Holding Space

I love the phrase “Holding Space”. I love the way it makes you think about space as something tangible and weighty. I definitely think of space this way—substantive, tangible, having its own energy. I walk into places and feel my energy rise and feel joyful and other places that drag me down and creep me out. The lovely side effects of being a highly sensitive person, neurodivergent, psychic, weird. Whatever you want to call it. I also feel that from people. Authenticity. The energy signature of each person is a bit different. It is how I feel my father with me even though he died five years ago. I feel his energy.

When I studied with my mentor, Pixie Lighthorse, we covered holding space—creating a safe environment for our clients and for ourselves. Of course, all my teachers cover sacred space and how to create an energetic neutral environment, but this was different. We talked about how to HOLD space. How to create a vessel for safety and trust. How to honor our clients. How to respect ourselves. We talked about psychological terms like transference and counter-transference. I can hear you say, “But those are psychological terms, Angie, and you aint a psychologist.”

True dat.

But the psychological model can be very useful for all of us who hold space for other people. Without a governing body, energy workers, Reiki practitioners, tarot readers, yogis, spiritual coaches, all of us really can get lost on our path. We burn out from working on people. Boundaries get crossed without us even knowing their should be a boundary there. Most of us need some guidance or guideposts on the way. A kind of moral compass and guide book for this landscape of energy.

When I got my first certification, I hung a shingle. I saw friends and colleagues, expanding my business online and in-person. I loved it. I held Moon Circles with no qualification other than I had been to Moon Circles. And as I got deeper into the work, the clients came to me with complex issues that needed a multi-pronged approach, and I had no idea what to do.

This is me saying—I made a lot of mistakes in my practice and my circles.

I let myself get triangulated. I became friends with clients and then had them calling with at all hours with Tarot emergencies. I tried to do everything for clients. I had my work and classes stolen from me by students. I let people not show up to appointments or come in late and got more and more resentful without talking to them. Truthfully, I was just a person in over her head in a community that were searching for more than I was trained to give.

Studying with Pixie changed my perspective. I am a professional and holding space is the most important part of my job. For my sanity and for the wellness of other people. I love research. I call myself a research monkey (though, honestly, the more I think about that, the more it sounds like I let people experiment on me). When I began my healing journey, I found called to work on others. When I began my healing trauma, I went down some really important rabbit holes for being trauma-informed in my practice. I felt I had unknowingly allowed my own privilege and bias not inform my practice. I have always taught ethics and boundaries in my circles, but through the years, it deepened and expanded with the core of my beliefs residing in love, kindness, and compassion. From there I rebuilt my approach to not only be loving, kind and compassionate to my clients, but also loving, kind and compassionate to me.

As I have said before, my philosophy can be summed up as “Do no harm, but take no shit.”

Ethics + learning how to hold space were the cornerstones of my successful energy healing practice. They’re the North Star that guides you to successfully have a thriving practice and honor your precious clients and protect your energy.

I am very honored to bring you the full scope of holding space, ethics + trauma-informed crystal therapy. My goal with this class is to EMPOWER you to have a practice that fulfills you, brings out the best in you, and serves your client’s highest needs.

I originally taught this class at Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy, and am offering it here. Read more about it here:

another q+a episode on centered with angie

Just a quick little episode of Centered answer these questions:

from Shannon:

I would love to know more about your Earth medicine journey and how you personally recognize and find meaning in the gifts Gaia offers you.

and then another from Melanie:

Hi Angie. What is the significance of the "Rising" sign and 12th House? I have my birth chart. They said I'm an Aries with Leo Rising and Cancer in the 12th House. I don't know what to do with that info. ❤️

New Moon in Pisces

anti valentine's day

shadow work

I am answering questions again. I like to answer questions, so keep them coming.This time I invited Kyra Paules to join me. We exchanged some Marco Polos about it, and then we jumped on Zoom.

Do we do shadow work or does the shadow work us? That is not the question we answer, but we say it at some point. So, Kyra and I thought we would answer some questions about shadow work, but really we only answer one question. Why are we qualified to talk about shadow anything? We like it. Also, Kyra is training to be a Jungian analyst, she is an official shadow retrieval facilitator and a therapist. I am a shamanic practitioner and we basically are shadowy creatures that like to explore the liminal spaces. And I am in recovery and we do shadow work, even though we don't call it that. We call it the fourth and fifth step. 

Here are the questions we actually were asked:

Tan - My question is:  how do you integrate shadow work? Shadow work gives us breakthroughs and revelations, most of the time I end up not knowing how to integrate it. How do I implement the changes? Sometimes I might even have a glimpse of what I need to do but actually doing it becomes hard. Maybe ego sabotages your missions with laziness or talks you out of it. How can we integrate our shadow in a way we don’t fell into it again?

Beka - yes, break it down on how one can do shadow work, ID your shadows etc.

If you want to find Kyra, go to http://awentarot.com and you can always find me at http://themoonandstone.com

Time, the Destroyer

Dear Time Bandits,

My Shamanic teacher once said during a business coaching call, “if I can give you one piece of advice.” I paused. This nugget will be magick, I thought. “Everything is going to take you two to three times longer than you think it will.”

At the time, I didn’t think that was so insightful. I used to be good at time management, but now, I realize it is the best bit of advice…schedule things 2-3 times longer than you expect. Set expectations low. You know how the Two of Pentacles shows a guy juggling everything and looking slick, but when he is reversed everything falls everywhere and the illusion of having it together is totally gone? Yeah, that is me right now. Reversed. Everything is taking me soooo long. Am I in slo-mo, or am I practicing more self-care and thus cannot get as much done? 

Maybe choice 2, but also a little of both.

In the end, the time thing is a big deal. I unwind my programming around time. Like a kitten with yarn, it is just a big tangled mess, weaving in and around the house, knotting and fraying, and my potted plants are suffering. When I was a kid, my mother was always late. We used to call it Panamanian Standard Time-15 minutes after start time. As an adult, lateness gives  me agita. I start to freak out and stress everyone out. As my youngest says tearing up, "Stop hurrying, mama." Then I am early and sit in the car like a crazy person waiting for someone else to show up so I can look normal.

What do I feel about time now? I can give you a thousand examples of time speeding and a thousand more of it being slow and plodding this last year. I cried because there wasn't enough time, and cried when I felt like time was not moving fast enough. When I had cancer, I kept reminding myself that time was an illusion, and I could jump ahead to the good stuff, but I didn't and I couldn't.

Most days, I wake up with ants in my pants and don’t stop moving. My leg bounces all day. I drive fast. I chew my nails.  I stutter and get caught on words because my tongue cannot keep up with my brain. I run into hallway corners because it is wasting my time to follow the giant human size space I am supposed to be walking within. As a middle aged person, I cannot believe how long I have been alive and how fast it all has gone.

But since I was released to my own devices in the work machine, I especially feel like time has been moving so quickly, which I have been moving through mud, losing time when I write and create, think and meditate. The day is gone and my schedule, while full and creative, was not as well-managed as I wanted it to be. Time stalks us. Kyra said in our latest podcast—I don’t think self-sabotage exists…we just have to look at what needs we are neglecting. And maybe I am finally meeting my needs, and that just takes extra minutes in the day. And I want to practice at a slower pace, savoring the moments of magick throughout my life. When I think about time, I also think about mortality. Time is the Goddess of Destruction, Kali. 

I read a post on Facebook that set me right on my ideas of Kali, and of course, changed everything. I used to think Kali was the goddess of Destruction and Justice and Rage. My sacred anger manifest in visions of her revenge. I called her in, worshipped at her altar, especially with my work around healing sexual trauma. She came at an important time, but I totally misunderstood why she came. I thought it was for my anger, but Shivani Hawkins shared this on Facebook a few years ago. I come back to it again and again.

Kālī is not the goddess of anger…She is Śiva's direct power, wisdom, and love. She is the power of meditation. Yes, she is described as an effulgent, luminous darkness because that is in part what the inner world looks like when you are meditating.

Kālī…destroys EVERYTHING, because TIME destroys everything, including the construct of self and existence itself. 

Is that scary? Of course it is. Why do you think you keep avoiding meditation practice?

In her mythology, she first kills off the bad guys (harmful beliefs). Then she kills off the good guys ("good" beliefs). Finally, she even cuts off her own head (Chinnamasta Kālī) because even SHE does not exist. Nothing is spared from her "wrath" (but is it wrath really?) because nothing but beloved Śiva - the supreme Oneness - is real.

Shivani’s powerful post unlocked something in me when I saw it. I have not been praying to Sacred Rage and Destruction. I have been praying to Time and Meditation. I have been praying for the illusions I hold to be made clear, to break down my patterns, to rescue me from me. I have been saying, Dark Mother, Sacred Time, help me see the illusions that keep me in chains. And she responded with lessons:

Your elders grow old, get sick, and die, but so do pets and babies sometimes. Just sit with that.

Your body is impermanent, child. Breasts are used to feed children, but you can still live without them. You can live without a womb. Cancer will show you that. Just sit with that.

You are not your body. Your body will die too one day. It may be tomorrow. We cannot control when or where, but we will all not have a body. Just sit with that.

You, your idea of you, will be destroyed too, because you too are an illusion. You are a result of a million actions and those actions, forgotten and unimportant, will be lost. Just sit with that.

Sit, daughter, sit still and meditate. And when you are not afraid, sit some more.

I sit. Kali destroys because time destroys. Everything is impermanent, except all that is, which we are also part of, even if there isn’t a we.  I have re-engaged the philosophical part of my brain. It is like my day job stopped and my body was like Sit. Contemplate egolessness. Read. Feel small. Move in sacred ways. Sit again. 

Do I have monkey mind? Yes. 

Do I have ants in my pants? Yes. 

Do I open my eyes at five minutes thinking it has been 30? Yes.

Do I still sit? Yes.

I want to share another paragraph of Shivani’s post:

This is full-blown liberation here. Not just freedom from what is harmful to us as mammals in human bodies, but freedom from every thought, concept, and self-construct that exists to separate us from the field of Beingness itself. From the pain of separation itself. She (Kali) is the vehicle of pure mystical union, where only God remains.

The Myth of Separation, Pixie calls it, the idea that we are all different and special and separate from the Earth, from Love, from the Universe. We are all one. And when we accept that, we can heal. When we surrender to time, allow the destruction to be part of us, returning us again to the whole of consciousness, we experience all that is. 

See what I mean about time? My wandering brain explores long forgotten dark tunnels, digging into muscle memory of thinking about thinking, returning from its hibernation into both old and new landscape. I guess that happens when I just sit with it all.

I didn’t mean to say all this. I honestly, just  meant to come in and just say:

I’m back, bitches!

But you know, like I know, I was never really gone. I was working. Sometimes on me. Sometimes just logging miles on the Mami-mobile I have been taking a minute to breathe and think and that is giving me some amazing ideas for offerings. Until then, if you want to connect with me, here is what I am offering:

- Private one-on-one shamanic earth medicine (crystal healing) sessions both in person at Alta View Wellness Center in Harrisburg, PA

- Private one-on-one spiritual counseling tarot sessions both in person at Alta View Wellness Center in Harrisburg, PA

- Private one-on-one distant shamanic earth medicine (crystal healing) sessions through Zoom or recording

 - Private one-on-one spiritual counseling tarot sessions through Zoom or recording

 -  The Moon + Stone Healing Membership which includes
        - Private Membership in our FB Group
        - Collective Readings at the New Moon + Full Moon
        - a monthly shamanic journey
        - Live Circle time with me, community and more in the Moon + Stone Membership group

Imbolc Reading

Enjoy this Collective Imbolc Reading for February 1. And you can try it yourself with this layout from my book the Complete Tarot Layouts:

Episode 40: Tarot + Earth Medicine Reading for December 2022

Blessed December! It’s going to be a dumpster fire, or it isn’t. We are working with the Hanged Man, so it is hard to know, but one thing is that if you want clarity, you can have it. Just don’t ask a question you don’t want to hear the answer to. Honestly. Seriously. We are hanging in a place between Justice (skewed Justice or real Justice, who knows for real?) and Death. And when we know the truth and we can’t unhear it.

We are working with Pyrite, Hematite and Petrified Wood. Quaking Aspen and Vulture. I think I am going to work with Condor, a type of Vulture, as South American Quechuan guide and ally.

Have an amazing December!! I’ll be back with Midwinter/Winter Solstice Reading December 21.

eyeballing the eclipse

This is eclipse is making me think about seeing things.

Like the one time I was driving to my mother’s house, and I turned my head into a field that had a stream running through it and there was a monkey. Like a real ass monkey. I passed it, processed the scene, then stopped the car completely. A monkey? In rural Pennsylvania? My left brain retorted, “Uh, no, sir. There is an error in that calculation.” I reversed up the country road.

When I came to the spot where the monkey lived, I squinted and looked, but it was just a tree trunk with branches that looked like a monkey. “It changed back to the tree,” I thought.

+ + +

I woke at 3:02 am ET, exactly, the time the eclipse was starting. The moon whispered in my ear…it is time, my love. It is time, seer, to witness the shadow fall over me and change the shape of things.
The entire yard illuminated by the moon, which I could not find. I walked to the west and there it was, like a spotlight over everything. It was totally full and bright and I said, “Here we go.” (As I write this now, the red is starting to creep over the moon from the top down, like a shade is being pulled over it.)

+ + +

This past weekend, I was honored to hold space for women in an earth medicine retreat where we worked with journey and painting to let the right brain drive for a while in a flowy, dreamy third eye dance. We journeyed, drank dream tea, and painted in a meditative state that implored us to get out of our own way. Our right brain just wants to drive for a while, but what happens, inevitably, is we argue with ourselves.

“This looks dumb. Paint something real, m’kay?”

“Shut it, Lefty. I am just flowing over here.”

“That’s not a real painting. Come on. What the fuck is this? Paint something real. We need evidence of art.”

“Maybe you are right. I don’t think I can do this. Maybe I should go nap. No, wait, you are left. I am just doing what is suggested and seeing how it unfolds. It doesn’t have to be anything right now. Nothing is supposed to be perfect.”

“It can be.”

And on and on…my Right Brain, let’s call it Orpheus, often is much more polite than is required. It says, “Thank you for sharing, Logos, but I am not looking for any advice right now.” Logos totally hates that shit. It is a know-it-all with half the information and so Logos keeps sending evidentiary memories to remind you of how flowing and being too creatively free made us objects of ridicule, or where teachers marked us off points for not being in the lines, or when someone called you flakey that one time.

We painted for four hours, the internal dialogue lessening over the sessions and the painting unfolding slowly. My first layer has a lot of optimism and messages of flying high, going for it. I pulled a Rebel Deck oracle card that said, "Get after that shit." And then the second layer turned darker and more defiant. Why are you always getting after shit? Just calm down. Pause.

I handed out secret messages every so often, like reminders from Spirit, a tablespoon of the extra sauce available for the flow. My second secret message said, "Take that Leap." And I just took the black and wrote NO next to it. I don't want to take the leap. (I may look defiant, but I am pliable and follow the rules and get nervous when I hold boundaries or say no.) I let the second layer be angry and defiant and punk rock. Hellz to the yeah!

My third layer came like a breeze, softening, honoring, calling in the medicine of my inner child and my inner mother, the one that sits with change and destruction and soothes. She said, "It's just an illusion of the sun and the earth. The Sun is shining behind you, my love. It is casting a shadow and makes the moon look like it disappears. Do not be afraid, the moon is always there whether we see it or not. You are always there whether you see or not."

+ + +

The night sky is darkening even more now, and the moon is starting to be enveloped by its shadow. I wonder if my writing will be enveloped by shadow too. The Sun is behind us now, as the Moon does her thing. It reminds me of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The shadow emerges and I wonder if I what I will see in this time and how I will see it. I need another cup of coffee.

+ + +

Then after painting, we ate, then we got ready for a dream/third eye focused collective grid crystal healing for dreamwork. Hot flashes + painting + unseasonably warm weather = Angie needs a shower. My mentor talks about adorning before ceremony, cleansing the energy field, doing the work. I pour a baño over my head, salt and herbs and water flowing over me. It feels so good to be in water. I craved it when I can't take a bath or cleanse this way. Then, in the shower, soap got in my eye. Mint soap. (Do adults regularly get soap in their eyes? Asking for a friend.)

It burned, and I rubbed and rubbed and rinsed it best I could with contacts in. And then it felt like my contact rolled up into my eyelid. I finished the shower and went to look in the mirror to retrieve the contact.

I just couldn’t find it.

I start sweating again, knowing that everyone is waiting on me, but my contact was stuck in my eye. What if it traveled into my brain? What if it caused a massive infection? What if I can’t get it? My left brain was loving this shit. Logos said, “YAY, home surgery!! I watch television where people do surgery all the time. We can do this.”

My right brain was like, “Uh, no. You aren’t getting it out that way. Let’s just go with the flow, man. Plus, you are going into a deep third eye meditation. Maybe there is a reason you cannot see right now. Or you can only see out of one eye. Look deeper, Ang. Look at the thing behind the thing. Just reconcile yourself to the fact that you aren’t seeing from this side tonight. The suffering comes from trying to do something you cannot do, like find a lost contact in your eye.”

I told everyone, and the ladies poked and prodded, and suggested things. I wasn’t sure if I was seeing a contact or the sclera, so in the end, I just went on, unable to see out of my right eye, looking like Popeye.

I have terrible eyesight. I mean, I think it is considered 20/500. Meaning what I see at 20 feet is what someone who had good eyesight sees at 500 feet. But I didn’t need to see. I was in the flow of the music of Jonathan Goldman, and the amazing energy of the archangels and ascended masters, the crystals and sacred geometry. I just did what I was trained to do as the wind howled outside and the almost full moon shone through the windows. I stepped into the light and just bathed in the moonlight.

Thank you, I whispered to Grandmother Moon. Thank you for letting me do this work.

+ + +

There is no light outside now. It is like a deep darkness, one that scares me a bit. The stars are suddenly illuminated—always there, but I couldn’t see them with the brightness of the Full Moon.

+ + +

Spirit wanted me to see without seeing, to see perfectly out of my left side and be fuzzy in the right. Fuzzy and tuned in. My eye ached from being manipulated and touched and ran with tears. I could still feel the contact in there, way back behind my eye, but I just trusted and moved into the flow.

Sometimes we have to not see before we can truly see. Sometimes we need to trust that what we need is right there, even if we don’t have evidence for that.

I fell asleep imagining the contact swimming toward my front cortex with little cartoon arms and exploratory tools, like a mini-pickaxe, strapped to its back. In the morning, I looked in my eye again. It felt injured—achy and sore. Still two days later, it feels achy and sore. I still didn't see any contact, but the eye was goopy. I made coffee and pulled tarot cards from the Alleyman Tarot.

Every card and description involved seeing. When the 10 of Eyes came, I realized that even this was the medicine of the weekend. Seeing was preventing me from the feeling. Seeing was preventing me from honoring. It was preventing me from trusting that the monkey was the medicine I needed at that moment. The medicine of laughter, communication, and community. Later in the morning, I found my contact in the sink, stuck half in and half out of the drain.

It was never in my eye. It had fallen out at some point, but I was still looking for something not there. Because wounds feel like that sometimes, like something is there that simply isn’t. Like there is a huge folded up piece of plastic in your eye lid, when it was your own damned finger.

Sometimes you are your own damned irritant.

This lesson is eternal. No matter how much we look outward, we always have a finger poking our own eye.

In recovery, we use sponsors. Sponsors are people who have gone through the twelve steps and guide us through them too. The Twelve Steps basically help you have a spiritual experience by doing some self-reflection, looking at our wounds and the wounding we caused others, asking Spirit to guide you to release the underlying character defects so you can be of maximum service to the world. Sponsors guide you in your spiritual journey, and so we call them when we are poking our own eyes, and seeing things that are not there, and avoiding the things right in front of us. Sponsors are not like therapists though. They often laugh when you are stuck and say, “Yep, that’s how it goes. I remember when that happened to me too. Stop poking your own eye when it hurts. Close your eyes and use your ears instead. Listen.” They can only share their experience, really. They aren’t there to solve the problem, just to think about it in another way.

I am not saying you should become an alcoholic but having a sponsor might be a good thing. You know the person who says, “Did you look in the sink first before you went around doing home surgery without sterilized equipment?” Then they usually say, “Why don’t you pray about it? Why are you trying to fix everything on your own?”

The Left-Brain loves poking at things and doing home surgery and making up conspiracy theories and letting your wounding take on the role of “logic” in your brain. It is the Right Brain that says, “Let’s just make some meaning out of this and go with the flow. Maybe this will lead us somewhere cool.”

+ + +

The Moon is completely covered now, there is not even a sliver, and I woke my daughter to see. She saw the blood red of the dark side as it was slowly covered. Then she plodded back to bed. Now it is just a shadow of itself. We honor the crone in the darkness, how the grandmother sits and waits and says, "It all goes too fast." Secrets are said to be revealed this total lunar eclipse in Taurus with the Sun, Venus and Mercury in Scorpio and with Uranus and square Saturn. We are as sick as our secrets; crone sponsors have been saying for decades. Maybe the medicine is the sharing of secrets.

The dogs were not interested in going outside, and I thought about how wise they are not to stand under the moon eclipsing and darkening. They stay inside and cuddle up, preparing for a long day of napping.

Samhain Reading

Angie talks Samhain, letting go, emotional support corpses and pulls some tarot cards for the dark season of Samhain to Yule.

This is a picture of my Layouts book with my margin notes. I really encourage you all to change up things in your books, because connecting with the layout is the MOST important part. You have control!

I talk about this piece by Marybeth Bonfiglio called 41 Ways to Make Love to Yourself: https://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/12/41-ways-to-make-love-to-yourself-marybeth-bonfiglio/

ancestors

dear future ancestors,

As October draws to a close and we welcome in Samhain, All Souls and All Saints Day, I acknowledge the thinness of the veil. I hear the whispering in my ear of the ancestors. 

Mi amor, be strong. 
We are always here. 
Honor yourself when you honor us.

I create an altar for Día de los Muertos* in mid-October, when I begin to feel the ancestors pushing against me. I call them in. Ask for their help. It is not simply because I come from a culture that celebrates this holiday (though I do), but because I am a bereaved mother. And this American happy-happy culture does a lousy job of honoring the dead and grief.  

Day of the Dead is one of those holidays that has grown more and more mainstream with non-Catholic, non-Latino people creating altars, painting their faces, hanging up decorated sugar skellies, and dancing into the night.  That isn't happening because others want to become or appropriate another culture, but because we are all hungry to honor our dead. We want to celebrate our ancestors. We want to walk with death, rather than hide our grief and whisper to our dead in the still of the night. It is only in recent history that the dead were hid away from us, or that we were protected from the dying, the dead, and grief. All cultures from Europe to Asia to Africa and the Americans, cultures honored the dead.

My niece said to me a few years ago, "We come from a long line of witches, right?" And I laughed. It depends on how you define witch. When I call in the ancestors before circle, I call in all the healers and mystics in my lineage. But I also come from a long line of storytelling artists and mystics, bawdy women with good heads on their shoulders, from cooks and musicians, teachers and writers. But the drunks are there too, the ones that acted badly at that party once. They are the same. Because the ancestors were human. 

This is the medicina they bring forth—their humanness. And not that anyone wants my opinion on this, but this is the beauty and awe of the stories of Buddha and Jesus—their humanness existed, their flaws, their character defects and defaults, but still they sought to heal themselves then others. They found a path of spirituality that helped them and passed it on. This is also the lessons of our ancestors—that they were human and had a story, which is now part of your DNA. (Epigenetics is a really cool rabbit hole to go down)

Día de los Muertos gives me a time to honor all the ancestors as well as my daughter. I love to collect the stories of my family. The ones that make you go, “What the…oh my goddess.” I love to know their names, see their faces, try to imagine their lives and then think of the lesson they learned and want to pass on, or listen for them to tell me.

A few years ago, Vanessa Codorniu  held an ancestors journey at Alta View Wellness Center. I journeyed to Central America, where my family is from, and saw them all there. My mother’s Abuelita Isabel with the curly hair and my ancestors with Mayan noses and headdresses and painted skin.  Sitting in front of all of them, Vanessa asked us to talk to them. And so I did. I remember asking about my health and my weight and why I haven’t been able to lose weight. And my ancestor stepped forward and said:

You are the wishes of all your ancestors. 
Your body is revered by us because you are the child that is not hungry. 

When we do ancestral healing, this is what we do. We dialogue with our ancestors. We reframe. We understand. We humanize. We integrate. We break patterns. We forgive. We allow their wounds to be our wisdom.

So Day of the Dead, I create a space for my ancestors and my predeceased ancestral daughter, hang a painting of her and me that I painted in the early days after her death and another of my ancestors, the ones that whisper to me in my sessions. I put calaveras and bright colors all around the altar as well as food, water, flowers and candles. In my mother's native Panama, my family walks to the cemetery to have a meal with the dead. They decorate the graves and commune as a family. Those weeks with my Día de los Muertos altar is not simply a time to grieve, but a time to celebrate life. When we honor our ancestors, we acknowledge the wisdom they have given to us in life and now in death. 

But my ancestors were awful people. What do I do?

You can say, “Thank you for letting me be the breaker of awfulness.” (Instead of awfulness, you can replace that with breaker of our family trauma, pain, abuse, addiction, etc.) When we reframe our ancestors, put them in their historical, trauma, and family context, we can find wisdom, even if it is learning from their sins. Sometimes the deep grief of lives not lived, or their actions can move through us. We can cry for our family lineage. We can cry for their victims, for ourselves, if we were the victim or them as a victim and victimizer.** This ancestral work is about healing and releasing. We are fully in Scorpio season, and it wants to move through us. We get to be the conduit for compassion, love, grief, release and rebirth. And yes, we get to acknowledge the awfulness of our ancestors too. You can grieve that there was no wisdom to be passed to you.

We can  transform grief to gratitude through this process. Not for having lost, but for them having lived at all.


*You can read more about El Día de los Muertos at this History Channel link. Just a quick correction, though, we celebrate it in Panama and throughout Central America, so it is not only a Mexican holiday.
** In the Body Keeps Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk , he talks about how PTSD sufferers from the Vietnam War often recounted the trauma they inflicted on others as the trauma they could not heal, because there is no outlet for talking about the awful things they did during war. I could go on a rant on why this is, but suffice to say, when we train people to dehumanize their enemy, we set them up for massive trauma.
PPS. I have some great things coming up and you can check them out here

PPS.  you can listen to my podcast with the Tarot and Earth Medicine of the month right here at Anchor or on Spotify.

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all the things.

It has been a week. I mean, it has been a month. Or so.

Actually, let’s be frank it has been a year. Or two.

No, I guess, it has been a life.

As the Buddhist note, it is all sucky, uh, I mean suffering. It shouldn't be shocking when things are hard. I have a very child-like part of me that is wide-eyed, gullible, and trusting. She jumps into things and as my friend Jess says, "She's a joiner!" Then the other part of me is world-weary and jaded. She sits in a darkened room by candlelight, smoking unfiltered cigarettes, drinking black coffee, listening to the Velvet Underground and talking about existentialism. She guffaws a lot and says, "I bet it is!" She is always urging me to just take a nap, then get a jobby job with the State already. I have have these two competing for attention. Let’s say they are two turtles.***

The naïve part constantly says, “Certainly, that’s it for the ‘hard stuff’ of this life. After this bout of cancer/babyloss/illness/husband surgery/busy season, everything is going to be smooth sailing.” I have two prints in my house that was hung by that Divine Fool aspect of me. One says, “EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY” and the other one says, “Nothing but blue skies from here on out.”

The jaded part is waiting for the next thing. She sits like a gargoyle on the mantle and growls at people who move her shit. She hung a sign that says, “Don’t Fuck with Me. (Protect your Energy.)”

The two turtles are fighting inside me. One is jaded. The other is not. This is not an Ancient Panamanian proverb. It is a metaphor and the turtles will make sense in a bit.

I keep thinking things will slow down and then they don’t. The jaded part asks the enthusiastic child part, “Why are you overscheduling yourself?” And the Divine Fool says, “I can’t help it. All the things are important. I love all the things.”

Are they? Are all the things important?

The jaded part points out that taking care of me, and me first, is priority. "No one else is going to watch your ass, Toots. You better make sure you get a nap."

+ + + + +

My brother-in-law, sister-in-law and niece visited this weekend, and my niece says, “I love everything about your house. It is the most inviting and comfortable house I have ever been to.” And it made my decade. That is literally my only style aesthetic—warm, inviting, comfortable. All my furniture is thrifted. I have plants everywhere. Crystals on the surfaces that make sense. There is art on almost all the walls…art from my kids, art from me, art prints are treated with the same import as painting and retablos and metal and woodwork, which I love. It just fills me with JOY to see everything I love out and accessible.

And without thinking I said, “Yeah, I am a maximalist.”

More is more. I try to distill my thoughts, keep things nice and streamlined. I have tried to play minimalist. Mysterious and distant. Giving you only a little. But it is not me. That childlike enthusiastic part of me that wakes up at 4am with the first thought being, “YAY! It’s morning! Can I get up now?” When someone talks about something I love, I get bright-eyed and just start sharing all the things I know.

Less is more leaves me wanting. I keep adding things. I put it all out there. More than is needed. I painted the tree. Then started adding animals. More animals. With people visiting, I make more food than is needed. I create more art, more words, more research.

All that is to say that I am unraveling this part of me that thinks all the things are important.

I am a neurodivergent, thinky, introvert masking as an extrovert. I am a research monkey and an artist, creative and logical. But I have to start saying “No”. I have to stop contributing to my own suffering. I have to learn how to prioritize. And when I started saying this over the weekend, when my feet ached and all I wanted to do was hide away, the medicine started coming in big time.

I thought in October, we would be journeying with bat (what an October animal to journey with) or owl again. But no, sea turtle came through. Sea Goddamn Turtle.

A turtle of the sea for this landlocked mama. I mean, I love turtle. They are nice. They generally seem to mind their own beeswax. This is a quality I admire in humans and in animal species. I began journeying with turtle to prepare the guided journey for my membership group, researching turtle and finding the medicine was exactly what was needed right now. Firstly, it is coming in the watery West, in Autumn, and it lives primarily in water—we are going to be dealing with deep emotions. The secondly, it is about slowing down, going inward.

When I journeyed with turtle, she took me into a turquoise sea with the bright sun shining through the water, illuminating the parts of me that need attention. She showed me that she walks slow on land because she is a water being. When she walks slowly on land, she has to be very protective. She is easily targeted for attack. "That is why the hare was so much faster," sea turtle said, "I'm not a creature of the land."—the turtle is supposed to be in the water. She showed me she travels through time through millennia. She showed me how ancient they are, and how they can access the knowledge from the 40,000 years of mankind that existed before writing did.

As I was journeying, I fell asleep. I rarely do that. But it all caught up with me—the past week, month, year…I ended up waking up groggy with the icaros still going, and me singing them in my sleep. I tried to focus on my work and record the journey for my membership group. But an ocular migraine slowly developed, which forced me into a dark room, then two more naps. I fell asleep at 9p.

+ + + + +

Turtle’s medicine was a forced pause. "BAM you need to slow down, sister!" I truly have been going a mile a minute, waking up at 4am just to get everything done. Turtle medicine slows us down, to evaluate if ALL THE THINGS are important. Are all those deadlines and busy-ness self-imposed? Can you un-impose them?

The next day, a groggy, slow, post-migraine day, our power went out at 6p, right before I went live for my weekly Live Office Hours, where I answer questions live for our crystal students. Everything shut down. I was done, but prepping the live video feed. I couldn’t access my work or research. We had no internet connection. The house was growing darker. The refrigerator warmer.

I contacted the team—"I have to reschedule.” And it was rescheduled in 5 minutes.

Many years ago, when I worked at a café in Tucson, I opened the shop. I get in there at 530a, and there is an inch of water covering the entire coffeehouse. I called the other worker to come in early. I turned off the water to the ice machine, which was the issue, and took a mop and began mopping up the floor. One mop head at a time. Sop up water. Put it in the mop bucket. Squeeze. Repeat. For 1 hour. Before someone else came in and said, “You do not have to mop this.” Basically, you do not have to do this impossible task alone and try to open the café by 7am. You can ask for help. And then they pulled out a squeegee and pushed the water out into the parking lot in almost no time. (Again, I ask myself why I am causing my own suffering?)

Yesterday, Spirit said, “Not today, honey. You cannot do all the things.” Zap. The power was out. Now what? Sit down. No devices. No work. No things were as important as the moment I was in right now.

I took a breather. Played cards with my kids. Set up the generator, the candles and emergency lanterns.

Turtle gave me this lesson this week.

That is how the medicine is, you know. You begin working with an animal, connecting with its energy, learning its ways, and then you can see those obstacles coming is as gifts and lessons. I very much needed turtle medicine. My Divine Fool part reminds me of the other sign she hung in my house, the one that says, “I am practicing radical self-acceptance, because this is the only me I’ve got.”

Sacred Turtle, the master of longevity and patience, comes forth for you too this month. Slow it the eff down, friend. Call in sick. Let the power outage bring you mindfulness and presence. Feed both of the turtles. The one that speeds through the ocean and the other that rambles, wearily, through the sand, and let them be brothers in arms, fighting against all the things to bring you just the right thing.

empathic boundaries

One of the things that I get asked most frequently, whether people know me as a Tarot Reader or a Crystal Healer or Energy Worker, is "Don't you get really worn out doing that work? I mean, don't people drain you?"

And actually, no, people don't drain me, and beyond regular working physical exhaustion, I don't get worn out in an empathic way. But they used to wear me out, simply when I went out for coffee with someone. I completely understand why people ask that question, because learning how to control your energetic boundaries is incredibly difficult and being an empath can be draining before you learn how to deal with it. We go through headaches, bellyaches, fatigue, anxiety, trouble grounding, as well as picking up ailments and emotions of other people. I am a classic Empath with IBS, Celiac, Arthritis, and Hashimoto's Disease--autoimmune disorders from years of tapping out my adrenal glands and not practicing good boundaries.

 When I work on a client, we have both signed a kind of sacred contract. First, they are inviting me into their energy field or aura. I take that responsibility seriously. My clients are allowing me to sense their energy; allow my intuition to pick up on their emotions, guides, and spiritual grappling; and to work on the different layers of their energetic field--the ones that govern the physical, the etheric, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual.

 They lie prone on my table, allow themselves to have their eyes covered with an eye pillow, and fall asleep, or drift into another plane of existence while I hold space, watch over them, lay crystals on the body and then touch their bodies. It is a huge responsibility. My part of the contract is not only to take that seriously and treat their body as sacred, but also to do my own work, keep my own boundaries, and align my thoughts, feelings and spiritual center with their healing. Vulnerability is a precious gift. I honor that gift given to me in my healing space.

 Most people do not invite many people into their auric field. Think about how many people you have close physical contact within the course of a day--our partner, our children, maybe a random hug here and there. But in general, to get into someone's field means you are standing within arm's length. Those encounters come in 10 second increments throughout your day. A client has allowed me into his or her auric field for one hour. What I need when I practice crystal healing is incredibly strong boundaries and a regimen of spiritual hygiene. I couldn't do my job effectively if I left my healing studio filled with the emotions, quandaries, and physical ailments of my clients. Or worst, my clients left with mine. It is something we don't talk about as healers often. We must align our thoughts constantly in session.

 My unsettled mind used to drift constantly in meditation. Buddhists refer to it as Monkey Mind, or a mind as filled with monkeys. One monkey is chattering, another jumping, another banging loudly on something. What am I making for dinner? Where are we going today? I can't believe that happened with so and so. Fear is a very loud monkey, as I once read in a Buddhist piece, screaming about everything that can go wrong. The writer in that article suggested talking to your fear monkey, and asking it questions. What would happen if we didn't have enough money? And just talking to your fear monkey about natural consequences. My cure for monkey mind is simply to acknowledge it. I label it, "Thinking." And then go back to being aware of the present, right where I am. A teacher once told me to stop in the midst of monkey mind and look at my shoes. This is where you are right here. Right now.

 In session, quiet overtakes the room, and I am in sacred space. The entire session is meditation for both my client and me. It is inevitable that we will drift into thinking, but my part of my sacred contract is to release my thinking, my feelings, my issues as I am in my client's sacred auric field. I also give my clients suggestions how to release a thought that may arise during session. It may sound hard, but it is liberating. If you are feeling something you don't want to feel, wait. It will change very quickly. Emotions, if we release storytelling, move through our body quickly. This is a practice to cultivate when we are in meditation. Feel the feeling, but release the thoughts around the feeling.

 I have done a great deal of this work. So, first I am conscious not to have my client pick up on my energy, but I am also conscious not to pick up on theirs. My teacher Pixie Lighthorse said in a boundaries class, "What if it is unethical to feel someone's feelings for them?" We must abide without picking up the emotions. I have consciously worked to strengthen my auric field and help transmute my emotions and the emotions of others. The first step was grounding, grounding and more grounding. The Empath is frequently ungrounded when they haven't trained their gifts. Using transmuting stones is helpful, like black tourmaline, smoky quartz, dravite, and obsidian. You can also ground yourself by walking barefoot, hugging a tree, and just simply sitting on the ground. During session, I ground my clients by sitting on the floor and doing energy work at their Earth Star. I see myself as their ground into Mother Earth and consciously channel energy this way through my sitz bones and up through my hands into their feet. For me, grounding begins this process of protecting your EMF. It is hardly work for me anymore. It simply is a way of being.

 One thing I am grateful for is not to be empathically drained after sessions with clients. I am absolutely present in that space. The feeling I consciously express are that of love and healing energy. I ask to be a channel of healing and peace, and call on angels and guides that assist to use me, but I also ask my guides and angels to help empty my emotions and thoughts out during session. To remain present with my client. This is hard work, and I know I can't do it alone. So I ask Great Spirit and my guides. You can ask too. When I finish, I treat my work like I've been in a sacred space of shedding and I am covered in other people's emotions, thoughts, and pain. I first run Selenite through my aura, and wipe of the energy. I burn sage sometimes, or use a sage spray. When I get home, I take a salt bath, drink lots of water, and practice Reiki and crystal healing self-care. If I can't get to a bath, I use a salt soap to cleanse my auric field.

 There are some great resources for working with strengthening your own boundaries and monkey mind. I love this small piece on Addictive Thinking .  Rose Rosetree has some incredible blog posts about her ideas of Empowered Empaths, and has written a few books about how to work with your Empath self. I love how she talks about turning off your gift of empathy, which is something I do in public. Pixie Lighthorse has written a wonderful book called Boundaries & Protection based on her two bootcamps called the same.

the nubs

I constantly talk about my nubs.

I’m two weeks into a Tarot class at Alta View Wellness Center, and I think I have brought my nubs up more times than I have talked about the suit of cups. Zachary thinks they are hilarious and sometimes we talk about what we can do to them to jazz them up a bit, like drawing little nipples on them, bedazzling them, or sticking some googly eyes on them.

And then we laugh and laugh and laugh.

Dark irreverent humor keeps me sane. And luckily my kids love to indulge in it too. One of the most hilarious, yet completely inappropriate (but hilarious) jokes my seven year old made was when we were watching TikTok and this advertisement popped up for a binder (for those who don’t know, a binder is a compression undergarment worn to flatten breasts.) The ad shows a sad young person and a voice comes on like an 80s commercial, “Tired of your breasts?” and my kid, without missing a beat says, “Then just get cancer!”

He looked shocked because he couldn’t believe that he said it out loud, and then we roared. Honestly, the two of us could not stop laughing. I was crying with laughter and we watched it again and again as we riffed on increasingly hilarious renditions on the breast cancer comment.

Zachary knows more than a seven-year-old should about mortality and serious illness. His mother was diagnosed with not one but two cancers in one year. Breast cancer in July 2021, and Endometrial cancer in July 2022. (Sam has had his own health challenges in the last year +, but that is his story to tell)

But, and this is the thing I love about our family, we kept laughing. We laughed about my exhaustion. We laughed about my drains. We laughed about my Buddha belly. We laughed about cancer. We laughed about my nubs— btw, my nubs are the two little bits of fat between the breasts that don’t count as breast tissue, but still would look better out after a mastectomy, but that is neither here nor there, because I am just glad to have my life saved and not really judging the sewing job my surgeon did. I mean, she did a great job for having sliced me open from armpit to the center of the chest, for severing my nerves, removing 12 lbs of breast tissue and then sewing me up as flat as possible. I got some nubs, some rolls, some pinched skin. It is part of the process for someone shaped like me, and honestly, my nubs are soft and look like the top of a giraffe’s head and I like them.

(if you are wondering why I am talking about my nubs, today marks one year since I had a double mastectomy and was cured of breast cancer and so i keep thinking about what this last year has been about, you know, like you do.)

It’s been a weird year. The things that I thought would matter do not. Like I worried about how clothes would look. I worried about bathing suits. I worried about being naked and seeing my body. I like my body better without breasts even though I am keenly aware that my body kind of looks weird and is lumpy and people don’t know what to make of me. I worried I would not be able to work as much. And it is true. I have had to slow down a lot and realize that surgeries take a toll, so now, I have some work-life balance and it is awesome. Workaholism doesn’t work-a-whole lot (ism?) That was kind of a Dad joke, but told by a mom might be a Faux Pas. (OMG, someone stop me now.)

Honestly, and this might sound strange, but I have felt an immense peace about my body. Having cancer healed something in me. I saw myself as capable of healing. Strong and vibrant and positive. I am proud of myself for consistently taking myself to the doctor for routine check-ups. It is not easy to go to the doctor when you are fat, because it is all some doctors see. The first breast surgeon told me I wouldn’t want to go flat because heavy people look weird without boobs and they are so used to it. Fat bias not only exists, but it probably causes most of the health problems that fat people face.**

I left that surgeon’s office and found an incredibly kind surgeon who would respect my desire to have a flat chest and not undergo unnecessary surgeries or radiation (something contraindicated for those with autoimmune disorders ANYWAY, but the first surgeon thought that was a small price to pay for BOOBS!) When I had endometrial cancer, I went to a surgeon who told me my fatness caused my cancer and suggest the best follow-up I can do is bariatric surgery. (I literally have a genetic anomaly in this tumor that was caused by nothing I did in my life.) And so I left and said, Fuck that guy. And I found another incredible surgeon that told me I was young and healthy and was going to do awesome. And you know what? I decided to believe him. In the end, I had ZERO pain, no discomfort. And felt better than before my hysterectomy.

But fighting for my own good healthcare made me realize that all this friggin’ self-care work WORKS. I am living, thriving and happier than ever simply by getting a mammogram and a yearly PAP smear. It was hard, don't get me wrong. I had infections and long weeks of open wounds and exhaustion. I have to learn how to accept a lot of things. I thought I would never not have pain. That my children might face the same future as me.

But in the end, I realized that my cancers were so much easier than they could of been if I had decided I wasn't worth the trouble of going to the doctor. If I let a doctor convince me to do something I know I didn't want to do. I just did the next right thing for me because I love and care about myself. Because I have learned over these last 12 + years, how to mother myself. I said, “I know you hate the doctor and getting weighed. I know you don’t like getting your boobs squished in a machine, but it’s so much better than dying of breast cancer.” And so I did it. Those routine exams caught my cancers early before they were in stages that needed chemotherapy or radiation.

(Incidentally, I just said to my kid this morning at the dentist, “Everyone hates the dentist, but we go every six months because that is so much easier and less painful than getting a cavity filled. And you know what, you have done so many really hard things and you can do this.” Those are the same exact words I said to myself last time I went to the dentist too, btw.)

And so, on the anniversary of my double mastectomy, my Boob Voyage if you will, and the birth of my beloved nubs, get your girl and boy bits screened. If you are struggling with self-love and self-care, start there. Like a little commitment to yourself. Just go to the doctor even if you don’t want to, and ask for your mammogram, or your PAP smear, or your colonoscopy, or just feel your balls up or your tetitas or ask a friend to and just check. Do it for you. Early detection literally saves lives. Self-care saves lives.

It saved mine.

My love is always with you,


PS. ** I could literally go on a soap box and rant about this for pages, but I will spare you the lecture. But Aubrey Gordon’s piece Weight Stigma Kept Me Out of Doctor's Offices is really important, so read it.

PPS. I have some great things coming up and you can check them out here

PPS. I decided to use a picture of the shirt I wore today that says Chingona with a breast cancer ribbon. Chingona means "bad ass woman." My nubs are under that shirt. Seemed a wee bit more tasteful than just doing the full monty for you. Mastectomy scars can be a little hard for people to look at, but I love mine.

agreements

The last few months in my monthly readings, the Four Agreements have come up as a way to deal with some of the difficult astrological aspects arising. Honestly, I have used these for many years as guides for how to approach. They were revolutionary, because they are simple and effective:

1.      Be impeccable with your word.

Say what you mean and mean what you say. It sounds easy enough. Most of us think we speak the truth, but then think about people pleasing…do you say or do things that you think other people want? If we believe we can create our own realities through intention setting, what is every word we speak—that’s right, an intention.

2.      Don't take anything personally.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, that other people and the world do or say to you, is about you. It is always about them. Think about that. Take that in. And then also, even the opinions about yourself are not necessarily true, so you cant even take that personally.

3.      Don't make assumptions.

The human mind has a wonderful ability to fill in blanks. Maybe because our brains is used to doing this with our sensory input, but filling in the blanks with other people, with what we think will happen, with what people should and shouldn’t know is not useful. It sets ourselves up for suffering. So, let’s ask questions.

4.      Always do your best.

This is just the best for right now. Somedays that might be an extraordinarily high quality or level and other days, our best is staying in bed and resting.

I love these because they touch on my four main character defects—people pleasing, self-centeredness, know-it-all-ism, and perfectionism.

Through the years, I have collected my own agreements that I use CONSTANTLY in my work and life. I didn’t write them, but I use them as touchstones through my work and through my own approach to my spiritual development.

1. Stop Watering Dead Plants.

I love this one, because it came at that exact perfect time for me when a friendship I had cultivated through the years fell apart. It was not because of lack of love or lack or care or lack of trying, but because she couldn’t trust me. She constantly asked others if I was mad at her, or talking about her, or upset with her. She never asked me. Then she started sabotaging the friendship and a normal misunderstanding turned into a apocalyptic event. And this popped up. It was a lightbulb moment. I just thought, “Angie, you keep watering this dead plant.” And it literally provoked me to look around my house and clear out all my dead plants, and repot the ones not growing because they are stuck. Once I did it in my home, I did it in all aspects of my life. I do think plants have so much wisdom to teach us, particularly when we try to domesticate them.

2. Do no harm, but take no shit.

Boundaries are the key to knowing your limits, making decisions on your life and being both a good friend, partner, lover, worker and community member. Think about what your boundaries are, first of all. Then keep them. It is not someone else’s responsibility to keep your boundaries. You can share them with someone, but it is your responsibility to enforce your own boundaries and sometimes that means saying no, telling people they crossed a boundary, or walking away from a relationship not serving you. Many of us are so enmeshed in the people pleasing behaviour that boundary setting feelings like harm. The Take No Shit is really self-compassion and self-care. Be your own advocate, but dammit, be kind.

3. Be extraordinary.

Being extraordinary isn’t about being a perfectionist or perfect in any way. It is about being extra. You know, extra. I often think of it as being of service, going above and beyond and following your inner child’s enthusiasm. Being extra-creative—thinking of things outside of the box, trusting your vision and following it through. It also means, to me, to be extra in terms of intuition—extra sensitive, extra trusting of your gifts, extra confident with your gut instinct, extra kind with yourself and others, and extra healing with your words and deeds. Recognizing that we need to be impeccable with our word means that maybe words have power and we are creating our reality with our thoughts. Maybe most importantly, being you, authentically you, is being extra-ordinary. Because you are extra, girl.

4. Nothing is wasted; you will use it all.

We can use every experience we have we will be use to learn, grow or be wise. As Oprah says, “Turn your wounds into your wisdom.” This is it. We will use everything to help other people. This is maybe my most important lesson from recovery—my story is all I have. My failures, losses, suffering, and trauma are what I have to learn from. We can shift our sadness and grief into strong boundaries, lessons and healing. Like how we can turn our garbage into compost and feed our new crops, we can use those things to help us grow in new ways. I use Vulture for this work to help me see the medicine in my wounds. But the message comes all the time for my clients. Nothing is wasted in this situation. You will use it all.

When I wrote these down, I felt a lightness, an exhale…this is who I am. this is what I am about.

There is an ease that arrives when you figure out who you are and what you are not, learning your boundaries and what you will and will not tolerate. I know my ethics class, coming up in September at Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy will focus so much attention on this. Who are you? What do you or do you not tolerate? And then making your mission statement around this.

And I feel like Hans and Franz saying this (old old SNL reference)—make it now or make it later, but you will make it. We often don’t realize a boundary until someone crosses it. Even if you don’t, Vulture is just hanging out, waiting for something to die, or fail, so you can make some medicine out of it. So learn it now or learn it later. With lots of suffering in-between. I am probably going to be diving a little deeper into these through the next few weeks, so buckle up, buttercup, we got some agreements to craft!

happy agreement creating!

Tarot + Earth Medicine Allies for September 2022

The Nine of Cups in the Ninth month!?!?! COME ONE!

It is a card of abundance and manifestation or is it a curse? We discuss this and more this month’s reading. It’s feeling a bit lighter in September even though retrogrades abound, wishes work their trickster magic and Mercury pulls its shit again. We talk wishes and the medicine of the hummingbird, the sunflower, hematite, turquoise and tiger eye. It is a wonderful time to think about how we talk and how we connect.

Listen and enjoy!

Episode 29 + Episode 30 of Centered

I actually went on a vacation for the first time in years. Since BEFORE the pandemic, in fact. My family and I did two weeks in New England—first in the Berkshires and second in Vermont in a beautiful treehouse. We napped and had ice cream and found swimming holes and hiked in the woods. It was a wonderful time, but it also meant I neglected this blog, my newsletter, my podcast, etc. Oh, and I had all my female bits removed, so I did deal with some, you know, healing time!

Here are my last two episodes of the podcast. First, the monthly earth medicine for August and whew boy, is it a doozy!?!? and then of course, another Q+A episode with my first recorded message, which was so awesome to receive. I hope you enjoy them!

on openings + closings

Lately, I have been putting posts on Facebook with a kind of Ask-Me-Anything feel, so I can cover your questions on my podcast. Sometimes just coming up with ideas exhausts me and jumping off points are so very useful.

After wanting to be a doctor, then an architect, then a journalist, at some point in my thirties and forties I decided that I wanted to be an advice columnist. I love advice columns, because they delve into the experience of being human, being compassionate and being action-oriented. I used to love Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar column on the Rumpus.

Beautiful writing + advice column + pontificating on the experience of being human = Angie Heaven.

I thought about what it would be called—Dear Nerd. Or Ask a Know-It-All. (Hey, I’m in recovery from being a Know-It-All!) Or What Would a Research Monkey Do? Nowadays, I like the idea of Dear Shamanic Practitioner And Energy Worker Who Reads Way Too Much And Loves To Do Research + Has an Inordinate Amount of Useless Information Floating Around her Brain, but it just doesn’t roll of the tongue like Dear Nerd.

In many ways, I have gotten to fulfill this fantasy in my actual work life, particularly with my work at Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy as a Curriculum Specialist and Crystal Coach. Every Wednesday night since 2017, I go live and just answer questions from crystal healers and practitioners about issues coming up, trying to understand certain aspects of healing work, etc. It honestly brings me endless joy and fulfillment. I connect with so many amazing healers and get to constantly be challenged to think about issues, scenarios, healing and ethical quandaries and more. I have five years of questions and answers, have talked to hundreds if not thousands of crystal practitioners about healing work. DREAM JOB LEVEL—UNLOCKED.

So many people ask me what I do, where I work, etc. If you are outside of the United States, this is normal convo…”Hi, nice to meet you. What do you do for work?” and I have to sort of list it out. It is even confusing to my closest friends when I say something about work…they are like, “Which work?” So, yeah, I have three jobs. They are all interrelated. They are all spiritual/healer-oriented/tarot-y woo woo and also not. I have a business called the Moon + Stone Healing. I added Academy later just because I wanted to start teaching classes. When I first launched my tarot reading + crystal healing + reiki + moon circle business, this is what it was called. It was out of my house, and I offered in-person work, women’s circles, spiritual counseling through tarot, crystal healing sessions, Reiki and then tarot readings. Eventually, when I moved to Central Pennsylvania, the Moon + Stone Healing became my online practice, the name of my website and distant sessions. It became the hub of my online teaching. In 2020 as I moved online for Pandemical reasons, the Moon + Stone grew to offer memberships with my monthly tarot readings. I also in 2021 hosted my first retreat in Central Pennsylvania. So, I guess that is Job # 1.

In 2013, I moved to Central Pennsylvania and found my home at Alta View Wellness Center in Harrisburg, which is run by my sister from another mister Sharon Muzio. There I started really offering classes, seeing clients for crystal healing and tarot readings. During this time frame, I started SouLodge Earth Medicine school four-level Earth Medicine Practitioner program, which not only changed my training—it changed my work, my approach and honestly, my life. At the time, Pixie Lighthorse was working within the framework of shamanic journey and shamanic approaches. I believe now, she would change that wording. I find it a good shorthand for what I do, but I was not trained by a shaman in the way some practitioners are. We were trained to do our work, and then when called, we could begin working on others. It was many years before I was called to integrate this work into my sessions, but once I did, there was no looking back.

By the way, I am a long-winded, neurodivergent, Gemini rising who goes off on tangents constantly. Nice to meet you.

AT ANY RATE, my second home in Central Pennsylvania will always be Alta View Wellness Center. Sharon has created an amazing community of practitioners (we all seem to be earth signs, btw). It is there I do all my in-person teachings, classes, one-on-one sessions, tarot readings, and trainings. And Sharon and I have offered shamanic healing circles together that are just mind-blowing (to me). So, Alta View Wellness is JOB #2.

My jobby job, my day job, is with Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy. Hibiscus Moon trained me as a Certified Crystal Practitioner and an Advanced Crystal Master. In 2014, I started working with HMCA as a Crystal Coach, then in 2017 I became the Curriculum Specialist, which was just amazing. I was helping HM create content for our students, learning how to write content and plan content that was responsive to our students, making quizzes and competency tests, even writing and editing our work as a company. Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy might seem like a woo-woo academy, but I assure you we take what we do seriously, and work within a structure, have a whole team of professionals who help make it look easy. I don’t want to say it is corporate, but it is kind of corporate, and I love it. Honestly, I thrive in an office environment.

My favorite role at HMCA is being Coach Angie, where I get to answer our students questions. First in the FB group, but then also in my Live Office Hours videos each week where for an hour to 1.5 hours, I just go through all the questions and answer them. I do tons of research and nerdy explorations, and then talk, pontificate even, about my research. I feel like I know our students and have personal relationships with them. It remains one of the most fulfilling and exciting jobs I have ever had.

Dear Coach…maybe that is the name of my advice column.

Sidenote: did you know that my public speaking skills are borne entirely from recovery and sharing in 12-step meetings? I used to break out in hives and cry just thinking about talking to a group of people. Then when I actually did speak, I would stutter terribly in front of others. You can still hear it when I get excited or nervous. Now, I just think SLOW DOWN, ANGIE, YOUR BRAIN IS MOVING TOO FAST.

As most of your probably know, Hibiscus Moon announced her retirement earlier this year. It was not a shock to the team as she wrestled with the increasing pressure of growing this beautiful, but unwieldy, academy. It demanded a lot of her, and one of the things I most love and respect about Hibiscus Moon is her commitment to her own self-care and dreams. We have lots of meetings, and hundreds of small tasks that make an online academy run. IN the end, she followed her intuition and guides, and made the difficult decision to close.

Through this process, HM and I talked a number of times about how she wanted her legacy to continue and I think it will. It continues through all of us who had the privilege to learn from her directly. Through her integrity and compassion, through her total commitment to crystal healing as a modality. She changed the landscape of healing work forever, and I know I will miss being in daily contact with her, and sharing that amazing creative and healing space with someone who is so authentically them. I hope I can be the same for my students.

So, 2023, my jobs go down to two, and I am looking to build my Moon + Stone Healing Academy into a full-time gig for me. (Don’t worry, I will always do one-on-ones and classes through Alta View Wellness Center.) But I want to grow my own teachings. Through the years, I have found my approach to hands on healing, which is a combination of laying on of stones and hands, earth medicine work/shamanic work, traditional healing, and dropping into journey during sessions is not found everywhere. I want to share that. I want to share my research and case studies and approach to healing.

I currently am reworking my mentoring circle to be a more earth medicine based or shamanic healing mentoring circle and centering it for distance students. I believe I will launch that in early 2023 and it will be a many month circle for people interested in learning about earth-based medicines and shamanic journey as a form of personal healing. I am so excited about it!!

I will teach my Tarot class in 2023 as well and do more of that. I also plan on teaching my crystal workshops online. I’d like to teach some of my magick work as well. I just started my Moon + Stone Crystal Academy Facebook group to share my daily musings and teachings and as a place for my community to discuss things like their shamanic journeys, personal tarot pulls, etc. I am thinking about doing weekly Q&As not unlike my Office Hours except for anything under the sun.

I wish I had a clean way to end this email. I don’t really. I just want to say, if you like my teaching style, or maybe you know me just as Coach Angie, please stay in touch. More is coming, I promise. I am working hard on being more regular with my emails, my blogs, my podcasts, etc. And if you have a wish list, please please do me a solid and answer this quick quick survey, which will help me target the future of the Moon + Stone Healing Academy. (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JHYQRNB)

My love is always with you,

Tarot+ Earth Medicine Allies for July 2022

There is so much I could say about this reading. I had something written that was very straight forward…there is a transit here, and a retrograde there, and a major arcana and I something or other, but then I scrapped it all and just started rambling about religious studies and connection and love and boundaries and unconditional love…it might be a shitshow or something profound for someone, but whatever it is, may it do no harm.

Enjoy!

ice

It started with ice...

Just a few cubes to make my water extra super cold and then the joy of chewing the melty bits…then the ice machine stopped being able to keep up with me. I chewed ice wantonly, like it was the most delicious snack in the world. I chewed until my tongue was numb and I couldn't speak properly. I snuck out of the house for cups of ice water from the shops with the best ice. I ranked them. I bought bags of ice at the local convenience store. It embarrasses me that I did this, but I was recovering from a mastectomy. I indulged myself in the seemingly harmless chewing of ice.

“This is a symptom of low iron, Ang.” It was a refrain I had in my head before anyone had ever said it. And then, unconsciously doing in front of friends and family, it was the same thing over and over—“You have low iron.” Like a petulant teenager, I would roll my eyes and say, "I know." I have had anemia on and off for years, so that seemed possible. Nothing too severe, but it caused some ice eating over the years. After a miscarriage…being a vegan. But nothing like this. My husband insisted that this was the worst thing I could ever do for my teeth.

“Your teeth are so important.”

Yes, I thought, it makes eating ice easier.

I casually mentioned it to my primary care physician, who just said, “Really? Eating ice? So, Pica...Let’s order a blood test and see what’s going on. How are your periods?”

“Severe right now. Menopause sucks.”

“Severe how?”

“I have bled and passed clots the size of my fist for weeks, then it stops for a week and starts again.”

“Time for a gyn appointment.”

And so it began…ultrasounds, pelvic exams, biopsies…and again, I am on the shitty side of the statistics.

…

Anemia has seriously kicked my ass this year. It has made me slow, easily fatigued, spacey, even more sensitive to my environment than I normally am as a misophonic intuitive with neurodivergency. Anxiety and fear loomed, as surgery loomed. The threat of two separate cancer diagnoses in one year hung over my large belly, like a dagger in mid-air pointed at my womb.

When I had my breast cancer diagnosis last year, it was not long before I was trying to create a sacred experience of my breasts and their imminent removal. But this, the womb, the space that held my babies, that housed sexual trauma and fear, that was the only place my Lucia lived, felt different. More intimate and vulnerable. I want to weave flowers through it, make a joke, be okay with it, but it is different. There is a latent shame here in my womb. What causes cancers in the womb? Sex? HPV? My slutty stage? Blackouts that ended up in the bed of an unknown person? Was it the grief? The half dozen pregnancies? Was it the healing I did for so many people?

I met with a surgeon. He was an old Turkish man, kind and gentle. He explained that he would have to remove my uterus, my ovaries, my fallopian tubes and my cervix. And then he said, “We have to ask what causes this cancer. It is your weight. And so, I suggest you have bariatric surgery.”

The womb is not a place to store fear and pain. The womb is to create and give birth to life.

I sat stunned at his words. But what do they tell thin women diagnosed with cancer? I have so many unknowns. And he tells me they know my weight caused this. Not the slutty stage. Can I go back to the slutty stage causing this?

My weight. My weight. It is a constant, stupid effing refrain. I worked intensively, intentionally, expensively one-on-one with an Intuitive Eating Coach and Dietician last year. I looked at my disordered eating, my constant yo-yo weight and dieting. How I have been trying to lose weight since before I was ever fat. She tried to undo diet culture in my brain. It was so ingrained and woven through everything that I am not sure it was ever successful, but it was liberating to be able to just see food as neutral. Not bad or good, just sustenance. She—thin, young and beautiful—assured me that taste and satisfaction matter with eating, that processed sugary food is just food. She taught me about what it means to feel full and feel satiated. “I am not sure I have an off button, though.” And she convinced me I do. She told me dieting has made me fat...and then brought receipts in the form of study after study. I believed her. Bringing mindfulness to my eating freed me in many ways. And yet, I still wanted and want to lose weight. I slowly started weighing myself again, and restricting calories. Cutting sugar, carbs. Fasting.

Then the small 75 year old doctor told me that Bariatric Surgery is easy and I should do it so I don’t have any more cancer. I started spiraling. Ice has zero calories.

The womb is not a place to store fear and pain. The womb is to create and give birth to life.

In a better moment, a few days after, I called another surgeon and made an appointment. He was horrified and got tears in his eyes when I told him what the first guy said. He said he cares about all of me, and besides, that is not even true. It wasn’t the slutty stage or the weight. It just happens.

Some things just happen.

The womb is not a place to store fear and pain. The womb is to create and give birth to life.

I am having a total hysterectomy in a few weeks. And so my womb will be gone and I will be thrust into immediate cronehood at 48. I am okay with this. My womb has caused blood and death and pain and now it causes fear. I am done with you, womb. You have served your purpose. Good riddance.

Sharon and I talk about why healers get sick. Why we can hold space for so many and then get struck with such difficult trials. Does healing cause illness? Are we shitty with boundaries? How much more protection can we do? I can add it to the list next to slutty stage. I don’t have any answer, but the womb is a vessel, a space that can hold fear and pain and stories…the stories of my clients and my ancestry and colonization and babyloss and sexual trauma…the stories of all the women. The stories of all the suffering.

The womb is not a place to store fear and pain. The womb is to create and give birth to life.

I am going to use this space in my low belly, the one left when my womb is removed, and fill it with flowers and love and radical self-acceptance in the way we do when we have done so much work we always look for a “Why” and “How” and “What was my role in my suffering?” but realize we just need mothering.

I just need mothering.

I just need to say everything is going to be okay. And I just need to love my giant belly and my cancerous womb.

Everything is going to be okay.

…

So, yeah, all that is to say I am having a huge surgery in early July. A total hysterectomy. My current diagnosis is pre-cancer in the endometrial lining. There is a 50% chance there is actual cancer there. Full pathology after surgery will let me know the truth of the matter, or if it is just the ticking time bomb of cells gone wild. I go for my routine check-ups, like my PAP smears and my Mammograms, which has been the reason I can catch these cancers so very early. If you learn nothing from my story, take this away. Check your boobs. Check your hooha. They are what kills women. Luckily, most endometrial cancers, when you catch them early, are cured by hysterectomy. So, whatever happens, I feel like the odds are in my favor.

I am taking time off from seeing clients and doing readings until I feel stronger. For now, July might be all I need, but I will let you know. I am encouraging everyone to make appointments for readings with me at Alta View Wellness Center in Harrisburg if you are local, or via Zoom if you are not in the next two weeks. I will be stacking appointments on Fridays at AVWC and Thursdays for distance sessions. My anemia is still going strong, so I need downtime, but if I have enough requests, I may add a weekend day between now and then.

Thank you always for the love and support. People always ask if they can send Reiki. I always feel so vulnerable in this area of my body and often limit people sending, but maybe I should do something different this time. If you have an opinion about this, let me know. I just always feel all the energies there and it feels violating, so maybe I need to switch that idea or flip it somehow. I just don’t know how to do that. But if you want to send, maybe just pray for now. I will ask for Reiki.

My love is always with you,