Tarot + Earth Medicine Reading for March

Blessed March, friends! They say March roars in like a lion but leaves as a lamb. But this March is roaring in with so much astrological shifting, we may want to roar, cry, mew, dance the Macarena, and hide under a blanket with a computer to take over the world.

This is the month we have all been waiting for, or at least, that is what we were told in the beginning of the year by astrologers. All these retrogrades, they said, just wait until March when everything shifts. I was in my live membership group circle and someone mentioned the crazy astrology in March, and I had totally forgotten. I was so caught up in what I thought would be a mild February. It was anything but for me. I was definitely getting ready for March.

So, if you have felt like me and are saying to yourself, “What gives? I thought this would be the calm time of the year.” You have laid the foundation, friend, to shift, change, adapt and let yourself get taken by the inevitable transformations of March’s astrology and energy.

Of course, I discuss this all in the Tarot + Earth Medicine Reading for March in my latest podcast. Click to listen here or at my Anchor site. Or you know Spotify, ApplePodcasts, etc…whereever you get pods, you can get mine.

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If you like these readings for the month and want to dive deeper with me, I have my Moon + Stone Healing Memberships. I do readings for the group on the Full Moon and the New Moon and provide a monthly shamanic journey to all members. We circle up for Coffee on Fridays and talk, pull cards, explore topics. There are a few price points for everyone and for one tier, I do a personal reading.

I just wanted to share that, since so many of you ask for how to work with me, or learn from me, I also have a place where you can schedule distant sessions with me.

Schedule with Angie

And one more thing, I am starting a monthly Live Q&A, which will be very similar to my office hours at Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy. You can sign up here. The last Wednesday of the Month. More about that coming!

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. ❤️

Episode 44: Tarot+ Earth Medicine Reading for February 2023

Enjoy the tarot + earth medicine reading for February 2023

Date in Peace Podcast with Lauren Smith: Building Peaceful Relationships with Crystals & Tarot

I was so honored to talk to Lauren Smith on her podcast Date in Peace, which is all about dating. Lauren Smith is an author of the book the Mindful Dating Journal and creator of an app called the MettaDate Journal App. The Mindful Dating Journal is your guide to using mindfulness to find a deep connection. Explore your past and track your present to set the foundation for a fulfilling relationship and the app, MettaDate Journal App is a simple mindfulness tool for modern daters. Lauren and I met many many years ago when she was the youngest member of a meditation circle I belonged to where I learned to channel and talk to Angels. I remember Lauren’s vibrance and connect to the Elemental realm as such a beautiful addition to our circle of older women exploring the metaphysical together. I really loved talking about Tarot and Crystals and Dating. You can follow Lauren here on IG: https://www.instagram.com/mettadate/ and at her website: Lauren Smith Studio

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.

Centered Q&A Episodes 37 & 38

Ugh, I forgot to post my November Earth Medicine + Tarot reading. For the month of November, we are working with the Eight of Swords, Salmon medicine, Thyme and the Crystals: Labradorite, Larimar + Sunstone. We deal with Mars Retrograde and a Lunar Eclipse…holy crap!

Episode 38 answers some questions from our listeners Tarot, Stage Cards, Moon phase work + Retrogrades. Here they are:

1. Suzanne asked, “Is there a card/s that is always a little difficult to interpret when it comes up in a reading? Conversely is there one or multiple that are easier? 🔮😻”

2. Tan Hm asked, “Stage cards confuse me! And it would be amazing if you could talk about how to integrate after shadow work.”

3. Danielle asked, “Phases- from the moon phases and the spiritual meanings, to the spiritual phases (waves) most of us experience in life…. Planet retrogrades and the different impacts depending on the sign if occurs in.”

4. Suzanne asked, “I know this info is probably somewhere but can you talk a little bit about what "retrograde" means. You can always send a question to angie@themoonandstone.com for me to cover in an upcoming episode or record one on my anchor page at https://anchor.fm/angie-yingst/message
   

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.

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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.)

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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."

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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.

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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.

Tarot + Earth Medicine Allies for October

October is here!! Working with some kick ass medicine this month as we pull in the masculine and feminine through the Sun and some decidedly feminine energy of Moonstone, Peach Selenite and Garnet. Enjoy this medicine reading.

autumn equinox reading + podcast episode

Blessed Autumn Equinox!!! In my earth-based pagan spiritual practice, we honor gratitude and the abundance of the Earth at this time of the year. Autumn Equinox or Mabon, the second harvest festival in the Wheel of the Year, arrives somewhere between September 20 and 22nd. Though harvest festivals have always been celebrated, the Wiccans, in the mid-20th century, brought us Mabon, named after the Celtic God of the same name. The Wiccan creators wanted to keep the Celtic-focus for the names of the eight festivals in the Wheel of the Year; hence the story of Mabon being featured for Autumnal Equinox. Mabon, a Celtic god, as a child was stolen from his mother and imprisoned deep in the womb of the Earth. At Yule, he will be reborn with the light again.

Like Ostara, the Autumn Equinox honors balance of light and darkness. Unlike Ostara, Mabon examines the move into the darkness. The Greek Eleusinian Mysteries and Rites of Demeter were honored for over two thousand years to honor the move from light to dark. Central to these mysterious rites, which were so secretive that they were never written down, was the story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, sometimes called Kore. You can read the Homeric Hymn to Demeter translated by Gregory Nagy (my favorite translation). Listen to the podcast episode for more…

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.

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!

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!

June's Tarot + Earth Medicine Allies

It’s Angelica Yingst with you June 2022 Tarot + Earth Medicine reading. Maybe I am early this month with our reading because I am ready to get out of the shitshow that was May—shitshow might be too strong, but the eclipses of May brought to light some darkness, revealing true motives, bringing up old wounds. I have some good news about June…it is not May!

We move into June in Gemini, which is not only my rising sign, but the sign that embraces curiosity, extroversion, and change. And I for one am here for it. Gemini craves communication, stimulation, and adventure, while we are still in Mercury Retrograde, you might find some of this difficult, but you might also find yourself wanting to express yourself through writing to better communicate a highly important message. Gemini is social, while the new moon is not. You can scratch both itches by sending a lovely text, email, DM, to someone you like and don’t want to tell off—start from grace and kindness….

Listen to the episode for more…

Tarot + Earth Medicine Allies for May 2022

Blessed May, friends,!

I do love me a lusty month of May, as we kick things off by turning it all up a notch with a New Moon and Solar Eclipse in Taurus as well as the celebration of Beltane. We have a Mercury Retrograde around the 10th of May until the 3rd of June, then a Lunar Eclipse at the Scorpio Full Moon (you may just want to find a cabin in the woods and go off-grid for a while during that one.) Then we move into Gemini season and all its airy glory. Let’s just say: ALL THE THINGS ARE HAPPENING

Keep your eyes peeled for my Beltane Reading and if you are interested in some Beltane Healing at the sacred to call in joy and creativity, check out my Distance Beltane Collective Grid Healing on April 30th at 7pm ET. If you can’t make it live, you can always watch the replay for healing work on the 1st.

understanding the medicine, even when it is disturbing

Friends, this is an essay I wrote a few years ago on my newsletter. I thought I would revisit it on my podcast and blog today as it ties in with the Deer Medicine of this month’s Guided Shamanic Journey. If you are interested in receiving my readings at the Full Moon and/or New Moon, which are collectively pulled, but surprisingly personal, or if you are interested in received an audio guided shamanic journey with an animal each month, which goes in depth with the medicine of the animal, then has a 15-30 minute guided shamanic journey, I can read more in-depth about it under the membership section of my website: MEMBERSHIPS. Several of my journeys are available on my website, and I am working on getting them all up there with three years of guided shamanic journeys for my memberships, which have so many amazing journey including frog, horse, butterfly, bee, beetle, whale, vulture, panther, great blue heron, fox, cougar and more.

On the way to one of my mentoring circle, one of my students hit a deer. She was devastated. The deer most certainly will die, or already had died. She asked me, “What does this mean?” As a circle keeper and an earth medicine walker, I found myself stumbling over my words. Why does this happen to us who walk an earth medicine path? Others chimed in with their thoughts—the deer knew you could hold space for its transition; it was destined to die; better you than someone else.

A few years ago, after a circle, I was driving home. I live in the boonies, as we say, out in the sticks, where I worry about hitting deer. Pennsylvania ranks as the second most deer collisions in the country. So, I drive slowly, cautiously through the fields, and frequently stop for all kinds of wildlife. But I was still in the city, headed home, and bam, a deer ran into my car. It hit my front quarter panel. I pulled over and the deer laid on the side of the road, panting, clearly injured. I called the police and sent Reiki. I envisioned the Reiki energy repairing the deer’s legs and head, and strengthening it. I did this Reiki for almost 15 minutes, and the deer stood up, steady and whole, then ran right out into the street to get demolished and killed by a massive truck.

The truck tore the deer apart. I shook and cried as well.

What does this mean? Is it still medicine for us if we see our medicine dead on the side of the road? And how do we interpret it?

As I meditated on the death of the deer, I could see this interplay between the deer’s medicine and the encroachment of humanity. The medicine of deer resides in its deep vulnerability. When deer interact with humanness and urban environments, we begin to see just how vulnerable these magnificent creatures are. Humans have disrupted the balance of the predator and the prey. Our ancestors decimated the predators—wolves, mountain lion population, the bears—who would have hunted the sick and weak, keeping populations down. Massive deforestation also affects deer populations. Whitetail deer flourish in edge environments, right where the forest meets the suburbs. Streets and cars encroach on the delicate ecosystems. And hunting is down around the country with the ease of shopping for meat in the supermarket.

So, deer medicine is not only a medicine about the individual deer’s vulnerability to predators but the species. Deer, particularly those with antlers, have a strong connection to Spirit. Their antlers are said to reach high to our guides and angels as antennae for messages. Deer connects with the subtle energy system and has heightened senses from hearing to vision to smell. They are always sensing the disruption in the force.

I could not help thinking as my student told me about the deer and her accident that this was part of the critical message for her. Knowing that she is going through a beautiful spiritual opening, deer medicine can come in this way to remind us of our vulnerability during our spiritual opening. When we experience all this light and love that begins to channel through us from Spirit, we live in a bubble of good vibes. When I started opening, I just was always blissed out and only able to tolerate other lightworkers. When we take all this gentle light and vulnerability into the real world, our first encounters with the sickness of our society, the toxicity and negativity of people, the harshness of the news and the suffering of others, we experience this world just like the deer, hit out of nowhere by real life. This modern world is cruel to the vulnerable. Deer medicine embodies vulnerability, quiet, and gentleness. Nothing is more profoundly indicative of the imbalance then when nature interacts with urban life. Where we see how pollution hurts wildlife, or cars kill deer.

This grounded, counter energy to very high vibrational work is part of the medicine lightworkers need to carry as much as the light message of our power animals. When you open in profound ways, you are, of course, more susceptible to those deep wells of grief and compassion. But it goes deeper. There is nothing natural about carrying vulnerability or being an empath in a narcissistic world. We also have to experience and learn about the shadow medicine of our animals. Shamanic work is not always easy or light or fun. It is mostly about challenging ourselves to go beyond the surface, to experience the more profound message, to become stewards of the Earth, spokespeople for the Mother. When all of this starts, we want to live in that amazing Other World of Spirit. When we practice earth medicine, we become intrinsically tied to Mother Earth and Grandmother Moon, and their incredible cycles. Life and death, happiness and grief, masculine and feminine—this delicate balance becomes second sight to us We can see it without trying. Impermanence and suffering of life and of the human condition is part of our medicine and the spiritual experience. We must hold space for both light and darkness, birth and death. As we begin our opening, this can be a harsh reality.

If this happens to you, or you are driving and notice an animal sacred to you, dead on the side of the road, my suggestion is to begin asking what is the medicine for you—both in the animal’s living experience (how does it live, love, eat, hunt, raise its young, etc), then as your medicine interacts with the brutality of this world.

If you are able and feel up to it, take the hair or an item from the animal that was killed (always remembering that if it stinks, it will always stink. If it has bugs, your house will have bugs, so only newly killed animals can be harvested, but that is another post) and use it in ceremony. As medicine keepers, we need to honor the medicine and the allies and giving them a good death is part of this process. You can use that medicine you harvested on your altar or in a medicine bundle.

One thing I know is that none of us aim for the deer or squirrel or bird, so release guilt. Guilt is the illusion of control (if I did something different, it would have changed the outcome). Just be with the profound grief. That is enough suffering. Create a ritual of honoring the medicine of the deer. Sit in the discomfort of your humanness and the ways in which we can mitigate the harshness of our living on the earth. Allow the tears their flow. Fall into ritual and ceremony.

Remember anything, all of our human experience, can become our medicine. To ignore the death, suffering, and violence inherent in our animal medicine is to ignore the full power of its medicine. May you walk gently on the Earth, friends.

rebirth

I have been thinking about rebirth so much these past few weeks, maybe even months, as the animals of rebirth began appearing for our monthly journeys in the Spring. Jaguar showed up first, the Queen of Shadow work and the one who often appears for dismemberment, then Snake, the shedder of skin and the symbol of transformation, and then in August, Beetle came…a small guide of rebirth who turns literal shit to nourishment, recycling our difficult experiences into powerful spiritual lessons. My personal work with Vulture prepares me, of course, intimately connecting to death and rebirth.

Through this entire process with breast cancer, it has felt like the end of a dis-ease, not the beginning. A personal invitation to be reborn into the healed Angie, the one who has done the work. That might sound strange, but it felt like the culmination of many years of working through trauma, grief, soul loss, and heart chakra imbalances. Like there is this part of you—over the heart, that has manifested cancer in my milk ducts. Interestingly, the cancer developed in a breast I was never able to produce milk out of. That is not exactly true. The milk was produced, but it could not be expressed. (Is that a metaphor or what?) I had a child who died, and I remember how engorged and painful my breasts were, filled with milk and no child to drink. I put huge cabbage leaves on it, until they withered and I smelled like an Eastern European soup. I would cry in the shower as my breasts would weep milk. Except the right one. It would just stay hard and engorged and no milk would weep until it just stopped trying.

During those days, I often thought about this class on Death and Dying in college with one of my mentors Dr. John Raines. He said that babies cry because they know they deserve food, comfort and love. And the cry, he explained, was exactly designed to be uncomfortable for humans, it is a noise we want to stop. It is only when they cry and no one comes that babies stop crying. My breasts were the same. They eventually stopped weeping milk because no baby came to feed.

It is interesting that this tidbit came from a class on Death and Dying. We have those moments we face death both metaphorically and literally. Maybe we survive a great trauma that threatened our life, or we stand and face our demons and get sober, or we ask for a new way to be in the world. In the process of earth medicine initiation, we undergo the process of rebirth through the shamanic experience of dismemberment, where, in the journey state, we literally ask our animals to rip us apart, tearing at us, killing us in journey, so that we may rebirth. With Vulture as my guide, she asked me to release my soul. She could not tear me apart alive. This process of releasing brought up so many emotions and feelings of helplessness that had permeated my life…how do I let go when all I have been doing is holding on tight? It is a zen koan, a paradox for survivors. Somehow I did, though. That is the thing…somehow we do. We do it when the holding on is killing us.

When I had my first chakra balancing many many years ago, my heart was completely closed. The pendulum did not move. It just stood stock still. It disturbed me. I had learned through my many years of life how to shut my heart off. Immediately, the self-punishing thoughts flooded in. “Oh my God, I am broken. My heart is shut. I am a monster.” (This is why I teach my students to be kind and gentle when doing a chakra balancing.) It has been decades-long work to open my heart and to trust people. It was well before I became a healer that I started, but I knew then that the pendulum was telling me something I needed to pay attention to. Opening my heart involved many healers, many therapists, many releases, many times feeling so vulnerable and fearful that I took steps backward and then when I was ready, started back on the path.

I say this because there is no healer that isn’t a wounded healer. Our DNA, our strength as healers comes from our wounds. It comes from our humanness, not our divinity or otherworldliness. While I appreciate there are many who feel shadow work is not as important as light work, I politely, yet adamantly, beg to differ. Any lightwork done without being aware of your wounds ultimately will take you back on the same path again and again. You encounter the same lessons, the same kinds of people (friends, lovers, colleagues, enemies.) Our wounds are invisible blocks that keep us in an eternal loop on the spiritual path, like Sisyphus, the Greek King who cheated death twice and was forced to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down. Sisyphus’s story has come to represent any futile, yet difficult task. Unless, we can identify our own triggers, wounds, and blocks; make them visible then dismantle them, we stay in this endless Sisyphean cycle. This is the rebirth. To simply emerge from the tedious work, to slowly break down that rock, our wounds into smaller pieces, so then we can break that cycle. Then our journey isn't so tedious.

Where shamanic and earth medicine work excel is in the rituals, ceremonies, symbolic work of that rebirth. We call in the snake, the beetle, the vulture to help us find a way to break our cycles. This work is a lifelong process. I have been intimately involved with this trauma work and work around my own heart for so long it is almost comical, but also I didn’t start it to be a good healer or to write a newsletter or blog post. I started it because that heart, the one closed and unable to weep, demanded I look at it. This petulant, hurt child within me said, “I cannot be ignored any longer. I will not be neglected. I need to be loved.” It began crying and I began responding. And in turn, I healed those around me, who tried to get into that closed heart for years.

Self-care and self-love sound like such bullshit terms, but they are juicy, deep, life-altering journeys. They aren’t just bubble baths and dark chocolate and masturbation. Self-love embodies self-compassion, self-care, self-worth, and self-actualization. We must remother ourselves, or refather ourselves. That has been the challenge—seeing and loving myself unconditionally. But when I struggle, I look at my own children and think, "You are just like them--beautiful, perfect, worthy of care."

It is strange to see my body without breasts. I don't NOT like it. It is just an adjustment. I am almost starting to like it more. I have been trying to take some time with no bra and no shirt to just get used to how I look now—a huge scar running across the place where my babies suckled. My belly sticks out like a big Buddha belly and my chest goes in, almost concave. Right now it is all puckered and there are major folds in it that are angry and tight. They will soften over time. Just like the other scars I have healed in my life—things soften with time. I can honestly say that I feel complete, even without my breasts. This body does not seem ugly, or unlovable, or unworthy at all. It is simply an adjustment.

This is what healing gives you—unconditional radical self-acceptance. I have been working on it for years by demanding I love myself. I thought that if I just said it enough, wrote it out on enough intentions, it would happen, but the truth is—that isn't what did it. You are not in control of the healing timeline. It is something you cannot fake. You simply love yourself until you are willing to accept the love. That's the thing--for me, self-love was about accepting the love, not giving it. Giving love was easy for me, but accepting it was a whole other thing altogether. You become gentle with your inner voice. One day something weird happens—you get diagnosed with breast cancer, or your partner leaves you, or you notice that your face is wrinkled and your hair grey, or you break something valuable and through this long rebirthing process you realize you aren't mad at you, or disappointed, or embarrassed, or ashamed. You stand tall and you say, “Yep, that is me, still me, still the same me as yesterday, still worthy of love and acceptance. I love you. You got this, kid.”

You got this, kid. I love you.