I’m working really hard right now on being able to understand myself. It’s a weird thing even to say that, but it’s honestly the truth.

If I ask myself whether I’m empathic and spiritual, of course I say yes. I feel that I do have empathic abilities and I have many natural spiritual tendencies, even without really thinking or working on it. But I am soooo not confident in myself when it comes to these things.

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my tarot cards. It’s a unique and really fun way to explore some aspects of myself, especially when it comes to the feelings I have and what to do with them.

I’ve always had strong emotions, strong gut feelings, and yet I’ve never felt confident enough to really follow through on them. I always worry that I’m wrong and will make the wrong decision. Basically, I don’t trust myself. Which sucks.

One of these days maybe I’ll find myself being always confident in what I feel or what I think, but I highly doubt that. I think I will get better at trusting myself eventually (if I work on it) but full 100% confidence? Yeah, highly unlikely.

Using my tarot cards though, has been super helpful lately. I’ve been asking questions like “how can I work through this feeling of frustration?” or “what should I do with this intuitive idea that I had yesterday?” and it really helps me figure out the root idea and how to move forward. It’s great.

As always, it’s a process! And I’m learning to let go of these “end goal” things and really focus on and enjoy the process.

I’ve mentioned this before. I love herbs. I love potions. Everything about it is just great and I aspire to be the person who has a beautifully stocked cabinet of herbs and oils and tinctures and potions and always knows what is used for this thing and what is used for that thing. Just a dream come true.

But herbs are expensive! And its been hard for me for some reason to justify spending the money on the supplies that I want. I’ve got the resources, I just couldn’t make myself pull the trigger for the longest time.

Until yesterday. I finally shopped around a few online stores that I know source their products responsibly and I made an order.

I ordered beeswax, lavender, nettle, and elderberries.

Lavender because its soothing and relaxing and 100% completely safe to have around baby 🙂

Beeswax because I would like to try my hand at some salves and beeswax is the perfect base for that!

Nettle because… I can’t really remember (research!) but I think its good for overall health and I know you can make tea out of it!

And the elderberries were an afterthought, but I know there are ways to make elderberry syrup as a preventative for colds and flu in the wintertime, so why not get started on that now!

And there you have it, the first little step towards my apothecary dreams!

Now I’ll need to stalk the mailbox until that precious little package arrives!

Next up? Trying my hand at the actual potion making process! If that goes well, guess who gets to make a second order! 😀

Last time I mentioned that I really feel called to live closer to the earth and her rhythms and cycles. That’s not an easy calling to follow through on in today’s fast-paced outcome-oriented world. It’s difficult to step back and see the big picture and even more of a struggle to make changes to the lifestyle that we have screamed at us all the time.

I’m still discovering exactly what this calling looks like for me. The only thing I truly know is my love for herbs, hence why I’m starting my little home apothecary. But it goes deeper than just collecting herbs and making some concoctions. It’s about becoming friends with the earth and learning the importance of her ways.

To some people this might just look like living a simpler life, a life closer to the one our great great grandparents might have lived. And in a sense, that is a part of it. But that in and of itself is not what I’m looking for. Honestly, I’m not 100% sure what exactly it is that I am looking for.

But I’m trying to figure that out. Starting to collect herbs is a first step, and in doing so, I will learn more about each plant and what relationship it has with the world.

The second thing I’m starting to do is journal. Brainstorm. Just THINK and ANALYZE. Taking a short while every day to slow down and consider what areas of my life don’t seem to line up with this mysterious calling I’m trying to answer. It’s hard. I’m someone who doesn’t like a lot of change and making changes in my own personal sphere is something I tend to avoid.

The very first step: outlining and defining who I believe myself to be as a person and who I want to be. There’s probably a lot of discrepancy there, and I want to find it.

Love.

I love herbs. And potions. And oils. And every other random concoction I can think of at the moment. But I haven’t been particularly great at collecting the things that I need to make them. And it seems weird to me to just buy the finished product. The fun is in the journey, right? Or in the creation. Whatever.

One of my very favorite women to follow is Becca Piastrelli. I listen to her podcast every week and always feel so inspired when I hear her talk about living with the seasons and cycles of the earth and how to create that magic in your own self. It’s so motivating and beautiful, and the whole reason I even discovered her presence on the internet is because one day I was looking for ideas on which herbs and things would be good for starting a home apothecary. I stumbled across this super comprehensive list of Becca’s and have had it sitting in my saved bar for months now.

I’ve wanted to dive in and actually start getting my hands dirty in the sense that I want to start creating. But I’ve been hesitant and afraid. And then I had a long conversation with my therapist yesterday about what’s holding me back from pursuing this alternative lifestyle that I dream of having.

In pondering everything that we discussed, I wanted to make a first step towards these ideals that I constantly dream of and feel called to. I’m starting my home apothecary. Eventually I would love to have a full herb garden to draw from, but right now I’m comparing a few reputable online shops (and shopping small where I can!) to get my first few supplies.

I’ll be back with an update in a few weeks or so and we’ll see what’s happened since this point! 🙂

This is just a quick note to myself. Last week was kind of a wash on the whole blogging thing – my emotions were all over the place and I wasn’t in the mood to write (plus work was overwhelming).

This week, I had a post planned, but due to the whole political situation in the country I didn’t feel right writing about my own personal problems. So I’m staying silent on here and saving my energy for whatever I can do to help the movements.

Back in February, I purchased my own physical tarot deck. I had been playing with a few apps for a while already to get the idea of it, but making that purchase was a big stepping stone for me. It got me out of my comfort zone and helped me dive deeper into this spiritual journey a little further. Not an easy thing for me since I avoid hard things.

But anyways, for the last few months I’ve gone back and forth between doing a daily card reading and sometimes just doing a reading at the beginning and end of the week. I’m the kind of person that gets easily frustrated because I don’t automatically know the meanings of each card, which, HELLO, that’s the whole thing isn’t it? The journey is the most beautiful part! If I could read tarot cards perfectly, I would probably have my whole soul figured out by now. Lol.

But anyways, I’ve really enjoyed having a tarot deck at my disposal because it’s a great way to ask myself open-ended questions and really start to dig deeper into what I want and need and desire. Lately, I haven’t had the time or really as strong of an interest in diving deep, especially with all the world’s chaos at the moment, but I’ve started to feel it’s energy calling to me again. Whenever I walk past the table where my deck is sitting on, I can feel it. Which is super cool but also annoying because I don’t want tooooo… at least not right now. It’s hard when you’re just not feeling into it, right?

Tomorrow is the new moon in Gemini and I’m going to make the effort and do a tarot spread for the new “moonth.” We’ll see how it goes! 🙂

I’ve thought a lot lately about my spiritual practices – probably because I can’t help but feel like I’ve been neglecting my spiritual self over the last while. I haven’t had any desire to draw tarot cards, to read scripture passages, nothing like that. The most I’ve done lately is read some posts in a couple Facebook groups I’m in, but that’s not fulfilling at all.

Talking to my therapist yesterday kind of helped me see that I’m avoiding a lot of feelings right now and I think I’m avoiding anything that’s going to push too deep spiritually too. I’m surviving right now and that’s all I feel capable of doing. Which is FINE. I don’t want to tell myself that I need to always be digging deep and processing shit or whatever because sometimes that isn’t feasible. And that’s okay.

But I do want to start picking at some of my spiritual ideas again because even while wanting to avoid… anything and everything… I still feel a little empty when I’m not doing or practicing anything at all. My therapist coached me through finding some new ways to self care through this whole pandemic chaos and I need to find some small way to stay connected to my spiritual side so that I don’t feel quite so empty.

Some of my ideas are… guided meditations or grounding techniques – but that is more for my mental/focus aspect.

Going back to a daily card pull and reacquainting myself with my tarot deck – sounds good but feels overwhelming.

Reading? This might be the easiest one… I can read some of my books, but I don’t necessarily have to connect or dig deep into myself unless I really want to. Hmmm.

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Ideally, I would have a lovely little spiritual practice and be connected to that side of myself all the time, but that’s just not realistic, especially not right now in these times. Right now, it’s more about surviving and staying intact, despite the chaos that surrounds us. So I feel like I should do what I can to connect with my soul when I feel able to. And sometimes perhaps I’ll try and push myself a little so that maybe I can heal slowly… there seems to be a lot of healing that needs to be done to my heart and my soul.

Originally, I wanted to write about how I’ve been analyzing what my beliefs actually are because I’ve felt a little confused lately. But that seemed too deep a subject all of a sudden, and one that I had no desire to think about right now… so I’ll come back to that later when I’ve been able to do some soul searching.

I’ve neglected my practice lately. It was quite different having Juan home for six weeks and it threw my schedule off at first, and then I just never fit it back into my daily routine.

I wanted to create a beautiful ritual for Beltane, but never found the energy or the time to do it. I did, however, sign up for a beautiful virtual gathering that Becca Piastrelli hosted and even though I didn’t participate in the live video (because it was over the baby’s dinnertime) I did go back and watch it later and it really warmed my heart.

I’ve been attempting to give myself some grace in this season because this is a busy season for me. I hate to say that I’m too busy for a spiritual practice, but it does feel that way sometimes. I’m going to unpack this in another post later on so I don’t want to go too deep into it right now, but suffice to say that it’s been a bit of a struggle lately.

As I slowly ease back into a routine that somewhat resembles normalcy again, I’m thinking a lot about what I want my days to look like, and where a practice fits into that, and why I feel like a fraud so much of the time. Anxiety sucks, being a mom is hard, and as much as 6 weeks of staying-at-home-social-distancing was a good way to try and reset, I still want a vacation. Thank goodness the adorable chunk is well on her way to being able to spend a night with her grandparents – that will be amazinggggg.

I realize that this is a lot of rambling, but considering that I haven’t written much in a couple weeks, that’s about all you’re gonna get for a while. LOL!

Today is the full moon and I’m gonna try and fit in some kind of little routine tonight yet. Toodles!

As I’m trying to hold onto my spiritual routines throughout this quarantine experience, I’ve found myself a little desperate to rework my altar space.

Ideally, I want to have a consistently updated altar in my bedroom, another small one in the kitchen, and perhaps a boxed up one that I can use for rituals that I want to do outside or whatever. It sounds like a lot, lol.

Deciding what I want on my altars though, is another factor. I think the kitchen one is the simplest since it would contain some herbs and my mortar and pestle and probably some kitchen related stuff.

The box one for outdoor rituals is the one I’m less sure about. I think it needs a special altar cloth maybe? And of course, the contents would need to be whatever I would need for a ritual. I’m obviously thinking out loud here.

The one in my bedroom is the one that I feel I would be most connected to at all times, since I sleep in there and whatnot. I already have altar cloths to use and I got some rose quartz a while back specifically for putting in the bedroom to draw in love. Candles for sure, and I want something new that represents the moon goddess. This is probably where I would keep my tarot deck and some incense, and definitely where I would make the most obvious changes for the seasons, cycles, etc. I’m excited about this one because my daughter is going to be moving out of my bedroom soon and I’ll actually have the room to set this up!

I’ve been using Pinterest and Tumblr and Instagram to look at fancy schmancy altars, and sometimes it just makes me annoyed because mine is never gonna look like that – I just don’t have all the money to spend on it. But I am gonna try! It’s a new project for next weekend, me thinks!! I’ll update again once I have something in the works. Hehe!

So I’ve been doing a similar morning routine for a little while now and it seems to be working out okay. The most consistent aspect of it is drawing a tarot card…

The hardest part is that the baby is still waking up usually at least once between 6-8am, so it’s hard sometimes to really focus on my meditative side when I’m constantly listening for her to cry. Hopefully, that starts to diminish soon.

Anyways, I have to start my day with a cup of coffee, so that is what I do first: make my coffee. Then, once I have it, I sit down with my journal and my tarot deck. I’m still getting used to handling the cards and the feel of them, so I still shuffle and cut the deck several times for the fun of it.

For a few days, I drew a three-card spread for my day, but that was a little much to learn with. So I’ve stuck with a single card for each day. After a while, maybe I’ll become more proficient, but until then, this works for me.

I log the phase and sign of the current moon in my journal and I’ll note whether I do any form of meditation or grounding that day. Then I draw my card (usually following some weird finger tingling thing lol) and study it.

Once I’ve studied and journaled about my card, then it is time to write and I like to blog for a while before I really get started with my day.

I like having a little morning ritual. Even though the baby has a schedule that we keep to, the days are still a little unpredictable around here. It is very nice to have something that is mine that is the same every day.