 A well-conducted tarot reading is not fortune-telling. As a decades long intuitive practitioner based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, let’s remove the mysticism for a moment. Tarot is not about crystal balls, dramatic predictions, or being told what you want to hear. At its core, tarot is a structured visual system designed to help you see what you may be too close to recognize on your own. A well-conducted tarot reading is not fortune-telling. It is pattern recognition, symbolic interpretation, psychological insight, and intuitive analysis working together in real time. And that makes perfect sense—for real tarot reading benefits like clarity amid chaos. Tarot Is a Visual Language A traditional deck such as the Rider–Waite tarot deck, crafted by Pamela Colman Smith, is built on layered imagery. Every card contains deliberate symbolism. Nothing is random. Look closely and you’ll notice:
Direction matters. If a figure looks backward, it can indicate focus on the past. If they face forward, momentum or readiness. If they look away from a gift being offered, it may suggest distraction or resistance. These visual cues create a psychological mirror. Your mind processes imagery faster than logic. Tarot leverages that for practical insight. Color Has MeaningColor is not decorative in tarot—it’s communicative:
This is structured symbolism—not guesswork. Numbers Tell a StoryTarot is divided into a numerical progression from Ace through Ten. Numbers reveal stages of development:
For example, a reading clustered around fives can indicate a period of change, while eights suggest effort and momentum are active themes. Again—this is pattern analysis. The Power of a Specific Question A tarot reading becomes powerful when the question is specific:
Tarot does not override your free will. It illuminates dynamics—internal and external—so you can make informed decisions. Structured Spreads Create Logical Frameworks A spread is not random card placement—it is a framework. For example:
Each position in a spread has a purpose. The meaning of a card changes depending on its placement. The same card in the “Obstacle” position tells a different story than in the “Strength” position. That structure creates clarity. The Role of an Intuitive Practitioner Cards alone are symbols. Interpretation requires skill. An experienced intuitive practitioner doesn’t just recite meanings. They:
A responsible reader does not predict fixed outcomes—they interpret energy patterns and likely trajectories based on current momentum. That’s very different from fortune-telling. What a Tarot Reading Actually Does A grounded tarot reading can help you:
Why It Makes Sense We consult accountants for finances. We consult doctors for health. We consult therapists for emotional processing. A tarot reading is a structured consultation for insight and perspective. It is a reflective tool—one that combines symbolism, psychology, intuition, and analysis. When approached responsibly, it is not mystical escapism. It is clarity. And clarity is never foolish. Ready for Clear, Structured Insight? If you’re looking for clarity—not fantasy, not vague reassurance, not dramatic predictions—a tarot reading can provide grounded perspective rooted in Rider–Waite symbolism, psychology, and intuitive analysis. At Jennifer Belanger, Intuitive Practitioner, based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, sessions are thoughtful, structured, and focused on:
Whether you want insight into a decision, a deeper understanding of relationship dynamics, guidance on career direction, or simply clarity about your next steps, a tarot reading provides practical tools for self-awareness and forward movement. Clarity changes everything.
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 Why Are We So Afraid to Name Harm? The Spiritual Cost of Explaining Violence Away. The Questions We’re Afraid to Ask This series is an invitation to bring difficult questions into the light — gently, thoughtfully, and without judgment. These are not questions meant to provoke outrage or demand agreement. They are questions that arise when lived experience collides with belief, when easy answers no longer hold, and when honesty feels more necessary than comfort. Each piece in this series explores a question many of us sense quietly but hesitate to name out loud — not to dismantle faith or spirituality, but to return them to something more grounded, humane, and real. This is not about having the “right” answers. It is about being willing to ask. Why Are We So Afraid to Name Harm? The Spiritual Cost of Explaining Violence Away There is something I’ve been witnessing more and more often — not only in public discourse, but in spiritual spaces that claim to be rooted in love, awareness, and healing. When people are murdered. When children are raped. When families are shattered by violence, abuse, or state power. There are voices that respond not with grief, accountability, or moral clarity — but with spiritual explanations that attempt to make what happened feel purposeful, chosen, or divinely arranged. I have been told — sometimes directly, sometimes implied — that victims chose their suffering as part of a soul contract. That their deaths or violations were lessons. That perpetrators are merely “playing a role” in a cosmic unfolding that exists beyond judgment, beyond good and evil, beyond responsibility. This is often framed as spiritual maturity. I do not believe it is. I believe it is spiritual bypassing — and at its worst, a quiet theology of dehumanization. Free Will Is Not Moral Neutrality- Human beings have conscious thought. We have choice. We have free will. Free will means a person can commit harm — not that harm becomes spiritually justified when they do. To acknowledge that human beings make choices is one thing. To say those choices are morally neutral, pre-agreed upon, or divinely orchestrated is another entirely. When violence is reframed as destiny, accountability disappears. When suffering is reframed as a lesson, victims are silenced. When perpetrators are reframed as teachers, cruelty is sanctified. This is not enlightenment. It is the removal of responsibility dressed up as wisdom. Souls Do Not Violate Consent — Humans Do- I believe there is a profound difference between the human mind and the soul. The human mind is capable of domination, entitlement, justification, and harm. The soul — however one understands it — is not. Rape is not a soul act. Murder is not a spiritual expression. Exerting one’s will over another person’s body, safety, or life is not divine. That is human behavior — and it must remain humanly accountable. When someone says a child “agreed” to be violated, or that a person “chose” to be murdered in order to advance collective consciousness, what they are really saying is that no one is responsible. That belief does not heal the world. It protects power. How So Many People Fell Into This- People did not arrive at these beliefs because they are heartless or irredeemable. Many arrived here through a belief system that has been carefully threaded over generations — a patriarchal doctrine that has long used spirituality to excuse harm, protect hierarchy, and avoid accountability. This pattern is not new. Human beings have always struggled with the weight of their own choices. And when those choices cause harm — individually or collectively — we have a long history of reaching for explanations that soften guilt and dissolve responsibility. Spiritual bypassing offers a seductive escape. It tells us there is no real good or evil. That nothing is truly wrong. That suffering is neutral. That accountability is judgment. For people overwhelmed by pain, fear, or helplessness, this can feel like relief. For people shaped by rigid hierarchies, it can feel like freedom. For people trying to make sense of a violent world, it can feel like meaning. But relief is not the same as truth. Collective consciousness is not collective amnesia. A Line I Will Not Cross- I will not engage with spiritual bypassing — not because it challenges me, but because it violates something essential in me. I do not believe we are here to be harmed so that others may learn lessons. I do not believe suffering is pre-assigned, that violence is destiny, or that cruelty is spiritually neutral. I do not believe Earth is a perpetual classroom where pain is required for enlightenment. I believe we are here to create — to co-create — with conscious thought, free will, and responsibility. I believe the soul is not a distant taskmaster assigning trials, but a living companion within us, guiding us toward love, care, and ethical choice. To me, spirituality is not about detachment from harm; it is about how we choose to live with one another. Any belief system that asks me to explain away murder, excuse abuse, or frame violations of the body as sacred lessons is not something I can participate in. It does not deepen love. It does not protect life. And it does not reflect the God I believe in — a Creator who gave us the gift of creation itself, not permission to sanctify harm. This is my line in the sand. A Return to the Most Basic Moral Center- I am not a theologian. But I know this much: The core moral teaching attributed to Jesus Christ is simple. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no exception clause. There is no spiritual loophole for violence. There is no doctrine that absolves cruelty by calling it divine. Creation itself was an act of love — not control. If we believe we are creators or co-creators in this world, then our responsibility is not to explain suffering away, but to choose how we live with one another. To protect life. To refuse to sanctify harm. To show compassion without abandoning conscience. What I Am Choosing Now- I am choosing a spirituality that stays human. That stays grounded in bodies, consent, and accountability. That allows grief, anger, and moral clarity to coexist with compassion. I am choosing not to mistake detachment for enlightenment. I am choosing not to call cruelty sacred. And I am choosing — again and again — to stand with the living, the wounded, and the silenced, rather than with any belief system that asks me to look away. Using spirituality to explain harm away is a cost that no one will ever be able to pay back. About the Author Jennifer Belanger is an intuitive practitioner, writer, and spiritual guide whose work centers on discernment, ethical responsibility, and the lived experience of being human. Her practice is grounded in the belief that spirituality should deepen compassion without abandoning accountability, and that truth-telling is an essential part of healing. She writes The Questions We’re Afraid to Ask as an invitation to bring difficult conversations into the light with care and honesty. If this essay spoke to you, you’re welcome to explore more in The Questions We’re Afraid to Ask series or reflect on what it means in your own lived experience. www.energytouchintuition.com  Why an Emailed Tarot Reading Can Be Exactly What You Need Right Now There are moments when you don’t need a full conversation. You don’t need to explain your entire backstory. You don’t need to rearrange your life just to ask one honest question. You simply need clarity — and you need it sooner rather than later. This is where an emailed tarot reading can be exactly what you need. Not as a shortcut. Not as a lesser version of a session. But as a carefully held container for insight, reflection, and steadiness. When waiting feels harder than the question itself- Most people don’t seek a tarot reading on a whim. They seek one because something is looping in their mind — a decision, a worry, a conversation that hasn’t happened yet, a feeling that won’t settle. Often, this happens late at night. Or between responsibilities. Or during a brief quiet moment when the noise finally drops and the question rises to the surface. In those moments, waiting weeks — or even days — for an appointment can feel like too much. Driving somewhere can feel exhausting. Talking everything out loud can feel overwhelming. Sometimes what you want most is to ask the question, be met with care, and receive something thoughtful back — without pressure, performance, or delay. What an emailed tarot reading actually is- An emailed tarot reading is not a generic response or a one-size-fits-all format. In my practice, everything begins with your question. I take time to sit with it, feel into what is being asked beneath the surface, and shape the reading around that specific concern. Each emailed reading uses a custom tarot spread created specifically for your question. I do not reuse the same spread over and over. No two questions are the same, and no two readings are ever alike. The structure of the spread is part of the interpretation itself — designed to bring clarity, perspective, and forward movement in a way that fits your situation. Tarot cards are then pulled intentionally for that spread, using tarot as a reflective and symbolic language rather than a predictive one. When appropriate, an oracle card may be included for additional grounding or emphasis, but tarot remains the foundation. Your reading is then written — not spoken off the cuff — allowing the message to be considered, structured, and clearly articulated. Nothing is automated. Nothing is rushed. Each reading is created by hand, with care and attention to both the question and the person asking it. Why written tarot readings can feel especially grounding- There is something quietly stabilizing about receiving a tarot reading in writing. You can read it at your own pace. You can pause when something lands. You can return to it later — days or weeks afterward — when the question resurfaces. You don’t have to hold eye contact while processing something emotional. You don’t have to remember everything that was said in real time. The guidance remains available to you, exactly as it was offered. For many people, this makes an emailed tarot reading feel more supportive and less overwhelming — especially during periods of anxiety, uncertainty, or emotional fatigue. Practical support that respects real life- Emailed tarot readings are also practical in ways that are often overlooked. You don’t have to wait weeks for availability. You don’t have to travel. You don’t have to carve out a full hour. And unlike a Zoom or phone session, you don’t have to find privacy in a busy household, step away from coworkers, manage background noise, or worry about interruptions. You don’t need to secure a shared computer, keep children occupied, or explain your circumstances to anyone else. Your life does not need to pause in order to receive guidance. An emailed reading meets you within the reality of your day — not an idealized version of it. Seeing the cards matters- With each emailed tarot reading, you also receive images of the cards that were pulled for your question. Tarot is a visual language. Color, number, symbolism, direction, and mood all play a role in how meaning unfolds. When you can see the cards alongside the written interpretation, you’re not just reading about the message — you’re engaging with it directly. I work intentionally with expressive, image-rich tarot decks so the cards themselves can speak to you. You may notice details that stand out in a personal way — a color, a figure, a gesture, a number — allowing your own intuitive understanding to deepen. This makes the reading collaborative rather than passive. My interpretation provides structure and clarity, while the imagery invites you to participate in the meaning. Over time, this strengthens trust in your own perception and helps the insight integrate more fully. Timely clarity, held with care- All emailed tarot readings are delivered within 24 hours, unless otherwise indicated, in which case delivery may take 24–48 hours. This timing allows the reading to be thoughtful and complete, while still meeting you while the question is alive and present. This is not about urgency. It’s about responsiveness. Sometimes one honest question is enough- Not every moment calls for a long conversation. Not every crossroads needs an hour. Sometimes what you need most is to ask the question, receive thoughtful insight, and feel your nervous system settle just a little. That is exactly what I am here to do for you through an emailed tarot reading. These readings are created intentionally — with privacy, care, and compassion at the center. They are designed to be returned to, reread, and re-entered, much like opening a message from a trusted friend who understands the situation and speaks to it honestly. If this feels like the kind of support you’ve been looking for, you can book an emailed tarot reading directly through my website at your leisure. Jennifer Belanger Intuitive Practitioner Where love never ends www.energytouchintuition.com  The Question We’re Afraid to Ask: What If Love Is Human? With Valentine’s Day approaching, the world begins to shimmer in pink and red.
Soulmates. Twin flames. Divine timing. Love written in the stars before we were even born. It is beautiful. It is hopeful. It is comforting. And yet, every year around this time, I feel a quiet stirring in my chest. Not resistance. Not judgment. Just a remembering. Because I have spent my life listening. Listening to young women who believed their first love would last forever. Listening to men who promised at the altar and meant every word. Listening to the trembling in a widow’s voice when she says, “We had fifty years.” Listening to the anger in a kitchen where two people who once adored each other now cannot stand the sound of the other’s breathing. I have listened at my tarot table while the cards spread out like a map of consciousness — not dictating fate, but revealing patterns. I have sat with the dying who speak not of destiny fulfilled, but of the small human moments that mattered: the hand held, the apology made, the love given when it would have been easier not to. I have asked questions. I have second-guessed myself. I have dissected stories and stitched them back together. I have watched the maiden fall in love and the crone sit quietly with what remains after love changes form. And after all of that listening, all of that watching, all of that questioning… I have come to recognize something very simple about love. It is astonishingly human. And when I strip away the mythology and the marketing and the mysticism, what remains is this quiet beginning -- two humans meet. It is not dramatic. It does not announce itself as destiny. It happens on an ordinary day — the kind of day that does not know it will be remembered. One looks up. The other lingers half a second longer than necessary. There is no choir of angels. Just a shift. A softening in the chest. A curiosity that feels almost like recognition. Not recognition of a soul once known -- but recognition of a presence that feels safe enough to explore. They speak. They misread each other. They laugh at the wrong moment. They try again. The maiden in her feels the spark of possibility. The boy in him feels the unfamiliar urge to stay instead of retreat. It is awkward. It is tender. It is human. And then it continues. They choose a second conversation. A third. A slow unfolding. They learn each other’s histories — the childhood wound that still flares, the parent whose silence shaped everything, the past love that left a bruise no one else could see. They begin to discover the ordinary miracles: the comfort of shared coffee, the quiet rhythm of sitting beside someone without needing to fill the space, the way one reaches for the other’s hand without thinking. It does not feel cosmic. It feels earned. And then, inevitably, something sharp appears. A misunderstanding that does not dissolve easily. A sentence spoken too quickly. An old fear triggered by a tone of voice. This is where mythology would tell them the intensity means destiny. But this is where humanity asks something harder. Will you stay conscious here? They argue. They retreat. They sit in separate rooms replaying the moment in their minds. And then — if they are willing — they return. They say, “That hurt.” They say, “I was afraid.” They say, “I don’t want to lose this.” They misstep. They repair. Love matures in repair, not in mythology. Days become weeks. Weeks become Months. Months become years. They learn the quiet choreography of one another’s moods. They begin to anticipate the way exhaustion looks on the other’s face. They discover that commitment is not a grand gesture but a thousand small decisions made in kitchens and parking lots and waiting rooms. They are not perfect. They are present. And presence — in our human consciousness and awareness, not in cosmic mythology or romantic prophecy — is what builds something that can withstand weather, or calmly and purposefully recognize when the season has changed. Some of these stories endure for decades. Some dissolve. Some burn brightly and end quickly. And yet, in every one of them — in the weddings, in the divorces, in the quiet reconciliations, in the final goodbyes — the pattern is the same. Love is astonishingly human. And that is where the question begins. Not in the clouds, but in the places our hands can actually reach. What if love is human? What if everything we’ve been told — especially in seasons like this one, wrapped in roses and promises — has gently lifted love out of our hands and placed it somewhere unreachable? What if love is not the reward for finding the right destiny… but the result of showing up consciously inside the one we are living? What if “everything happens for a reason” is not a slogan to soothe us, but an invitation? An invitation to look at what our fear created. At what our silence allowed. At what our tenderness repaired. What if everything happens for a reason only when we are willing to see the reason? And what if “this too shall pass” — a phrase we say so easily, and yet one that asks more of us than we often realize — is not about waiting for time to fix what hurts… but about anchoring long enough for awareness to change us? What if storms do not pass simply because destiny moves us forward? What if they pass because human consciousness alters the course? What if the storms inside even the most devoted unions are not proof that this was written in the stars… but proof that two imperfect humans are learning? What if they are not punishments or prophecies… but signals? A yellow light. A red one. An invitation to anchor. What if those moments — those lampposts, those God winks, those sharp awakenings — are not signs that the story is doomed or destined… but signs that we are alive inside it? What if we learn to softly consult our soul while still living from our human self? What if guidance is real… but governance is ours? Fate may bring us together. But destiny is what we build. And sometimes what we build lasts a lifetime. Two elders holding hands in the quiet hum of a hospital room, grateful for the small, holy moments of having stayed. And sometimes what we build is a bridge that carries us only part of the way. We part. We ache. We grieve. It is not failure. Because we loved consciously. Because we showed up. Because we allowed love to love us back, even when it asked us to grow. The maiden becomes the woman. The young lover becomes the elder. The crone sits at the edge of memory and understands that no love was wasted. Not the one that lasted fifty years. Not the one that ended after five. Not the one that broke us open and taught us how to stay. Not the one that broke us open and taught us it was time to leave. Perhaps the point was never simply to find the one written in the stars. Perhaps the point has always been to recognize the human who reminds us there is magic in them. Love may be written in the stars, but it is shaped on earth -- with our human imperfections, line by line, by how we show up. During this Valentine’s season, I wish you joy. I wish you a love lived consciously -- recognized, tended, and made whole by how you show up within it. If this reflection resonated with you, I would love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to leave a comment below — I read every one. And if you ever feel called to seek guidance — whether through the language of tarot or the quiet messages that come from beyond the veil — you are always welcome at my table. This is the kind of space we enter together at my tarot table — not to predict a perfect love, but to understand how you are showing up inside the one you’re living. With care, Jennifer Jennifer Belanger is an intuitive tarot reader based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, offering in-person and online tarot readings throughout Western MA and beyond.  Money is Allowed Here The Questions We’re Afraid to Ask
Over the years, I’ve noticed that the hardest questions aren’t the dramatic ones — they’re the quiet ones people hesitate to ask. The questions that come wrapped in apologies. The ones we carry privately, unsure if they’re too much, too selfish, too vulnerable, or too human. This series, The Questions We’re Afraid to Ask, is an invitation to bring those questions into the light gently and without judgment. Each piece explores one of these tender places — money, grief, wanting more, staying or leaving, love as it changes — not to offer quick answers, but to create a safe space where curiosity can replace shame, and honesty can breathe. Tarot has always met people there, and this series is an extension of that same listening. Part One Money Is Allowed Here Money is often spoken about in hushed tones, especially in spaces devoted to meaning, healing, or spiritual growth. Over years of sitting with people at the tarot table, I’ve come to recognize how heavy that silence can feel. Someone sits down. We exchange a few gentle words. And when I ask, “What would you like to look at today?” there is often a long pause — not because they don’t know, but because they are afraid of how it will sound once they say it out loud. They soften their voice. They apologize before they begin. “I know there are more important things than money.” “I feel selfish even asking this.” “I should be grateful for what I have.” “Is it okay to ask about this?” “Please don’t judge me for asking.” “What if this says something bad about me?” What they are really trying to say is simpler, and far more human: they are tired of being afraid. Tired of the tightness that settles into their chest when money comes up. Tired of lying awake at night calculating, re-calculating, and wondering what it means about them that this feels so hard. There is nothing shallow in this. Money is not a reflection of someone’s worth, depth, or goodness. But when money is unstable or scarce, it touches nearly everything — how safe a person feels in their body, how much rest they allow themselves, how freely they can imagine a future. When resources feel uncertain, the nervous system stays on alert. Joy becomes cautious. Creativity narrows. Even beauty can feel distant, as though it belongs to someone else’s life. This is not a personal failing. It is a human response to lack. Many people carry what is often called “poverty consciousness,” but what I see beneath that phrase is something far more tender: self-blame. The quiet belief that not having enough means not being enough. That needing more support means having failed some invisible test of character, strength, or spirituality. This is where the real harm lives — not in the desire for money, but in the way people turn that desire inward and let it become self-disdain. In tarot, questions about money live in the suit of Pentacles — earth energy. The Suit of Pentacles reflects the physical and external level of consciousness: health, finances, work, creativity, and the structures that support daily life. It shows how we shape our outer world — how we build it, care for it, and try to grow within it. On a deeper level, Pentacles also speak to self-esteem and self-image. To how safe you feel in your body. How supported you feel by your surroundings. How much space you believe you are allowed to take up in the world. The pentacle itself holds this meaning. Its five points represent Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit — thought, emotion, effort, physical matter, and soul — all meeting within a single form. The surrounding circle acts as a container, symbolizing wholeness, protection, and continuity. Nothing is meant to exist in isolation. Everything is meant to be held. This is why Pentacles are never only about money. They are about balance. About generosity and care when resources are flowing, and about fear, contraction, or self-protection when they are not. When money is working in a healthy way, it often brings stability, freedom, and spaciousness — room to breathe, to give, to rest, to choose thoughtfully. When it isn’t, it can become tight, overwhelming, or controlling, mirroring the strain placed on the nervous system. The gold coins in the Pentacles do not represent greed. They represent care. They represent the resources that make emotional regulation, creativity, and connection possible. They represent the very human need for ground beneath one’s feet. Caring about money is not the opposite of appreciating beauty. In fact, when fear around money softens, people often become more able to notice beauty — the warmth of a cup in their hands, light through a window, the steadiness of breath, the quiet dignity of showing up for another day. Relieving poverty consciousness is not about forcing positivity or pretending that lack doesn’t hurt. It is about gently untangling self-worth from circumstance. About learning to say, “This is affecting me,” without adding, “and therefore I am bad, broken, or failing.” Money, at its healthiest, is not something we chase or fear. It is something we relate to — like breath, like water, like shelter — with respect and honesty. It is allowed to matter without defining us. So when someone comes to tarot wanting to talk about money, I don’t hear greed. I hear a person trying to care for their life. Trying to understand how to stand more steadily in the world. Trying to meet their material needs without losing their sense of beauty, dignity, or self-trust. There is deep compassion here — for the fear, for the exhaustion, for the quiet ways people blame themselves for circumstances that are often far beyond personal control. Wanting to feel safe enough to breathe, to rest without guilt, to imagine a future without panic is not unspiritual. It is elemental. It is the body asking for steadiness so the soul can remain present. Money was never meant to measure a soul. Money is a human-made structure — a system of exchange created to move energy from one form to another. Time for labor. Skill for compensation. Service for support. It is a way humans translate effort into sustenance, contribution into continuity. Nothing more, and nothing less. The danger comes when we confuse the structure with the meaning. The soul is not measured by transactions. It is not defined by income, productivity, or accumulation. And yet, the soul does live inside a physical life — one that requires movement, exchange, and support in order to remain stable enough to breathe, rest, and choose. This is the paradox people feel but struggle to name: money does not create worth — but the absence of stability around money can erode a person’s sense of worth. When the soul is unseen or unvalued internally, money begins to carry too much weight. It becomes a stand-in for safety, dignity, and self-trust. But when the soul is recognized — when a person knows their inherent value — money returns to its rightful size. It becomes a tool. An item. A means of exchange rather than a measure of meaning. Money does not create kindness. It does not generate love. It does not bestow goodness or depth. But when fear around money softens, the nervous system settles — and it becomes easier to access the qualities that already live within a person: generosity, creativity, care, presence. Understanding supports a life. Self-recognition supports a life. A stable exchange system simply gives those things room to exist without constant threat. When money is allowed to return to its rightful place — as structure rather than verdict — it becomes a container rather than a definition. Something that holds life steady enough for care, choice, and presence to be possible. And when money is held in that place — neither worshipped nor denied — it can move through a life quietly, without defining it. Jennifer Belanger is an intuitive practitioner based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. She offers in-person, virtual, and emailed tarot readings rooted in reflection, clarity, and compassionate inquiry. Sessions can be booked directly through her website- www.energytouchintuition.com 
A Year That Asked Us to Pause- No one moves through a year untouched. In 2025, each of us encountered moments that hurt us, saddened us, unsettled us, or quietly broke something open. There were events that crushed expectations, altered relationships, reshaped futures, and asked more of us than we thought we could give. There were also moments that surprised us — that excited us, moved us, or reminded us why we keep showing up to life even when it feels heavy. And like all the years before us, 2025 was no different. We experienced loss. We lost beloved family members, friends, elders, teachers, and companions. We also grieved the passing of public figures who, in ways both quiet and profound, felt woven into our lives. Their voices, stories, music, writing, and presence lived alongside us, shaping our inner landscapes and shared culture. When they died, something shifted within us. Their presence did not disappear — it changed form, asking us to carry memory differently and drawing us into a deeper relationship with time, meaning, and love. Alongside these losses, there was another kind of death this year as well — a quieter, transformative, metaphysical one. Versions of who we were before certain conversations happened. Before diagnoses, endings, reckonings, or realizations arrived. Before something fell apart and could not be put back together as it was. These losses are rarely acknowledged out loud, but they matter just as deeply. A year like 2025 does not pass without asking us to shed skins we once believed were permanent. 2025 carried the reflective energy of the Hermit — a year that asked us to pause, to look inward, and to walk our paths more deliberately and alone. The Hermit and the Tower share a striking resemblance: the same narrow peak, the same downward gaze, the same confrontation with truth from a height we did not expect to reach. Both ask us to look honestly at our lives and decide — do we steady ourselves and continue, or do we allow what can no longer stand to fall away? Many of us tried to remain centered while the world around us was unstable and unfamiliar. In that inward, searching space, we tended our gardens with care. We planted what we could, knowing that nothing in a single season is guaranteed. Gardens are not meant to flourish all at once; they are begun, paused, weathered, and returned to. What we started in 2025 was not meant to be finished there. Much of it will continue to grow quietly over the coming years, shaped by patience, timing, and trust rather than urgency. And through all of it, something remained. A steady thread of connection. The moments of connection. The conversations. The quiet moments. The questions spoken out loud — and the ones held gently inside. I was honored, again and again, to witness these moments with you. To sit in spaces where honesty was allowed to breathe. To hold stories that mattered. To have conversations that illuminated. To feel safe in loss — and even safer in healing. To open pathways we weren’t yet sure existed. To distinguish truth from illusion. To make friends of strangers, and to reunite with parts of ourselves that had been waiting to be seen again. What Carried Us Through- What carried us through was not certainty. It was love. Love as a guidepost. Love as a center. Love as the unseen hand that holds ours when we feel unsteady. Love as the gentle touch that wipes a tear we didn’t realize was falling. Love as the warmth we feel when sunlight hits just right, and we know — without proof — that something beyond us is near. Love showed up in the smallest ways. In the whisper to add salt while stirring soup. In the reminder to lock the door before bed. In dreams that arrive uninvited but feel familiar. In a sudden scent — perfume, cigarette smoke, cigar, pipe — that carries memory like a living thing. In the graves we visit with our feet, and the ones we visit only with our hearts. Love is how we remain in relationship — physical and nonphysical. It is how we stay connected — to those who came before us, to those who walk beside us now, and to ourselves as human beings moving through time. As the years increasingly show us the limits of our bodies, our energy, and our control, something deeper becomes clear: the soul knows no such limits. As we say thank you to 2025 and gently release it, may the lessons it offered stay with us. May what no longer serves us be allowed to fall away. And as we welcome 2026, may it reveal what seeks to express itself — and may we be given the patience, clarity, and tools needed to nurture what is ready to grow. Whether we met in person, over Zoom, by phone, or through an emailed tarot message, I was honored to witness these moments with you. With gratitude and so much love, Jennifer Belanger Intuitive Practitioner Where love never ends  “When the Stars Shine Differently: Mediumship, Memory, and Love That Never Ends”
Connection is not something we summon. It is something we allow. And love does not require permission to continue. So much of our suffering around death comes not from loss itself, but from what we are taught we must do with the love that remains. We are told to sever it, to quiet it, to “move on” as though love were a phase rather than a bond. But love does not disappear simply because a body is no longer present. It persists — not because we call it back, but because it was never gone. When we mourn, we are not only grieving a person. We are grieving the memories we will no longer be able to make with them — the conversations that will not unfold, the shared moments that will never arrive. And because of that, the memories we already hold become sacred. They are not relics of the past; they are living threads of relationship. Stories matter because they are how love continues to move. When our bones are no longer here, when blood no longer runs through our veins, what remains of us is carried in memory — in the way we are remembered, spoken of, and held by those who loved us. And when we cross into whatever comes next, we carry the memory of the living with us as well. Relationship does not end. It changes form. The body is human. But it is not the whole of us. The body is where we meet one another in time. It carries voice, gesture, touch, and presence. It is how love becomes visible and audible in this world. But it is not the source of love itself. It is the vessel love moves through while we are here. What makes us whole is not blood or bone alone. It is memory, intention, awareness, and relationship. It is the way we recognize one another beyond function or role. It is the part of us that responds when someone enters a room, the part that knows a voice without seeing a face, the part that feels connection before thought arrives. This is why relationship does not end at death. The elements that make us who we are — love, recognition, meaning, memory — are not housed solely in the body. They are shared, relational, and carried between people. They live in stories. They live in habits. They live in the quiet ways someone remains present in our decisions, our language, our values, and our sense of home. This matters because when we deny this, we ask people to amputate living parts of themselves in the name of “moving on.” We tell them that continued relationship is unhealthy, imaginary, or indulgent. But denying relationship does not create healing — it creates silence, shame, and unnecessary loneliness. Allowing relationship to continue does not trap us in grief. It anchors us in love. It gives memory a place to breathe and meaning a way to remain in motion. It allows us to carry those we love forward with us, not as weight, but as wisdom. For many of us, the moment that interrupts this continuity is burial. The ceremonies meant to honor the dead often carry an unspoken message: this is where the relationship ends. The pageantry of saying goodbye — the services, the casket, the earth closing — can settle in the human psyche as a final punctuation mark. We are taught, gently but firmly, that this is the last act of love, the last exchange, the last moment of connection. Not because we stop loving them, but because we assume they can no longer love us. But love does not work that way. Those who have crossed out of physical form do not stop caring, watching, responding, or loving simply because they no longer inhabit a body. The absence of form does not diminish relationship — it often removes the very limitations that once constrained it. Without the weight of illness, personality, distance, or circumstance, love becomes more immediate, more fluid, more available. Nearness is no longer measured by proximity, but by presence. The tragedy is not death itself. It is the belief that death requires emotional severance. When we are taught that burial marks the end of relationship, we silence the ways connection still wants to move. We misinterpret continued presence as imagination, longing, or refusal to let go. And in doing so, we deny not only our own experience — but theirs because love does not cease on one side of existence while continuing on the other. Relationship is reciprocal, even when it changes form. This is often the moment when the living step in and urge us to let go of our grief too quickly. Not out of cruelty, but out of discomfort — with our pain, with their own helplessness, with a culture that has no patience for love that doesn’t resolve neatly. We are encouraged to reshape our memories along an imagined timeline, one where grief has a proper duration and relationship has an expiration date. We are told to stop talking about it. To let it go. To move on. To live our lives. And while living is necessary — while life does continue and must be tended — these instructions often arrive before something essential has been honored. They arrive before we are allowed to reconcile the truth that those who have passed are still living with us, just not in human form. Before we are given permission to recognize that relationship can continue, even as it changes shape. What causes pain is not continued connection. What causes pain is being told that connection itself is the problem. When presence is reframed as pathology, when memory is treated as indulgence, when love is mistaken for refusal, we are asked to abandon something sacred in the name of healing. But healing does not require erasure. It requires integration. It requires honesty about what remains, not denial of it. Honor begins when we allow relationship to find its new language. When we stop measuring grief against someone else’s comfort or timeline. When we acknowledge that those who are no longer embodied do not withdraw their love — and that we do not betray life by continuing to love them back. That is not stagnation. That is fidelity. And fidelity requires space. It requires a kind of grief that is allowed to exist without being rushed into resolution — not mourning as performance, but grief as recognition. Acknowledging that something has shifted, without insisting that relationship has ended. This kind of grief is quiet. It does not follow a schedule. It does not need to look a certain way to be valid. It belongs to the one who is carrying it. In this spaciousness — in silence, in pause, in the willingness to remain present with what has changed — something opens. Not because we are trying to reach across a boundary, but because we begin to recognize how insistently we have been taught that the boundary must be absolute. Sometimes that insistence comes from our own inherited beliefs about death. Sometimes it comes from the beliefs of those who love us and want us to “feel better,” to “get past it,” to return to a version of ourselves that makes sense to them. When we stop forcing closure — whether through our own belief systems or the expectations of others — connection is free to reorganize itself. This is why it matters that we hold what is true for us. Grief is personal because love is personal. No two people experience the same relationship in the same way, even when they are loving the same person. A daughter’s grief will not mirror her sister’s. A partner’s grief will not resemble that of an ex-partner. Memory, meaning, and bond are shaped by lived experience — and they cannot be standardized without doing harm. Those who remain living often want us to heal faster than we can, not out of malice, but out of their own discomfort with ambiguity and pain. But putting a bandage on grief does not make healing easier. It creates a scar that tightens over time, making integration harder, not gentler. Grief that is allowed to take its own shape does not trap us. It creates honesty. And honesty creates room. It is within that room that connection can change form without being lost. This is not about clinging. It is about coherence. There are moments that arrive without ceremony — moments that don’t announce themselves as spiritual or significant, but linger anyway. You smell a familiar perfume passing a stranger in the grocery store. A song comes on the radio and your body reacts before your mind does. You reach for the phone to text someone who no longer has a number. Sometimes it’s quieter than that. A dog pauses at the doorway and looks back into an empty room. A cat settles into a space that no one else uses anymore. These moments are not interruptions. They are continuations. They are how love moves when it is no longer bound to form. Not demanding attention. Not insisting on meaning. Simply arriving — steady, familiar, and present — as it always has. This is where relationship continues to meet us in ordinary life, not as memory alone, but as presence woven into the everyday. This is often how the love of those who have died finds us — not to pull us backward, but to help us live again. Love that never ends does not ask us to stop living. It walks with us as we learn how. This is where it becomes important to say what this is — and what it is not. Ancestral presence is not a special ability. It is not a gift bestowed on a few. It is not something that belongs only to mystics, mediums, or those who claim spiritual authority. It is not dependent on belief systems, religious frameworks, or whether someone thinks it should or should not be possible. It is an orientation. It is the understanding that when the human part of us dies, what is soulful and spiritual does not. Blood and bone are how we experience one another here, but they are not the source of love, memory, or relationship. Those things do not belong to the body alone — they belong to the whole of us. And the whole of us does not end. This is why connection continues. Not because someone is reaching across a veil. Not because someone has learned how to summon what is gone. But because nothing essential has been lost. What changes is not relationship, but how relationship is felt, perceived, and understood. People often frame this as belief versus disbelief — as faith versus skepticism. But ancestral presence does not require agreement. It requires recognition. It asks us to consider that we are not only human beings who happen to have spiritual moments, but spiritual beings who have been living a human life. From that orientation, connection is not extraordinary. It is inherent. Hearing it, trusting it, and learning how to recognize it does take practice — not because it is rare, but because we have been taught to dismiss it. We have learned to mistrust what does not announce itself loudly, what does not arrive on command, what does not fit neatly into doctrine or explanation. But love does not need permission to continue. And neither does relationship. Ancestral presence is not something to be attained. It is something to be remembered. It is the relationship we are allowed to hold for as long as love exists — which is to say, without end. There are certain times of year when love feels closer. When nights arrive sooner and the dark settles in gently. When the stars seem sharper and brighter against the sky. When familiar gatherings return — or memories of them do — and the absence of certain voices is felt more keenly than at any other time. These seasons carry warmth and sadness together. They ask us to remember. It is not only the people we miss. It is the moments that shaped us — the shared meals, the quiet traditions, the conversations that once filled these days. Tables feel different. Laughter sounds altered. Even joy carries a tender edge. This is a loving time, and it is a sorrowful time. Both are true. Because of that, this season often invites connection — not as something we create, but as something we allow. This is a natural time to speak inwardly to those we love. Not with questions. Not with effort. Simply with recognition. To notice, I feel you. I sense you. And I trust what I’m feeling. Connection does not begin with knowing or understanding. It begins with belief — believing that what you are sensing matters, and allowing it to exist without explanation. When you acknowledge that feeling, without analyzing it or trying to make sense of it, something gentle settles into place. For many people, this begins with a few simple truths: You can connect with what you sense. You are spirit, too. And love is what brings you together. From there, awareness shifts — not outward, but inward. Away from effort and toward sensing. Away from thought and toward knowing. You may notice your attention lift slightly, as if listening from a quieter place inside yourself. You may feel warmth, emotion, calm, or simply a sense of being accompanied. There is no correct way. What matters is intention — not force. You can allow connection by opening your heart, imagining light, or simply resting in the feeling of love. You can invite presence in whatever way feels natural to you, or with no words at all. In that allowing, connection reorganizes itself. Love knows how to meet love. This is where love that never ends finds us. Not because we searched for it. Not because we asked the right questions. But because we trusted what we felt, honored it, and allowed love to do what it has always done — continue. When we trust what we feel, honor it, and allow love to do what it has always done — continue — something begins to take root. Not a momentary comfort, but a living relationship. One that can sustain us, shape us, and grow alongside us. Connection does not remain static. Like all relationships, it changes. It deepens. It finds new ways to speak. What once arrived as grief may soften into companionship. What once felt like absence may become guidance. And through that ongoing relationship, we come to understand ourselves more clearly — our choices, our values, our capacity to love. This is not a one-sided experience. When we allow our living, earthly hearts to remain open to the spirit and soul of those who have passed, relationship continues on both sides. Just as we are shaped by memory and love, so too are they. Stories are still shared. Understanding still unfolds. Love remains active, relational, and responsive. This is how memory becomes living memory. This is how stories stay alive. This is how guidance continues — not imposed, but offered. And so relationship does not end. It matures. We carry one another forward until the day comes when form changes again, and we meet where separation no longer feels like separation at all. Until then, love teaches us how to live more honestly, how to love more fully, and how to remain in relationship with those still here. This is the continuity we are allowed to hold. This is the love that carries us — both ways. This is love that never ends. Thank you for sharing this tender moment of connection with me. I hope you continue finding the love you seek — in the living, in memory, and in the relationships that continue beyond form. And if I can ever be of help to you, it would be my great honor. Jennifer Belanger is an intuitive practitioner offering tarot, spirit communication, and ancestral presence work grounded in reflection, relationship, and lived experience. Her practice centers on connection without spectacle and guidance rooted in love, memory, and continuity. She offers in-person sessions at the Clock Tower Building, 75 South Church Street, Floor 6, Suite 11, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, as well as virtual sessions for clients beyond the Berkshires. Jennifer Belanger can be found at www.energytouchintuition.com  Today, while shopping for Thanksgiving, I stopped to chat with Ed, my local butcher and an old friend from my hometown.
We grew up in the same small place, went to school together, walked the same streets, knew the same families. Our parents knew each other. Our grandparents knew each other. Back then, holidays were big, loud, crowded things. We stood there for a few minutes, two old acquaintances tucked into the corner of a busy grocery store, catching up the way people do when the holidays are close. We talked about our kids, about whose children were coming home this year and whose weren’t, about how different Thanksgiving looks now. “No grand kids yet,” I said with a little shrug. “Same here,” he answered. “Just my two this year and the girlfriend.” We didn’t have to say that our parents were gone now, or that the tables we grew up around had dissolved into memory. We both knew it. It lived in the way we smiled, in the way we shook our heads softly and said, “It’s smaller now, but it’s still good.” Nothing profound happened in the grocery store. No angel choirs, no lights flickering overhead. Just two people who shared a town, a history, and a quiet understanding that life had shifted us into a new season. Then I finished my shopping, said goodbye, and headed home. Later, after the groceries were put away, I started unloading the dishwasher. The house was ordinary-quiet: the soft hum of the fridge, the faint scent of laundry soap drifting in from the other room, the low clink of plates as I stacked them. As I stood there, the conversation with Ed floated back to me. I reached for one of my everyday white plates, still warm from the dry cycle, and suddenly I thought of the china. When my grandmother passed, I inherited her “good” dishes — the fancy dinnerware she used on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter. Over the years I added to it piece by piece: estate sales, antique shops, little discoveries in dusty corners of secondhand stores. A serving bowl here, a gravy boat there, a stack of plates I couldn’t bear to leave behind. At this point, I probably have enough place settings to feed a small village. I joke that I must have service for a hundred now. For years, those plates felt like a way to keep everyone close. I would bring them out on the holidays, wash them carefully, set them gently on the table as if I were setting a place for the past itself. It felt like a kind of honoring, a way to say, “I remember.” But as I stood in my kitchen this afternoon, holding that simple white plate from the dishwasher, something shifted. You don’t need the plates this year. I didn’t hear it as a loud voice. I almost never do. It was more of a knowing — a soft, steady awareness that rose up out of nowhere and settled into my chest. A feeling that someone, or several someones, were letting me know: It’s time to put the dishes down. I paused, plate in hand, and let the feeling move through me. You know we’re not in the china, right? And just like that, my memory opened the door to another house, on another street, in another time. I remembered my grandmother’s house on Park Street, the “battleship,” as she always called it — that big, regal home standing tall on the main street of my childhood town. I can still see the front door opening again and again, the bell above it ringing every time someone rushed in from the cold. Blasts of sharp November air would sweep through the hallway, mixing with the rich fragrance of gravy, roasted vegetables, and turkey crisping in the oven. I can hear the chatter in the kitchen — my grandmother’s voice, bright and bustling, everyone talking over one another as relatives crowd around the stove and counter. Her laughter rises above the clatter of pots and pans, while my aunts and uncles half-bicker, half-joke about timing and recipes. The cousins try to sneak cookies and slices of pie long before the turkey is carved. The candy dish never seems to be empty, and there is a warmth in the air that has nothing to do with the thermostat. Those sounds, those smells, those faces — they are as real to me now as they were then. But as I stood in my own kitchen today, holding that plain plate from the dishwasher, I realized something: those memories never lived in the china. They live in me. They live in the way I season the turkey without thinking, my hands moving almost automatically toward the same herbs my grandmother used. In the way I make the stuffing the way she did, even though the recipe was never properly written down. In the way I can still hear someone muttering, “Add more salt,” and laugh because I know exactly which relative would have said it. They live in the stories I tell my children about those crowded holidays — about the battleship on Park Street, the bell over the door, the endless parade of coats piled on beds, the grown-ups sitting at the table for hours after dessert is finished. My kids never sat at that table for the holiday, but they can picture it. They can feel it through my words. I don’t need to bring out the plates to bring back the people. As I stood there, I felt the truth settle deeper: The dead do not cling to objects. They cling to us. They’re with us because we remember them. Because we love them. Because they love us. And also because we are them. We carry their faces in the mirror, their expressions in our own, their gestures in the way we stir a pot or fold a towel. Their stories live in the shape of our hands, in the tilt of our heads, in the way we instinctively comfort someone who is hurting. Not just the ones we sat beside at holiday tables, either. They’re with us in the ancestors we never met — the great-grandparents whose names we barely know, the relatives who shared meals with our loved ones long before we were born. Generation after generation, they passed plates, poured coffee, cut bread, laughed at family jokes that found their way to us in the sound of our own laughter. They live in our blood, in our bones, in the quiet ways our lives have been shaped by people whose faces we will only ever know through stories and photographs. We remember them even when we don’t know that we remember them. And this — this gentle, almost invisible moment in my kitchen — is where my understanding of mediumship comes from. For me, mediumship isn’t only in the big, dramatic signs or the perfectly timed messages in a darkened room. It’s in the subtle shifts of awareness that happen while I’m unloading dishes, or making the bed, or driving the car when a certain song comes on the radio and I suddenly feel like someone has slipped into the passenger seat. It’s in the way my breath catches for half a second when a smell in my kitchen turns the air into 1982. It’s in that tiny shiver that feels like goosebumps for no clear reason. It’s in the way my eyes sting, just a little, when I think of a name and feel warmth bloom at the back of my throat. It’s in the way a recipe scrolls past on a screen and I know — without thinking — that this is exactly how someone I loved would have made their pumpkin pie. It’s in the soft flicker of candlelight on a quiet evening, when the room feels just a touch more full and we find ourselves talking out loud to someone who isn’t physically there. This is mediumship as I know it: The simple, sacred way the past leans gently into the present. The thin, shimmering moment when we stand between worlds — one hand in the life we’re living, one hand in the memory of those we love. We all touch that space. We stand in that liminal doorway when we say a name under our breath and feel a rush of warmth, when we tell a story and the room feels suddenly crowded with more than just the living. When, for a heartbeat, time folds, and we are both who we are now and who we were then, sitting in someone else’s kitchen, hearing someone else’s laughter, smelling someone else’s gravy on the stove. Maybe that’s what we miss when we cling too tightly to the objects. The plates, the china, the heirlooms — they’re beautiful. They carry energy, history, and memory. There is nothing wrong with loving them. But we don’t need them in order to be surrounded. Sometimes, when we put the objects down, we notice what has always been there: the presence that moves as softly as a sigh, as lightly as a butterfly’s wings, as quietly as a familiar voice in the back of our thoughts. So this year, I decided not to bring out the china. The cabinets stay closed. The fancy serving dishes stay wrapped and resting. I’ll set the table simply, with the plates my children are used to, in the home we share in this chapter of our lives. Not because I’m letting go of anyone. But because I finally understand that I don’t have to recreate the old table to honor the people who once sat there. I honor them by living the life they helped shape. By telling my children about the battleship on Park Street. By seasoning the food the way my grandmother did. By laughing at the lines my grandfather would have said. By feeling my mother’s presence in the way I straighten the tablecloth or fold the napkins. By knowing my heart beats because theirs once did. They are with us because we remember them. Because we love them. Because they love us. Because, in so many quiet ways, we are them. The smallest table can still hold an entire lineage. And when I think back to that brief conversation with Ed in the grocery store, I can’t help but feel that we weren’t alone then, either. Two people from the same small town, talking about our children, about the way the holidays have changed, about parents who are no longer here to sit at the head of the table. I know both his family and mine were smiling today — the grandparents who watched us grow, the parents who raised us, the ones who knew us when we had scraped knees and awkward school pictures and small-town dreams. I can almost feel them there in that fluorescent-lit aisle, listening in, amused and tender, watching the children they once served holiday dinners to now planning simpler meals for the next generation. Maybe they nudged us into that conversation. Maybe they just leaned in a little closer while we talked. Either way, I feel them — in the warmth of the memory, in the soft ache of gratitude, in the way my chest loosens just enough to let both joy and longing sit side by side. This Thanksgiving, there will be fewer chairs at my table than there were at my grandmother’s. The plates will be plain. The china will stay in the cabinet. But the room will not be empty. The dead don’t live in the plates. They live in the stories, in the seasoning, in the laughter, in the quiet knowings that arrive while we’re unloading the dishwasher on a Monday afternoon before Thanksgiving. They gather because we remember. Because we love. Because we let them sit with us in the ways they choose — not as ghosts trapped in objects, but as love moving easily between worlds. If you found yourself seeing your own family in these words, you’re not alone. I’d love to hear the stories of the ones you’re cooking for, and the ones you’re cooking with in spirit — feel free to share below. And if you’re ready to explore your own connection with the other side more deeply, you can book a session with me and we’ll sit together in that liminal doorway. With warmth, Jennifer Belanger, Intuitive Practitioner "Where Love Never Ends"  Samhain Night: The Magic of the Wish (pronounced “Sow-in”) On this sacred Samhain night, I drew a single card — Wish — from the Earthly Souls & Spirits Oracle by Sarah Foss Robinson and Terry Foss.
The words that followed came through as a message for this day — a quiet reflection to honor our ancestors and the wishes that bridge the seen and unseen. I share it with love, from my heart to yours. These are the words that came through: Samhain Night: The Magic of the Wish (pronounced “Sow-in”) Tonight, the world holds its breath. Between one heartbeat and the next, the veil shimmers -- and the living and the dead walk closer than ever before. The air hums with candle flame and memory, with the scent of smoke, apples, and something ancient stirring in the dark. The card that revealed itself for this sacred night is Wish --was meant to rise now, guided by Spirit, carried through the cards by those who once walked beside us. In its image, a witch sits beneath a raven-lit sky, the moon cradled softly in her hands. She does not clutch it — she listens. She trusts. She knows that magic is not found in demand, but in surrender. The ravens, black-winged and watchful, circle like keepers of old promises, reminding us that every wish spoken into the dark finds its way home. So tonight, whisper your wish into the candlelight. Let it drift through the smoke and shadow, past the pumpkins glowing like sentinels on the porch, into the waiting arms of your ancestors. Speak it not with trepidation, but with a deep inner knowing that they hear you. They always have. An invitation to wish with your ancestors- As gentle as a kiss from my lips to you, as soft as the wind that kisses me back, may my wish be heard by you. And in the stillness, and in the darkness, and in the silence of this eve, may it be shaped into light by the quiet magic that connects us through all time. Where love never ends, wishes become spells of remembrance and light. From my heart to yours -- may you feel the presence of those who love you, in this night and in all nights to come. Where love never ends. — Jennifer Belanger, Intuitive Practitioner  Brambrack -Sweetness and synergy “Samhain Night: Barmbrack, Ancestors, and the Magic of the Wish”
There’s something about this time of year when the air smells like leaves and spice, when light fades early and the veil grows thin, that stirs both memory and mischief. It’s the season of sweetness and synergy, of stirring and storytelling. And in my kitchen, it means one thing: barmbrack. Not quite a cake and not quite a bread, barmbrack is a sweet Irish loaf baked with dried fruits, zests, and love. It’s hearty and fragrant—more solid than a sponge cake, yet softer and sweeter than a rustic loaf. The making of barmbrack is an Irish Samhain tradition that still carries warmth into modern kitchens. Samhain, pronounced “Sow-in,” is the ancient festival that gave birth to what we now call Halloween. When I bake my barmbrack, I think of intention—love, truth, connection. Because this isn’t just a recipe; it’s a ritual. Inside the dough, small charms are hidden and baked into the loaf. Each carries a message from the unseen world, a kind of kitchen oracle. Traditionally these included a coin for prosperity, a pea meaning no marriage that year, a ring for marriage certain, a stick for disputes ahead, and a piece of cloth for hardship or financial strain. Some later added religious medals, but I prefer the original symbols, because Halloween to me is about connection to our ancestors, not to any single god. This is an earth-born ritual, a remembrance born of the hearth and the heart. I think of barmbrack like charm casting, bone tossing, or tea leaf reading—divination at its most playful. Every charm tucked inside carries both laughter and curiosity. I’ve added my own touches through the years—a few extra trinkets, a bit of parchment-wrapped whimsy. Every slice becomes a message, every crumb an omen. But the real magic isn’t in what’s hidden, it’s in how it’s made. It’s in the laughter as flour dusts the counter top, in the quiet moment when you stir and feel someone’s presence beside you—maybe a grandmother’s hand guiding your wrist, or an ancestor’s whisper saying, “Add a little more spice.” One year I added golden raisins because my Italian grandmother sent me that image from spirit. I’m not of Irish heritage, at least that I know of, but the soul doesn’t care about heritage lines—it cares about love lines. I smiled every time a golden raisin rose to the surface, like her laughter breaking through the veil. Baking this bread always marks the beginning of what I call the Quiet Season—the ancestor season. The time when my tarot cards come out far more than usual, when I snuggle into solitude with mugs of black tea and candlelight, when the world outside slows and the spirit world draws close. It’s the season of comfort—of chicken stews simmering on the stove, pot roasts in the oven, and loaves cooling on the counter while the house smells like spice and memory. When I bake this bread, I feel the shift—the great turning inward. The laughter becomes softer, the magic deeper, the air filled with the scent of earth and home. Barmbrack is just the beginning. It’s a welcome to the ancestors, a nod to the coming cold, a whisper that says we’re ready. This isn’t just one night of raised veils and flickering candles. This is the opening of an entire season of connection, a long, slow conversation between the living and the departed, between body and spirit, between the seen and the unseen. This is when I light the candles and set out the photos. When I draw my Hearth & Home tarot spread and listen for the quiet messages in the cards. When I journal more, bake more, pray more, and feel that deep ache of belonging—to something vast and unseen yet always close. This is the time of year when sweetness takes on meaning. When buttered toast and hot tea become small rituals of remembrance. When I feel my ancestors beside me at the kitchen table, nodding in approval as I pour another cup. Though barmbrack is called a Halloween bread, it becomes something more—a fruitcake for the darkening months, a companion to winter fires, a symbol of continuity. It stretches beyond one holiday. Each slice carries us deeper into the comfort of winter and the promise of spring that lies somewhere beneath it. Every loaf I make feels like a bridge—between then and now, between me and those who came before, between the silence of the earth and the warmth of my own breath as I stir the dough. So yes, this is about bread, but also about lineage. About stories and spirits. About finding sweetness in the dark months and remembering that the veil doesn’t lift for just one night; it stays open for a whole season of listening. I encourage you to read the recipe below and bake it with your ancestors here and passed. Add to it the ingredients you love, the charms you offer, and the magic you are. Make many loaves to share with family and friends, grab a deck of tarot and and cherish this time of connection. And when you bake, may your bread rise with laughter, your tea steep in peace, and your kitchen glow with the warmth of those who still love you from beyond the seen world. May your tarot cards speak clearly, your ancestors whisper kindly, and your heart remember—this is not the end of the light, but the beginning of the listening. And if you feel that same call to settle into your soul as I do, this is the perfect time to do it. Book a tarot reading, pour yourself a cup of tea, and sit with the magic of this quiet season. This is where reflection deepens, where the stories of your ancestors meet the story of your own becoming, and where every crumb, every card, and every breath reminds you: love never ends. Traditional Barmbrack Recipe The Day Before 1 ¾ cups (8.75 oz / 248 g) raisins 1 ¾ cups (8.75 oz / 248 g) sultanas Zest of 1 large lemon Zest of 1 large orange 1 cup (8 oz / 227 g) dark brown sugar 2 cups (16 fl oz / 500 ml) hot, strong black tea In a medium bowl, combine the raisins, sultanas, zests, and sugar. Pour the hot tea over and stir to combine. Cover with cling wrap and let it sit overnight at room temperature. The Next Day 3½ cups (15 oz / 426 g) all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon mixed spice or pumpkin pie spice 2 eggs, beaten Preheat oven to 325°F (170°C). Butter and line a deep 9-inch cake pan. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and spice. Stir in the fruit mixture and beaten eggs, alternating between the two, until no dry streaks remain. At this point, tuck your chosen charm — wrapped in parchment — into the batter. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 80–90 minutes, or until golden and springy. Cool in the pan for 20 minutes, then turn out to finish cooling on a wire rack. Slice and serve with butter and a hot cup of tea. Barmbrack keeps well in an airtight container for up to four days, or can be frozen for four weeks. It’s also delicious toasted. A Blessing for the Baker May your bread rise with laughter. May your kitchen fill with the voices of those you love — both near and unseen. And may every golden raisin you find remind you: even in the turning of the year, sweetness endures. If this story resonates with you and you feel called to explore your own Star Soul—or to connect with loved ones in Spirit—I invite you to reach out. My name is Jennifer Belanger, Intuitive Practitioner and Medium. You can learn more or schedule a session at www.energytouchintuition.com. Every session is an invitation to remember that where love exists, nothing is ever truly lost. “Serving clients from Western Massachusetts and the Berkshires, the Capital Region of New York, Southern Vermont, and worldwide via virtual sessions.”  When I was a child, December was a world of light. I grew up in Adams, Massachusetts—a town folded between mountains and memory, where winter came early and the stars always felt close. My grandparents lived on Park Street, right in the center of town, in a towering house that seemed to watch over everything. It was a tall, three-story home with a wide front porch and an attic that whispered with the hum of old winters. Downstairs, my grandfather ran his TV and radio repair shop. He was the one people came to when their picture tubes went dark or their radios fell silent. The smell of solder and warm wires drifted through the floorboards, mixing with the scent of my grandmother’s pies and pine. It was the 1960s, and back then the town dressed itself in light. In the week before Thanksgiving, workers would climb ladders to hang great strands of bulbs from one side of Park Street to the other. Not dainty garlands or soft ribbons, but grand, glowing bridges of color—magnificent ropes of red, green, gold, and white that arched across the street like celestial banners. And on Thanksgiving, at my grandparents home, where we would gather for a feast of gratitude, we would wait with excitement to see the lights turned on. When the switch was flipped, the whole world changed. From our big front windows, we’d watch the lights come alive—one string, then another, until the entire street shimmered like a river of stars. At the end of the road stood the enormous Christmas tree, crowned with a bright, blazing star that felt almost alive. We’d press our faces to the cold glass, the laughter of cousins and uncles and aunts spilling through the house, and the scent of turkey and cloves heavy in the air. I remember the warmth of it, the hum of belonging, and something deeper that stirred quietly in my chest—something I didn’t have words for then. It wasn’t just joy. It wasn’t just family. It was truth.Connection. A sense of the eternal standing right there in the glow of ordinary life. Years later, I would learn its name. The Star Soul. The upper soul. The higher self. The divine bird perched upon the unseen branches of the World Tree, seeing the expanse of our lifetimes all at once. It was there even then, perched above the lights, whispering through the laughter, reminding me that the feeling I had—of being part of something so vast, so achingly beautiful—wasn’t imagination. It was remembrance. Thanksgiving ran into Christmas, a month of glorious lights, music,shopping, and festivites throught my small town, and the feeling of connection would fill me as much as the candy straws my grandmother always had near the front door during this season. For many years, my grandmother’s tree was topped with a star, and it shone through the front window like a beacon. But one year, she replaced it with an angel. I remember asking her why, and she said softly, “Because the angels live with the stars. The stars and the angels are one.” I never forgot that. The angel she once placed upon her tree now sits atop mine, glowing quietly through the seasons. Every time I lift it into place, I think of her words and how deeply true they are. The stars and the angels are one. The heavens and the soul are one. The child I was and the woman I am—they are one. We don’t see the lights crossing Park Street anymore. The banners of glory are gone, and the tree still stands each year, but the magic feels quieter now. The laughter has softened. The gatherings have changed. And sometimes I think that what we’ve lost isn’t just tradition—it’s a kind of soul light, a connection to wonder itself. But the Star Soul never leaves us. It is the shimmer that still flickers in our hearts when we look up at the night sky. It is the light that knows us through every lifetime. It is the same pulse that mediums touch when they call upon the guidance that loves unconditionally—the voice that says, You are never alone. You are of the stars. In my adult years, I have come to understand what that childhood wonder was truly showing me. It was never only about the lights, or the tree, or even the family gathered close—it was about the language of the soul calling me home. As I grew and my path as a medium unfolded, I came to see that what I had felt in those earliest moments was not outside of me at all. It was the Star Soul itself—my own higher self—reaching through time, reminding me that love is eternal, that spirit is never lost, and that nothing, not even death, can extinguish the shimmer of connection. The Blood Soul roots us in lineage. It carries the pulse of those who came before—their joys, their wounds, their stories written into our very veins. The Bone Soul grounds us in form, in the living memory of the earth itself, in the endurance of those who built and broke and built again. But the Star Soul… the Star Soul lifts us beyond it all. It is where forgiveness is born. It is where love expands past the limits of grief and time. It is where we remember that we are multidimensional, ever-becoming, ever-rising beings—that like the stars, we do not die. We shimmer across lifetimes, carrying our wisdom forward, crossing the veil again and again in the name of growth, compassion, and divine reunion. As a medium, I feel this every time Spirit speaks. The Star Soul allows me to hear not only the words of those who have passed, but the echo of their higher understanding—their evolution, their peace, their love. It is the bridge between the worlds, the part of us that remains alight no matter what endings come. Nothing is ever promised in one lifetime. That is the grace of the Star Soul. We return again and again, guided by that eternal light, learning, forgiving, remembering. And in every moment of connection—every whisper from Spirit, every message of love—we are reminded that we have never truly left the heavens. We have only come here to remember them. May your Star Soul shine bright through every shadow. May your Bone Soul anchor you to the wisdom of those who walked before. May your Blood Soul remind you that love, once born, never dies. I am of blood. I am of bone. I am of stars. We are one in three—roots, branches, and tree. May this always be. If this story resonates with you and you feel called to explore your own Star Soul—or to connect with loved ones in Spirit—I invite you to reach out. My name is Jennifer Belanger, Intuitive Practitioner and Medium. You can learn more or schedule a session at www.energytouchintuition.com. Every session is an invitation to remember that where love exists, nothing is ever truly lost. “Serving clients from Western Massachusetts and the Berkshires, the Capital Region of New York, Southern Vermont, and worldwide via virtual sessions.”  The lights that sang to my Star Soul  The Bone Soul: A Story of Mills, Memory, and Belonging We have forgotten. We have forgotten who our bone ancestors were, and what they carried across oceans and mountains to give us life here. We have forgotten that they left one land weeping, their bones crying for the soil they would never see again, and came to another with nothing but their strength and their faith. And when they reached this new land, they poured their blood, their sweat, their tears into the mills and farms, into the rivers and roads, into the towns that once rang with the hum of looms and the laughter of children. And when they died, their children cried for them. Yet grief did not end there. For when the mills themselves died—long after those first ancestors had passed—the grief rose again. The children and grandchildren, the great-grandchildren, all wept at the loss of the very places that had sustained their families.. Across the veil, the ancestors wept with them, for their blood and bone had been poured into the rivers, the looms, and the very soil itself. When the looms went quiet, their voices rose in mourning. Their tears mingled with ours, weaving us together across the veil. Every year at Samhain, we are asked to turn inward and remember that life and death walk hand in hand. And so we journey into this time through the bone soul. The bones of the earth show through as the fields rest. The bones of our ancestors stir in memory. The bone soul — our middle soul, our middle self — carries our face, our story, our presence in the world. It is how we meet this incarnation, shaped by the union of our parents and the steps we take along the way. It holds our personality, our preferences, our memories and knowledge. It builds our reality, sorts and names it, and becomes as singular as each life we live. Unlike the blood soul, which flows through ancestry, or the star soul, which returns to the heavens, the bone soul does not reincarnate. At death, it lingers here. It abides in the places that mattered most — a graveyard, a window, a tree, a river bend, a stone wall no one takes down because the stones themselves remember. It may merge with land and become a guardian spirit: a hush in the pines, a spark in the hearth, a warmth at the corner of an old room. This is why cemeteries hum with company, why childhood streets hold echoes of laughter, why the ruins of a mill still feel alive — the stones keeping rhythm with the footsteps that once shook their foundations, the air carrying voices too faint for the ear but never lost to memory, the very soil breathing with the weight of those who poured themselves into it. The bone soul lingers in the places where work and memory meet — in mills and farm fields, in kitchens and parishes, in streets where belonging was forged through sweat, sacrifice, and song. And so I know the bone soul in the towns that made me. My Italian, German, French, French-Canadian, and Polish, ancestors came to Adams, Massachusetts, leaving beloved homelands behind. Some carried the road in their bones: Quebec into Vermont. Vermont into New York. New York into Adams. Names like milestones their feet still remember. Rivers and ridges etched into their journey like prayers. They came with hope. They came with desperation. They sought life in the mills, and in the homes that rose beside them. They sought community in crowded streets, solace in parishes that rang with mother-tongue hymns, belonging in bakeries, markets, and the simple company of neighbors who understood the same longing. They came seeking not only wages, but roots — a chance to weave themselves into the fabric of a new land. My French, French-Canadian and Italian ancestors bent their backs beneath the roar of the Berkshire Mills, while my Polish great-grandfather and great-grandmother built a dairy farm that fed workers and townsfolk alike — bottles of milk left on porches in the cool of morning before the sun had risen. These were not just jobs. They were offerings. They were vows made to a new land with no promise of return. The mills consumed entire families. Fathers, mothers, even children. Children as young as seven or eight stood at machines instead of school desks — small fingers darting between threads, lungs full of dust, feet aching on floors that never seemed to end. The clatter of looms was their lullaby. The ache in their bones their teacher. Education was rare; wisdom was forged in hunger and repetition and silence. Many of mine could not read or write, but their bodies remembered — how to tie, lift, carry, listen; how to endure. Inside the mills, men and children learned English because wages required it, but in their homes, the old languages whispered across the table. Children became American by daylight and kept the music of their motherlands by night. The mills remade them — in body, in spirit — blending bloodlines and habits, absorbing their stories into brick and timber until the buildings themselves seemed to breathe. And after the workday, the bone soul of community woke. Kitchens and stoops filled with voices in many tongues. Women baked the breads their grandmothers had taught them, steam beading on winter windows. Men told stories of rivers and fields they missed and of new ones they were learning to love. Parishes rose that mirrored the ones they had left — bells ringing in mother tongues. Bakeries, feasts, processions, saints’ days, and summer bazaars. Little towns inside the town, where memory and faith held fast against fatigue. Here, belonging was not a luxury — it was survival. In bread and hymns, in neighbors’ voices, in shared devotion, the bone soul of community kept memory alive. This is how they kept their bone souls alive: togetherness as sacrament, the ordinary as altar. Down the road, the same story lived in Pittsfield, in a village once called Barkersville. Barkersville was its own small world — about seventy acres where Cloverdale, Branch, and Church Streets cross today. There were worker houses, a mercantile, a bank, shops, the stream that powered the looms, and a Barker villa watching over it all. J. Barker & Brothers anchored the village, their pride the Railroad Mill — wool and cotton turned to satinet, industry singing through the valley. Older maps whisper another name — Stearnesville — for the land keeps every name it’s ever worn. Then came January of 1879. A bitter morning. The Railroad Mill caught fire. By noon, it was gone — one of the worst blazes the city ever knew. Livelihoods vanished with the roof. Hope collapsed in ash. By 1890, the hum was nearly silenced. The village fell quiet. But the stream kept going — streams always do — and the land, as land does, held the memory. Even so, the people refused to be erased. Survivors salvaged what could be saved. Families endured. Faith endured. And in 1910, my home was raised by those survivors — hands that remembered the heat of 1879 but chose to keep building anyway. The street I live on once bore Barkersville’s name. The boards and beams around me were lifted by workers who would not surrender, their bone soul pouring into new walls after so much had been lost to flame. When I opened a sun-porch wall, I found the ghost of brick where a fireplace once burned. When I turned the soil, I uncovered the old slate walk, a path that had simply been sleeping. I gathered dirt from the four corners of my yard and placed it on my ancestor altar, to honor those who built this street and gave Barkersville breath. This is what I mean by ancestors of place and the bone soul working as one: the ones who bled here, built here, stayed here, and by dying here became part of here. Their bones — or the ashes of their bones, or only the stories of their bones — entered the ground and taught the ground our names. Ancestors of place are not always kin by blood; they are kin by land. If blood was spilled on a field, the field remembers. If a body was buried, the hill holds it close. If hands shaped a millstone or laid a sill beam, wood and stone keep that touch. And though towns rise and fall, something endures — the bone of a place. To connect with the bone soul, you must walk where you lived, where they lived, where your people traveled and rested and worked. Stand at an old fence. Sit on a step that has been sat on a thousand times. Listen. Listen from your bone soul. Research helps — maps, deeds, ledgers — but your feet must feel it. You must step where they stepped. I was raised in Adams — a mill town. Now I live in Pittsfield, in the old Barkersville neighborhood — another mill town. Small town to small city. The circle unbroken. Adams still stands, learning how to remember itself. Barkersville is a sign and a stream. But I live inside its remnant, and the remnant lives inside me. When I drive these renamed roads, I feel the workers walking with me. My bones know both towns; my bones are both towns. And I know what was carried, and what was lost. For when the mills closed, it was not only wages that disappeared. It was the bakeries, hymns, and neighborhoods that had been daily communion. Economic safety was no longer guaranteed. Roots that were growing deeply into the soil stunted. What they had built was more than wages — it was belonging, and belonging was the hardest to lose. Yet nothing freely given is ever lost. The bone soul remains — calling us to remember, to reconnect, to restore what can be restored. This is why we ache for communities we never knew. Why a hymn in a language we do not speak can sting our eyes. Why the photograph of a mill child—barefoot, steady, too old and too young at once—can stop our breath. The bone soul is not only memory. It is a summons. And because it is the middle soul — the craftsman of connection and communication — it loves the tools that bridge worlds: language and art, story and song. It loves practical magic and plain devotion. If you want to meet it, speak aloud the names of your dead. Tell their stories at your table. Place a candle in a window. Build an altar for the season — Samhain’s thin time — with photos and favorite foods and a dish of dirt from meaningful ground. This is how an ofrenda opens a door. If you work with cards, call the suits that speak its dialect: Pentacles for earth and legacy, Wands for fire and will, Tarot as a bridge to the middle souls of the dead — guardians in graveyards, along streams, in mills that now sleep. If you walk with dirt and stone, learn graveyard etiquette. Offer what you take. Take only what you can return. And sometimes the simplest rite is enough: walk the streets, greet the houses, thank the trees for remembering. And I believe animals may carry a bone soul too — especially those who choose us. My Olde English Bulldog, Roy, has gone on, but I feel him in the corners of rooms and in the cadence of my days. Some say the middle soul belongs only to humans, but I have seen its glint in the eyes of those familiars who nurture. At Samhain, when the veil thins, I feel my boy, Roy, and all of my ancestors most strongly. I feel the workers of Adams and Pittsfield. The children who grew too soon. The immigrants who carried homelands in their tongues and poured their lives into the mills. I feel Barkersville’s stream threading the quiet, Adams’ brick remembering hands, the Railroad Mill’s phantom heat, the will of survivors in the joists of my 1910 house. They are still here. Their bones are the land. Their souls whisper in the wind. The mills may be quiet now, but memory endures, and through memory we find belonging — to land, to lineage, to each other. And my work — as a storyteller, as a keeper of ancestral wisdom — is to keep them alive. Because every bone holds a story. And every story deserves to be told. And so I offer this prayer, this mantra, this invocation of soul alignment: I am of blood. I am of bone. I am of stars. We are one in three — root, branches, and tree. May this always be. Author’s note: My ancestors came from Italy, Germany, France, French Canada, Poland, and England; their stories live in my marrow. But this story belongs to many. If your people worked the mills, kept the farms, baked the bread, sang the hymns — if you feel your own bone soul stir when you walk an old street — write to me. Share what the land remembers of you, and what you remember of the land. If this story has stirred something in you — a memory, a longing, a whisper from your own bone soul — I invite you to explore it further with me. My work as an intuitive practitioner blends tarot, mediumship, and ancestral communication. Through story, spirit connection, and the imagery of the cards, I help you reconnect with the wisdom of your own lineage and the voices of Those who walked before you Sessions are available in-person in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, or virtually via Zoom, WhatsApp, phone, or email. You can learn more and book a session here: Book a Session Because every soul has a story. And sometimes, all it needs is to be heard. For those who wish to trace these echoes further- — The Barker Brothers and Their Village (J. Barker & Brothers; satinet; the Barkers’ role in the village). -- Lower Barkersville and the Osceola River Flouring Mill, Hungerford St. (maps, siting, the stream, present-day traces). — Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company, Adams, MA (Berkshire Mills, growth and decline, later transformations).  Berkshire Mill in Adams, MA  Historic illustration of the J. Barker & Brothers Railroad Mill in Barkersville, Pittsfield, Massachusetts,  How I discovered The Blood Soul When I first began to reach for my mother after her death, I didn’t know I was reaching for what
I now call the blood soul. I was seven years old, and all I knew was that I wanted her, I needed her, and I would talk to her in what I believed was heaven. Later, with a bit of practice, I would imagine my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and the faces in old photographs I found and kept hidden under my bed. I didn’t understand it then, but what I was really doing was trying to connect to my ancestral source -- my blood soul. Because my mother died when I was so young, I didn’t have her family to fall back on. My connection to my maternal lineage was cut off, and I grew up not knowing my heritage, not knowing the stories or the people who shaped her before me. That left me with an emptiness,a longing,and a deep confusion. I didn’t know I was seeking out my blood soul -- I only knew I was desperate for connection. I clung to any smile, any kindness, any person who would see me. I opened myself to energies and situations I shouldn’t have, because I was starving for recognition and belonging. Years later, when I began working as a massage therapist and then expanded into the study of energy work -- Chios, Reiki, therapeutic touch, craniosacral therapy, and many other modalities -- and when my mediumship began to unfold, I found myself circling back to that same longing. And then I came across the framework of the three souls: the blood soul, the bone soul, and the star soul. These teachings exist in many cultures, each with its own language, but the pattern is remarkably similar — we are more than one soul. When I read about the blood soul, something inside me clicked. It gave language to what I had been reaching for all my life. The blood soul — sometimes called the lower soul or the lower self -- is the part of us rooted in our ancestry and our body. It connects us to our DNA and family line, to the wisdom and trauma carried in our blood, to our instinctual and animal nature. It is the part of us that knows joy, laughter, dance, movement, play, and survival. It ties us to the land, to the spirits of place, and to the deep emotional currents that flow beneath thought and logic. This blood soul includes our blood ancestors -- parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and all those stretching back into primordial time. But it also includes what I call our ancestors of nurture: those who may not be tied to us by blood, but who raised us, nourished us, and shaped us. They might be adoptive parents, neighbors, mentors, friends, or teachers. They are the ones who fed us when we were hungry, who treated us like family, who gave us the nourishment our bloodlines could not. Their love and presence live in the blood soul, too, because nurture is as vital a thread of ancestry as DNA. Because my mother and I both carried A negative blood, I clung to that as proof of our bond. No one on my father’s side shared that Rh-negative factor, and as a child, I sometimes wondered if I truly belonged to that family at all. They did not honor her memory. They did not speak her name. Slowly, her story was erased in what I can only assume was their way of coping. I will never know why. But the A negative blood flowing in me was undeniable evidence that I was her daughter, no matter what anyone else wanted me to believe. It was a thread of belonging I could hold onto when everything else was stripped away. Years later, in my early thirties, I met my best friend Stacy. We became fast friends instantly, standing side by side at the elementary school as we watched our children walk inside. We discovered that she, too, had A negative blood. And I realized that if I ever needed a transfusion, it would be her blood flowing into me — not my family’s. In that moment, she became more than a friend. She became an ancestor of nurture, proof that the blood soul is not only about DNA, but also about the ways people enter our lives and become family of the spirit. Through Stacy, I learned that nurture also flows in the blood soul. It is carried in the friends who become kin, in the chosen family who feeds us, comforts us, and stands beside us when no one else will. They, too, are part of the river. They become our allies, our saints, our adopted kin. The blood soul weaves them into us as surely as it does our great-grandparents, our healers, our midwives, our keepers of memory. Connecting with the blood soul does not have to be complicated. It begins in silence, in spaciousness, in stillness. Sit, breathe, and imagine your blood flowing through your veins like a slow, steady river. Imagine that river carrying not only life, but memory -- the voices of your ancestors moving with it. Ask them to come forward. You may not hear clear answers at first. You may only feel a brush of wind, a flicker of image, a single word. Write it down. Honor it. Ask your blood soul for a message, and then give thanks, even if it felt like nothing happened. Relationship is built through presence and repetition. With time, that river will carry you into communion with your ancestors of blood and nurture, and you will know their wisdom. Now, at fifty-nine, I look back on that little girl and I see her not with pity,but with compassion. Her confusion became my doorway. Her grief became my teacher. I am no longer just the daughter who lost her mother -- I am the woman who has lived through the aching emptiness of not knowing, and who has discovered, through the blood soul, that I was never truly alone. Because of this understanding, I became more than my wounds. The blood soul gave me back a sense of belonging, even when my family could not. It taught me that I carry the wisdom of generations in my very veins. It showed me that my mother’s love did not vanish with her death -- it flows in me still, and always will. The blood soul turned my searching into knowing, my silence into listening, my longing into connection. Today, I stand as an elder, a crone, rooted in the understanding that grief and love are not opposites but companions. My blood soul has taught me that my life is not only my own story, but also the continuation of every story before me. It has given me the strength to guide others, to help them hear their own soul cries, to remind them that they too are carried by rivers of wisdom and resilience. And so I tell you this: your blood soul is not just your past. It is your vitality, your will, your spark. It is the river that carries your ancestors, the laughter of your inner child, the pulse that reminds you that you are never truly alone. To listen to your blood soul is to listen to life itself. And in that listening, we discover that even in death, love does not end. It flows on, endlessly, within us. Give it a try-- I've created a short, guided practice to help you connect to your blood soul- Meeting Your Blood Soul Take a moment to find a quiet space. Sit comfortably, let your body relax, and close your eyes. Breathe deeply, in and out, until your breath begins to settle. Now, bring your awareness to your blood. Imagine it flowing through your veins like a slow, steady river. With each heartbeat, feel that river carrying not only life, but memory -- the voices of your ancestors moving with it. Follow that river as it winds through you. Imagine it carrying you back through time -- to your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, and all those who came before. See it reaching back further still, into the deep currents of human history, until you feel yourself resting in the collective river of your blood soul. Here, invite your ancestors of blood and nurture to come forward. You may not see them clearly. You may only sense a presence, feel a brush of air, or hear a single word. Whatever comes, welcome it. Ask your blood soul: “What message do you have for me today?” Sit with what arises. Write it down if you can. And when you are ready, give thanks -- for the blood, for the river, for the ancestors who continue to flow within you. Tell them, “I will see you soon.” And know that you can return to this place at any time, with only a few breaths and an open heart. Thank you for reading my blog. It is my hope that these words have touched something within you, whether it’s a memory, a longing, or simply the reminder that you are never truly alone. If you ever feel called to go deeper -- through a reading, a session, or guidance on your own soul journey -- I would be honored to walk with you. You can learn more about my services and reach me anytime at: www.EnergyTouchIntuition.com With gratitude, Jennifer  I Am of Bone. I Am of Blood. I Am of Stars. There is a passage I once read, in Magical Mediumship by Danielle Dionne, that struck me so deeply it felt like it reached into my chest and pulled me still:
"I am of bone. I am of blood. I am of stars. We are one in three. Roots, branches, and tree. May this always be." The first time I read those words, my life was swirling in noise — the chaos of the world outside, and the quiet ache of my own inner world. Life felt like it was spinning in every direction at once. There was stress, chaos, worry—circumstances with my children, my relationships, my work. I was navigating the endless pull of being a mother, the demands of my work as a medium and card reader, the expectations of partnership and friendship, and the unseen currents of the world — war, hunger, uncertainty, the rising tide of collective pain that empaths like me cannot help but feel. My work requires that I open myself up. I keep my chakras as open and clear as I can. I meditate. I listen to my dreams. I listen to my guides. I do everything I know to keep my energy flowing in alignment. And yet, I was holding space for others while wondering, in the privacy of my own thoughts, if I was even holding space for myself. The Soul of Mothering, Partnering, and Being To be a mother — whether of children born to you, chosen by you, or nurtured in other ways — is to live with your heart and your soul cracked wide open. You give and you give, not because you're keeping score, but because love calls you to pour yourself out. And yet, in the quiet hours, there can be a whisper: Am I doing enough? Am I enough? Partnership is another place where the soul is tested — not in the grand gestures, but in the daily showing up. It's in sharing the kitchen light over morning coffee, in the arguments you work through, the constant changes that come into and leave relationships, in the laughter you protect. And still, there's the wondering: Does my love measure up? Does my soul feel safe here? Friendship, too, asks for a piece of the soul — the listening, the remembering, the showing up even when your own inner well feels dry. Sometimes you give when you're not sure what you have left. Sometimes you wonder if you've been so busy carrying others that you've forgotten how to carry yourself. The What-Ifs and the Stillness When the noise of life finally quiets, we can be left with the "what-ifs." What if I've given too much away? What if I've misunderstood what my soul was asking for? What if I've been speaking in my own voice but not hearing the language of my deeper self? In the stillness, in the meditation, in the sleepless nights, there can be a realization: maybe you never truly knew your soul the way you thought you did. Maybe you've only been living with one part of it — the part most convenient for survival — while other parts went silent from neglect. The Human and the Soul — Partners in Creation It is essential to know our human self — our boundaries, our values, our truth. If we don't know what we stand for, we will stand for nothing and fall for everything. But knowing ourselves as only human is not enough. Our soul is not separate from our human experience — it is the current that runs through it. In tarot, the Magician tells us we already hold every tool we need to create, while the High Priestess reminds us that we already hold every truth we need to hear. Together, they are the mind and soul in partnership — a mirror of what we are meant to be. This is not about spiritual bypassing or putting a pretty bow on pain. It's about the deep, raw truth of being alive. Blood in our veins. Bones in our body. Stars in our psyche. The Three Parts of the Soul When I read that passage — I am of bone. I am of blood. I am of stars — I began to see the soul as having three distinct but connected parts. That line revealed itself to me as a map of the soul. Not in the literal sense of ancestors or lineage, but in the sense that our soul has different aspects: The Blood Soul – The pulse of life, the part of you that feels, loves, grieves, and connects in this present, physical world. This is our life force, the part of us that feels deeply and connects in the here and now. The Bone Soul – The structure and strength, the part that carries your truths, your resilience, your unshakable center. This is the enduring part of us that holds our truths and gives us the strength to stand. The Star Soul – The infinite part of you that knows you came from beyond this moment and will return beyond it — the dreamer, the seeker, the spark of the cosmos. This is the luminous part of us that remembers we are more than this body, more than this life, more than this moment. When one is missing, the others feel the loss. When all three are present, we are whole. When they are aligned, we return to ourselves. When they are scattered or neglected, we feel the absence—sometimes as exhaustion, sometimes as numbness, sometimes as the quiet ache that something is missing. Loss, Love, and the Places the Soul Fractures We give away pieces of our soul without realizing it. We pour ourselves into our families, our work, our friendships, and sometimes we forget to call those pieces back. Some fractures in the soul are so deep that they become part of who we are. Others are the quieter deaths — the symbolic endings that ask us to release what was so something new can be born. Losing my mother when I was just seven years old was one of those deep fractures. It wasn't just losing her arms around me — it was losing the anchor that a child builds their sense of safety and belonging upon. That kind of loss rewires both the human mind and the soul. It seeps into the Blood Soul — shaping how you love and how you trust. It tests the Bone Soul — asking if you can stand without the structure that once held you. And it touches the Star Soul — making you wonder why a love so eternal could feel so painfully gone. Calling that part back takes a lifetime of listening, of loving yourself as fiercely as you wished she could have loved you for longer, and of understanding that her essence still threads through every star in your night sky. Then there are the losses that ask us to die while we're still living -- watching your child become an adult and learning to step back from the mothering role that once defined so much of your identity. Your Blood Soul grieves the daily closeness, the being needed in that primal way. Your Bone Soul must rebuild itself around a new truth: love sometimes means letting go. And your Star Soul learns that the greatest gift you can give is the space for someone else's soul to fully unfold. The symbolic death of a partnership follows a similar pattern -- whether through divorce, betrayal, or simply growing apart. What dies is not just the relationship, but the version of yourself that existed within it. The shared dreams, the daily rhythms, the future you planned together. Each soul part must find its way back to itself. The ending of a deep friendship can be just as profound, especially when it happens slowly, through distance or changing life paths rather than conflict. The soul pieces you invested in that connection — the shared laughter, the mutual support, the understanding that felt irreplaceable — must be called home and integrated into your wholeness. Then there is the loss you see coming -- like with my beloved Olde English Bulldogge, Roy. I knew from the start that his heart was fragile. I knew I wouldn't have him for long. And yet, I loved him anyway. For six precious years, he was my meditation partner, my quiet companion, my mirror of unconditional love. He was a soulmate in fur. The day he left, I felt a part of my soul go with him. But here's the truth about animals: they teach us a form of love so pure that it doesn't stay gone. Roy's presence, his loyalty, his joy -- all of it still lives in my Blood Soul, still strengthens my Bone Soul, and still brightens my Star Soul. Losing him broke me open, but it also left me more whole, because I learned that love, when given freely, always returns. Returning to Wholeness But this is not a story of despair. For with the loss, there has also been joy. With the giving, there has been receiving. I have dear friends, marvelous clients, and relationships that anchor me in peace. I have a beautiful home, caring neighbors, and moments of gratitude that take my breath away. We lose people. We lose animals. We lose parts of ourselves in the process. But we can call them back — not in the same form, but in the essence they left behind. Every soul piece we retrieve makes us more ourselves. When we bring the Blood, Bone, and Star back together, we remember who we are. And we can finally stand in the fullness of our being. Your soul is not just one thing. It is many. And the more you know its parts, the more fully you can live in your wholeness. "I am of bone. I am of blood. I am of stars. We are one in three. Roots, branches, and tree. May this always be." This is the first post in a series exploring the Blood, Bone, and Star aspects of the soul. In the posts to come, we'll dive deeper into each part — how to recognize when they're calling to you, how to heal the places they've been wounded, and how to call them back into alignment. If this resonates with you and you'd like support in your own journey of soul retrieval and wholeness, I offer intuitive readings and guidance through my practice. You can learn more and book an appointment at www.energytouchintuition.com. May you remember all the parts of yourself. May you call them home. May you stand whole.  When the Soul Cries: Listening for What Words Cannot
There comes a moment — maybe more than one — when life quiets just enough for us to hear something deeper. Not the chatter of the mind. Not the pull of the outside world. But something ancient. A subtle ache. A whisper. A cry. It’s not a sound anyone else can hear. And often, we don’t recognize it ourselves. But if you’ve ever felt frozen in place, unable to move forward no matter how much you wanted to — if you’ve ever felt like you were watching your life but not living it — then you’ve heard it. That’s the cry of the soul. As an intuitive psychic medium and card reader, I witness this all the time in others. But I also know it from the inside. I know what it feels like when your soul is crying out for relief, for change, for truth — and your conscious mind doesn’t know how to understand the message. The soul doesn’t cry the way the body does. It doesn’t always speak in words. It shows up in other ways — fatigue, grief, tension, tears, anxiety, numbness. It shows up in the strange silence inside you when everything seems fine on the outside but nothing feels right within. Sometimes, the pain of our life — whether from trauma we’ve endured or situations we’ve chosen — becomes so heavy that we stop moving altogether. We feel stuck. Paralyzed. Like being awake inside a coma — watching, hearing, sensing, but unable to move or speak or break free. That’s not laziness. That’s not weakness. That’s not a failure of effort. That’s soul exhaustion. And in those moments, the mind tries to take control. It tries to "help." It labels. It dismisses. It says: “This isn’t a big deal.” “You’re overreacting.” “Other people have it worse.” “Just think positive.” “Everything happens for a reason.” “You just need to move on.” This is what we call spiritual bypassing — and it’s one of the most harmful things we’ve been taught to do. Spiritual bypassing wraps pain in platitudes. It uses light language to cover dark wounds. It tells us that if we just stay positive, everything will be okay — and in doing so, it erases the soul’s cry. We are taught not to cry. Not to speak of pain. Not to go deep. We’re taught to override, suppress, affirm it all away. But we were never meant to bypass pain. We were meant to witness it. To feel it. To touch it. To honor it. Spiritual bypassing keeps us locked in patterns and chaos. It disconnects us from the truth that could set us free. Because underneath that forced peace is a soul crying out: “This hurts.” “Something must change.” “Please hear me.” That ache in your chest? That lump in your throat? That feeling of being lost, hollow, or unable to breathe deeply? That is sacred. That is the soul begging to be heard. And when the soul cries, it often speaks not in words — but through tears. The Sacred Language of Tears- Tears are not weakness. Tears are not failure. Tears are not a breakdown. Tears are the voice of the soul when the voice cannot speak. We cry when the truth is too big for our body to hold. When the pain is too old or too confusing to name. When the grief has nowhere else to go. And sometimes — when our spirit is remembering something we thought we’d forgotten. People say “the eyes are the windows to the soul,” and maybe that’s why tears come from the eyes — because the soul is speaking through them. When our voice closes up, when our throat is tight, when we can’t explain the ache — tears say it for us. Tears are truth made visible. They are sacred water. Streams of clear, crisp soul language — softening the jagged edges of our wounds like rivers shaping stone. Over time, tears reshape us. They smooth us. They awaken us. They cleanse the soul’s sight, not just the eyes. They come to say what was never said. They fall in the places where our voice failed. They are part grief, part prayer, part release, part rebirth. So let them come. Let them fall without apology. Let them carry the truth you were never allowed to speak. Let them say: “I’m still here. I still feel. I still remember.” Because after those tears fall, something beautiful happens: We begin to see clearly. Not through illusions or spiritual gloss — but with soul-clarity. Not from a place of performance. But from the raw, holy space of truth. The Way Forward Is Through Healing doesn’t come by avoiding the ache. It doesn’t come by numbing ourselves with work, distraction, or “positivity.” It comes by going through it. Through the silence. Through the discomfort. Through the stillness that the mind wants to avoid. To know where we are — and where we need to go — we have to be willing to be with ourselves. Not fix ourselves. Not force ourselves. Just be with what is real. And that takes space. Stillness. Listening. Meditation. Journaling. Card reading. Sitting with Spirit. Letting the body speak. Letting the soul cry. Letting the tears say what you cannot. This is the sacred work. This is the path to becoming whole. You are not broken. You are not lost. You are waking up. And your soul? It’s not trying to hurt you. It’s trying to bring you home. If Your Soul Is Crying Right Now…Know this: You are not alone. You are not too much. You are not weak for feeling so deeply. You are becoming. You are remembering who you are beneath the chaos. And you are worthy of hearing your own truth. The tears that fall are sacred. The ache is the invitation. And the journey through it is where you will find your power. I am here to hold space for that journey — through spirit communication, through the wisdom of the cards, through intuitive guidance and soul listening. Not to fix you. Not to save you. But to remind you that your soul already knows the way. It’s whispering. Crying. Speaking. And when you are ready to listen -- You will find yourself again, because even when we are lost, our soul always knows where we are.  There are days when I forget I’m a psychic. When I forget that I’m a medium, a healer, a guide. And strangely? Sometimes, I don’t mind forgetting. In this quiet, human reflection, I share what it means to step outside the role — to just be. Spirit doesn’t disappear in these moments; it simply waits, gently, until I return. There are days when I just want to move through the world without thinking about where I’ve been, where I’m going, or what’s waiting around the bend. Days when I want to quiet the channel, ignore the signals, and just breathe like a “normal” person might. Sometimes, forgetting feels peaceful. But Spirit never forgets. And neither do the souls—living and passed—who find their way to my door. Before the world changed, I had a lifelong dream come true. I opened my own metaphysical shop. It was more than a place of business—it was a sacred, welcoming space where people gathered to browse tarot decks and crystals, sit quietly with a book, ask deep questions, and explore the unseen. It was a place of connection, conversation, and quiet discovery. I did readings there, yes, but my heart was in the whole of it—the atmosphere, the energy, the community. My beloved Olde English Bulldogge, Roy, was my steady companion through all of it. He was there as I unpacked boxes, painted walls, set up shelves, and welcomed my first customers. He was the heart of the shop—the soul who kept me grounded and smiling through every long day and every magical conversation. Roy was a bigger part of that dream than most people ever knew. My chats with Roy came from my core. They were my meditations come alive. I would talk to him, and shortly after, I would hear “his” guidance. We built a dream together. Then came COVID. The pandemic took my shop. I had to close its doors—temporarily, I told myself at first, and then, finally, completely. It broke my heart in ways I’m still healing from. But through it all—every tear, every box packed, every last goodbye—Roy was there. Right by my side, loyal and watchful, just like always. It wasn’t much later that my beloved Mr. Roy left me. He passed about a year and a half ago, from a heart condition he was born with. Even though I had known our time was limited, nothing prepared me for the silence he left behind. Losing him was like losing a piece of myself. He had been with me through everything—the creation of my dream, and the loss of it. And when he passed, it was as if that chapter of my life truly came to a close. But then, without fanfare, Spirit sent me Astrid. A mix of Boston Terrier, English Bulldogge, and French Bulldogge, Astrid arrived in my life like a tiny beam of light wrapped in fur. I hadn’t planned to get another dog. I honestly didn’t think I could—not after Roy. My heart didn’t feel ready. But Spirit knew better. Astrid came into my life as a gift—a message, really. A living reminder that while I spend my life offering healing, hope, and messages to others, Spirit still sees me, too. Still knows what I need. Still remembers that I, too, am human. I, too, grieve. I, too, long for signs. Astrid is one of those signs. She reminds me that I am loved. That joy returns. That Spirit never leaves us empty. She is not Roy, but she walks beside him in a way I cannot explain—two spirits, one following the other, guiding me on. Today, I no longer have a shop. What I have now is a deeply personal practice. One-on-one sessions where I sit with people—sometimes strangers, sometimes kindred souls—and listen for what Spirit wants them to know. And over these past years, something beautiful has become more and more clear: Spirit doesn’t just use my “clairs.” Spirit uses everything. Images. Feelings. Cards. Animals. Conversations. Signs. There are signs that continue to push me forward—through the rolling fog that sometimes clouds my trust in my own purpose. Messages that draw me inward even as they open me to the outer worlds. Lately, I’ve found myself reflecting—not on what I can’t do, but on what I’ve simply stopped doing. I wasn’t sitting in meditation as often. I wasn’t talking to Roy anymore. I wasn’t listening for the answers, or trying to follow the path. At least, not in the way I once had. And here’s the truth: I can’t always explain what I see without my voice trembling. I can’t stop my heart from racing before each session begins. I can’t hold back tears when a loved one says, “Tell them I’m still with them.” I can’t stop the ache when Spirit shows me how someone passed. If they smoked, I cough. If they suffered, I feel it—just for a moment. If it mattered to them, it matters to me. I can’t always turn it off—but I’m learning how to gently dim the light when I need to rest. I can’t always find the perfect words—but the cards and the signs always seem to speak when I cannot. I can’t stop yearning to be better—but I’m learning that being honest and present is often more powerful than being “right.” And I can’t stop dreaming of reopening my shop someday. Even though I’ve grown, changed, and evolved, that space still lives inside me-- and maybe, one day, it will live again. This path is not the one I planned. But it’s the one I belong to. And when I forget who I am, Spirit gently reminds me-- Through a card. Through a sign. Through a stranger. Through a session. Through a dog. If you feel called to reconnect with your own path, receive messages from those who love you, or find healing in the spaces between what’s seen and unseen, I invite you to sit with me. Sometimes we forget where we are. But Spirit never forgets. With love and light, Jennifer Belanger Intuitive Practitioner www.energytouchintuition.com  The Day Great-Grandmother Catarina Finally Got to Tell Her Story
What happens when the cards become a bridge between worlds You know how sometimes the universe conspires to give you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it, even when you have no idea that's what's happening? That's what occurred the afternoon Katherine walked into my space for her Beloved Dead Tarot Session. She settled into the chair across from me, fidgeting with her sleeves, that familiar look of someone carrying invisible weight. "I feel so lost, Jennifer," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Like I'm walking through life in someone else's skin, making choices that don't fit, following a path that isn't mine." I nodded, shuffling the Relative Tarot Deck between my hands, feeling that familiar tingle that tells me we're about to dive deep. "Tell me about your family," I said, beginning to lay out the fifteen cards in their sacred pattern. "What do you know about the women who came before you?" Katherine shrugged. "Not much, honestly. My great-grandmother Catarina died when my grandmother was little. Nobody really talks about her. It's like she just... disappeared from our family story." {Ah, there it is.} When the Cards Start Whispering, the first few cards painted the expected picture—Katherine's childhood filled with "shoulds" and "supposed tos," the pressure to be practical, safe, conventional. But when I flipped that seventh card, the one representing ancestral gifts, my breath caught. Queen of Cups, reversed. Surrounded by cards of hidden knowledge and buried truth. "Katherine," I said, my fingers tracing the card's edges, "there's a woman in your lineage who had to hide her gifts. She's been trying to reach you for a very long time." The tears came immediately. "Catarina?" "Tell me what you feel when I say her name." "Sadness. Like... like something important was lost." Katherine wiped her eyes. "Is that crazy?" "Crazy? Honey, if feeling the truth is crazy, then we're all beautifully insane." Catarina's story began to emerge like morning light breaking through curtains. The Nine of Swords revealed her fear—living in a time when women like her, women who could see beyond the ordinary, were dangerous. The Hermit showed how she practiced her healing gifts in secret, helping women in her community under cover of darkness. The Star card practically glowed with her connection to something divine, something she could never fully express in her lifetime. And then, the Ten of Pentacles reversed. The card of legacy disrupted, inheritance denied. "She was erased, wasn't she?" Katherine whispered, understanding dawning in her eyes. "Not erased," I corrected gently. "Hidden. Waiting for the right moment, the right person, to bring her gifts back into the light." Katherine's hands were shaking now. "I've always felt this pull toward healing work. Ever since I was little, I could sense when people were hurting, sometimes before they even knew it themselves. But I ignored it. Went into accounting because it was 'practical.'" {Of course you did -- Catarina probably told you to.} The Moment Everything Shifted was when the thirteenth card—ancestral guidance for Katherine's path—revealed itself as The High Priestess. Pure, undiluted intuitive power. Katherine stared at it for a long moment, then looked up at me with wonder. "She's been trying to tell me, hasn't she? All these years of feeling restless, feeling like I'm living the wrong life—that's Catarina?" "That's Catarina," I confirmed. "And probably your grandmother, and maybe even your mother, all carrying gifts they couldn't fully express, passing them down through the bloodline until they reached someone who could finally shine them into the world." We finished the spread in reverent silence, the final cards showing Katherine's path forward: trust the gifts, seek the training, break the cycle of hiding that had haunted the women in her family for generations. "Catarina had to dim her light," I told Katherine as we sat together with the cards spread between us. "But she's been guiding you toward a time when you can let yours shine freely. Every time you've felt that knowing in your bones, every time you've sensed someone's pain before they spoke—that's Catarina, whispering through your DNA." Six months later, (Because the Universe Loves a Good Follow-Up), Katherine sent me a photo last week from her energy healing certification. She's radiant, lit up from the inside like a woman who's finally come home to herself. "I can feel Catarina with me every time I work with a client," she wrote. "It's like she's finally free to practice her gifts through me. We're healing each other across time, Jennifer. Both of us are finally whole." "Yes, it is when we are finally ready to listen, our ancestors speak." Why This Work Reveals So Much-- This is what happens in a Beloved Dead Tarot Session. We don't just get guidance for tomorrow—we uncover the love stories that have been shaping us all along. The gifts running in our spiritual bloodline. The wisdom that death couldn't silence. Your ancestors aren't gone, love. They're woven into the very fabric of who you are, and their guidance is available when you know how to listen. The cards become their voice, their way of reaching across the veil to share what they couldn't in life—or what they've been trying to tell you all along. Sometimes the most profound healing happens when we realize we're not walking this path alone. That the gifts we carry, the callings we feel, the dreams that won't leave us be—they've been lovingly nurtured by those who came before us, waiting for the right moment to bloom. What story are your ancestors waiting to tell you? What gifts have they been whispering through your bloodline? Ready to discover the love letters your ancestors have been sending? Book your Beloved Dead Tarot Session and let the cards reveal the wisdom that's been waiting for you all along. Visit www.energytouchintuition.com to begin your journey home to ancestral wisdom. Because where love never ends, wisdom endures.  Herkimer Diamonds Every day, every adventure, every phone call, every encounter, every moment holds an infinite promise of revelation.
To re-member our ego with our soul through individual expression (s). To re-unite our soul-selves with our human-selves to become our one-self. Yesterday, my adventure to the Herkimer Diamond Mines, gave me once again another revelation. A beautiful Sunday morning, sun shining with a light breeze, pail, and hammer to dig and capture my treasures in hand, sneakers and loose-fitting clothes for comfort, gas in the car, GPS on, Aunty Robin co-piloting, excitement for the adventure, full speed ahead. As typical with all long drives, (2 hours is a lifetime in a car for me), conversation passes the time away. Chatting on about life, kids, jobs, daily life, the occasional heartfelt laugh and giggles galore, the distance closing in, happiness overflowing. This is the most significant part of any adventure. Communication. The ease of friendships. The joy of the moment. It was in this ease of the drive that my phone gave a bit of a ring, and my daughter’s voice popped into the conversation via the miracle of Bluetooth. Paige had 5 days earlier embarked on her own road trip from San Diego to Montana and back. My daughter, the soul of a traveler, had time off from and chose to set off through the deserts and mountains of the midwest. SOLO “Hey, Paige! How goes your road trip”? “MOM! MY CAR DIED”! {fuck}. “Okay, breathe, look around you, where are you? What happened? You are safe. We will figure this out”. And so, begins a bit of unease. The momentary feeling of doom and disaster, worry, fear, confusion, prayer. (Team Jen, find Team Paige and help them, God, keep her safe, Mom, wipe her tears, Archangel Michael, see if you can fix that car.) Yes, I can pray, worry, swear, and feel impending doom all while sounding brilliantly calm and reassuring. “Paige, I am on the road in the middle of upstate NY, I will call Dad and Alex. They will get you the information for AAA, send you money via Venmo if needed, do all the things from home you may need until I can pull over without hitting a cow or losing cell service.” Nothing else I can do but move forward. Alex sent her money, Tim got her AAA under control, we all check in every 15 minutes while she waits for the tow truck, and Aunty Robin and I continue our path to hunt diamonds. Ace Diamond Mines here we are. Buckets and hammers in hand, thousands upon thousands of rocks to bang, diamonds to find. All while in constant contact with Paige and the unraveling saga of a $500 car and what may possibly be a shot engine, somewhere in Nevada. As I wandered the incredible amount of rocks and considered the what-ifs of Paige’s situation and its impact on her next few days/weeks, I once again asked for help from the other side . I asked again to keep her safe, to help her figure this out, to ease her burdens, blah, blah, blah. I already requested 1,000 times. Once is enough. I’ve been heard. I just keep boomeranging prayers. It was at this moment I saw a smallish stone with a bit of glitter. Curious, I picked it up and turned it over and there it was. A heart. I always get a heart when I am pondering life on life’s terms. It is always sent in love and always a reminder that the answers, although usually hidden from sight, are still available to me and are always perfect. I showed Aunty Robin, and we continued our quest to find the perfect stones, our treasures. Throughout the day, Paige and I would chat. Her car now safely at an auto mechanics shop waiting for the morning to learn more, Paige safely, albeit unhappily, in a $50 cheap hotel room with a halfway decent pizza and a case of water coupled with a six pack of beer because seriously, this situation sucks. After about 6 hours of digging and not really finding much in the way of treasure, we packed up our hammers and gloves and headed back home. Full of chatter, full of laughter, much reminiscing, and plans for another adventure. Goodbyes said, the shower taken, Roy walked and fed, I finally sat down to look intently at the Diamonds I did find or were given to me by the lovely lady wanting the bigger diamonds and giving me her littles. I pondered my day again and held my heart stone close. I found myself feeling its texture, noticing its imperfections, color, coolness, beauty. I put it with the diamonds and then sat back again lazily absorbed in its display. “Do you see beyond the shine, Jennifer”? “Do you finally understand what you have been hearing these past few months”? “What is seeking to express itself through you”? “What is seeking to emerge from within”? “What shell are you finally able to release around you which will allow yourself to shine”? And there it was. A reminder of the meaning of life. It is never about the treasure; it is never about the adventure without setbacks. A big part of life is about knowing there will always be something deep within your being, hidden within your past, your illusions, your shell, your fears, your nightmares, your ego, which is seeking to express itself through you. A talent, a potential, a spark, a dream, a wish, a hope, a gift, a desire, an expression of greatness, whatever your unique and individual seeds are within the dark, hard, and cold shell within, patiently waiting to be exposed through you and as you. There will forever be easy ways to find little sparkles on the surface, just hanging out waiting to be discovered. And while these sparkles bring much significance in our lives, the treasures, which there are many, will need to be chiseled at until they reveal themselves with such magnitude, such beauty, such strength, such love, such shine, we never will hide that expression of self again.  Years ago, I, along with most of us who vibed this vibe, was introduced to the Law of Attraction as a way of living a more full, more affluent, more abundant life and more peaceful life. In this first introduction, I learned that "thoughts make things" and "change your thoughts, change your life." While this is a very, very good beginning point to moving onto another path of our journey, it is just that, the beginning steps on a long and glorious way of self-discovery and self full-fill-ment. Remember this word, fulfillment. It will matter in a bit. There was a time in my life where the rabbit hole I had dug myself into seemed way to deep and far to black ever easily to remove myself from. I had dug this hole without a shovel, without any real knowledge of doing it, and certainly without any intention at all. No-one intentionally intends to dig a hole so deep they can't find a way out, yet this is precisely what we do, and we do it unconsciously. Like so many journeys our human self takes, we take them unconsciously. This is why "change your thoughts, change your life" is such an important beginning step. When the choice is finally made to take stock in where you are, what you have chosen to bring into your life, the people, the places, the external circumstances of life that are now eating at your inner self, our thoughts shift. When we start consciously choosing to think differently, we will begin to notice circumstances shape-shifting into more beneficial, more enjoyable, and more peaceful avenues to walk down. This type of thought process helps remove us from the VICTIM mindset, which is the pattern our ego uses to keep us believing that external circumstances prevent us or determines our destiny. When we are in VICTIM IDENTITY, we dig the rabbit hole. Quickly. Without intention. Using the Law of Attraction, we begin to MANIFEST our new paths. We begin to chose differently, using our mental power, to describe the world we want to "See" for ourselves. Our motivation to change our external circumstances begins us on a path of imagination. Affirming, through words and thoughts, we begin to visualize our future selves in a more positive, more FEEL-FULL-MENT way. Our thinking starts to change, so our lives begin to change. We become Goal and Task Oriented. We follow the "SHOULD BE" model that books, self help gurus, movies and therapists tell us we "should be", and BOOM! Another Rabbit Hole is dug. This rabbit hole is much more beautiful than the Victim Rabbit Hole. It has pretty things, sunshine, blankets, happy people, money, and even more things we imagine into our being. SO...why are we still Un-Full-Filled at this stage? The Law of Attraction tells us that if we just "think it," we can "be it" and "have it" ! This is where it becomes tricky and where most of us get stuck. We begin to linger in the "Should Be" state of life. I "Should Be"... Rich, happy, married, traveling, have a business, have a career, have a...whatever the hell you think your should be, perfect life tells you to have. Perfect life, equipped with the perfect pill and the perfect drink so we can live the should be illusion forever because we are supposed to be..... Sooner or later, your soul finds a way to whack us upside the head and remind us there is more. This is where we begin to realize that "thoughts may indeed become things," but "things" aren't what brings us joy, love, light, and happiness. At this point on my journey, I learned that yelling over and over "WTF, GOD! I CHANGED MY THOUGHTS, I CHANGED MY LIFE, WTF!!!" may not have been the easiest way to move forward, but it did work. My soul brought the student me to the teachers I needed for this next step. CHANNEL CONSCIOUSNESS. This is where I learned to Surrender. Albeit the harsh and long path way, but I did learn. I learned to live in the Zone of a Universal Presence, a Life Intelligence who has never been born and will never die lead me. Now, this is not in a religious, head down, bow to the big guy in the Sky with the Big J sitting next to him lead the way to follow. It isn't a don't kill the spider, ant, fly or gnat while sitting crossed knee in the middle of the ocean with the sun beating down on me while I burn begging for enlightenment way either. No, this was an "I can not do this with just my thoughts anymore" sort of way. I surrendered my need to "figure it out" and allowed Universal Intelligence to guide me by slowing down my mental chatter. I stopped pursuing life as a Sprinter. I stopped looking to acquire externally and began researching my life internally. Intentionally going internally to understand eternity. I still visualized, I always set goals and did the tasks to reach those goals, but It wasn't from MOTIVATION, which comes from external circumstances, the mind, the individual or the things happening outside of me. I visualized from INSPIRATION, which comes from the Mind of the Infinite. What our SOUL NEEDS not what our Ego desires. Once I chose to slow motion my life, I began meditating, breathing, listening, following the strands of Divine Intervention, seeing with eyes behind my eyes, hearing with ears behind my ears, feeling with a heart behind my heart, my slow-motion thoughts became "Flow Motion" living. This is where I began to Understand Life itself lives through us as unique expressions of itself through our soul. This is now where I attempt to live daily. In the BEING. In this state we understand the "I AM AS US." or as my Catholic upbringing taught me rather unsuccessfully, "Thou art and I am and I am Thou Art." This is the state of Being where we are no longer just Task Oriented or Goal Oriented, we are Purpose-Oriented. This is the state where we have our Satori, or "Aha" moment that tells us our lives revolve around Kensho which is the slower awakening of our Souls that is ever eternal., ever evolving. In Kensho, we slowly release that which no longer serves us. We begin to learn that to really be FULL-FILLED we need to stop looking to FEEL-FULL. In this VISIONING State, we learn who we are "Meant to Be." This long and winding road brings us more prosperity, more joy, more love, more health, more wealth, more peace, more freedom, more engaging relationships, more creativity, more excitement, more awe-mazement, more In-sight, more Full-fill-ment and more of all you have ever hoped, dreamed and desired with the added joy of knowing, really knowing we will never, ever be without because it is already given. I said attempt because life is a practice in patience, love, and understanding. In order to Re-Member our soul's purpose, we need to practice daily self- love, self-acceptance, self -understanding in a "Soul-Flow Motion" of Being.  The twist and turns, peaks and valleys, sunrises and sunsets of life can often leave us to feel lost, confused and even conflicted. We see our path that was once so clear become fuzzy, unclear, changed. Our confidence can be shaken with an illness, a loss, an unexpected cost. These potholes along our journey can sometimes threaten to engulf the peace we have created with fear and uncertainty. Even the good things can cause an unexpected disruption; finding out you are finally pregnant, a dream job in a new state, a lottery win, a marriage, a new home. The list is endless. When these crossroads find us, and they will, Tarot will offer the guidance to navigate the road ahead with valuable insights to help make decisions in a natural and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way. Tarot helps us to identify the reasons for our feelings. Often we feel sad or upset about something that may or may not show itself clearly. On the surface level, we may believe we know the reason, but with Tarot helps we are more able to dig out the root of these feelings once and for all. Tarot can also help us make potentially life-altering decisions in which the process can sometimes be very stressful. Tarot readings help ease some of this stress by guiding us to see all angles from many different perspectives. A single message from a Tarot reading may be all that is needed to make this decision in a more balanced and positive way. A Tarot reading is especially useful when we are stuck in a situation that no longer serves our highest and best good. This could be a job, a relationship, our environment, our health, or life in general where we no longer feel in the flow of life. Tarot is also an incredibly useful tool to help us understand the people we surround ourselves with and those who appear in our lives by chance or circumstances. Tarot can offer us advice on how best to vibrate with these people or help us determine whether we need to vibe somewhere else. Tarot helps us talk to our loved ones on the other side. We can ask them questions and receive answers through the cards using certain spreads or just a few cards. Tarot can also help us by merely pulling a card in the morning to start our day. This daily practice offers us quiet time in the morning to center and ground ourselves, think of the day ahead while creating a blueprint of the path in which we aspire the day to be. This simple act of pulling a Tarot card each day will set us up for success by helping our intuition work as a tool to nudge our mind in the right direction. Tarot gives us a starting point-a message- that can take us in whatever direction we feel called by the card. By listening to and trusting the first thought that pops into our head when seeing the card expands and strengthens our intuitive muscle while offering us a message that is more than likely what we need to hear at the moment. By strengthening our intuitive muscle daily, we will start seeing other fantastic benefits, like better decision making, clearer thinking, internal dialogue and trust rather than the external need for validation, as well as knowing we are more than capable of making our lives more enjoyable by empowering ourselves with clear purpose and intention. As you can see, Tarot can be the exact tool we need to ensure the proper conditions are met to help the seeds we plant in our garden grow strong, vivid, healthy, beautiful, vibrant and nourishing with minimal weeding. To learn more about the role Tarot can play in your life contact Jennifer Belanger Intuitive Medium and Tarot Practitioner 3 Charms 25 Main Street 2nd Floor Chatham, NY https://www.energytouchintuition.com  My commute to work is a lovely back road scenic drive over the "mountain" as we from Berkshire County, MA call it as we travel to Columbia County, NY.
It is exactly what you see in picture books, coffee table books and images of backroads and the path less traveled documentaries depicting the simpler way of life. The fields leading way to the distant Berkshire Hills and eventually the Catskill Mountains. The farmers on their John Deere, farm stands every few miles with trust buckets to leave your cash take your veggies, coolers with fresh eggs, vintage containers with freshly picked flowers, cows and llamas mingling in fields, birds and turkeys picking off the berries along the road, and little to no real traffic to be concerned of. This drive is but one of the many joys of living on my piece of rural America or as my friend, Jennifer Mach, commonly refers to "the 413". Four days a week, twice a day, I am able to enjoy the quiet time on this road contemplating my day ahead, talking to my guides, hearing their answers, listening to fantasy football talk radio tell me how to win big even though I never do, listening to music. It is an extraordinary time twice a day for reflection and guidance which brings me to the point of this musing. Last week, being the end of the regular football season, and deciding I needed some music rather than talk football, I tuned into the Billy Joel radio station for a change of headspace and was greeted almost instantly by "An Innocent Man". Some people stay far away from the door If there's a chance of it opening up They hear a voice in the hall outside And hope that it just passes by "Huh". I had been spending time wondering why we as humans have such a difficult time separating the ego from the soul. Attempting to truly understand the difference to easily differentiate between the "I" in the "I am" and the "EEK" in the "Ego." Once again, Spirit led me to music for a greater understanding. Some people live with the fear of a touch And the anger of having been a fool They will not listen to anyone So nobody tells them a lie I know you're only protecting yourself. "Protect me from what?" Freedom. Freedom to be, to let, to allow, to live. Freedom to choose your life on your terms. Freedom to love rejection as much as you love reward. Freedom to allow the ebbs and flows of life and all its ups and downs, strangers and friends, lovers and foes to come and go with the same freedom. Freedom to know unconditional love, acceptance. Freedom to learn all there is to learn about you without caution or criticism. Freedom. "I get that. Free Will, the Magician, the Wheel of Fortune, The Secret, I've read the books. There has to be more." Some people see through the eyes of the old Before they ever get a look at the young Some people say they will never believe Another promise they hear in the dark Because they only remember too well They heard somebody tell them before "It is hard to trust. Lies are everywhere. Humans lie." Some people sleep all alone every night Instead of taking a lover to bed Some people find that it's easier to hate Than to wait anymore I know you don't want to hear what I say I know you're gonna keep turning away "I'm not turning away. You are not hearing me! Give me a better understanding. There is more to it than Freedom. It isn't that easy." There isn't more than Freedom, and it isn't that easy. Freedom isn't something you read and learn from books, it is learned from experiencing all life has to offer while remaining non-judgemental, un-affected by the illusion seeming negativity. I'm only willing to hear you cry Because I am an innocent man I am an innocent man Oh yes I am "Yeah, well being Human isn't as fun as you portend it to be. There are no college bills due in Heaven.." You know you only hurt yourself out of spite I guess you'd rather be a martyr tonight That's your decision But I'm not below Anybody, I know If there's a chance of resurrecting a love I'm not above going back to the start To find out where the heartache began Apparent Negativity, senseless worry, fear, living in the Ego mind is not Freedom, it isn't loving, it isn't SOUL. "It is living in a material world in which we must live as humans to survive." If all you want to do is survive, sure. I thought by now you understood Humans are all here to thrive. Some people hope for a miracle cure Some people just accept the world as it is But I'm not willing to lay down and die Because I am an innocent man I am an innocent man Oh yes I am An innocent man "What are you attempting to convey?!" I am an innocent man Oh yes I am An innocent man "Are you telling me YOU are the innocent man?!" No, I am telling you, YOU are the innocent man.  “Why did I never see this ornament before?”
“Have you always had it?” my girlfriend asked during our annual Christmas get together. “For years” I replied. “It was my grandmother’s, and when she passed, I took a few of the ornaments she loved for my tree.” “Wow! I never noticed it before, and I always come by to see your tree!” “Why is that?” Why is that? The simple answer, I believe, is because we don’t look. We see the beautiful colors of the tree and notice the ornaments quickly in the same way we discern the rain, the snow, the trees, the grass, the sun, and the moon. We see the terrain in front of us in a significant form. We notice the mountains and the stars without much thought. We notice every aspect of what we see, but do we really look? It is so easy to see without looking. To live without living and the be without being. It is in the details we get lost… I am guilty of this practice far too often. I have to catch myself daily to step away from the grand picture and focus on the minute. To see the ornaments in all their glory, with their stories, memories, hopes, and history rather than the Christmas Tree as a whole. I have to remind myself when I am concerned with the next big step to make sure I tie my shoes first. I have to remember when I see something beautiful the detail inside of that beauty. Seasons remind us of the natural cycle of life in which all comes together in a magical display only through the tiniest of detail. The snowflakes blanket our lands but only under a microscope do we see their magnificence. The sun shines down upon us in the heat of the summer, but only when a rainbow appears after a rain shower does we see the miracle of light. The colors of the fall take our breath away, but do we stop to smell the fall? Hear the crackle of the leaves under our feet, and the see the color of each leave fallen? Flowers bloom in the spring but not before the first sprout of green begins. We are always thinking ahead...thinking what is next, where do I go, how will I get there and a billion other really useless questions that somehow garner much more attention than they deserve. What deserves our attention is the details, the moments, the microscopic details that forge our lives. We are so enthralled by the “big-ness” of life that we sometimes trample over the foundations of it. My friend and I chatted about what we think next year will hold for us and then, after our chat we laughed about how it will be so different than what we believe because we can look at the canvas our minds eye will show us, but the details man, those pesky details are what is running the show. My resolution for 2019 is nothing grand at all. I am not vision boarding a successful business, money in the bank, friends at the dinner table, family around the hearth. I am not resolving to lose weight, exercise more, do more or be more. I resolve to notice the Angel in the details. I resolve to see the aphids on my roses in the spring...and dowse them with dishwater..darn things love my white roses. To see the rainbow in the raindrop shimmering off the spruce tree needles in the summer. To see the designs of snowflakes frozen on my window in the morning before scraping them off. I do need to drive to work…. To hear the crackle of life under my feet when I walk. To see the bees gathering nectar from the bushes outside my window as well as recognize the buzz of the hummingbirds rather than just noticing their beauty. I resolve to take tiny steps on my journey. Hear each note the Universe plays, see each sun ray sent my way. I resolve to BE without worry of BEING. I resolve to breathe more deeply because in the exhale the world becomes a better place. I resolve to take these three pills of health daily. Stillness, Spaciousness, and Silence. May 2019 be a blessing of peace to us all and may your resolutions be detailed.  Years ago I offered profound wisdom to my eldest niece, Court, when she was having difficulties.
She was trying to understand some circumstances in her life in which she wasn't sure if it was "her" or "them" and how to determine the difference. My words of wisdom were simple; "A pound of shit with a pound of sugar on it is still shit." "Your job is not to taste it,no matter how tempting it looks and to not step in it." A few nights ago she called looking for some Aunty advice and support which needed a bit more thought than my usual quick thinking, Super Aunty Gemini, glib bumper-sticker statement. This time she needed Aunt Jennifer and damn did that scare me. This kid is my Superstar. She has a strong will, a kind heart, a go for it attitude, just enough sass and ego, and the stature of a fairy complete with pink hair. Or is it orange this week...or yellow. I can never keep up with her hairstyles or her tattoos which only serve to define her magical nature.She is an exemplary example of the phrase "when life gives you lemons you make lemonade." She not only made lemonade, but she also sweetened it with two gorgeous children, (with the help of her husband), a career as a highly in-demand stylist/colorist on a rock we all know as Hawaii. Yes, she made very delicious lemonade from some horrifically tart lemons. This is why when she asks me for support and advice, she gets 1000 percent of me. This phone call centered around her beginning to understand that sometimes, no matter how much we try, we will inevitably step in the shit of our own making and it will prove to be the most perfect soil to grow from. See, many times we make a choice or do an action that causes a crack in our well-constructed foundation that will require more than a plop of cement on the masonry. It requires a complete teardown and rebuild. This is when we take that shit, mix it with some of that soil we had built our foundation on and grow a brand new lemon tree! Yes, damn it, a lemon tree, because you know what? You can add sugar to lemons and make a sweet tea, or you can be bitter, resentful and stagnant with puckered lips because your tea is sour. Your choice. Aunty advice at its finest right there... My niece, like so many of us right now, is starting to understand how to blend her past and her present to create her future. She understands that mistakes are not costly when you choose to grow from them and bad choices are only bad when you don't take the time to understand why they were made. In the same way that history is destined to repeat itself, so will our past in the decisions we make until we learn from it. We have triggers from our past that have the power to destroy our carefully built foundations. They can rip at our hearts, our minds, our souls, churning up our inner demons that have outgrown the small garden space we allow them to grow in our beings. It is at this moment, we feel the shift of wisdom gently weed out that demon and replace it with a new seed of ourselves. Rich in shit, watered with our tears, fed with our desires and out of that seed, a new way of thinking, seeing, living, being, emerges and with this wisdom we are able to make better choices that feed us, nourish us and heal us and help us decide who and what we will allow to trigger us in the future. We need to have fertile soil to grow steadily, but we can decide who and where we get that soil from. We can let those who trigger us go. We can work with our inner child to heal much of our scars. We can choose to love ourselves far more than we need others to like us. We can let go to let in. We can walk new paths and dream new dreams and every now and then, get a new pair of shoes because we stepped in some do-do again. My niece is my Superstar, and her soil is suddenly very well manured for her growth. I am sad for her pain, concerned for the depth of potholes on her path, hoping her map becomes clear, praying the sun and moon offer bright lights for her to follow, but most importantly grateful I have a front row seat to watch her bloom.  Have you ever watched a child take its first steps?
More so, participated in the coaxing of that child's first steps? Remember back to the cheering, the praise, the excitement, and anticipation of those first 3 or 4 steps. "You can do it"! "I've got you"! "Keep going"! "Get back up, come to me"! Each time the child stops, falls, pauses, cries, there you are, lending support, cheering, loving, being there, celebrating. Inevitably after a short time of practice, that little rascal begins on a path of curiosity, mischief, wonder, destruction, (child proof locks, anyone), scrapes and bruises and a lifelong of peaks and valleys, planes, trains, and automobiles. In that monumental moment, a toddler was born. A significant life change, pivotal in the entire trajectory of that child's life, but all we see is a baby taking his or her first steps, captured in our memory, stored on marshmallow. At that moment we are happy, the baby, now blooming toddler, awestruck at its achievement. Exhausted by the effort. In awe of its feet, which by now has chosen to chew on. Yes, the very beginning of self-exploration. Freedom from the protective baby front-pack, the jolly jumper, stroller, arms. Freedom to GO! That baby didn't make a chart, write the pros and cons, ask for help, permission, speak to its therapist if now is the right time to attempt walking, check tarot or meditate on the issue. Nope. That baby gave it a shot after observing others and when the time felt right, showed up. Yeah, the kid showed up. The kid took a breath, stood up, waited, held on, pushed off, and went for it. The kid showed up when the time was right. Bravo little person! Bravo! Keep going! Baby steps don't end when you learn to walk. Nope, that is when they begin. Each journey, each dream, each day begins with a step, and when the time is right, we need to take them. It is so easy to forget the baby inside of each of us. We may age, we may not dribble out of a sippy cup anymore, and thankfully we can stop eating creamed spinach out of a jar, but we are still taking baby steps every day. We are still figuring out how to be toddlers without childproof locks. We are scared, we are afraid to fall, we are in need of encouragement, we are curious, and we are always free to choose our journey, and those who are really, really good at yoga can most likely still chew on their feet. The difference is, are we showing up? Are we taking that breath and showing up for ourselves or are we pausing? Are we not paying attention to the timing and letting time fly past us? There will be times we need to pause, to seek help, to find strength outside of ourselves, but more often than not, we just need to show up. Show up for the journey. What steps do you need to take? What are you going to show up for? When are you going to take that first step? How about today. The Universe has your back..take a step.  I've been pondering again.
Pondering is one of my favorite pastimes as it can be done while doing almost anything else. I can cook, clean, work, watch tv, lose at fantasy football every Sunday, talk with my husband, hang with my friends, garden, journal, even begin meditation while continually pondering some thought that wanders in and out rather than being present, in the moment, in the miraculous space of now. Yup...I ponder, and I did it again this morning while dogging my morning meditation, only this time it yielded some real fruit. This morning, while aimlessly finding reasons to be way too busy to park my ass and meditate I wandered upon my boy, Roy. Roy. An Olde English Bulldogge with the peaceful soul of Buddha, the whimsical sparkly eyes of a child at play and allergic skin reactions that erupt faster than a pissed Mother Nature pointing her rage at the Hawaiian Volcano, Kilauea, on a dreadful day. My Roy, the soul of a saint, the skin of a devil, a constant reminder that the two continually need to be monitored. His skin is better today, thanks for asking, his ninety lb. body plopped comfortably on the couch enjoying a much-needed nap after his full 9 hours of sleep in which he awoke from just an hour prior. His ability to plop anywhere at any time began my ponder for which I am quite grateful. This has been a year of much movement, much change, much chaos, much angst, and much joy. As all years past and all years future, there is a cycle, a wheel that turns and with each turn we are, as individuals in our own personal lives, either up, down or somewhere in the middle. This year tended to begin down, moving to the middle, and finally a bit towards up. It is the moving up that worries most of my clients and truth be told, myself as well. The fear of change, of movement, of forwarding progress, seems to scare most of us more than being down or somewhere in the middle and that, the being comfortable in the down and uncomfortable in the up is what makes me ponder and clients ask "How"? More often than usual. "How do you, how do I, how does it, how, how, how...." Once again, an answer came in the purest form. Roy. Little Roy, plopped on the couch allowing whatever will be, to be. Patiently allowing this crazy lady who calls herself his mom, run around his home, talking to no-one and always way too loudly, do her stuff while staying comfortably plopped. Observing with one eye opened while I begin dusting dog hair from the floor that will never be without it, and then running up and down the stairs for what seems to be without reason other than to swear when I slip on them. Quietly observing me pouring a cup of coffee that I really, really don't need, recognizing my already heightened intensity, all while knowing I will inevitably leave the cup of too much hype somewhere it doesn't belong while asking a million times to the no-one who is listening "what the hell did I do with my coffee?" Roy, who no matter how red his newly infected ear is, how painful his paw is from another mysteriously erupted sore or how itchy he may be from yet another dry spot on his precious skin, sleeps peacefully knowing he is safe. This is WHY I KNOW the HOW. Roy knows the HOW. Love is how. Roy knows that he is loved so much that all of his needs will be met and all he has to do is relax, and all will be given to him. He will get fed, he will get his medicine, lots of exercise and pats on the head, coconut oil rubbed on his skin, blankets on the couch. His needs always, as if by some miracle, met. He has an unconditional love who takes care of him. He doesn't have to know my name, he doesn't have to pray to me, he doesn't have to beg, plead or even please me to be loved. He just is. So am I, so are we. Loved unconditionally. My love for Roy is so abundant, so deep, I intuitively know what he needs without him asking and his ability to KNOW this love is so deep, so real that he never, ever asks WHY. He just KNOWS. All of Roy's needs are met without him doing much. He gets up for food, lies down for a blanket, barks to be let out, gives kisses for a treat. There are times when he is uncomfortable with his allergies. There are times when he may be hungry, and there are times when he may feel a bit lonely. Sometimes when the lightning is too close to home, he gets scared, and sometimes he doesn't have an immediate response to his barks, but he ALWAYS gets what he needs and wants in what may seem like forever to him, but really, is just a moment or two in the grand scheme of things. No matter what is going on in life, with a little effort, a small gesture, a quick prayer, a short bark, the HOWS will always be met in the most miraculous ways. That LOVE, the love Roy knows, comes from the LOVE that loves me. It is me. That LOVE loves all of us unconditionally. The Love that made us is the Love that lives through us. That LOVE is US! No matter the wheel of fortunes cycle, I am loved, we are loved. We can relax into the knowing that the HOW will be taken care of by Love that loves us unconditionally and will respond to all of our desires, needs, wants, hopes and barks when the time is right, and all we have to do is relax into it. |
Jennifer Belanger Intuitive Medium
& Tarot Practitioner
Jennifer Belanger
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