​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.”

​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).

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

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.

​Sometimes I forget where I am presently and how I got here. 
I forget that I am a psychic,  
I forget I am a medium,
I forget I am a healer. 
I like forgetting sometimes. 

There are times I ignore it all and drive along my road without a thought of where I am, where I was, where I am heading, and how I got on the road in the first place. 

It is actually easier to forget, quieter, less stressful, less demanding than notice the road I am traveling on.

This happened to me last Sunday when one of my most fabulous friends and I were heading to Chatham to put the finishing touches on what I lovingly refer to as my "Spirit Studio."  

As we casually drifted over the mountain from MA to NY, we happily chatted about our families, our jobs, our friends, our plans, football, and hypnosis. 

I mentioned that I took a hypnosis course to help people get into a quieter state while treating them using Emotional Freedom Techniques, EFT for short, for pain relief, PTSD, weight loss, etc. 

She laughed out loud and exclaimed, "Is there anything you can't do?!"

I giggled back and said, "plenty."  

After a moment or two she pensively turned towards me and said, "no, really, is there anything you can't do?"

The thoughtfulness of her words, coupled with the softer tone of her voice, made me pause and rethink her question. 
Again, I responded as I had the first time she asked with "plenty" and I meant it.  

I can't settle into who I am.
I can't be comfortable with what I do. 
I can't explain what I see.   
I can't vocalize what I hear without my voice quivering.
I can't stop my heart from racing before each client walks through my door. 
I can't seem to keep my eyes dry when I hear a loved one tell my client they love them and miss them. 
I can't not react to the seesaw of emotions of my clients during a session. 
I can't control the pain in my body when my "friends" on the other side show me how or what they have died from. 
If your loved one smoked, I would cough. 
If your loved one suffered, I will for a moment too. 
If they saw it, I see it.  If it mattered to them, it matters to me. 
I can't always turn it off, but I am learning to dim it down. 
I can't stop yearning to help, to be better, to be "good" or "right" or "legitimate."
I can't do a lot,

There is plenty I can't do, but what I can do is continue following the road I've been detoured on.  

Being a Medium, better yet, admitting to being a Medium is not a road I found on a map and decided to sightsee on. 

As a matter of fact, I wasn't even aware I was a Medium until I got a phone call from a potential client asking me for a psychic reading because one of her friends got a "reading" from me during one of her massages.   
Of course  I laughed it away questioning Bonnie, "What is she thinking? I am not a Medium!"

Oh, I dabbled in tarot as a teenager and young adult.  

I prided myself on "knowing" before others and I even knew I was psychic my entire life. 
Of course now I know we all are, but for a bit, I was "special."

Being a Medium, that is a whole lot different than tossing a card or two on a table in front of a living person and playing the psychic game.

Being a Medium is a deep, often lonely transformation from ego to soul in which I could not have prepared myself for had I been told what was happening.  

Thankfully, for me at least, it was a slow process.

I would tell people what I saw while I massaged them not really knowing what I was doing other than being the chatterbox I am known to be.  
I would see a photo in my head and talk about it.  
Hear a few words and ask questions about it.
My jaw would ache if I didn't say anything or I would drool.  
Yup, drool on the client lying on the table....not good for business.
Eventually I realized I had to come clean with what I saw or wear a bib for the rest of my life.  I hate bibs.

That first phone call was the catalyst that put me in the passenger seat of the Universe's Prius on a blindingly bright road without a seat belt. 

A journey of healing, love, upliftment, sadness, fear, confusion and in the end gratitude.    

This ride I may never be able to understand and will always be slightly afraid of. 

Who am I fooling, terrified of.

​A yearning to be more than who I am, to be more than who I dream I can be, and to hold onto a light that if I look too closely into, may absorb me completely.  

An easier road is where I was found, but this road is where I belong. 

Travelling any other road, the road not travelled,  is something else I can't do, but that I can be ok with.
​


​

Sometimes rooms are spooky. 

Even in our own homes, in the middle of the night, or first thing in the morning, during a thunderstorm, snowstorm, power outage, our own home can give us a feeling of unease.  

As children, we imagine all sorts of funky and wild things happening under our beds and in our closets.  
As adults it is no different, we get spooked, and our hair raises, our hearts beat wildly, our breathing becomes quickened, we go into defense mode.


We freeze.  

We offer a quick prayer and usually, for me at least, a prompt promise to Heaven above "God, If you save my ass right now, I will ......."  
I tend to get a little extreme when I am frightened, so my promises are really, really big.  

Being in this state can last a moment or a million moments, and as time tends to stand still when our fear is heightened, it really doesn't matter.  
We are spooked, we are defensive, we are sweating, and we do not see the whole picture.  

Until of course, we turn on the lights.
  
Bright, beautiful, blinding light illuminating our surroundings, dissolving our fears.  
Just like that, a flip of a switch and some sort of wire voodoo in the walls of our home bring us back to the reality that we are indeed safe and just a little bit foolish for allowing our imaginations get the better of us.

Dreams, desires, wants, hopes, chances, personal needs....these are our spooky rooms. 

Our hopes and dreams, our deepest desires, the longings of purpose can send our hearts racing and palms sweating.  

We take that first step into our dream and immediately feel the ground soften under our feet, thinking it is quicksand we jump right the hell out of it and run to safety before realizing it is perfected, rich and fertile soil to grow in.  

We open the door to our desires and hear the boogeyman growl, so we immediately slam it shut before realizing it is our own voice telling us to stay safe, stay small, stay complacent.

We long for something...anything.....yet we don't stop doing what we don't love to know what we do love.  
We conform to the world around us instead of creating the world we choose to live in.   


We keep busy to keep safe.  

We talk about everything that matters little and look for guidance and wisdom from others, from outside of us rather than allowing ourselves to emerge as the wise warriors we genuinely are.  

We allow ourselves little freedom by living under conditions we have grown accustomed to without any real thought as to why.  We live in spooky rooms.  

We live as we have learned.  

We are who we think we should be based on our human thoughts,  rather than what we really are. 
​We live in wooden homes with contained elements that turn on and off with the flip of a switch.  

We allow ourselves to dream only in our sleep and if we find ourselves frightened, we flip a switch to illuminate the room to erase our fears, and we go back to our beds and dream of living.  

We live in spooky rooms.  

But we don't have to.  

We can use our imagination and our fears to raise us out of our sleepy, fearful life.  

We can LIVE with our feet touching the earth knowing it is soft for our users to grow our own gardens,  and our souls can awaken our ego to the beauty of Mother Nature and all of her glory.   

We do not need to live in spooky rooms when we have the sun to warm us and the moon to guide us. 

We don't need to switch on a light for illumination, we are the light in which we seek. 

Listen to the fear when you open the door..what is it saying?  

Why is it saying it?  

Don't slam the door, jump into it!  

Complacency and mediocrity are our bogeymen, shut them out, not life. 


We can be free of the spooky room we have created to keep us safe by living on the edge of our comfort zones.  

When something sparks us, feel it.  
When we hear a voice, listen to it, when we are scared, ask why.  
When we are shaky about our next step, embrace it!   

Allow the sun to feed our bodies during the day and the moon to guide our souls dreams at night. 


When we are shaky about our next step, embrace it!  
The soil of our life is supposed to be dark, creamy, soft, wet, and easily pliable. 

Without great soil, the sun, and the moon how else would we bloom?
 


​ 

It's a funny card, this 4 of Swords.  At first glance I thought,  this poor, exhausted knight, sleeping in the sanctuary of his beloved and trusted church is going to be killed by his swords.  I always imagined this would be a very unpleasant occurrence for a knight who apparently has faith in his work and trust in his God. 
Seemed harsh. 

Then, I looked at this card.  I began to examine the surroundings of this knight, the colors of his bed, his clothes, his surroundings.   The incredibly beautiful symbolism of this card.  What was the actual meaning conveyed in this pure artistry?  

Of course, I could look the meaning up in my handy dandy library of tarot books or on the numerous sites available on Google, but alas,
I don't do easy.  
It is a curse as well as a gift this "take the long way home" brain of mine. 
Where a dull pencil and ruler would result in one nail hole to hang a picture, I choose to make roughly six nail holes. 
​ When using GPS would make for a more comfortable trip, I decided to take numerous paths just to make sure I know all the ways to get there...
I decided to absorb all this card was saying to me over the course of a few days. 
Thinking over and over and over about the meaning and how it would portray in my life and the lives of others. 
Each client became the sleeping knight.
I wondered what would make someone sleep, in a church, on a golden pillow, below a beautiful stained glass window with swords over his head. 
Maybe he's dead.

What is he thinking?

He's NOT thinking.
He's NOT praying.
He's NOT sleeping.
He's NOT under his swords.
He's NOT dead.
He's RECHARGING his soul.
The Knight has absolute faith in his souls work and while all souls are meant to thrive there is an element of struggle and battle. 
You are a soul having a human experience. 
You know this, you preach this, the knight never forgets this. 
The knight places his swords on the wall of his temple. He rests on the bed he has created in his temple. 
He places his one golden sword beside him while he lies contentedly, prayer hands, face up,  in the golden glow of Angels and Illumination. 
He knows that it is in these times of complete faith, he will know his next step.  He meditates in the Cathedral of his soul. Aligning himself with all that is and all that will ever be. 
I AM

Yes!  Of course. 
The 4 of Swords reminds us to put down the swords. 
The battle well fought and the victory sweet. 
The time now is to rest, recover, rejuvenate, grow. 
This card reminds us that, in the words of my Spiritual teacher, Michael Bernard Beckwith, 
We are at a choice-point in every moment of each circumstance, each activity, spoken word, and thought.
Do we live in a minefield or a garden?
When we live in a minefield mentality, we explode with the weeds of worry, doubt, fear, lack, and limitation.
We must choose to cultivate our inner garden.
We must stop looking outside for help. We are sourced and fuelled and funded by a renewable resource, which is within us. 
It never runs out.
It is the Essence of our lives, and the universe corresponds to the nature of our song.” 
Go within now.  
Have faith in all that is and all that will be.
Allow your soul's growth to take form in whichever way it shows itself.
Align yourself with your SOUL-self.
Do it now.  


Jennifer Belanger is an
~Intuitive Tarot Reader~ Medium~ 
~Certified Chakra Therapist~
~Certified Energy Therapist~Licensed Massage Therapist~EFT Practitioner
who specializes in Body and Soul Therapies
​
If you would like to work/consult with Jennifer please 
Contact and 
Schedule your appointment with Bonnie at
413-499-2419


​


















​

​Wondering what early Spring has in store for us?
Me too, so I asked the Tarot!


The Queen of Swords is telling us that it is time to cut through any drama, any worries, any issues that are holding us back from living our truest potential.
The Queen of Swords uses intellect in all she does and inspires us to remove the emotion and embrace the intellect. She is sassy, she is brilliant, she is a puzzle solver, she is a visionary and she could care less about what anyone thinks and never, ever will let anyone get in her way. 
She is focused on the Ace of Cups which tells us that a new love, not necessarily a personal love, but a beginning of something that we "fall in love with" causes us to overflow with passion, inspiration, excitement, and wonderment of what could be.
This could take form in a new relationship, new career, new home, new move, new idea, new anything that sets our hearts on fire and gets those emotional juices of creativity moving. 
This hand that offers us this new passion is also guiding us to take the first step into whatever brings you alive. 
This is the hand of the Universe, my friends, and when the Universe hands you a cup, you drink from it!
 The 9 of Wands is also facing the Ace of Cups.
This fine gentleman has seen his fair share of the battle.
He's been through it and he has won or at least is still standing. He is now ready for a change.
He is ready to leave the craziness behind him. 
He is going to embrace his inner Queen of Swords, drop his stick, take some aspirin for his headache, or better yet, get a Chiropractic adjustment and Massage and go move towards the Universal Cup of Happiness! 
Wands are action cards that are also Spring timing, so take action, cut through the fear with that sword and grab hold of this new opportunity that is being offered to you.
​The time for planting seeds of change is now!


Happy Spring, everyone. See you when the sprouts appear.


If you would like a personal Intuitive Tarot reading, 
Call me at 413-499-2419 
or
https://www.energytouchintuition.com