Both, and...

reflecting on duality, divination, and deeper conversations

If you are alive right now, at this moment in time, you are, on some level, being asked to learn how to hold duality: in opposing beliefs, thoughts, and energy. In some form, in your own way, and to varying degrees along the spectrum, this is part of our soul curriculum.

Do you think it’s a coincidence that we are living through one of the most polarized eras, at least in my lifetime? It might seem like division is the only path offered to us, but I refuse to believe that’s all we get. What if the breaking points we’re witnessing—internally, interpersonally, collectively—are not just signs of collapse, but invitations? To choose a different path. One that asks us to stretch our capacity again and again. To hold both grief and gratitude. Anger and compassion. Certainty and confusion. To find ourselves in the tender pause of curiosity before rushing to judgement.

No emotion arises without a reason, without a role to play.

By no means do I have it all figured out. Most days, I’m confronted with the sweetness and simplicity of the life I live while also feeling the angst of unrealized potential, and the weight of sadness and guilt for experiencing joy while so much else in the world is in pain.

I coach people to insource their own sense of safety and nourishment while knowing that so many others aren’t afforded even a moment of safety in their environment. At times, daily life feels insignificant in comparison. Nothing feels like enough. And yet, somehow, you, me, we are also whole and enough.

How do we begin to hold space for it all?
How do we stay connected to our humanity in the face of distraction?

We build our capacity by rooting into something deeper; call it source, faith, inner knowing... love. Without it, we risk breaking under the weight of it all.

The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. ~ Francis Weller

And right now, we’re being initiated into an era that asks us to cultivate this connection more consciously. Not just for ourselves, but so we can hold the full complexity of life without shutting down or splitting apart.

If the fast-moving pace of digitized life has offered anything in this regard, it’s this: an abundance of options and paths. The old structures built on hierarchies and gatekeeping our connection to the divine are becoming less powerful, less relevant.

You get to choose how. You get to choose the route, or many routes that bring you back to what’s always been within you.

And that something greater outside of you? I find myself looking to nature and nurture. Nothing in nature tries to choose one or the other. It simply allows both.

Light and dark, bloom and decay. Coexisting.

And then there’s nurture, in the form of community and loving connections. The mirrors that reflect both the unseen growth just below the surface and the beauty of your evolution. More than anything, the right community can help you secure your container, so you can hold grief in one hand and gratitude in the other.

We were never meant to do this alone.

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It’s never lost on me how themes are so often reflected back to us through luminary transits.

Saturn in Aries asks us to shape the self with structure and discipline. While Neptune in Aries flows in with a looser dreamscape, urging us to reimagine possibility. Together, they create a kind of friction, the kind that births new worlds. To me, this tension intersects at the corner of true devotion.

To your path, your purpose, and who you’re becoming.

Devotion not built on promises of clarity or ease, but the kind that asks you to show up anyway, to co-create and trust that you can hold both.

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What if the way we introduce ourselves, and the conversations that follow, reflected not just what we do, but who we are… and who we’re becoming?

The Confession Book is a snapshot conversation and written series inspired by the Victorian-era confession albums once used in polite society to get to know friends beyond the bounds of acceptable, often surface-level conversation. What began as a parlor game became a window into personality; later evolving into what we know as the Proust Questionnaire, popularized by a deeply thoughtful 14-year-old Marcel Proust.

This series is a reimagining of that spirit, less about pleasantries, more about presence. One question per episode. Fifteen minutes-ish. An experiment in skipping the small talk and sharing something a little more real.

The first edition drops this Friday, May 30.

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Bits & Baubles of Life Lately

Before I go, I thought I’d share a few things I’ve been into recently, including a card reading I pulled for yesterday’s New Moon in Gemini.

• Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud — Honestly just really into the whole premise.

• Towards Zero — I’m not sure what had me more in its thralls: the show itself, or the character, wardrobe, and overall aura of Audrey Strange, played by Ella Lily Hyland, who was also a pretty badass assassin in Black Doves. The duality between these two roles, both embodied by the same actress, is 🔥.

• Before We Forget Kindness by Toshikazu Kawaguchi — A time-travel café in Japan, where tenderness, regret, longing, and unspoken words unfold? Yes, please.

• Yin & Yang I-Ching Oracle Deck — I’ve felt called to study the 64 hexagrams of the I-Ching, especially how they correlate with the gifts and channels in Human Design and the Gene Keys, and how these ancient divination arts continue to reveal themselves through modern frameworks.

New Moon in Gemini Reading

1. Intention Being Seeded — Progress / Prospering

2. Potential for Transformation — Nourishment

If you're feeling stuck, what’s needed may not be action, yet, but a shift in consciousness. The so-called “limitations” in your life might actually be fertile ground, the exact conditions to help you uncover and develop your strengths.

What perspective haven’t you considered yet?

This made me think of a recent conversation I had with a friend. I was sharing how, over the last few years, my external habits and daily rhythms haven’t changed all that much. I’ve tried different approaches here and there, but I always come back to what works best for me: a sense of flow and flexibility.

What has changed, radically however, is my mindset.

I’ve always fiercely protected my time, even selfishly. Until one day, my husband gave me a hit of perspective I hadn’t seen before. What felt like self-honoring started to look more like self-absorption. And in the wake of that, I felt guilt. Shame. Resentment. Discomfort.

But eventually, I got tired of being in that space. I started to look at it differently. What else was in there? What if that old pattern was trying to evolve into something more nourishing?

The cards for this New Moon pointed to Progress and Nourishment. Not progress at all costs, but the kind that emerges when you’re willing to shift your perspective.

When what once felt like a limit, be it a mindset, a pattern, or even guilt itself, becomes the soil something more meaningful can grow from.

I wonder what might happen if you began to shift the way you think about your limits. What perspectives, questions, or conversations could open new possibilities?