The Magic of Grief & Grief Tending

Every rite of passage and rebirth you experience, whether on a spiritual, emotional, physical, personal, or collective level, includes opportunities to grieve. Yet, talk of grief is often reserved for death and dying alone. While in truth, grief relates to any deep sorrow, and sorrow accompanies many of the rites of passage we walk through. Some of the rites of passage, rebirths, and deaths that come to mind that so often lack our grief are the onset of menstruation, puberty, childbirth, monetary changes, loss of friendships, moving, changes in important relationships, career or work changes, deaths, and collective changes like climate change and the pandemic, just to name a few. 

Listen to this post on my podcast, Rooting into Wholeness, here.

Grief lives within every death and rebirth cycle, waiting for us like a wise teacher ready to help us alchemize through another right-of-passage portal. Unfortunately, for many of us, rights of passage are sorely lacking in our personal lives and collectively, leaving our ability to properly grieve important changes neglected. How might our view of grief and grieving change if we could hold these words with more reverence? How would life's rights of passage, death, and rebirth processes look and feel if you had more time and space to grieve them properly? How might we as a collective find more peace if we made more space for the magic of grief? 

In the book Death Nesting by Anne-Marie Keppel, she shares this about grief, "Rather than seeing it as something to "get through” and "move on" from, learn how these new feelings incorporate into your life. Death changes life–that's what it does. Be gentle with yourself and others as you learn this new being you are becoming." When I grieve, I'm often reminded that I need far more time and space than I think to be with my grief. What would happen if you allowed more time to tend to your grief or, as Anne-Marie put it, “to learn this new being you are becoming”? Would you turn into a pile of tears, incapable of moving forward? Maybe for a little while, but not forever. I suspect your grief, like mine, has wisdom, healing, and even inspiration to offer you as you navigate this physical world. Perhaps focusing on our grief is the transformative and paradoxical magic we need to emerge from personal and collective rites of passage more healed and whole.

This isn't to say grief tending is easy, and of course, there are barriers to regular grief tending embedded in the systems in which we live, so each person's ability to grieve will vary. The natural cycles of nature and the moon show us ways to grieve even when it may be difficult. I've found in my own grief tending that my ability to grieve directly correlates to my capacity to love myself and others and experience deep joy. Like most things, the more time you spend cozying up to grief, the more natural it will feel over time.

Like so many areas of life, perhaps the best place to better learn how to grieve is by turning to our closest teachers in the natural cycles surrounding us, like the moon and the seasons. In this share, I'll explore grief through the seasons, moon phases, and the tarot, gleaning ways to honor and learn from our grief to help us become whole and more firmly rooted in our humanness. I'll offer energetic insights into how I see grief show up in the energy body as an energy worker, how I approach it on an energetic level, and other grief rituals. This share is an invitation to examine your grief, and the magic, healing, and joy found within the grieving process. 

As a human who grieves, a death doula, and an energy worker, I'm no stranger to grief, but I'm also not the authority on grief. As a cis white woman, I carry internal biases that skew my perspective, which undoubtedly pertain to my experiences around grief. As always, take what you like and leave the rest. Furthermore, if you've recently lost someone or are experiencing deep grief, I invite you to be gentle with yourself as you listen and take breaks if you need. Therapy can be a wonderful ally to grieving. You don't need to do this alone. 

Grief and the season of slowness, winter

Wintertime is our dark moon of the year and a palpable reminder of the need for slowness, darkness, death, and the need to retreat inward. The hibernating flora and fauna remind us not to extend our energy outward year-round. Inward and descending energy has a vital and nourishing role in our existence. My son wisely described this season as the time that "the sun takes a rest." As I write this, here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are a week away from the Spring Equinox, positioned on the cusp of the season of rebirth. For me, the grief is palpable. 

As my first year back in a cloudy, cold climate for winter, it dawned on me that the seasonal depression I felt creeping in was another metaphorical red flashing sign inviting me to "slow down!". Leaving me wondering, would the effects of SAD be as bad if I could rest and retreat inward even more throughout the winter months? The amount of sunlight we have access to throughout winter may be fixed, but the reality is that slowing down, regardless of the season, is simply not an option for most. Depression is real, and lack of sunlight can certainly play a role, but would SAD be as severe if people could slow down and grieve more amidst these natural seasons of less light?

A view from one of my many midwestern winter season walks.

When I lost my grandmother and father within a couple of months of each other, I entered what I like to call a "grief portal." Time seemed to slow down, everything felt hard, and through my patriarchalized and capitalized lens, I just wanted to return to "normal." The biggest lesson I took away from that experience was how much slowness my grief required. I needed loads of time to do nothing to allow things to process. Of course, the way each person processes their grief will be unique, but for me, getting to a place where my grief can come out to be processed requires tremendous slowness. 

Of course, rest and slowness may sound lovely, but there are very real barriers to this kind of big rest, grief tending, and inner transformations. I was privileged to have the space to slow down amidst my grief amidst deep loss. Having time for big slowdowns to process grief may not always be doable. Add to these barriers the fact that many of us have endured various levels of conditioning to place more value on our ability to produce over our ability to simply be. Slowing down can feel like a life-and-death situation. Yet, for many of us, this is what grief needs. 

It is within this season of slowing down and integrating that our grief wants to be witnessed and held close the most. The world outside is in a literal death phase, reminding us daily to honor our personal need to grieve. Yet, our attempts to make space for grief can, understandably, feel too difficult to make space for or thwarted due to the demands of living in a capitalist society, stretching us ever thinner in a time when we should have the space to be with our grief and let parts of ourselves die away. 

Returning to the midwest and communing with the winter landscape has left me pondering how to rewrite this season to make more space for my need to grieve, integrate, and transform. I'm learning that being with my grief at this time is the most potent spell and healing gift I can offer myself this season. When the inevitable happens, and my grief bubbles up, or someone else's grief begins to overflow in my presence, I try witnessing it without judging it or trying to fix it and instead, asking myself how to lovingly hold the space for it, allowing it to be witnessed just like the death of nature all around me. What a powerful gift for myself and others when I can approach grief from this tender and vulnerable space. 

When I look at grieving as something I need to thrive and become whole, it feels less like something I need to get over and more like something I need to hold dear. When I move further into being present with my grief, its magic shines even more. My ability to be present with more grief and the grief of others expands, and my grief transforms into the gift of being present for someone else in their grief. I found myself sitting with the starkness of the winter landscape, witnessing the grief of nature on full display, and wondered if, rather than tucking grief neatly away for an "appropriate" time, perhaps we could be like the winter landscape and allow our grief to simply be. 

Of course, wintertime is not our only season of grief, death, and rebirth. Mother moon shows us how to die, grieve, and be reborn every lunar cycle. Let's explore the wisdom of the dark moon phase in relation to grief.

Honoring the dark moon 

The dark moon phase is mother moon's death, rest, and integration season. Unlike the full moon's magic, the dark moon is not a time for manifesting and materializing but for returning to the inner cauldron, shadow work, and connecting with unseen realms. It is a monthly opportunity to honor death and grief. 

Dark Moon card featured from The Ritual Deck (discontinued)

In Sarah Faith Gottesdeiner's book The Moon Book, she describes the dark moon as "a site of liberation," and I couldn't agree more. It is within the darkness of this phase that we are granted the space to excavate from our depths the parts of us that need to be witnessed and loved the most. By loving these parts of ourselves and witnessing our grief, they can be fully integrated into our inner soil, cultivating a necessary richness for new seeds to be sown. 

When I neglect this phase of the moon's cycles, my inner earth remains parched, thirsty for my grief to be witnessed and tended. Liberation comes when I can hold my sorrow close, rock it, and tell it it's okay to be. Giving my grief permission to integrate into my inner landscape gives rise to the fertile soil needed for new life. I get free. 

The beauty of honoring grief through the dark moon phase is that it comes every month. You don't have to grieve everything at once. The moon reminds us daily that we're not fixed beings and that change is our true nature. We are not meant to be radiant and positive every day; we are also not meant to grieve every day. Every lunation is an invitation to honor where you're at and how you feel, not how society tells you to feel. The dark moon is often the reminder I need to honor my grief and the little day-to-day deaths we all experience. Sometimes, we're intended to crumble and be held by the earth, and the dark moon phase can be a monthly ally to assist in this kind of grief tending. 

Grief as paradox and the chariot

Beyond my personal grief tending this season, I’ve noticed the topic of grief surfacing more on a collective level as well. Have you noticed this, too? Being in a chariot year (2+0+2+3=7, which corresponds to the chariot), I found myself called to think about grief in relation to this card and was excited to see so many overlapping themes and invitations around grief and grieving. Even though the chariot is not usually correlated with grief, I think it has some wisdom for us in this collective season.  

The first clue to the chariot card being an invitation to help us grieve is its placement, and I’ll be honest, the placement of this card did not dawn on me immediately. It wasn’t until I was in the final editing process of this share that I received a little nudge reminding me that the chariot card is the last card of the first line in the major arcana. Wow. Talk about an opportunity to invite grief in. The placement alone sets this card apart as a point of death and rebirth. The fact that the chariot card is the card associated with 2023 indicates that this is indeed a year to, among other things, honor our grief individually and collectively. 

Left: The Chariot Card from Journey Tarot by Cassie Uhl, Right: The Chariot Card from the Waite/Coleman deck

This isn’t the only invitation to grieve that I’ve found in the chariot. The chariot card is one of those cards in the major arcana that I find has many layers, paradoxes, and can mean different things at different times of life. Let’s dive into the paradox of this card and how it shines a light on the paradox in grief. 

The name of the chariot indicates movement and action, yet, on the Waite/Coleman deck, there is no movement shown. It is often touted as a card of willpower yet corresponds with the soft and intuitive energy of Cancer in the zodiac. The paradox continues with the duality of symbology, which can be seen in the black-and-white sphinx looking in different directions. I captured this in my deck with the black and white birds heading in different directions. The medicine of this card is potent and not one that I will be able to fully expand upon here, but I think it has some powerful invitations for us as we examine our grief on a collective level.

There’s a certain amount of resiliency building that accompanies regular grief tending. This is where the chariot comes in. Within the chariot's many layers, there are elements of softness, which we can see with the Cancerian energy tied to this card. There is an invitation to allow what is, to sink into it, and to try to be in a state of flow with what is, even when it’s uncomfortable. 

I see the willpower part of this card come in with how we engage with emotions and grief. The chariot asks us to allow a steady stream of emotions to flow, all while staying on course or perhaps being open to flowing in a new direction. With the gates of grief open, your emotions may indeed put you on a new course entirely or direct your life in new ways. The chariot can be an invitation to get more comfortable in the ups and downs of grief tending. It shares possible avenues to explore around building resiliency while pendulating between grief and joy. Asking, “how can we be with the joy and the grief without being knocked off course so far that we can’t come back?” or, “how can we allow the pendulation between grief and joy to carve a new pathway?”

There’s a certain tension held within the chariot card—a tension between the world of our subconscious emotions and the logical world. In Rachel Pollack’s book Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, she expresses the tension found in the chariot through our relationship with speech and language in this excerpt. “However, just as the ego is limited, so is speech. First of all, speech restricts our experience of reality. By forming a description of the world, by giving everything a label, we erect a barrier between ourselves and the experience. When we look at a tree, we do not feel the impact of a living organism; rather we think ‘tree’ and move on. The label has replaced the thing itself. Also, by relying too much on this rational quality of language we ignore experiences that cannot be expressed in words.” 

In what ways do we limit our ability to feel our grief fully and all of the magic it has to offer? Cancer, the astrological sign connected to this card, epitomizes feeling and being in our emotions. When paired with the strength and willpower of this card, how are we being asked to use those emotions to direct our movement forward? There is an over-arching theme of being in flow with the discomfort of not knowing where our emotions will take us, which may be another reason some fear sinking deeply into grief. I know I’ve certainly held this fear. What would it look like if the tension between your emotional and logical worlds were in harmony? How might inviting more grief into your daily life inform your daily actions or larger goals? 

This plays out in so many ways societally as well. I find myself constantly faced with the paradox of seeing and experiencing deep pain and injustices in the world, yet, I’m asked to forge ahead like everything is okay, or worse, that it’s completely normal to shove these grievances under the rug and carry on. I think intuitively, even humanely, many of us see how problematic this is. This is certainly one side of the chariot, the idea of forcing and forging ahead at all costs by leaning deeply into our willpower. But, if I invite in more of the nuance this card offers, I can see the need to bring my emotional and subconscious world into my decision-making and how I use my energy. Through this lens, I can see the chariot as an invitation to lean into my willpower to find ways to dance between and betwixt my emotions and the logical world. 

How might our trajectory as a collective change if more of us were forging new paths by flowing between our emotional/subconscious and logical/physical worlds? I sense this shift coming as many of us tire of binary thinking, especially in political spaces. These shifts could be slow and painful, but I don’t think they have to be. There’s so much space for deep joy and pleasure in these in-between spaces around our grief, joy, and the real demands of day-to-day life. I hope 2023 will be a year of flowing more intentionally between our grief, emotions, and the logical steps needed to build a more just and equitable world. 

Grief and the heart space

I don't often share experiences from my energy healing practice, but this specific topic felt like the right time to do so. Tending to grief within the heart space is one of the most common themes in my healing work with clients. Grief often presents to me as heavy weights or boulders in the energy body settled around the heart space. Sometimes these energetic weights are buried deep under several layers. Sometimes it takes multiple sessions for these pockets of grief to be revealed to me as a person becomes more comfortable working with me and my guides. 

How I approach untended grief in the energy body is quite different from how I approach a general imbalance in energy. I'm not the type of energy worker that removes everything from the person I'm working with. So, I certainly don't go in clearing away layers of grief when I come across it. I've found that clearing everything away is not only non-productive and ineffective but can potentially have negative side effects. Over the years, spirit and my guides have become exceedingly clear that grief needs to be witnessed, held, and danced with by the person I'm working with to be fully integrated and processed. There are things I can do to help bring awareness and help the grief surface or to give tools to tend to the grief, but it is not a healing path I can walk for someone else. 

This isn't the answer most folks want to hear. Of course, it would be much easier to remove people's grief, never to be seen again. However, as I shared, I feel there's deep wisdom in our grief and what a tragedy it would be to be severed from our humanness in this way. This isn't to say I won't remove energy from a person's field that isn't serving them, but my guides are always very clear about what needs to go and what needs to stay when I work with others. 

Unsurprisingly, most of the grief I see as an energy worker is settled in the heart space. Like the chariot card, the heart space is an extremely nuanced, layered, and paradoxical part of the energy body. The bridge area holds a unique duality between the physical and spirit realms, where these two qualities seek a sense of harmony. When I see untended grief in the energy body, it often affects one's overall ability to give and receive love, which has been my experience with grief, too. Love, on all fronts, is undeniably a bedrock of our human experience. Again, pointing to grief's important role in our ability to love, be loved, and experience deep joy. 

When I encounter untended grief in the heart space while working with someone, I usually sense a deep desire to witness, feel, and hold the grief. What I offer this kind of grief when I come across it is that deep witnessing. I give it space to tell me what it's been holding onto for so long. I hold it and rock it. After sessions like this, clients often report a sense of openness in the heart space. I do this to help bring it to the surface, not to clear it away. Instead, it's an invitation to embark on a personal grieving and healing journey if the client wants to, with or without me.

The rituals I offer after this kind of work are similar to what I do when I'm energetically engaged in someone's heart space. I invite folks to sit with their heart space, see what arises, and give it space to be witnessed and held. What our grief wants of us is rarely difficult, but the structures in which we live can make it feel like they are. If you're feeling pulled to tend to your grief in this way, you can find a by-donation grief-tending guided meditation I created here. I'll explore this meditation in greater detail below as well, as well as some other grief-tending tools.

Touching into the magic of grief through ritual

The ways we approach our grief will be as varied as the ways we approach life. Let these offerings serve as a place to play and create your own rituals around grief. As I shared earlier, what I offer here is based on my experience as a human who grieves, an energy worker, and an end-of-life doula. I am not an expert or a therapist. If my experiences of grief and grieving do not relate to you or your experiences, that is okay. As always, take what you like and leave the rest.

It's also important to note that working with a trained therapist can be incredibly helpful for grief work. I am a huge proponent of therapy, and many of my deepest underworld journeys have included the aid of a therapist or spiritual counselor. You do not need to go this alone.

Grief work can look like a lot of things. It can look like inner child healing, shadow work, or grieving the loss of someone or something. Remember, grief is paradoxical, so it might take you on surprising journeys and not look how you thought it would. For example, when I was seeing a therapist to help me navigate the grief of losing my father and grandmother, much of the work that transpired between us revolved around healing grief within my childhood. I invite you to be open-minded and curious as you explore your grief. 

Grief Witnessing Meditation

In my practice, some of my most powerful grief work is quite passive. I have learned a lot about slowness through my grief tending and working with those at the end of life. Grief works on its own time, which can be challenging in and of itself. Especially those of us who like to have a checklist! I've shared this before and will continue to. During one of my grief journeys, my therapist reminded me often that in grief, "doing nothing is doing something." It took me a long time to hear her, but I finally did, and it's something I remind myself of regularly today. Grief requires us to slow way down, and there's no shortage of barriers trying to prevent many of us from doing that. 

Vintage illustration of a Young woman bathing by moonlight, Victorian art print, 19th Century

This meditation practice is the most common practice I share with my clients who are carrying grief. It is very passive and may even seem overly simple, try not to let the simplicity of this grief-tending exercise keep you from trying it. 

Find a guided audio version of this meditation here.

Grief tending heart space meditation 

• Carve out 10-40 minutes, whatever you feel you have the capacity for, as I'll encourage you to return to it often.  

• Settle into the present moment by noticing your breath and body. Add in any practices that help you root into the moment. 

• When you feel ready, settle yourself energetically in the heart space. This might look like visualizing traveling into the body and the heart space, visualizing a green or pink field of light around the heart space and focusing your energy there, or something else. There's no wrong or right way to do this. Your goal is to focus your attention on your heart space.

• As you settle into this space, simply notice what comes up, any physical sensations, emotions, visuals, or where you feel called to move within the heart space.  

• If you feel stuck at any time, you can consider asking your heart space questions like, "Are there any parts of myself that need tending to?", "Are there any versions of myself that need to be witnessed?" or "Are there any griefs that need to be held or honored?" I usually find an area of focus that my heart leads me to. 

• Go where you're led as far as you feel safe to continue. You could come in contact with any number of feelings or past experiences that feel they need your attention. Remember, you do not need to feel them all simultaneously. Spend as much time with each layer in your heart as you want, knowing you can always return. 

• You may find it helpful to ask your grief or any younger versions of yourself that you come in contact with if there's anything it would like for you to do to better tend to it. You may find that your grief simply wants you to play or laugh more to honor parts of your childhood that were taken away. 

• Come out of this when you're ready, and take your time returning to your physical space. Consider reintegrating by eating some food or having some tea to root into the physical body. 

If you'd like some support with a meditation like this, find my guided meditation for grief here. 

Play, expression, and ritual

Play, ritual, and various forms of expression have held and continue to hold key roles in grieving that is often forgotten in modern times. In Ireland, there's been a resurgence around the art of keening, which is the intentional wailing, singing, and crying for the dead—a practice initiated by Goddess Brigid after the death of her beloved son. In Ireland, a woman is sometimes hired to keen or wale at a ceremony. The keener holds multiple roles, one to give permission for others to wale or yell, but also to help usher the dead to their next phase. Did you know there are also past practices of game-playing and storytelling amidst the grieving process in Ireland? They were called "wake games." Similar to keening, they were suppressed as Christianity dominated. 

In Monica Sjöö's important book, The Great Cosmic Mother, she speaks of the importance of group ritual and expression in rites of passage, "Rites of transition from one life stage to another required group participation in ritualized expression, all designed to keep the individual's psyche united and in balance while passing through crises." I see this passage as another reminder of how many have forgotten the importance of grieving together. Of course, this "forgetting," was quite intentional. Grieving takes time, and many systems we abide by now, like capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy, do not allow the time it takes to grieve properly. This isn't true for everyone, and there are certainly many cultures that have maintained beautiful and powerful grief practices, and, as I mentioned, some are seeing a resurgence like keening. However, for the most part, what I see, as someone who works with folks at the end of life is that many of us have a beautiful opportunity to learn how to grieve better, especially together.

Preparing and conducting rituals around grief throughout the dying process was a big part of my end-of-life doula training. There was also huge importance placed on guiding folks to create rituals independently or as a family. As someone who lives and breathes ritual in my personal practice, I understand the personal nature of ritual. The way you need to grieve, or your family needs to grieve, isn't something I can tell you. I can encourage you to explore your ancestry, if it's accessible to you, and learn about ways your ancestors grieved together. I can also offer you some questions to ponder or journal on when thinking about ways to express or ritualize your grief. 

1. What story does your grief have to tell, and how might that story want to be told? 

2. What parts of your life have died or will die amidst this grief? How might you honor those parts and their ending?

3. How will your grief and loss create openings in your life, whether painful, sad, or happy? Can you think of any ways this openness may want to be honored or acknowledged while simultaneously holding space for your loss?

4. While sitting in your grief, what does it feel like your body wants to do or not do? How might you honor this?

5. While tuning into your grief, can you ask how it would like to be expressed? What does it have to tell you? 

Beyond these reflections, I will offer you one tool that has served me well throughout my life and my grief, and that's through working with altars. 

Grief altars

Different cultures have used altars since the beginning, and grief and loss are powerful ways to work with them. When I was fresh in my grief after the death of my father and grandmother, it caused me deep pain to see pictures of them. Each image served as a reminder of their absence. One of my earliest grief-tending methods was through creating a grief altar. This altar had no images. Instead, I used stones, flowers, and other found objects to represent them. My altar for them held space for all the indescribable feelings I was experiencing around their deaths. It gave me a physical space to put all my big feelings when I needed a break from carrying them. Over the years, I eventually added images of my loved ones to this altar. It is still up in my house today and continues to transform in appearance and purpose. What started as a container for my grief that I could dip in and out of has morphed into a physical representation of my reverence and connection to these loved ones. 

I created a similar altar for my grief around my difficulty having children. There is no grief too small for an altar. Every grief you carry deserves your love. Altars can be small and simple or large and intricate. There is, in my opinion, no wrong or right way to create an altar as they are extremely personal. One purpose of an altar is to bring physicality to something you're working with or an experience. In grief, an altar can be a place to hold, honor, or work with your grief. If this feels like something you'd benefit from, I invite you to approach your grief altar with curiosity and a playful spirit. You might even find it helpful to try the grief-honoring meditation earlier and ask for insight into what creating a grief altar might look like for you.  

Grief offers us a bridge between our deaths and our inevitable rebirths. Whether we honor the grief within them or not, the death and birth cycles will always continue within our own lives and the collective. The invitation of grief is to be a present participant within the many processes of death and rebirth we will all experience. When I become an active participant in my losses, when I decide to feel them fully and dance in the grief, I am simultaneously allowed the presence to rebuild myself or my life in meaningful ways. We can extend these sentiments to the collective as well. When I seek moments to be present in the grief of the mass extinctions happening all around us, to feel it and dance alongside it, I also create avenues to become an active participant in our rebirthing process as a collective. That is the magic that grief offers us. May you be with the grief fully, dance with it, let it wale through your body and out your mouth, and let it stream down your face and stomp through your feet into the great mother earth who holds us all until it is fully witnessed and held. 

What are Death Doulas and Why we Need Them

It's time to call in our demons around death and dying. They need healing and nourishment. As we continue to walk through a world steeped in an ebb and flow of grief and death, we have an opportunity to address our relationship with death and dying. Not only do we need to address these wounds to better equip us to care for our dying, but I believe there's also a well of healing to be found within nourishing our wounds around death. Addressing our relationship to death and dying is one way to do this. Addressing how we care for the dying is another way to do this. 

In this share, I'll offer some personal thoughts on why so many of us have a difficult relationship with death, especially in the West, opportunities and ways to heal our connection with death and the benefits of doing so. You'll also learn what a death doula or end-of-life doula is and their role in the dying process. 

Listen to this post on my podcast here.

If you think this doesn't seem like a very spiritual topic, that's precisely why I'm talking about it. We're all going to die, even you, and if our spiritual practices only encompass life, then we're missing a huge portion of wisdom by avoiding talking and thinking about death. If you have anxiety about your mortality, and the mere mention of discussing death stirs internal fear and anxiety, you are not alone. I encourage you to stick around. I, too, used to have intense fear and anxiety about dying. 

I spent a large part of my adolescence and young adulthood holding onto an intense fear and anxiety around dying. It caused me sleepless nights and even altered my plans from time to time. The worst part was that I didn't feel like there was anyone I could talk to about these fears. I knew they were deeply irrational and therefore spent most of my time trying to block these feelings, making them even more debilitating. 

It wasn't until I was faced with death through the loss of my beloved grandmother and father within two months of each other that my thoughts and feelings about death slowly began to shift and change. I witnessed firsthand how dysfunctional our relationship with death is as I watched much of my family spiral into chaos with little support. Within the depths of my grief, something in me was cracked open. The tears from my sadness slowly eroded away my long-held fears about dying. The deep grief I experienced from these losses opened a pathway for healing my relationship with death and dying, and it also showed me the need for better death care. 

This theme is reflected in the wise quote by Rumi, "The wound is the place where the light enters you." The wounds we face at different points in life can have the potential to grow and heal parts of ourselves when we have the time and space to do so. Of course, it also needs to be noted that having the time and space to heal our wounds when they arise is a privilege in and of itself and one that not all have access to. 

The healing I experienced around death was not immediate. It slowly unraveled as I rode the waves of grief over several years, leaned into therapy, and explored death through my spiritual practice. My healing around death is still ongoing today. Like all healing, there's no finish line but a continuous spiral of growth and learning. Though I no longer experience the fear and anxiety of my inevitable death, I continue to find ways to challenge and heal my relationship with death and dying. Which, today looks like talking about death more and uprooting and untangling patriarchy and white and human supremacy from how I see and experience death. I've learned that the wise woman within me knows that death is a natural and even beautiful part of the cycle, not a failure as patriarchy would have us see it, which brings me to some thoughts on how we got here. 

How did we get here, and why we need death doulas so badly right now?

In my personal experience with death and dying, combined with my spiritual practice and end-of-life doula training, I've realized that many of us carry a wound around death, and why wouldn't we? We rarely talk about it, our society, by and large, aims to remove death from sight, and many view it as a failure rather than a natural part of life. For example, phrases like "so and so lost their battle to cancer" imply that certain kinds of deaths are a failure instead of normal and natural parts of being human.

It goes much deeper than our simple avoidance of the topic. Wounds around death are yet another side effect of patriarchy, white supremacy, human supremacy, colonization, capitalism, and the suppression of earth-based, often Goddess-based, spiritual practices. Patriarchy and all of the supremacies live in a linear framework that always aims for more growth, creating a path that only leads up to more, more, more. Linearity leaves no room for death, individually or as a society. When our systems are set up to sidestep death and dying, it can feel challenging to embrace or even discuss death and dying because the systems in which we live do not allow space for it. 

Our linear-focused society has been detrimental to ourselves, the planet, and all of its inhabitants. It reminds me of something I hear echoed by many of my anti-racism and decolonial teachers like Thérèse Cator and Dr. Rocio Rosalez Meza, which is the idea that due to white supremacy, white folks, especially, are cut off from our humanity. This couldn't be more clear than our relationship with death. Death is a natural part of being alive. Yet, our focus on supremacy and linearity strips us of our connection to death and its inherent wisdom. Though I don't think wounds around death are exclusive to white folks, I do think it's more prevalent. Our severed relationship with death and dying is yet another way we’ve been cut off from our humanity. 

These ideas are a very condensed explanation of a much larger issue in which I am not an expert. In my study of anti-oppression work, death, and my spiritual practice, I've come to these conclusions. I encourage you to explore your ideas and learn from teachers who speak on the topic, especially those in the BIPOC community doing this kind of work. 

Healing death wounds

So, where do we go from here? Here's a quote from one of my favorite books titled Mysteries of the Dark Moon by Demetra George, which is where I found the inspiration for the opening of this share, and I find she illustrates perfectly our need to heal our wounds around death. 

"We must call our demons in from the backyard where they've been starved and banished into the leaking doghouse. We must welcome them in the warmth of our kitchens and feed them the foods that will heal their wounds of rejection. As we cleanse our inner images of the Dark Goddess through loving and accepting her, we will notice a corresponding decrease in the fear, anger, rejections, failure, disappointment, deceptions and hatred that we experience as part of our outer reality. In this way we reach the original true essence of the dark feminine that exists within us, an essence that is unclouded by layers of distortion." 

Mysteries of the Dark Moon by Demetra George

I think this is a beautiful and powerful starting point. We must begin to call in death and invite death into our hearts and homes to heal our wounds around it. In doing so, we can become more whole. Furthermore, I find that addressing our relationship with death and dying in relation to where we are now as a collective is imperative and can give us the tools needed to remain grounded and useful in uncertain times. None of us are immune to the effects of climate collapse, and even if you've yet to be affected by it, it will affect all of us at some point, and grief and death will no doubt be a natural outcome. 

Like our more than human plant and animal kin, death is an integral part of our cycle. It's easy to see the value of death in the natural cycles of plants and animals. Death is a needed part of the cycle that offers rest, decomposition, nourishment, and, eventually, rebirth. Though we've tried, we are not separate from this web, death will come for each of us, and it can have meaning too. Healing our relationship with death can have as much value for us today as the day we take our last breath. The sooner we each face our demons around death and dying, the more fully we can live in a world inundated with death. 

This isn't to say that all deaths are fair and just. Absolutely not. The devastation we've already seen due to climate change disproportionately affects people of color and historically marginalized communities who have contributed the least to climate change. We should continue to fight against it. Changing our relationship with death can give us the tools to navigate these times and enable us to continue striving toward a more just and livable world rather than resulting to fight, flight, or freeze.

When we see ourselves as part of the web and cycles inherent in the earth, we can learn from the wisdom death has to offer. Healing our wounds around death can give us the resources and words we need so badly right now, resources like understanding living cyclically, being able to take ownership over our role in the current death cult of white supremacy, human supremacy, and patriarchy, the ability to be fully present with our human kin in their death phase, and understanding the need for contraction and death in our day to day lives and work. Healing our wounds around death gives us the language we need when we know we must step back from work, relationships, and the grind of living in a capitalist society. 

We need to learn how to live in a world where excess death seems impossible to avoid. We must learn to be in a world that asks us to walk alongside death. And that is a big ask. 

Death card from Journey Tarot by Cassie Uhl

Let's talk solutions and explore how death doulas can be one part of helping us heal our wounds around death and dying. 

Death doulas, death midwives, and death walkers

An obvious place to begin healing our relationship with death is to offer better care to those dying. Anytime I bring up the term "death doula," people are immediately curious. This curiosity shows me how eager many are to have a better relationship with death. People are starting to see the benefits of discussing death more, planning for it, and offering more emotional and spiritual support for those at the end of life. Physical care from hospice and spiritual care offered by organized religion is no longer enough for most of us. In 2021 only 29% of people in the US identified as religious. We need more when it comes to facing our own deaths and the deaths of our loved ones. 

I had the unique back-to-back experience of being with my grandmother during her death due to terminal cancer and my father's sudden and unexpected death due to a heart attack. I experienced firsthand how each kind of death, known and sudden, affected our family and me. While walking through these experiences, I learned a lot of things, but what stood out to me the most was the extreme lack of emotional and spiritual support for the dying and their loved ones. I also learned that death tends to bring out the worst in caregivers (likely due to lack of support) and that, due to my spiritual practices, I was able to remain relatively grounded in these environments.

After these experiences and other family deaths in the subsequent years, I knew I was supposed to be working with those on their death journey and talking about it more. When I heard the term "death doula" in 2019, I knew it would be part of my path, and I completed my end-of-life doula training with INELDA in 2021 and am currently in the process of completing my certification. Let's dive into what a death doula is and how they can offer support. 

What is a death doula? 

Before I share more about what a death doula is and does, there are three important things I'd like you to keep in mind. 

1. First, though the phrase "death doula" may be relatively new, it's important to mention that the role a death doula offers is not new at all. In many indigenous communities, there have been and still are many acting as "death doulas" far earlier than the term was coined. 

2. Second, there's currently no standardization or regulation over the death doula field, so the scope and quality of training vary. I urge anyone curious about hiring a death doula to research where they were trained. This isn't to say that formal training and certification are a must, as mentioned above, but be sure to do your research before hiring someone. 

3. Hospice does an incredible job of ensuring that those at the end of life are physically comfortable. Whether or not someone wants medication to aid their comfort as they die is a personal choice and not something in which a death doula should have any say. The death doula's role is to support the dying person's wishes, whatever they are, which includes any other support team that is part of that person's team. 

The simple explanation of a death doula is someone who offers non-medical, emotional, and spiritual support to the dying person and loved ones. But this usually leaves people with even more questions, so let's dig deeper. 

In my training, the role of the death doula was broken up into three tiers with several subcategories, which I'll share a bit about here. 

1. Summing up and planning

I see this as one of the most important areas of the death doula model. It gives those dying time to explore meaning in their life, address unfinished business, create legacy projects, and plan for their death. These are many of the areas that hospice teams simply do not have time for and areas that may be too difficult for families and loved ones to address on their own. Summing up and planning requires time and the ability to listen deeply and non-judgmentally. 

The death doula offers deep active listening to their clients, giving them the time and space to think and share about some of the most important moments in their lives. Summing up in this way can uncover parts of their lives that they wish to address before they die, allowing time for addressing regrets, healing, or making amends. It's also a way to determine what legacy projects may benefit the client and their loved ones. 

Legacy projects can range from scrapbooks and video recordings of special stories to collaborative art projects that preserve important parts of the dying person's life or personality that can live on for the family. A study conducted in 2008 by a group of palliative doctors showed that those who were dying and their caregivers who participated in legacy projects showed a decrease in stress and an increase in physical well-being. A tremendous amount of focus is given to the physical comfort of those dying. While comfort is certainly important, implementing a legacy project gives those dying and their families something else to focus on that can have a long-lasting and meaningful effect on all involved. 

Finally, the death doula gives clients time and space to explore how they want their death to look and feel. They may discuss what sites, sounds, and scents they'd like present while they're dying. Who they want to be there or not for their death and if they'd like any special rituals to take place before and after their transition. Not only does this give those facing the end of life comfort that their death will look and feel how they want it to, but it gives them back a valuable sense of control. This kind of care and attention has become common practice with birth and the role of the birth doula. Why wouldn't we extend this same time and planning into our deaths? 

2. Vigil Support

When death is imminent, it's time for the vigil or death labor. The vigil is the time when the dying person is on their final journey toward death, which can last one to several days. At this point, the death doula will help ensure that the dying person's wishes for their death are implemented. This doesn't necessarily mean that the death doula will be "in charge" or doing everything. It means they will help support the other caregivers in implementing the dying person's wishes. 

Support could be through offering respite for the family, planning, creating schedules, facilitating rituals, or simply holding calm and grounded space for the dying person and their family. It's also quite possible that the family won't need the help of a doula to do this. Some families may feel able to implement things on their own. The amount of support each person receives will be unique. 

A death doula can also help offer non-medical comfort care to the dying person by facilitating guided visualization meditations and, for those trained, energy healing, a service I include for those who want it. Finally, the death doula can also offer the family the important service of respite. 

3. Early Grief Reprocessing

The final portion of care that the death doula extends is early grief reprocessing for any loved ones or caregivers who want it. Early grief reprocessing is also a wonderful option for those who've experienced the sudden death of someone they love. Similar to the first stage of summing up and planning, the primary role of the death doula is to offer non-judgmental, deep active listening to loved ones. 

Early grief reprocessing allows time for family and caregivers to recount some of the most meaningful and difficult experiences they had during the death of their loved one. This time may even uncover a desire to create legacy projects or rituals of their own based on the experience of their loved one dying. For those who experienced the sudden death of a loved one, this can allow time to recount and explore the feelings associated with the death and open up pathways to bring meaning and ritual into the experience. 

Grief reprocessing usually lasts 2-3 sessions and is not intended to replace a grief therapist but may be a stepping stone to traditional therapy for some. A primary benefit of the death doula offering this service is that, at this point, families will have been working with the same death doula for an extended time already. This report allows them to recount important moments during the death of their loved one with someone they already know and went through some of the same experiences with. 

Death doulas outside of active dying

As I mentioned earlier, you will see a lot of variety in how death doulas serve their communities. This variety is for a couple of reasons. First is the lack of standardization and regulation in the field. Second, each death doula brings unique skills. Some end-of-life doulas may focus more on a specific area. For example, I offer energy healing and energetic assistance in transitioning for clients who want it. That is certainly not a requirement or something all death doulas will offer! Some death doulas only work with pets and pet owners, while others may only focus on the summing up and planning area. Each doula is unique.

There are also many roles that a death doula can fill outside of assisting those who are actively dying. This is a big reason why this work called to me. I see a huge need for more discussion and space holding around death for the living, so I've created a separate offering called the "Death Exploration Container." In this offering, I assist and hold space for folks who want to contemplate and plan for their inevitable death. Not in a legal way but in emotional and spiritual ways by providing proper nervous system tending while approaching topics around mortality.

This experience will look different for each person, which is why I include a free consultation call before you book. This service could explore any of the following themes: exploring the meaning in your life, embarking on guided meditations to reflect upon how it might feel to be faced with a terminal illness, identifying and addressing regrets, thinking about and planning for how you'd ideally like your death to look and feel if allowed to do so, frameworks for beginning legacy projects for yourself, and exploring what rituals you might like to be a part of your death. 

You don't have to wait until you're dying to start planning for your death. Many of us won't have the luxury of knowing when and how we will die. Planning for death is not only one of the best gifts you can give to your loved ones, but it's also a huge gift you can give yourself. If you've sat down to think about your own death, you probably already know this, but for many, this feels like a huge and scary task! I used to think I would die if I planned my death. I know I'm not the only one who's thought this! Let me be the one to tell you that planning for your death will not make you die, at least not right away. I mean, we're all going to die eventually. But, thinking about and planning for your death can give you peace and begin building a foundation to call in and heal our wounds around death and dying. 

This share has already become much longer than I anticipated, so I think I need to stop at this but know I have more to share! I look forward to talking more about finding and honoring all of the mini-deaths that happen within our lives and celebrating them as a right of passage. Let me leave you with some resources if you feel compelled to explore this topic more. 

Of course, if you are interested in working with me in either of these ways, click here to learn more or to schedule a free consultation call. I went through the program with INELDA, the International End of Life Doula Association. I highly recommend it and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is also very affordable. The founder of INELDA, Henry Fersko-Weiss, also has a book that dives deeper into many of the topics shared here, Finding Peace at the End of Life. I've just started the book Death Nesting by Anne-Marie Keppel and am loving it. From a spiritual standpoint, I highly recommend the book Mysteries of the Dark Moon by Demetra George. Finally, here are some of my favorite death accounts to follow on Instagram @the.death.empath, @cait.deatheducation, @going_with_grace, and @deatwives. This is a short list, and there are sooooo many more great accounts.

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My Story & Support for Opening up to New Intuitive Abilities

If you consider yourself intuitive, you've probably experienced a handful of unexplainable experiences. The kinds of situations you just knew were outside of the scope of what most would deem "normal." Even when you walk a spiritual path, some of these experiences can still be jarring. Why? Because it's not what most of us are taught growing up, it's not what most of society deems as "normal," and these experiences usually happen outside our usual physical senses.

I don't usually get super personal here, but today I will be. Some of the experiences I've had over the last few years have shifted my business and life trajectory, and I know some of you have had these experiences too. It's been helpful and healing for me to hear other intuitive folks talk about their experiences because it's made me feel less alone and more empowered to walk this path. If sharing my story helps one person feel less alone and better able to embody their gifts, then this post has done its job. I've also recently opened my books to offer 1:1 sessions for energy work and intuitive mentorship and want to give you some context for this new phase of my work.

In this post, you'll learn more about my personal story and initiation into the work I do now and some tips for coping with the onset of psychic gifts.

Before I begin, I also want to offer a content warning. I will be talking about death and dying. So if you've recently experienced a loss or are actively grieving, I want to let you know and allow you to opt-out of this share. 

Let's dive in! Here's a super-condensed version of my story. 

Listen to this episode on my podcast, Rooting into Wholeness, here.

My Story 

When I was young, probably around six or seven years old, I remember sensing, "hearing," and even feeling the presence of spirits around my bed at night. It terrified me as a child. I honestly cannot remember if I ever brought it up to my parents or not. If I did, it must have been dismissed because it wasn't ever discussed. It wasn't until I was an adult that I heard other intuitive people talk about this same sort of thing. So many of us are open when we're young, and I've since learned that experiences like this are the norm for many intuitive people. 

Even though I was brought up in a Christian household and was told more than once about the evils of witchcraft and tarot, religion was never forced on me. Much of my extended family was deeply religious, which certainly colored some of my childhood. Still, overall I was able to choose whether or not I wanted to participate in organized religion, which I'm still grateful for to this day (thanks, mom!)

My grandmother, on the other hand, was very open-minded. She lived by her pendulum and astrology. Her open-mindedness made me feel safe as a young person to explore alternatives to the faith in which I was raised. As a young teenager, I started reading some of her books, everything I read made sense, and it answered a lot of the questions that religion never did. I learned meditation and energy work techniques from these books and was surprised at how easily I could feel my energy and get into a deep meditative state. I was hooked. 

Much of my adolescence was spent holed up in my room meditating, performing spells, feeling my energy, and begging my sister to pose for me to see her aura (she would usually do after a certain amount of pestering.) I remember having an inclination that I must be experiencing something that most others didn't. If other people could feel and sense what I felt from meditation and working with energy, they would do it too.

As a young adult, I became absorbed with studying Buddhism, yoga, and quantum physics, which have influenced my path in different ways. I completed my yoga teacher training in 2012 and always knew it wouldn't be the core of my work, rather something to compliment my work in the future.

Though I certainly experienced a variety of intuitive hits and supernatural experiences throughout my young adult years, they weren't anything out of the ordinary for me. The most prominent thing I remember is often having an inner knowing or receiving intuitive hits about my path. I always knew what my next step needed to be, whether it be, even if I didn't honor it. And I quickly found out that if I didn't honor the nudges, my physical health would suffer. 

When I moved to Arizona with my husband in the summer of 2012, things started to shift. My meditation practice became more regular, and I started having more intense premonitions, including my grandmother's death and the birth of my soon-to-be twins. 

When my grandfather died in 2017, things started to get a little bit weird, even for me! My grandfather had been living with cancer for some time. I again had the sense when it was his time to pass, but this time something else happened. I would begin to feel his presence and hear him clairaudiently, saying that he needed help crossing over. At first, I'm not going to lie, I ignored him (sorry, Roger.) Ignoring him only made him more persistent. So I did what I knew how to do. I sat down, got in a meditative state, accessed his energy, and began moving and pulling energy to create a clear channel for him to leave his physical body. I got the call the next day that he'd passed.

Now at this point, I hadn't had any formal training with this sort of thing, and I was having a pretty hard time accepting this because I loved Roger (I was on a first-name basis with this grandfather.) I didn't want him to die, and even though I knew he wanted help crossing over, it was hard not to feel somewhat responsible. I kept this experience a secret and chalked it up to being a fluke or merely my imagination.

In 2019 another family member on my husband's side (who I've decided to keep anonymous to respect his family) passed. The same thing started happening. I knew it was getting close to their time, and I felt their presence. It had been so long since Roger had passed that I did the same thing and ignored them for a while, and again they did not leave me alone. So, I helped them, and they left their body shortly after. I should also mention that all of these instances were performed remotely. Each time these people were states away.

At this point, I could no longer shrug off two experiences like this as a fluke or my imagination. I eventually opened up to my husband about it, which was hard for him to grasp, and to be honest, I don't blame him! I was still wrapping my head around it too. 

Side note, I'll be digging into some tips for bringing this kind of stuff up with loved ones later in this share.

If there's one thing I've learned about intuition and nudges from the other side, it's that if I keep ignoring something I'm intended to do, it won't go away. I've even experienced physical ailments in the past due to ignoring my path. I knew I had to take some action and seek guidance about my new abilities. 

Years earlier, I'd been receiving energy work from my now mentor, Robin Afinowich. Robin is, among many other beautiful titles, a shamanic practitioner in a Celtic lineage. My work with Robin was deep, and she was someone I trusted. I decided to go back to her to discuss some of my experiences. She confirmed what I already knew: I was very open and that this was a path I could walk should I choose. 

That was in 2019, and it's a path I've been walking ever since. I've spent the last two years learning from Robin and other Wise Women, practicing and honing my abilities beyond death midwifery. 

As you may have noticed from what I've shared already, my initiation into this work was centered around death, so hint hint, this is also where I feel called to deepen my work and offer more services. Though I intend to continue offering energy work, intuitive mentorship, and more books, my work will be centered around death and all that goes along with that (and it's a lot.) So, if you've been hanging out with me for long, buckle up because things are about to get deep! 

I will definitely speak to this more in future episodes, but one quick thing I'd like to point out is that you do not need to be old in linear age or actively dying to benefit from learning about and ritualizing themes of death. There's so much deep work that, in my opinion, we really need as a collective around death. Many of us have so much fear, anxiety, and stigma attached to death. I'm really excited to begin sharing more about this topic and bring it to the forefront as something to learn from and explore. From a practical standpoint, I'm beginning training to become a certified death doula from INELDA (International End of Life Doula Association) later this year, so I will also be offering sessions more specifically around dying too. 

Fun side note for my astrology friends out there, I recently had a reading with my friend Natalie Walstein of Soulshine Astrology, and one of the most valuable things she shared with me was having Pluto in my 10th house. Which, if you know astrology, you're probably already chuckling about this "coincidence." The 10th house is the house of careers, work, and social status. Pluto, which corresponds to Scorpio, is all about death, destruction, creation, and transformations. First of all, not sure how I didn't catch that from looking at my chart myself, and second of all, things started making a lot more sense after meeting with Natalie! P.s. I'm linking Natalie's info in the show notes if you want to connect with her or her work. She's lovely. 

I'll stop talking about death because I could go on and on about this topic, but I want to dive into some practical tips to offer if you're feeling called to walk a more spiritual path but feel lost. 

Where to start if you're experiencing intuitive and psychic abilities? 

Whether you have intuitive hits, are hearing spirits or feeling spirits, or just having a lot of unexplained synchronicities, here are some tips that I've learned over the years for navigating these waters. 

1. Family, friends, and boundaries

This one is tough and will be so unique to each person. Ultimately, it's entirely up to you who you decide to talk about and share your gifts with. I've approached sharing my work with family and friends on a very case-by-case basis. I know that there are people in my life more open to this sort of thing than others. If someone asks about my work and I know they're not open to it or believe in it, I have a personal boundary that I will not share much. I will be polite, but I will not tell them very much because it's not my job to prove myself or my abilities. On the other hand, if a friend or loved one is asking, and I know that even though they may not have the same beliefs as me, they're respectful and open to learning, I will share more with them. My suggestion is to be discerning about who you open up to about your gifts.

I've learned the hard way that I'm not here to convince anyone or defend my abilities, so if someone wants to poke holes in my experience, that's something for them to explore within themselves, not something for me to take on. Don't waste your precious gifts and energy on those who already don't believe you! I'm fortunate enough to be married to someone who believes in me and supports me even though he doesn't have the same beliefs as me. If he didn't, I'm not sure that we'd be married! 

2. Support, teachers, mentorship, and growth

Unless you were raised by an extremely open-minded, spiritual, or witchy family, it's unlikely that you have a lot of close people in your life to talk with about experiencing intuitive or psychic abilities. I know how isolating it can feel to be experiencing supernatural-like events and not have anyone to turn to. Here are a few tips and suggestions for finding your people. 

First, let the universe know that you'd like a mentor or teacher. Every time I've felt the need for a mentor or teacher in my life, I always make a point to ask for one. Though it may not always happen in the timing I'd like, I've always been presented with the right teachers at the right time. 

There are so many talented teachers and mentors who offer sessions, courses, and mentorships online. What I do and encourage my clients to do is to meditate on whether or not someone is a good fit for you or if you need their medicine and notice how it feels in your body. You could also try using a pendulum or a sway test to determine this too. I've found that I usually get a pretty definite "yes" or "no" when aligning my path with a teacher.

Second, connect with your guides more. We have so many teachers on the other side who are always ready to help us develop our gifts more. Don't discount their wisdom, and I encourage you to seek counsel from them often. Here's a great past post all about connecting with your guides. 

Lastly, don't discount the power of online friendships. Some of my closest spiritual friends are people I've met online. Don't be shy. Consider DM'ing people (not businesses) who seem like they're in alignment with you. Many metaphysical stores have classes; this can be a great place to meet like-minded people, although I know this can be tricky right now with Covid.

3. Energetic protection and being scared of your abilities

This is always the top question I'm asked from anyone new to walking a spiritual path, especially if they're experiencing psychic abilities. Though I certainly do not want to discount the possibility of experiencing harmful or malicious energy or entities, it hasn't been my experience. Nearly all of the experiences I've had with the spirit realm have been overwhelmingly positive or neutral. I don't tell you this to say not to be cautious. I say this to put you at ease because, in my experience, malicious spirits are not the norm or need healing as well.

The most important thing I've learned in my work is that I have agency over my energy. If someone or something is bothering me, I can say, "not right now, later," or "not at all." I know that I could have ignored the requests of my loved ones who were dying, but ultimately I decided not to because I knew I could help them.

If you don't want to interact with something or someone, or don't feel comfortable seeing, hearing, or feeling certain things, say so. I've found that spirit will usually not give me more than I can handle and that the spirit world honors my requests and boundaries. There are, of course, loads of different tools you can use to bolster your energetic safety should you feel called. Some of my favorites are smoke cleansing, black tourmaline, and calling on my guides for protection. Check out this past post to learn more about energetic protection.

Those are some of my initial tips and suggestions for handling the onset of psychic and intuitive gifts, but I know there's so much more we could discuss! I always love to hear your questions, so if you have more on this topic, please share them on social media on my account at @cassieuhl or by email at hello@cassieuhl.com to answer them in a future post. I hope that if you've experienced supernatural experiences and feel like you don't know where to turn that my story offers some peace or at least a sense of not feeling so alone. 

My work now and how to work with me

As I mentioned, right now, I'm offering energy work and intuitive mentorship sessions. If you feel called to work with me, you can explore my energy work offerings here and intuitive mentorship offerings here. I anticipate that I'll begin offering my death doula services in the Spring or Summer of 2022.

Though I've been practicing this work for a little over two years now, I opened my books for sessions about a month ago. I'm so grateful to the beautiful souls I've been able to work with so far. Friendly reminder, my rates will be increasing on October 22, 2021, so now is a good time if you have been thinking about booking. I offered a lower rate initially because I knew I'd need to do some fine-tuning to my process based on feedback and how I felt about the work. I did, and I feel really good about the flow of my sessions. 

Those are some of my initial tips and suggestions for handling the onset of psychic and intuitive gifts, but I know there's so much more we could discuss! I always love to hear your questions, so if you have more on this topic, please share them on social media on my account at @cassieuhl or by contacting me here to answer them in a future post.

I hope that if you've experienced supernatural experiences and feel like you don't know where to turn that my story offers some peace or at least a sense of not feeling so alone.