As a witch, taking the first steps in this unfamiliar territory of caregiving, I’ve wondered where my Craft fits in and how it might help carry me through this difficult time. Witchcraft goes only so far in the face of everyday tasks, sleepless nights, frequent crisis situations, and feeling helpless.

We often think of caring for a loved one approaching the transformation of death, as something one person does for another. In becoming a caregiver for my husband, I’m finding out it’s so much more than that. Caregiving has become its own threshold. We enter this journey together, knowing each will be transformed in different ways.

I’m reminded of the modern tradition of a groom carrying his bride over the threshold, juxtaposed with the older, cultural folk tradition of jumping the broom. Both symbolize leaving one life behind and stepping into another, but they express different acts of love—being carried, or walking forward together.

I know my Craft will offer no miracles. Magick cannot make a loved one’s illness disappear, or even make the caretaking easier. Yet, there is healing to be found in simple spells and rituals—the intentions stirred into tea with honey for soothing a throat dried by medication, or the comfort of herbal salves massaged into aching muscle and bone.

These small acts matter. The spells, the rituals, the kitchen witchery, they are love made visible. They are not powerless simply because they cannot cure. Rather, they are powerful because they remind us that love can still move through our hands even when our hands cannot fix what is breaking.

I’m beginning to understand that the deeper work of caregiving is found in changing the way we travel through this liminal space together.

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In entering the cauldron of caregiving, my spouse and I are both submitting to transformation by the fire—one crossing the threshold into the sacred mystery of death, and one remaining behind, emerging from the flames with the hard-won wisdom of the Crone.

Witchcraft cannot carry me over this next threshold, no more than I can carry my husband into the next realm. But it can give me the strength to walk beside him until I must let him go.

All that’s required of me is answering the question, “What does my Craft ask of me today?”

Naming The Shadow

There is a shadow side to everything and caregiving is no exception. Perhaps nobody understands better than a witch that what is burried eventually demands to be unearthed.

But it seems nobody wants to admit this darker aspect—I’m talking about the anger.

Maybe it’s anger at the universe, the circumstances, the bad luck that strikes a loved one with illness. Maybe it’s anger directed inward, for not being able to fix everything, for being impatient, or for getting frustrated when certain cares are met with resistance.

I’ve judged my selfishness for wanting an afternoon of freedom, one day without crisis, or a good night’s sleep. I’m sometimes irked by the level of care I’m expected to give, especially when I feel the disease taking him away is the consequence of his own lifestyle choices.

I can’t always stop the gall from rising in my throat when I have to swallow that bitter pill of anger, tasting the guilt that lingers. If you’ve ever felt the same, know you are not alone.

But it’s then I return to one of the foundational beliefs of my Craft, Unwanted consequences can indeed arise from choices, but they also find us through no fault of our own, by the random chaos of chance.

We all make poor choices in our lifetime. It doesn’t mean we should have to bear our suffering alone. In the bigger picture, wisdom lies in knowing that it doesn’t matter if we’ve found ourselves in this space by fault or misfortune—the reality of each day would still be the same.

Judging myself for feeling anger and frustration just adds more weight to what I’m already carrying.

Then there is the biggest taboo of all, the one thing no good caregiver is supposed to feel. The wish in my darkest nights, that all this could just end. Not him. Never him. But the weight of it all. The ambulance trips, the hours in ER, the hospital stays and battery of tests, adjusted medications, new side effects, more medications. Watching the man I love shrink, physically and spiritually. Love asks us to bear all of it. The grief of not wanting to lose him, and the wish for the pain, both his and mine, to be over. Both can be true at the same time.

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I reassure myself that feelings aren’t actions; that when I have to help him with buttoning a waistband, or steady him when he walks, I’m overcome with a kind of love I’ve never known before.

When he has good daysand we can still laugh together. When we can dance in each other’s arms, even if it’s just for one song. When I watch him sleeping, breathing easy, no part of his body twitching in pain, I wish that time could stand still, would just allow us to remain here forever.

If each morning I were asked whether I accept the sacrifice of caregiving, if it meant he would live one more day, my answer would be yes. I know I won’t abandon him. I will always be there when he needs me.

But even being there has come to mean something sharper than comfort. It also means vigilance. Holding his hand, yes, but also being the one who steps up when an ER doctor isn't listlistening. Being the extra set of eyes when a specialist can't see beyond the boundaries of their own expertise.

Because as any caregiver will tell you, it's not always the cancer, the lung disease, the heart failure, or whatever life-ending diagnosis has become the center of your world. Sometimes it's a virus, an infection, or heartburn—something ordinary, something treatable, but when overlooked it adds to his misery, and may even hasten death.

This is when I know exactly what my Craft asks of me; to understand that none of the anger or resentment lurking in the shadows of my exhaustion, unmet needs, or anticipatory grief reveal any less love in the reckoning, nor any less fight when called for.

The deeper truth is that we earn our wisdom when we give ourselves the grace to be human. A caregiver is not forged by never feeling frustrated, impatient, burdened or angry. We are forged by letting the fire burn our doubts to ash until what remains of us is tempered—standing guard, fully present in the moment.

The Act of Remaining

Caregiving is like a thief in the night. Friendships become harder to maintain, dreams are postponed, hobbies will be abandoned. Little by little it steals you away if you don’t protect your boundaries. This is how remaining begins long before the final moment.

Perhaps it’s a few quiet minutes with your morning coffee, time in the garden, or tending your houseplants. Making a call to a friend, walking in the moonlight. Or just taking a deep breath to summon yourself back each time you feel you’re slipping away. These small rituals are ways of remembering that you are still a whole person, not merely the role you’ve assumed.

My husband and I have entered the same cauldron, but the fire asks something different of each of us. While he is preparing to let go, I must prepare to stay behind.

He is surrendering certainty, independence, the body he once trusted. We are both surrendering control over the outcome. Neither path requires less courage than the other.

All I can do is to keep answering the question, What does my Craft ask of me today? This hour? This moment?

• Make the tea

• Set the boundary.

• Speak the difficult truth.

• Bite your tongue when silence is kinder.

• Hold the hand.

• Forgive.

• Forget.

• Remember.

• Begin again.

Beginning again is a vow made new every day—in sickness and health, until death do us part.

When I fell in love and was ready to marry, my mother had one question for me: “Are you willing to wash his dirty socks and underwear for the rest of your life?”

Love is not found in grand gestures. We find it in the everyday things we do for each other. We fold it into clean laundry, stir it into the food we prepare. If we’re lucky enough to reach old age, it becomes organized pillboxes, whispered encouragement, and the familiar rhythm of yet another day shared side by side.

My parents enjoyed 64 years together, living independently until the end. Mother walked on first. When my father chose the headstone they would one day share, he had engraved a single line from their favorite song: We’ll stroll hand in hand again*. Nine months later, he joined her in their next journey together.

There comes a point in every love story when one person can no longer walk beside the other. Caregiving is teaching me that. It’s also helping me understand that walking beside someone for as long as you can is its own sacred act.

Love does not always get to choose the length of the journey, but it will choose how we walk it. I cannot cross this next threshold with my husband, but I can walk beside him, hand in hand until the end. It may not be the kind of love that changes worlds, but it’s the kind that means the world to him—and to me.

That is no small enchantment.

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Until next time ~

Blessed Be and Journey Well

*Lyric from Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain, written by Fred Rose in 1945

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Something is stirring.

You can see it in the social media posts and hear it in the conversations over ladies’ lunches. You can feel the energy among the women who never thought of themselves as political, suddenly showing up at school board meetings, at rallies, at kitchen tables with clipboards.

Not the caricature with the pointy hat, but the real thing, the woman who sees beyond the facade, who speaks truth, who tends her community and refuses to be silent when the world demands it. Women who never called themselves witches, but stood accused by those in power.

Six hundred years ago, they came for the healers first. The midwives, the herbalists, the women who knew about bodies, about plants, about the turning of seasons. Women trusted by their neighbors, women who held their communities together in hard times.

In every era of upheaval, there is a moment when ordinary women stop waiting for someone else to fix things and start using whatever power they have. That moment is upon us again. And whether you call yourself an activist, an organizer, a concerned citizen, or just someone who can’t look away anymore, you are walking a path that women have walked for centuries.

You are, in the oldest sense of the tradition, walking the path of the witch. Because at its core, witchcraft is the practice of creating change, and effecting change is the heart and soul of activism.

The work of the witch is not an easy task. Maybe you’re feeling drained from pouring your energy into everyone else’s cup. Maybe the daily rituals that once sparked your spirit now feel like another item on a never-ending to-do list. Or maybe, suddenly it all seems trivial in light of what’s happening in our communities.

For most of human history, the witch was not a source of fear, she was a resource for survivial. Every village, every community, had their wise woman. She was the woman you went to when the baby wouldn’t come, when the fever wouldn’t break, when you needed something the priest or the landlord couldn’t give you.

Witches held the knowledge that had been passed down through generations of women, They did not operate outside the community, they offered the skills that held the community together.

So what changed?

The power, and who wields it.

As the Church consolidated its authority, as governments centralized, as the early machinery of what we now call capitalism began to grind into motion, independent women became a problem to be solved.

In systems that benefit from your exhaustion, self-care is not only empowering, it becomes necessary.

The witch trials of the 15th through 17th centuries were not really about supernatural magic. They were about control. About who gets to hold knowledge, who gets to heal, who gets to speak with authority. The women most likely to be accused were the ones hardest to control, widows who owned land, midwives who challened the emerging medical profession, cutting into their profit, and the outspoken women who didn’t look away when something was wrong.

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If this sounds a little too familiar, it should.

Just look around at what’s happening in our communities right now. Schools are battlegrounds for what children are allowed to learn and allowed to be. Healthcare (especially women’s healthcare) is being legislated and controlled by people who will never worry about access or affordability. Libraries are being defunded. Social safety nets are fraying. The systems that are meant to care for us are failing.

And one by one, neighborhood by neighborhood, women are filling the gap—as they always have. Organizing food drives and mutual aid networks. Showing up for neighbors. Holding space for other people’s fear while quietly managing their own. This is the witch’s work; it always has been.

But here’s what the old ones understood: you cannot tend the needs of others and ignore your own—your rest, your rituals, your connection to something larger than the chaos around you. And yes, even your joy in the spaces between grieving.

Self-care, in its truest form, was never the bubble bath and scented candle version we’ve been sold. It was radical. It was the refusal to be consumed. It was the understanding that your own welfare is not separate from your community’s welfare.

The most countercultural thing a woman can do right now is insist on her own wellbeing. To say, I will show up fully, and I will also rest. I will fight, and I will also tend to myself as carefully as I tend to others. The witch knows that power doesn’t come from depletion, it comes from deeply, stubbornly, and unapologetically thriving in the face of everything that would bind her

We may not all claim the title of witch. Maybe most of us didn’t plan to become the woman who shows up and speaks out. The woman who stays up late reading things that make her heart pound with anger—and with something that might, underneath it all, be hope.

What you’re carrying right now, the worry, the fury, the fierce protective love for your community and your children and the future you can still see even when it feels far away, women have carried before. They’ve carried it in harder times than these, with fewer resources, and with far greater personal risk.

They didn’t have group chats or online organizing tools or the accumulated knowledge of every women’s struggle that came before them. They had each other, and they had themselves, and it was enough. It has always been enough.

You are not starting from scratch. You are picking up a thread that has been laid down for you by women who refused to stay silent. Who healed and were punished for healing. Who gathered and were punished for gathering. Who bore the knowledge of generations and were punished for knowing.

Women who left you something, a thread woven through history, a way of moving through the world that is fierce and tender at the same time, that holds the community in one hand and the self in the other, that understands power not as something you seize but as something to be shared.

That isn’t nothing, it’s everything.

So my dears, tend yourself and tend each other. Show up when you can and rest when you must. Trust that both of those things are part of the same work. The circle is wider than you know. The thread is stronger than it looks.

Something ancient is waking up in the ordinary woman.

That woman is you.

Until next time ~

Blessed Be and Journey Well

If you’ve found yourself unexpectedly stepping into this role, showing up in ways you never imagined, carrying more than you thought you could, I’d love to hear your story in the comments. You are not alone in this, and your experience matters.

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This post is the beginning of a series exploring what it really means to take care of yourself in times like these, We’ll be looking at Self-CARE^TM as a practice: Clarity, Action, Results, and Empowerment. The tools the modern witch actually needs. I hope you’ll stay with me.

While a rosy moon blushing in a twilight sky would feel like something pulled from a dream, this lunar name was never meant to describe its color. Rather, it comes from the Indigenous Algonquin people, honoring the spring miracle of new life—when wild phlox begins to bloom in eastern North America.

This full moon illuminates Libra, standing directly opposite the Sun in Aries. Together, they create an energetic tension between the fierce independence of the Ram and the relational grace of the Scales.

Aries asks us to be true to ourselves. Libra invites us to remember we do not live in isolation. And somewhere between them, we are asked a more sacred question: What does it mean to honor your truth without becoming a weapon? How do we protect the edges of who we are, our boundaries, our needs, our right to say no, while still reaching across the space between us?

Under Libra’s moon, we are invited to seek harmony—not by abandoning ourselves, but by learning how to care for ourselves, how to stand in our own center while still keeping our hearts open.

An earlier version of the remainder of this post
was previously published on The Agora at Patheos

We are at the crossroads of changing times.

As helpers and healers, as medicine men and women, as shamans and witches, we are being called to lead the way into the next age.

Change is never comfortable. Just look at the transformation of butterflies. Everybody thinks about the lowly, ground hugging caterpillar making its cocoon and emerging as the beautiful winged creature that soars up into the sky. Nobody gives much thought to the actual process of change.

What happens inside the cocoon is violent, messy and presumably painful (though I don’t know if caterpillars perceive pain). The leaf eating larva secures itself to a branch, then its body begins to undulate and contort; its head is literally splitting wide open to form the chrysalis in which the transformation will be completed. It almost looks as if the creature is turning itself inside out, the way we turn a sleeve.

Once sealed in this self made incubator, the caterpillar’s body begins to break down, dissolving into protein soup, leaving little but liquid goo. The caterpillar must die for the butterfly to emerge.

We are experiencing the dying off of old ways. We are standing at the nexus, a pivotal moment in time. We are birthing the next new version of life on this earth, and it’s messy, violent and painful.

These Are The Bone Times

Bones are what remain when everything else has been taken.

They endure long after flesh has returned to the soil. They hold the story of what lived here before us, of our ancestors now resting in the dark womb of the earth, their bodies becoming nourishment, their memory woven into the roots.

And now we are entering a season of our own undoing. We are being stripped down to the bone. Everything that no longer serves, everything hollow, brittle, false, unsustainable, is being cut away. Not as punishment, but as revelation. Not to destroy us, but to expose what is true.

The old structures are collapsing, and beneath it all remains the sacred architecture of who we really are.

These are the Bone Times, when we are reduced to the raw materials of our own becoming, so that we can begin again. Not by recreating what was, but by rebuilding something stronger. Something truer. Something that can last.

Bone Language

Look to the language we use around bones. We say we feel things in our bones, to mean we have a deep knowing of something true. We have great need of that wisdom now, the information that comes to us not only from our own experience, but from the DNA of our ancestors—our bone wisdom.

When somebody holds fast to a belief or way, we say we they are like a dog with a bone, meaning tenacious or stubborn. In these bone times people are greatly divided in their beliefs and values, as well as their biases. Many are resisting forward movement, trying to turn the clock back, and many are acting as agents of change, while each cling to their bones, growling at the other through bared teeth.

Creating Sacred Tools

In answering the call as spiritual guides and healers we risk exhaustion of our own body, mind, and soul. It’s essential to make personal wellbeing a priority in such trying times.

Now is the time to practice shielding, to create a barrier against spiritual and physical depletion. Make grounding and centering (connecting to Source as you know it) a daily ritual. Follow with calling down protection to surround you. I use the following intention:

Before me, behind me, beside me,
Above me and below,
I cast this circle of protection
As a sphere.
Let no baneful intention,
nor wayward harm
befall myself or those I hold dear.
May better angels walk with me
and guide my steps.

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Establish sacred spaces where you can retreat when the pressure feels overwhelming—a room or small corner in your home. Use a minimal approach to give your eyes and mind a break from sensory input. Create a gentle and soft embrace that soothes and comforts you. Listen to calming music or recordings of nature sounds.

When possible, seek outdoor spaces in nature, where you can rest your body and replenish your soul. Choose quiet, secluded spots and immerse yourself in the elements—in a forest, near water, a mountain view, or wide open prairie. Let all of your senses connect to the life force. What do you see, what can you hear, touch, smell, and perhaps even taste? What do you feel that can’t be touched—the wind in your face, the sun on your bare skin?

This waxing and full moon phase over the next few days lends it’s energy to creating or concecrating personal tools for use in your practice. Tools for strength and resilience, for truth and justice, and for peace and unity. Amulets, charms, crystals, or any object that holds meaning for you, can be charged to carry your intention. Keep the item with you, worn as a bracelet or necklace, tucked in your pocket, pinned to shirt, worn in your hair . . .

As touch points, talismans help you conjure the energy, belief, or attitude you wish to embody around your bone wisdom any time you need it.

Rattles, drums, bells and other sound instruments, including your voice, invoke the element of air (sound waves), moving stagnant energy, inspiring ideas and solutions. In many ceremonial drumming rhythms, sound also mimics the human heartbeat—the life force. Using these instruments helps you to ground and center, and can be used to raise energy as well. Rhythmic sound also helps in entering meditative or trance states.

You can make a simple rattle with an empty container (like a pill bottle) filled with dried beans. Decorate the outside by painting, or wrapping with ribbon or cord in colors to match your intention.

Natural medicine serves well as a simple, sacred tool. The properties and energies of herbs and flowers can all be accessed to support holistic well being, through teas, tinctures, essences and topical applications like salves. Botanicals can also be used spiritually in smoke or water cleansing rituals, or as elements of sacred herb blends carried in pouches, worn in lockets or placed on your altar

Runes, oracle cards, tarot, pendulums and other tools of divination serve as windows to our own bone wisdom. The archetypes and symbolism help us dig down and more closely examine our own inner landscapes and shadows. In doing so, we begin to understand our motivations and actions, and are better able to make wise choices. The night of the full moon would be a good time to concecrate or redidicate your divinational tool(s).

Stones and beads fashioned into malas, rosaries, bracelets, pendants, amulets and charms hold forth symbolism and corresponding energies. Whether we believe the properties are inherent in the minerals, or that we assign the qualities by our own design really doesn’t matter.

Shields Up

I have my grandmother’s crystal and silver rosary; the facets of several of the beads are worn smooth from the many hours she worked those beads like worry stones, praying for a desired outcome. My father’s Veterans of Foreign Wars pin and my mother’s crystal heart locket hang from the review mirror in my car to protect my travels. These family heirlooms hold great powers of protection for me.

Charge any piece of jewelry to hold strong boundaries. Or, you can carry a few stones, crystals, herbs, shells and trinkets in a small pouch to enhance your personal power. Think of these talismans as the source emitting an energy field around you. You can activate or drop the shield at will by touching the jewelry.

Professionals wear power ties or suits to bolster their confidence. Many people have lucky items of clothing that they might wear to a job interview, a sporting event or when gambling. Some wear a signature scent that makes them feel confident, provacative, alluring or demure. All of these are examples of bestowing an item with a personal intention for a desired outcome.

This Is Us, Preparing the Way

We are standing at the crossroads of change, laying bare the truth of who we are as a society, stripping away the dis-ease and discontent that grew in the shadows. We are making way for the next us that is to be. Now is the time to create your cache of sacred ways and tools to see you through. Let this full moon guide your heart and hands.

Until next time ~

Blessed Be and Journey Well

I have pet names for many of the 78 tarot cards. I refer to the Ten of Swords as stick a fork in me, I’m done.

The suit of swords takes us through journies of intellect and inspiration. The swords correspond to the cardinal direction East—air and breath. The word inspire literally means to breath life into derived from the latin, inspirare. It is related to spiritus (spirit/breath) refering to inhaling, either literally or figuratively breathing Spirit into the body.

My whole being—body, mind and soul—is crying out to remain still and just breathe in this moment.

What’s The Moon Got To Do With It?

I am astrology curious, a neophyte. For what it’s worth, here’s what I make of the current astrological alignments and influence.

• New/Dark Moon in Aquarius

• Solar Eclipse

• Beginning of the Year of the Fire Horse

• Eve of Lenten Season

New Moons are the premier lunar phase for setting intentions. Void of any visible light in the sky, we are presented a blank slate for planting seeds of change, starting new projects, and reflecting on future goals.

This isn’t any new moon, though—she’s passing directly between the Earth and Sun, causing a solar eclipse visible in Antartica, and parts of South America and Africa. Solar eclipses symbolize transformation, renewal, and the balancing of opposites—releasing old patterns, and embracing new beginnings.

Today also begins the Year of the Fire Horse (Chinese lunar calendar). Fire Horse years are considered auspicious yet challenging, often marked by significant shifts. Fire element amplifies these, creating a blazing year for change, innovation, and breaking old, stale patterns.

The word Lent derives from the Old English lencten, meaning spring, symbolizing a season of spiritual renewal. As a former Catholic, I remember Lent being a time of preparing (purifying) the soul in preparation of the resurection of Jesus on Easter. This, too, reflects the themes of rebirth and new beginnings.

The world is in turmoil. The collective conscience is in the throes of rebirthing itself and we’re all feeling the labor pains; we are all participants in breathing new life into the way going forward.

It is exhausting at times. There will be days when all you want to do is be still and breathe. Days when your brain refuses to even single task, let alone multi task. Days when your spirit calls you to the safe respite we see in the Four of Swords, a sacred pause for reflection, healing, and gathering strength.

This calls to mind a a similar theme we see in fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, where the young women cast into suspended animation represents not only patience, timing and the triumph of good over evil, but also the resurrection of the divine feminine energy; a rebirth of creativity, comfort, nurturing, receptivity, intuition, collaboration, and inclusion.

If (or when) you’re feeling the exhaustion like I am, try showing yourself a little tenderness.

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A Self-Care Ritual for Respite

What You’ll Need

• The Ten of Swords and Four of Swords cards (if you don’t have a deck you can print images from online, or simply display the images on your device)

• A small white or pale blue candle

• A soft shawl or small blanket

• A quiet place to lie down or recline

Place the Ten of Swords before you. Light the candle and say:

“What has wounded me is finished.
What has ended may rest.
I surrender to the night, knowing the dawn follows.”

Close your eyes and imagine gently removing each sword — not with drama, but with compassion. With each breath, say silently: This is over.

Now place the Four of Swords beside the first card. Drape the shawl over your shoulders and say:

“I give myself permission to rest.
Recovery is holy.
Stillness restores my power.”

Lie down (or recline) for as long as you need. Imagine yourself in a sanctuary. The battle is not yours to fight right now. No fixing, no analyzing, no manifesting. Just breathing.

When you rise, gently extinguish the candle and say:

“From ending comes quiet.
From quiet comes strength.
I tend my own restoration.”

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Until next time ~

Blessed Be and Journey Well

June’s Strawberry Moon blossoms into full illumination at 2:44 a.m. on the 11th (Central Time) and she has some interesting aspects to share. This first moon of summer will move across the sky in the lowest arc since 2006. Because it’s traveling through more of the Earth’s atmosphere, you might see a bit of a pink tinge. And with the smoke from the Canadian fires there is a chance that this year’s Strawberry Moon might actaully be blushing.

This moon is not normally pink, so why do we call it theStrawberry Moon? If you search for the traditional or common name of any moon, chances are you’re going to find names derived from the language of Algonquin Native Americans—the original people of Northeastern America (to Lake Superior). Colonists were influence by the indigenous way of life, but the Old Farmers Almanac (in publication since the 1700s), is largely responsible for popularizing the native names for the moons.

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Keep in mind that variations exist; most Native American tribes have their own sets of full moon names reflecting customs, regional climate and ecology. Likewise, other nations and cultures have their own names for the moons. This is why I’m always encouraging readers to choose personal names that fit with their seasons and ecology.

I happen to live in the land of the Algonquin—or Anishinaabe (also known as Ojibwe), so the traditional names resonate with the seasons here. Even so, I have chosen personally significant names for a few of the moon cycles.

But the wild strawberries are indeed blossoming right now in this far northern realm, and already ripening in milder climates of the Northeast. In the Ojibwe culture, the strawberry is known as the “heart berry” and the sacred guidance of Strawberry Moon (Ode’ imin Giizis) calls for reconcilliation, forgiveness and community healing. Under this moon, we are all invited to come together and let go of anger and judgement. It is a time for healing relationships, with each other, the land and within ourselves. It’s a time to cultivate the energy for healing nations.

This full moon is also sits in Sagitarius a good time for embracing the possibility of growth and change. I can’t think of two more favorable actions for healing a strained or broken relationship. Sagitarius also encourages us to release old beliefs, face fears and take a leap of faith, believing in the best outcome. In support, Jupiter (ruling planet of Sagitarius) has moved into Cancer, highlighting family, nurturing and home life. If you have a rift with a family member, there is no better time to put your magick to work on healing the wounds.

Strawberry Moon Healing Spell for a Broken Relationship

Timing: Night of the Strawberry Moon (or the three days surrounding it)
Moon Phase: Full

Until next time ~

Blessed Be and Journey Well

For the complete ritual you will need:

• A ripe strawberry (or strawberry tea)

• Rose quartz crystal

• A pink or white candle

• A photo, symbol, or name of the person you're healing with

• A small piece of paper and pen

• A bowl of water or moon-charged water

• Optional: rose petals or lavender for softness and reconciliation

Cleanse your space with incense, moon water, or sound. Set your tools in a quiet place under the open sky or near a window where moonlight shines. Cast your circle. Call in the elements and create sacred space. Invite the Strawberry Moon’s energy, saying:

"Sweet moon of healing, love, and grace,
Bring peace and acceptance to this sacred space."

Hold the crystal to your heart. Take three deep breaths. Sip your strawberry tea or take a bite of the strawberry slowly, letting it symbolize sweetness returning to your life and the relationship.

On the paper write your name, their name and one sentence naming the hurt or misunderstanding. Fold it and place it under the bowl of moon water. Light the candle and say:

"Under the Strawberry Moon’s embrace,
I call for healing, love, and grace.
Let old wounds dissolve, let harsh words mend,
Let pain transmute, and hearts extend.
May we forgive. May hearts open. May love be known.
May this bond be healed, soul to soul."

Drop a few rose petals or lavender in the bowl. Let the paper stay beneath it overnight. The next morning, pour the water on soil (potted plant, garden, or outside), releasing the pain and calling in renewal.