Easing into the New Year

I’ve been trying something new this year. Instead of trying to be more productive or radically change [fill in the blank], I’m focusing more on FLOW and JOY. I wake up every morning and give myself a few minutes to transition from the world of dreams to the world of yoga stretches and the ritual of dressing for the day ahead. Cat cuddles are involved in the process. So is marinating on the night’s previous dreams as I snuggle in warm blankets. In a few minutes, I’m lured out of bed by the promise of coffee and whatever excites me for the day—time to write, family visits, a new lesson plan, a seed catalog to pour over, or just another morning full of possibility. 

It has taken me time to find my flow again in a post-pandemic world. It is time to feel excited to greet the day and time to get inspired for new adventures and experiences, even if they are just sacred simple pleasures, which are what I’ve been gravitating to more over Big Excitements.

“It is no small thing,” as Tolkien reminds us, “to celebrate a simple life.”

This feels especially true this year as we are grappling with so much politically and socially. It’s easy to get lost in the doom and gloom of the moment, but that doesn’t really do much to help things. Instead, I find hope in the people I collaborate with who make our communities more equitable. I find joy in seeing these same communities thrive despite the issues that might thwart our progress. And I find immense satisfaction in helping people forge connections in this world that so often seems divisive, fraught, and isolationist. That’s just all in a day’s work—and an integral part of magical living. 

Still, I wouldn’t be able to do all that without first filling my own cup. I’m reminded of the Star in the tarot. She is one of the radical self-care cards of the tarot deck. She asks you to nourish yourself first before giving out to others—and to be careful how much you give. I bask in this wisdom as I recover from pandemic-related burnout and the difficulties of working in higher ed, where over-work is glamourized. The Star offers us perspective—a bigger worldview and a reminder that things won’t always be this difficult. In fact, she is the card I drew in 2020 when we went into our first lockdown. Be gentle, be soft, go slow…that is her medicine.

And so I think of her again, now in a much better place than in 2020, and find gratitude in her wisdom. I’m learning how to flow and better listen to myself and my needs. I’m relishing the art of finding joy in the little things—and it is an art, as I literally rewire my default pandemic settings to look for the flaw, the potential problem, or, worse, echoes of past mistakes that I can’t do a thing about. Now? I do what the Star suggests and look at the Big Picture. Nothing’s perfect in the world, but that doesn’t mean life can’t be filled with wonder and connection. 

I even find medicine in the plot twists and setbacks. 

Take the first week of the spring term. My computer stopped working. Then, the office printer. Then my lamps. AND THEN my car died, thanks to record temperature lows. It would be easy to get frustrated at all these setbacks or wonder about Mercury in Retrograde. Instead, I used them as opportunities. I got to know my campus IT person better and had a chance to chat with my favorite colleagues when I moved to another place to print out my class handouts. I also expressed gratitude for the fact that I always prepare my lesson plans in advance just in case anything like this ever happens. Yay, for past Maria! So, really…there was nothing to stress about, and it's better that these issues got resolved now before the term got busier. Energetically?

It cleared out the last of the stagnant energy from the past few years. 

It was also a real gift that my car wouldn’t start on a day when I could work from home. No pressing meetings or in-person classes made it so that a really stressful situation ended up being a cozy day at home, drinking copious amounts of tea and working in my yoga pants until my car was ready for pickup. Now it drives like a dream, even through the snow we’ve been lucky enough to have these past few weeks. Lunch was a warm bowl of mushroom soup, and each completed task was punctuated by belly rubs (my familiars’, not mine). As for my lamps…well, I think I needed to shine a new light on my life. 

It’s all about perspective and I’ve been shifting mine to find the light in these difficult times. 

This is what FLOW is…leaning into daily life, with all its ups and downs, reading the signs and synchronicities, listening to your energy shifts so that you can cultivate a soul-nourishing life. As I finish writing this, I’m sitting in one of my favorite coffee shops, enjoying the cozy light as I watch snow fall outside. This, too, slows me down, and I’m grateful for the gentle hush that washes over our city and the way the world seems to soften against a backdrop of snow.

So this year, why not make FLOW and JOY your focus and see how your life unfolds. As I often say, the more we open ourselves to the magic all around us, the more we find. Isn’t that wonderful?

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational collection of musings touching on life’s simple pleasures, everyday fantasy, and absolutely delectable recipes that will guarantee to stir the kitchen witch in you.  If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is the everyday, subscribe here.

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Winter Solstice Story Magic

This post originally appeared in my November/December 2024 newsletter.

At the start of the year, I pulled The Fool in the tarot. The message was clear: time for a new adventure. I wasn’t sure if that meant a new job, a move, or what. But I’d forgotten what a trickster the deck can be! Often, the message is more poetic than the brick-and-mortar answers that we want to ascribe to this divination tool. At any rate, this has very much been a year of trying to relearn myself and all the joys life has to offer.

Somewhere around March, I discovered what The Fool had been trying to get me to see all along. I didn’t need a location change. I didn’t need a new job or even a new haircut. What I needed was a change in perspective. I need a deeper appreciation of my life and all I’d done to make it an abundant one—and the knowledge that I could keep growing and bringing light into the spaces of my life that needed more nourishment.

The stress of the pandemic—personally and professionally—had narrowed my vision and made me tight and tense, always looking for the next battle or foe. Worse, the stories I told myself about my life got rigid and hard, like some highly-touted but thoroughly depressing piece of literary fiction…in other words, it was brittle and boring! It was time for a reset.

Enter The Fool who asked me to open my heart—and my eyes—to the wonder all around me. It was time, in other words, to rethink my story and get rid of the plot threads that weren’t doing a darn thing but bogging down my narrative flow.

There are precisely two ways to effect positive, lasting change in your life. Trust me. I’ve learned from experience. The first is through hope. I know it sounds trite, and perhaps what not many people want to hear with all the traumatic world events right now. But ACTIVE HOPE—where you firmly believe that there is a better way of being in the world and work towards that—is a powerful thing.

The second is through storytelling.

Stories give us hope. Stories give us glimpses into different lives and worlds and ways of thinking. They offer us medicine and wisdom. We find ourselves in stories—what we read, what we watch, even the stories we tell about ourselves. It should come as no surprise, then, that hope and storytelling go hand in hand.

I often ask myself, when I get stuck and my thinking gets rigid, “Is this interesting narratively?” Or, if it seems like there’s no solution to my problems, I ask, “What’s a good, generative plot twist here?”

This helps me get perspective and space from the doom and gloom that’s easy to sink into when old ghosts and negativity come knocking on my door. I wonder…is it interesting to be consumed by that darkness and end up like a long-suffering protagonist in a dry-as-dust but supposedly “brilliant” literary treatise on human suffering? No, not really.

I’m no stranger to the lure of darkness, but I’d much rather be a gothic heroine!

So here is another, more interesting narrative path: Take a beeswax candle. They are the best for warding off negativity and purifying the air, after all. Set it in an old brass candle holder. Light it. And use it to find your way down that darkened corridor beyond your door. Ideally, you should be wearing a long, flowing white gown, though you need not necessarily run through this haunted house.

Brave the darkness, certainly. Face those ghosts. But do not let them consume you. And for goodness sake, keep your heart open to brooding strangers with a mysterious past and a future that is as bright and loving as the one you wish to conjure for yourself. What is a story without romance? A boring one, and as my familiars will tell you, we simply don’t have time for boring.

Sound foolish? Perhaps. But The Fool says there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, we both think getting a little foolish now and then is a marvelous idea!

That’s why I’m indulging now in one of my favorite holiday pastimes: immersing myself in the world of storytelling. When the world seems dark and the way forward unclear, I sink into the realm of the imagination, a place where archetypal energies and mystic forces are always at work, showing us a more profound way of working magic in the world. Stories take us beyond the dust and build-up of everyday living and remind us that there is wonder all around us, endless possibilities, if we stay open and curious, like The Fool.

So this holiday season, whatever you celebrate and however you celebrate, may you leave room for stories that terrify and shock, that heal and cleanse, that revitalize and inspire. Indulge in the Christmas tradition of reading ghost stories. Find yourself in terrifying folklore and mistletoe-strewn romances. Revisit old friends (a Lord of the Rings trilogy marathon or a rewatch of The Holiday, anyone?) and find new ones (do yourself a favor and go see Wicked—I promise it is the magic we all need right now!). May you leave room for hope and light on these darkest nights, as well as good stories. Above all, tend your own story—what wild and vibrant plot twists would you wish for yourself in the coming months? Invoke that Main Character Energy! It’s all The Fool asks of us.

I will see you in the new year for more magic-making, tarot know-how, and bookish enchantments. Until then, remember, true magic is in the everyday…and a good story!

Image of a cozy reading nook with festive winter decor framed by a window that overlooks a snowy landscape. A book is open across a warm blanket.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational collection of musings touching on life’s simple pleasures, everyday fantasy, and absolutely delectable recipes that will guarantee to stir the kitchen witch in you.  If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is the everyday, subscribe here.

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Let’s Get Spooky!

This post originally appeared in my October 2024 newsletter.

As I sit here writing this, it is a cozy fall evening, perhaps one of the first truly chilly nights of the season. The wind whistles and scatters dried red, yellow, and orange leaves, and shadows grow longer under the fading light.

Inside?

Autumn twinkle lights offer a soft glow to write by while old black-and-white horror movies play in the background. Whisigothic decor (and some Halloween decorations too!) fills my home with a sense of magic. The kettle whistles in the kitchen, and a lazy pumpkin-spice cloud wafts from my jack-o-lantern mug. And two sleek black cats snooze nearby.

Readers, we are the picture of spooky autumnal coziness.

That, however, was not the case just a few nights ago when I decided to go to my first haunted house. You see, I had been feeling brave. I’d spent the last few years watching iconic horror movies each October, finding again and again that they were never as scary as I’d imagined them to be. I’d been reading horror books, too, and enjoyed every minute of it. In fact, I found that the idea of these stories was often scarier to me than the actual story. While these terrible tales could be creepy or chilling or even downright terrifying, I always made my way through them all the better for having read or watched them.

All this to say that I felt VERY proud of myself for facing the things that once scared me and realizing that they weren’t all that scary. In fact, I was feeling downright smug about it!

Too smug, as it turned out.

It was with this deep sense of what I now know was overconfidence that I decided to try my first haunted house. I was offered free tickets, after all, and had a sister who was willing to brave the unknown with me.

The Universe was providing me with an opportunity to try something that might have been too much for me Once Upon a Time. I wasn’t such a big old scaredy cat anymore. Sure, the promo images for the event looked chilling, but I’d seen scarier images in some of the movies I’d watched. And I knew it wasn’t real, so…

How bad could it be?

Spoken like the protagonist in a horror movie right before she promises to spend the night in a haunted house. Nothing bad will happen if you stay in an old home that only a bunch of superstitious townsfolk think is haunted, right? The one where a bunch of people fifty years ago disappeared under mysterious circumstances, their bodies never found, right?!?! RIGHT?!?!?!?!

At any rate, I couldn’t back out after I invited my sister and told everyone I was going. I have a goth reputation to uphold, after all. Like any traumatic experience, much of it is now a blur. What I can tell you about that harrowing event was that a certain amount of (liquid) courage was required to enter that haunted house. But enter we did, into the swirling fog, where all manner of things lurked in the shadows.

There were screams (mine). Dark maze-like corridors to navigate. Panic (also mine). Ghosts and ghouls and all sorts of monsters to run from. Believe me when I tell you it was not for the faint of heart!

I learned something about myself that night: I AM STILL A SCAREDY CAT.

But I also can’t help myself. I will always be drawn to the gothic, the unknown, and terrifying things that go bump in the night. And that’s okay. Healthy, even.

After we made it through the terrifying haunted house and ran to the safety of the well-lit street, my sister and I both felt strangely cleansed. Okay, our hearts were still racing, and we were out of breath from dodging monsters and running through torture chambers. But we were also relaxed.

There was the rush of having faced something we’d both built up in our heads (hence the liquid courage), doing the thing that scared us, and coming out the other side (mostly) intact.

We survived!

It was truly a terrible delight to be frightened out of our wits and then leave it all at the door of the haunted house. There, in the moonlight and crisp air, was a fresh start and a clear mind.

That feeling is what makes me venture deeper into the world of horror, even as I am, and always will be, a scaredy cat. There’s something incredibly empowering about looking at the things that scare you—especially the ones that have followed you since childhood—and laying them to rest. They may never stop scaring you, but at least you know, when old ghosts stir in the night, you can face them and be the better for bringing them into the light.

That’s the power of horror stories: They shock us! They terrify us! They make us face our fears so we can put things into perspective, heal what needs to be healed, and exorcise the demons and spirits that have tried to hold us captive.

That’s the beauty of spooky season. It makes us eager to look at the things we normally confine to the shadows of our minds the rest of the year. Now, in the cozy warmth of my home, a large pumpkin on the kitchen table waiting to be carved, I feel brave again. Brave enough to consider going through that haunted house again next year.

Maybe.

As a special treat, in honor of spooky season, I’m offering up free copies of Hungry Business and Weep, Woman, Weep through Dia de Los Muertos. May they bring you chills, thrills, and delightful exorcisms!

Image of a dark and stormy night with a haunted house in the foreground.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational collection of musings touching on life’s simple pleasures, everyday fantasy, and absolutely delectable recipes that will guarantee to stir the kitchen witch in you.  If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is the everyday, subscribe here.

Want even more inspiration to make your dream life a reality?  Follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, and  Instagram.  Thanks for following!

Meg Ryan Fall

This post originally appeared in my September 2024 newsletter.

Every time the fall term rolls around, I’m compelled to do several things: start drinking apple cinnamon tea, put up cheesy autumnal decorations, and sharpen a bunch of pencils like I’m Kathleen Kelly in You’ve Got Mail, even though the majority of my “school work” is digital now.

My head is filled with fanciful visions of wearing cute autumnal outfits while strolling through The Big City, clutching my newly purchased pumpkin or a pumpkin spice latte (or a tall, skim, caramel macchiato in Kathleen Kelly’s case). In fact, when I’m not going full goth, my seasonal vibes are straight-up Main Character in a Romantic Comedy. (This is true for the rest of the year, too, especially when I’m teaching my class on romantic comedies like I am this term.)

Sure, I love my spooky stuff, and the way the last third of the year just seems made for cozy gothic vibes. But there’s another part of me that absolutely delights in the nostalgic comfort that can only be described as Autumn in (RomCom) New York. I guess it’s because I’ve watched When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail on repeat at a formative age. As a teen and early 20-something, these movies were the height of Adult Sophistication, and Meg Ryan was the aspirational working woman with a strong sense of style and a soft warmth that feels almost radical today when so many narratives about women in mainstream media often treat us as flat characters catering to the male gaze.

So often, we are forced into stereotypes of Uptight Boss Ladies, Manic Pixie Dream Girls, or Sexy Vixens. Meg Ryan, instead, portrayed characters who were both competent professionals and women searching for love, confident in who they were and yet only human in their insecurities, strong in their opinions and soft in their care for others. Her characters were, in other words, real women who contained multitudes while also looking autumnally stylish AF. What’s not to love?

As it turns out, I’m not alone in this. I was today years old when I discovered there is such a thing as Meg Ryan Fall. It revolves around her iconic roles in When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle. These movies capture the seasonal beauty of The Big City, the ephemeral joy of season’s change, and all the cozy things that come with it, like walking through Central Park on an autumn day or attending a neighborhood fall festival, and maybe meeting your soul mate on the Empire State Building or in a rival bookshop. These movies are also very much stories about loving the city you live in, from the neighborhood coffee shop to your local grocery store and, yes, your favorite bookstore. 

Although there are valid critiques of Meg Ryan Fall as just being another iteration of White (Christian) Girl Autumn or a way for the internet to further commodify a nostalgia-tinted past, I think the real appeal of Meg Ryan Fall is that it connects us to the “valuable, but small” parts of our lives, all the “nothings” that actually mean something, to poorly quote a few lines from You’ve Got Mail. In other words, the dailiness of life—from checking your inbox to grabbing a cup of coffee—becomes magical when we realize that these tasks and routines that we often take for granted actually bring meaning to our lives. It’s those chance encounters with an old acquaintance that suddenly leads to something more—or the hope for something more that ushers in gentle change.

Just as spooky stories connect us to the hidden parts of ourselves and the universe, Meg Ryan Fall reminds us that life can be soft and romantic. This sentiment feels especially true after the pandemic as I’ve struggled to release the fight-or-flight mode I was in for most of that time and to embrace the fact that life can be cozy and gentle if we let it. 

There is nothing I missed more during the pandemic than these mundane “nothings” that I absolutely took for granted before going into lockdown. The weekly trips to the grocery store. Chatting with people as we stand in line at the coffee shop. Bumping into friends at a local restaurant or making new ones. Reading a book on a sidewalk cafe on a sunny autumn afternoon. People watching at the park. These moments connect us to something deeper than ourselves and that never-ending to-do list. They are a reminder of our basic humanity and interconnectedness. 

Most of these films were made before the internet really took off and before iPhones were commonplace. You’ve Got Mail signals the dawn of a new technological era in which our communication landscape fundamentally changes. Even then, however, the film has a way of making the World Wide Web feel quaint with its story of secret digital penpals. The Internet is just another cozy neighborhood space where chance encounters can lead to the kind of love that is simply meant to be. Meg Ryan Fall asks—no BEGS—us to put our phones away, slow down, and really be part of our neighborhood. To plug into our lives more than we plug into social media. To be present and aware of the ephemeral joy of the season’s change. To connect, not through dial-up, but through being at home in our small corners of the world.

Yes, the idea of modeling your fall vibes after Meg Ryan’s iconic romantic comedy roles is cheesy. That’s kind of the point. After the trauma and stress of the pandemic and figuring out how to live in a post-pandemic world, Meg Ryan Fall invites us to be a little silly, a little frivolous, and a little playful. Play, I’m learning, is our way of signaling to the universe that we are ready for some unexpected magic. So, this fall, I’m going all in as I relish the autumnal glory of my city and the cozy camaraderie of my local neighborhood haunts.

If you’re looking for a little more enchantment in your autumn, too, I’d encourage you to find a moment or two in your day that makes you feel like Kathleen Kelly walking through her neighborhood on a sunny fall day while the Cranberries croon “Dreams” overhead. Or don your most dapper hat and sweater combo and take a city stroll to leaf peep. See what lighthearted magic comes from it!

Image of Meg Ryan as Kathleen Kelly from You’ve Got Mail walking down a path surrounded by autumnal trees.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational collection of musings touching on life’s simple pleasures, everyday fantasy, and absolutely delectable recipes that will guarantee to stir the kitchen witch in you.  If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is the everyday, subscribe here.

Want even more inspiration to make your dream life a reality?  Follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, and  Instagram.  Thanks for following!

Summer Monsoons & Gothic Romances

This post originally appeared in my July/August 2024 newsletter.

You know you’re a desert woman when you get inordinately excited about thick clouds rolling across the sky on a late summer’s day, promising rain and blessed relief from the blistering heat of the day. Is there anything more exciting than thunder and lightning serenading you to sleep?

We’ve had better monsoons this season than in years past, which fills me (and my garden) with gratitude. I can see the clouds rolling in over the Sandia mountains as I write this. They are dark and heavy, which always means rain—and sometimes rainbows. 

I love the rains, you see, not just because they give the land much-needed moisture and make our desert summers more bearable, but because these storms provide the perfect symphony for one of my favorite pastimes: reading gothic novels late into the night. 

There’s nothing more satisfying than curling up in bed with a gothic romance while the window panes rattle, the thunder rumbles, and lightning flashes. The rain outside mirrors the angst on the page, which is fitting, given how often these pulpy tales rely on the pathetic fallacy to highlight the inner turmoil of their characters.

It’s always been cathartic to read books about darker aspects of human nature and all the difficult things Polite Society does not want to discuss or express. That’s what gothic romances do—they pop out heightened emotions, shine a light on things lurking in the dark corners of our minds and homes, and remind us that for all our belief that we are rational, enlightened beings, we are also ruled by desire, emotions, the mystic, and a myriad of other unseen forces that propel us forward in our lives. Juicy stuff!

I’ve been enjoying diving into Phyllis A. Whitney lately. Often considered the mother of American gothic romance, she actually prefers the term “romantic suspense.” Still, the works I’ve read so far have each had a decidedly supernatural twist in one way or another, so it’s hard not to think of her as a gothic writer. The reading is all the more enjoyable because I’ve collected quite a stash of her older paperbacks. The ones with the lurid covers, naturally. Those covers somehow make the stories better.

As I savor these books while the rain and wind sing their wild song outside my door, I feel a deep connection to humanity, to the parts of us that are always striving, longing, and searching for more. A good gothic novel, ideally read during a dark and stormy night, reminds us that the world is full of strange and wonderful things and that even the most mundane of settings—domesticity—can be full of intrigue and passion.

They serve as a promise that even if our lives seem utterly ordinary, there is always an interesting plot to follow if we tune into the magic all around us. At the very least, the make us appreciate a good storm!

Image of a gathering storm.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational collection of musings touching on life’s simple pleasures, everyday fantasy, and absolutely delectable recipes that will guarantee to stir the kitchen witch in you.  If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is the everyday, subscribe here.

Want even more inspiration to make your dream life a reality?  Follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, and  Instagram.  Thanks for following!

Solstice Sun Magic

This post originally appeared in my June 2024 newsletter.

Confession time: I’m one of those witches that will take a day-long celebration and turn it into a week. Birthdays, holidays, Impromptu Excitement such as…Yay! I got my manuscript done! Or, Yay! It’s Tuesday! Tuesdays, after all, can be quite lovely days…the joy of them deserve to be savored. As for Halloween? It’s a SEASON that runs 365 days a year, but you already know that about me.

I’ll let you in on another little secret: Even in the heart of winter, the Summer Solstice is always with me. I’ve been marinating on this fact as I’ve celebrated the longest day of the year, not just on Wednesday but in the days leading up to it, and will do so in the days that follow. 

I extend my celebrations because I think it’s important not to be finite with our joy. I also think that, in light of the pandemic, it’s more necessary than ever to find happiness when and where we can, in each moment of the day. It can be easy to close off and shut down after the seemingly endless trauma of the past few years, but it’s important to remember that life goes on, and while we might not want to blithely return to normal, we do want to find a way forward, a way to harmony and—dare I say it?—exuberance to greet each day as a new adventure. 

I’m reminded of the Sun card in the tarot, which is the epitome of Big Summer Solstice Energy. It comes to us when we need hope, to remember that joy is an incredible healer. Upright or Reversed, it’s always a good card to get. In fact, it’s considered the most positive card in the deck, and for good reason.

It tells you to lighten up!

Relax, it says, know that the hard times are over. It’s also an important reminder that you are magic—this light luscious feeling of the Summer Solstice? It’s always inside you, even when you’re experiencing the darkest part of winter.

So when I find myself fighting waves of winter—the heaviness, disorientation, stagnation that comes with finding my way in the world again—the Sun calls to me and reminds me that there is an eternal fire inside me. 

The Sun does the deeper work, too, of casting light on the shadows—of our minds, of our hearts, of the things in our lives that need to be brought to light so that we can work through them and move forward with lighter hearts. Sometimes, we need a loving gaze to show us that we are strong enough to face what we need to, wise enough to learn from these revelations, and 

I’ve been marinating on the Sun card as I’m relearning the art of joy this summer. 

I’m allowing myself to move at a slower place…which means I might be as productive as I’d planned, but, as I’ve learned from years of teaching and writing, the important stuff always gets done. In the summer, I have the luxury of prioritizing all the things that fall to the wayside come mid-semester, and it’s important to savor that ability, as anyone who lives by the academic calendar can relate to. 

So instead of pushing myself to squeeze in more work or crank out one more project—more heavy winter energy I’m working through as I allow my mind and heart to be more expansive post-pandemic—I throw open the windows and doors to let the fresh air and light in. I light beeswax candles and harvest lemon balm and lemon verbena from my garden, both of which are the ultimate happiness herbs.

On the solstice, I cleaned my home and washed my floors down with vinegar and lemongrass essential oils. I set my bed with lilac-scented sheets and swept the dust from my bookshelves and mind. I chatted with my plants as I watered and pruned them. Then I went to converse with my tarot and see what the Sun had to tell me—the card before it is what I need to leave to the past, the card after, my future.

Today, I puttered in the kitchen and played with herbs, filling a mason jar with wildflowers for my kitchen table and writing desk. I pickled fennel. I steeped lemon balm and tulsi in cold water for a refreshing and soothing beverage. I listened to stories that made me feel bold and magical.

I lingered with my own stories.

I let them whisper their secrets to me so that I may better know myself and live their epiphanies out in my daily life.

Now, I let the honeyed balm of the season coat my skin and my thoughts. I surrender to the long, light-filled days, to the uncertainty, to the soft, yielding yes energy of summer.

And, in all this, I let the sun warm my body, my mind, my heart, a soft, sweet reminder that life can be joyful if we only, like sunflowers, turn our gaze to the sky.

Image of a blue sky with a radiant sun. In the center is The Sun card of the tarot with the Wheel of Fortune and The World cards behind it.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational collection of musings touching on life’s simple pleasures, everyday fantasy, and absolutely delectable recipes that will guarantee to stir the kitchen witch in you.  If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is the everyday, subscribe here.

Want even more inspiration to make your dream life a reality?  Follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, and  Instagram.  Thanks for following!