(NOTE: If you haven’t already selected your card from yesterday’s email or app, please go back and do so, then come back and read your message.)

Here are the three cards I randomly selected yesterday with the muse’s wise wisdom revealed.

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Today is Tarot Tuesday for paid subscribers of The Footloose Muse. I have randomly selected three cards from the 78-card deck, The Muse Tarot. This deck is infused with a wildly eclectic spirit and it will help illuminate your path toward inspiration and magic.

Without overthinking the exercise, choose a card. Let muse’s spirit guide you. Then click the leave a comment button below, and type your response (left, center, or right). Tomorrow I will reveal the three cards’ messages. You can open your email or the app and read their guidance at your convenience.

Trust the process.

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Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. ~Arthur Ashe

A long time ago, in what seems like another lifetime, I decided to start a clothing company. Aptly named after my firstborn daughter, Katherine’s of Kingston, was supposed to be a custom collection of simple, whimsical, colorful dresses for toddlers and little girls designed and manufactured by me and a handful of University of Rhode Island textile majors. Slam dunk, right? Could have, should have, been. What derailed my business plan was my inability to start. More specifically, my inability to start where I was. Married to a custom home builder at the time, I convinced him that I needed a bona fide sewing room, and he was only too happy to oblige. Needs were assessed. Measurements were taken. Blueprints were drawn up. Trim was fabricated. Colors were selected.

By the time dozens of cones of serger sewing machine threads were systematically color-coded and arranged in a custom-built-in cabinet, I had already moved on to painting floorcloths, and the bolts of fabric I had stockpiled grew dusty and faded. Distractions diverted me from my primary purpose. Today, I know better. Whether it’s taking up a running practice, yoga, or photography, I can just show up as is. I don’t need fancy shoes, mats, or the newest equipment. All I truly need is an open heart and the willingness to be a beginner every day.

http://bit.ly/3kpgepB

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(NOTE: If you haven’t already selected your card from yesterday’s email or app, please go back and do so, then come back and read your message.)

Here are the three cards I randomly selected yesterday with the muse’s wise wisdom revealed.

Read more

Today is Tarot Tuesday for paid subscribers of The Footloose Muse. I have randomly selected three cards from the 78-card deck, The Muse Tarot. This deck is infused with a wildly eclectic spirit and it will help illuminate your path toward inspiration and magic.

Without overthinking the exercise, choose a card. Let muse’s spirit guide you. Then click the leave a comment button below, and type your response (left, center, or right). Tomorrow I will reveal the three cards’ messages. You can open your email or the app and read their guidance at your convenience.

Trust the process.

Leave a comment

Yes, your family history has some sad chapters. But your history doesn’t have to be your future. The generational garbage can stop here and now. ~Max Lucado

Walking out of my favorite bookstore on Saturday afternoon, I saw a little girl, maybe 7 years old, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a book in her lap, while her mother stood nearby perusing the stacks. As I passed, I overheard the girl ask if they’d be leaving soon, and I was taken back to my own childhood, and all the times that I’d asked the same question. In my case, I was asking my father if he, my brother and I could leave, but we weren’t in a bookstore. We were in a noisy bar room, and my brother and I spent a whole lot of time there. My mother worked nights to help make ends meet in the late 1950s. My father always answered my query with, “In a little bit. Charlie just bought me a drink.” If it wasn’t Charlie, it was George or Hank. “Here, go play the jukebox,” and he’d toss us a quarter. My brother and I would swirl around on the sticky dance floor for a few songs before tugging at his shirt again.

My father only drank beer, but don’t let anyone ever tell you beer drinkers can’t become alcoholics. And even though I swore I’d never become my father, once I got to college, I became a daily drinker with no regard for anything other than my obsession for that next drink. And by the time I became a mother at thirty-three, my preoccupation with alcohol had blossomed into full-blown alcoholism. I was a functional alcoholic with a high tolerance for booze, so unless you were a trained professional, I hid it pretty well. But make no mistake, I became my father the first time I took my 18-month-old daughter into a bar for the first time, sat her up in a high chair, fed her a meatball, and deluded myself into thinking this wasn’t a barroom because they served food.

Fast forward. Blessedly, my three grown children have had a sober mother/grandmother for over 18 years now. Twelve-step work saved my life and slowed (hopefully, halted) the curse of generational alcoholism.

Today, that 18-month-old daughter I’d dragged into barrooms is a beautiful mother of four children of her own. I love our Wednesday mornings when she and I share our happenings and love of books around her kitchen counter before she heads off to her office, and I get to babysit her soon-to-be three year-old daughter.

The blessings of sobriety abound.

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(NOTE: If you haven’t already selected your card from yesterday’s email or app, please go back and do so, then come back and read your message.)

Here are the three cards I randomly selected yesterday with the muse’s wise wisdom revealed.

Read more

Today is Tarot Tuesday for paid subscribers of The Footloose Muse. I have randomly selected three cards from the 78-card deck, The Muse Tarot. This deck is infused with a wildly eclectic spirit and it will help illuminate your path toward inspiration and magic.

Without overthinking the exercise, choose a card. Let muse’s spirit guide you. Then click the leave a comment button below, and type your response (left, center, or right). Tomorrow I will reveal the three cards’ messages. You can open your email or the app and read their guidance at your convenience.

Trust the process.

Leave a comment

Happiness does not come from the things that we have but the abandoning of things that we cling to, by letting go of the attachments to things we don’t want. ~Kevin Griffin

My best friend in high school, Nancy, had a green thumb. Her house, and later her college apartments, were resplendent with all manner of hanging and potted plants. I particularly admired her ability to grow coleus---especially the wide, bold, eye-catching, serrated varieties. Back in the 1970s, my alcoholism was gathering momentum, and I was more preoccupied with where my next drink was coming from than watering and maintaining houseplants. Nancy, on the other hand, had a knack for nurturing green things, and under her care, they flourished. Routinely, Nancy pinched off the purple buds protruding from the centers of the leaves. “What are you doing?” I wanted to know, fascinated and puzzled at the same time. She patiently explained deadheading to me. By definition, deadheading means to remove a plant’s spent flowers. To do so channels the energy away from seed production into further flower production.

Decades later, deadheading has become a metaphor for an important tool in my spiritual arsenal. I have learned (the hard way) that holding on to anything out of fear blocks wisdom and spiritual growth. To grow, I must be willing to relinquish the fear of “what if.” If I quit this job, will I find another? If I end this relationship, will I find another? If I move to a new community, will I make new friends? Being fearless today, I don’t lament dead flowers. I don’t mourn the people, places, and/or things that have had their glory and weren’t meant to last. Like the coleus and other greenery flourishing in the windows of my cottage today, I must be willing to discard the old and await the new. Experience has taught me that with faith and courage, I can channel my energy into spiritual production instead of atrophy. What/who are you clinging to today? What seeds can you channel into flowers?

Check out: http://bit.ly/3FhTJud

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(NOTE: If you haven’t already selected your card from yesterday’s email or app, please go back and do so, then come back and read your message.)

Here are the three cards I randomly selected yesterday with the muse’s wise wisdom revealed.

Read more

Today is Tarot Tuesday for paid subscribers of The Footloose Muse. I have randomly selected three cards from the 78-card deck, The Muse Tarot. This deck is infused with a wildly eclectic spirit and it will help illuminate your path toward inspiration and magic.

Without overthinking the exercise, choose a card. Let muse’s spirit guide you. Then click the leave a comment button below, and type your response (left, center, or right). Tomorrow I will reveal the three cards’ messages. You can open your email or the app and read their guidance at your convenience.

Trust the process.

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Death is not the opposite of life, it is a part of life. A part we’ve not yet explored and thus do not understand and it is only natural to fear what we do not understand. But with the right attitude, we can make life beautiful. With this same attitude, can death not be the same? ~Unknown

Several sorrowful and inexplicable developments have occupied my mind this week. The seeming randomness and brevity of the human condition have pulled me up short and begged me to examine death. After a routine pediatrician visit, a classmate of my four-year-old granddaughter was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer; a sweet young mother in my circle discovered, after experiencing a series of seizures, that she has three inoperable brain tumors; and my former husband’s baby sister entered hospice after a courageous years-long battle with esophageal cancer. And sitting here at my local coffee shop penning this column this morning, I am watching a middle-aged woman lean heavily on the arm of a gentleman as they make their way haltingly to the counter, surely in the advanced stages of some neurological disorder.

My heart is heavy, dear readers.

But why? We’ll all transition. In grieving these tragedies, do I set myself somehow above and apart from the inevitability of my own demise, thinking, “Whew, glad it’s not me or my kids?”

Not yet.

At 71 years old, I have far less time in front of me than behind me. Have I made peace, come to terms with my mortality? I have a belief; I’m not sure I’d call it faith, but I have a view of the afterlife that sustains me. I’ve taken care of the business of drawing up a final will and testament, establishing health directives, and downsizing my home and belongings.

Still, all these maneuvers are cerebral, they’ve been undertaken at arm’s length, without the full embodiment, the complete readiness and acceptance of death. Let’s address the elephant in the room; let’s stop whispering about others’ dying and death and have full-bodied conversations about our own misgivings while we can. How I wish I’d had end-of-life discussions with my mom before she left us suddenly in 2016.

What would it take to view death through a lens of curiosity, to see it as a great adventure, the final frontier? When my time comes, I hope I can show up aware and prepared, with eyes wide open in wonder.

I once a dear friend and Reiki master to be part of the care team should I be lucky (?) enough to spend my final days on hospice. What’s something you can do today to reduce the discomfort, the fear, around death? Perhaps start here: http://bit.ly/3IytWQm

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(NOTE: If you haven’t already selected your card from yesterday’s email or app, please go back and do so, then come back and read your message.)

Here are the three cards I randomly selected yesterday with the muse’s wise wisdom revealed.

Read more

Today is Tarot Tuesday for paid subscribers of The Footloose Muse. I have randomly selected three cards from the 78-card deck, The Muse Tarot. This deck is infused with a wildly eclectic spirit and it will help illuminate your path toward inspiration and magic.

Without overthinking the exercise, choose a card. Let muse’s spirit guide you. Then click the leave a comment button below, and type your response (left, center, or right). Tomorrow I will reveal the three cards’ messages. You can open your email or the app and read their guidance at your convenience.

Trust the process.

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Authenticity means to be the author of your own life. ~Tom Shadyac

There was a time, not that long ago, when my outside---those external things that the world recognized me for---my marriage, my residence, and my job, looked pretty impressive indeed. Successful, handsome, entrepreneurial husband. An award-winning, historically-restored homestead with a center chimney for Santa to slide down every December. A circular drive with a new luxury vehicle parked in it every year. Exotic vacations to faraway lands. Boxes of designer clothing that would arrive weekly on the backs of rumbling UPS trucks. Shoes. Lots and lots of shoes. (Ironic, considering that I’ve been a barefoot/sandal kinda girl all along.) A freeform, in-ground pool. Professionally landscaped and manicured acres. A potting shed with a wood stove hook-up. A second home in the mountains. Horses, barns, pastures, and a riding ring to rival any Olympic arena. All the trappings of an upper-middle-class, successful married life.

To any outsider looking in on the charmed world I actively built and inhabited, it looked like a modern-day fairy tale. But like the alcohol I used daily to self-medicate, self-will had run riot, and in reality, the stuff just created a bigger wall between me and God. My inside suffered mightily. My family imploded. My marriage failed. No amount of home improvement, world travel, and fancy parties was ever going to fill that God-shaped hole deep within my heart. Alcoholics Anonymous literature refers to us this way: “The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others. Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead. Affections have been uprooted.” For me, recovery didn’t come because of the things I lost. Recovery came because I could no longer deny that my inside and outside worlds did not match.

Today, I bring my imperfect, spiritually evolving, and authentic self to every part of my life. What you see is what you get, folks. That smile on my face? The way I am willing to look you in the eye? My eagerness to engage with you, grab a coffee, and share heart-to-heart? Yup. It’s the same honesty and openness I extend to newcomers, trusted friends, family members, clients, and here on the page. If you are willing to bring your authentic self to the table, I promise to bring mine. And if you can’t, or won’t, don’t be surprised if I see through your outside to the inside waiting to be released and recognized.

Check out: https://positivepsychology.com/authentic-living/

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(NOTE: If you haven’t already selected your card from yesterday’s email or app, please go back and do so, then come back and read your message.)

Here are the three cards I randomly selected yesterday with the muse’s wise wisdom revealed.

Read more

Today is Tarot Tuesday for paid subscribers of The Footloose Muse. I have randomly selected three cards from the 78-card deck, The Muse Tarot. This deck is infused with a wildly eclectic spirit and it will help illuminate your path toward inspiration and magic.

Without overthinking the exercise, choose a card. Let muse’s spirit guide you. Then click the leave a comment button below, and type your response (left, center, or right). Tomorrow I will reveal the three cards’ messages. You can open your email or the app and read their guidance at your convenience.

Trust the process.

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In The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness, Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, tells us to “Come as you are.” Often, I resist stepping out of my comfort zone unless I can be sure I have it right, until I can be confident that I’ll be a master at whatever new endeavor I am attempting. But I’ve learned in recovery to show up and start wherever I am. The magic is in the moment, and in that moment, I can choose to be fully alive and present. Fear holds me back from experiencing all that this life has to offer. Fear of failure. Fear of imperfection. Fear that you won’t like me if you find out how truly inept I am.

Nowhere has that fear had a bigger hold on me than in my personal relationships. I never knew how to make friends. I was so sure you weren’t going to like me that I went out of my way to make sure you didn’t. Once I became willing to remove the chip on my shoulder and practice being friendly, I gained a boatload of friends. If I hadn’t been willing to bring my imperfect, often socially immature self to the table, I would have missed out completely on experiencing the fellowship of the spirit.

If I’m waiting, busily preparing my mind, my body, and my skill set, then those golden opportunities to be present in the world as the imperfect person I am pass by. Last year, a good friend of mine helped me develop my Instagram account. She noticed my reluctance to commit to various suggested action steps in the process. Speaking from experience, she encouraged me to “Just do it. Do something. You can always change it.” Essentially, she told me to just “Come as you are.” Start somewhere. Take Substack, for example. Launching my page several years ago, I didn’t understand all the nuances, but the point is, today, I am willing to come to the page just as I am. Today, it’s not about being perfect; it’s about being present.

Check out “Nine Joys of Being Imperfect” at: http://bit.ly/3zMPGTr

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(NOTE: If you haven’t already selected your card from yesterday’s email or app, please go back and do so, then come back and read your message.)

Here are the three cards I randomly selected yesterday with the muse’s wise wisdom revealed.

Read more

Today is Tarot Tuesday for paid subscribers of The Footloose Muse. I have randomly selected three cards from the 78-card deck, The Muse Tarot. This deck is infused with a wildly eclectic spirit and it will help illuminate your path toward inspiration and magic.

Without overthinking the exercise, choose a card. Let muse’s spirit guide you. Then click the leave a comment button below, and type your response (left, center, or right). Tomorrow I will reveal the three cards’ messages. You can open your email or the app and read their guidance at your convenience.

Trust the process.

Leave a comment