It’s not a good idea to jump into anything without careful consideration this week (or any time, probably). Take time to look at the opportunity from all angles, and allow space for all the information to emerge – there’s probably hidden factors that have yet to become clear. Don’t let FOMO push you into taking action before conditions are right. That’s especially true on Tuesday, thanks to a clash between passion-driven Mars and cautious Saturn. The key is finding a balance between risk and reward.

Get the lowdown in my energy forecast video above.

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Back then, I enjoyed being the person who found typos on restaurant menus, and errant apostrophes on signs. Did staff at these businesses enjoy having this pointed out? Did they make changes accordingly? Reader, they did not.

My motivation for joining the unofficial grammar police was not a commitment to upholding the highest standards of the English language, which is an excuse I would proffered at the time, had I been asked. It was a blatant reach for superiority. I knew I was lacking in multiple areas – fashion nous, magnetism, humour, to name a few – but my command of the English language was an area where I had above-average competency and, by God, I was going to wield that power. There was also more than a touch of hyper-controlling behaviour at play – me wanting to exert some control over a world that is uncontrollable. Most embarrassingly, it was me in my judgiest pair of judgey pants, hungry for the glorious moments when I could assume a mantle of higher intelligence and feel better about myself.

In a welcome development for everyone I’ll ever met, I stopped correcting people’s grammar over time because I realised it was… gross. It’s like foisting parenting advice on mothers who are minding their own business – unwelcome, and it makes people feel small. It took me way too long to realise that.

I was reflecting on this recently when I was sent a link to a tedious online debate about the Oxford comma. (If you don’t know what that is: good for you, honestly.) The comments section was full of people fist-pumping themselves as they endorsed the virtues of the Oxford comma in a series of competitively witty retorts, and it was exactly the sort of thing I would have once partaken in (except that I’m not very witty, and I also think the Oxford comma is unnecessary 90 per cent of the time). I shuddered and shut down the browser.

What I’ve learned is that no one wants their grammar or spelling corrected, even if they’ve made the sort of mistake that makes my eyes twitch. As a card-carrying member of the grammar police, I cared deeply about enforcing ‘the rules’ (so much of it was about rigidity and control). This is the rule that fits me best now: never correct people unless they specifically ask for your critique. (Or maybe if they’re making a mistake that’s really, really, really embarrassing. Maybe.)

Knowing how to use an apostrophe correctly did not make me morally superior. And judging people on their misspelling of ‘definately’ (definitely) did not make me look smart. My friend and her boyfriend are long gone from my life but I still feel bad for putting up an obstacle that made it harder for us to connect authentically.

Accuracy in my own writing is still important to me – and according to ‘Muphry’s Law’ (sic) I’ve probably made plenty of mistakes in this post – but correcting other people’s mistakes? Not doing that anymore. Unless asked. And paid to (in proofreading and editing work).

Here’s a fun plot twist: in a digital world increasingly dominated by AI slop, spelling and grammar mistakes are now sometimes seen as a mark of human authenticity. Who would have thought being imperfect would one day become so desirable? What a time to be alive.

Compassion, service and healing all come to the fore as we reach the full moon eclipse crescendo in Pisces on Friday. And since Pisces is a deeply spiritual sign, your intuitive channels could be louder than ever. The oracle cards bring big Pisces energy, and there are also messages about financial healing.

Get the lowdown in my energy forecast video above.

Powerful healing meditation

To help you make the most of the eclipse energy, this week’s powerful healing meditation is centred around enhancing your intuition. It aims to:

• Clear anything blocking your intuitive channels

• Healing energy to strengthen your connection to the divine

• Empowering you to take action on intuitive guidance.

Try this seven-minute meditation here:

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I get a cold sore about once every two or three years, generally following a period of illness. When my immune system is under the pump, a cold sore will often appear, thanks to lowered immunity giving rise to the virus that lies dormant in my body. People who also get cold sores – and there are a heck of a lot of us! – can probably relate. I was confused about why a cold sore had appeared when I wasn’t sick nor particularly stressed.

“What is this cold sore going to stop you from doing?” my spiritual healer asked me.

“Hugging and being close to people.”

“Is that something your body might not want you to do?”

“No… well, kinda.”

Bingo.

The body, it turns out, is very responsive to fear and very much wants to protect you. If you are sending it messages – whether spoken or unspoken – about a situation that invokes fear, it will listen, and sometimes it will create a way to keep you safe. A cold sore to keep you away from getting close to someone you don’t want to be close to. An injury to force you to rest and stay out of the high-stress work environment that your body is now perceiving as a threat. Once, I read about a woman who theorised that she’d gained weight as a teenager to make her less visible to men, having experienced abuse as a child. Of course, this is a complicated situation and there are many contributing factors, but the emotional issues could play some part.

Are emotional and physical health linked?

Back in the 1980s New Age pioneer Louise L Hay wrote a book called You Can Heal Your Life which promoted the idea that your physical health is related to your emotional health. She believed certain parts of the body or health complaints could be directly related to an underlying issue, that could be healed through affirmations. Personally, I’ve found that the connection between emotions and the body is not as prescriptive as her book asserts. I have experienced some minor physical symptom relief through addressing an emotional issue, but it’s not a cause-and-effect relationship, and it’s rarely the full picture.

Take my shoulder, for example. Late last year it started to become stiff and limited in its range of motion. I wondered if there was something in my psyche about shouldering burdens or feeling weighed down, so I explored this with my healer, but that approach just didn’t feel quite right. I sensed that I didn’t have all the puzzle pieces. When the pain had increased and the range of motion become even more restricted an MRI revealed I had adhesive capsulitis, otherwise known as frozen shoulder. The most likely factor: hormonal shifts. (There’s a reason this issue is common in women aged 40 to 60.)

Sometimes a physical issue really is just a physical issue. But sometimes emotional issues can exacerbate or contribute to it, so it’s always worth checking in with your intuition with some body talk.

Are emotional issues affecting my body?

When I’m working with clients and they mention a physical issue they think might be related to what they’re going through emotionally, I do a form of ‘body talk’. It involves a routine where we tune into the body and ask it questions like:

• What are you trying to protect me from?

• Is this a recent issue or related to historical events?

• What support do you need from me to heal?

You can do this after, or during, a meditation. Or you could simply sit quietly and tune in. Try not to judge the responses that come up – especially if they don’t make sense right away.

Of course, this is not a replacement for care from qualified healthcare professionals. It’s simply an exercise you can do to support yourself emotionally, which may have a positive impact on your body’s physical healing. We know stress has an impact on our physical health, so it makes sense (to me, at least) that other emotional states would show up in the body too.

From a spiritual angle, the body contains infinite wisdom and can be a talisman for what’s going on in the subconscious, and if we’re able to tune in and listen, we may be able to help support the body by approaching healing from an emotional, as well as physical, angle.

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Two powerful oracle cards emerge this week, including one that imparts extra strength to help us through challenges that seem insurmountable (but aren’t). There’s also a fiery clash between romantic Venus and adulting Saturn which could really emphasise your boundaries – or lack thereof. We’re building up to an eclipse in spiritual Pisces at the end of August, so you might find your intuition is extra sharp right now. It’s best not to ignore it.

Get the lowdown in my energy forecast video above.

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“You can hear someone’s childhood in the way they apologise.”

It echoed something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: why it’s so difficult for certain people to apologise or be held accountable for their actions.

Belle Burden’s best-selling book Stranger – which details the shock collapse of her almost 20-year marriage amid revelations of her husband’s infidelity and his financial manoeuvres that cut her out of a fortune that should have been shared – is a harrowing read for many reasons. One of the biggest, for me, is the fact she never really got an apology for how she’d been cast aside, making it even more difficult to move on. Even if this has never happened to you, it might be a relatable feeling; a lot of my clients are seeking out healing so they can move on without the apology they should have received and didn’t.

It’s in childhood that we learn how to apologise, and why it matters that we do.

More than that, we learn how safe and secure we are in our family, in relationships and in the world – specifically, whether or not we can be wrong, or make bad choices, and still be safe and accepted. We learn this from the way we are loved and supported, and we also learn it from watching the primary adults in our lives. How they apologise and the language they use. Whether they change their behaviour for the better afterwards. How they acknowledge the impact of their actions, regardless of what whether or not that impact aligns with their intentions. Most importantly, whether they’re accountable for what they’ve done, or whether they blame someone else. And the underlying factor in all of this? Shame.

“I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection,” writes shame researcher Brené Brown.

Shame can make us equate making a bad choice with being a bad person. It can make us think that taking ownership of bad choices and remedying them is an act of weakness, an admission of deficiency. It can make us blame other people for what happened – usually: the person calling us out, or the person who has been hurt (“Look what you made me do!”) – so that we can remain impervious to the misery, guilt and regret of knowing we’ve fallen short of expectations, and caused damage to someone. How we respond when shame shows up is key to our willingness to be accountable.

Learning how to apologise in sincere ways has been difficult for me. I was raised in a household where we overlooked bad behaviour to “keep the peace”. Instead, we shoved our resentment down our own throats where it simmered bitterly and leapt out in passive-aggressive comments or bitching behind the other person’s back later. We did not call out bad behaviour. I became someone who apologised reluctantly and defensively, often sidestepping blame. I had learned that owning bad behaviour was shameful.

Learning to apologise, despite the shame I felt for what I’d done – and also learning to hold someone else accountable for what they’d done, despite fear of massive blowback – has been one of the greatest learnings of my romantic relationship, particularly in the early years. I was able to do this because I have a partner whose love for me is not conditional on me being flawless, and who is also willing to take accountability for his own actions.

Being willing to apologise and take remedial action for what we’ve done – even when it’s uncomfortable – boils down to this belief: I can make mistakes and still be a good person. I can cause hurt and still be deserving of love.

It’s true that our childhood plays a large part in determining how well, or how poorly, we apologise. But we are mutable beings. If we’re willing to examine the underlying events and emotions that have shaped us, we don’t have to be saddled with them. Healing means being able to sit with our own flaws and still be okay. This is the greatest gift we can give ourselves, and the people around us.

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Money, money, money… apologies if you have the ABBA song stuck in your head now (actually I’m not sorry – that song’s a banger!). With Chiron, the wounded healer, now retrograding in Taurus, the sign of value and security, your relationship with money could be front and centre. And in this week’s oracle cards, there’s a message about financial healing giving us an oh-so-subtle prod to address any money habits that may be emotion-driven, or just plain detrimental. So if money issues are problematic for you, this week’s healing meditation might be helpful.

We also have the first of a series of eclipses, with a new moon eclipse falling in Leo on Wednesday/Thursday (depending on where you live). If there were ever a time to put yourself out there, this would be it!

Get the lowdown in my energy forecast video:

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A similar thing happened with reading. Last year I began tracking the novels I’d read on my Storygraph app so I could recommend them or refer back to them later. But at the start of this year, inexplicably, I decided to gamify my reading. I vowed to read 60 books in 2026, to beat last year’s Storygraph total of 55. Initially this didn’t change my approach to reading much. I’ve always loved reading, and sitting down with a book is still my biggest priority of a weekend. Around May, I realised my favourite part of a book was no longer being immersed in it and then digesting it, it was recording it in Storygraph so I could see my progress. I had gone from a passionate reader to a competitive reader, for no good reason. Knocking off a book, instead of being wonderfully consumed by a captivating story, had become my goal. For most of this year, I proudly powered through a book a week. Currently I’ve been sitting on the same book for three weeks and have little inclination to continue. A hobby I’ve had since childhood has (temporarily) lost its appeal.

Gamification is the problem here. That’s where companies, employers and the like create rewards to incentivise us to continue on a particular path – usually, to work harder or to spend money on their product. You know the drill: keep shopping at our supermarket and you’ll earn points to redeem. Hit these workplace targets and get a bonus. It works because it keeps us motivated. Gamification isn’t wrong, but it can muddle our intentions – and that’s what’s been screwing me up.

When I read an article about gamification by Jonny Thomson on Big Think, I had a lightbulb moment. The article says:

“The problem with gamification is that it confuses one goal with another. It forces us to play a game that we don’t want to play, and it flattens rich activities into inert metrics. But as the sociologist William Bruce Cameron put it: ‘Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.’ So much of life cannot be plopped into a spreadsheet.”

I got sucked into the metrics and forgot why I was doing the activities in the first place. I’d started learning French to challenge myself and explore a different language, but soon I had become a slave to an app. I’d started counting books to keep track of my reading, but soon I had become more interested in metrics than the enjoyment I’d always reliably got from reading. Gamification wasn’t keeping me engaged, it was eroding my pleasure and cutting me off from my original intentions. I had lost my why. And if I’m going to invest my precious time and energy into an activity, it needs to have a clear why. Wanting to avoid harassment by a cartoon owl is not a good-enough why.

I’m using a different, non-pushy, app to learn French now, at my own pace. And I’m still reading – albeit more slowly, but with no yearly total in mind. The intentions and the actions matter, the incentives do not. Magnifique.

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Hot on the heels of last week’s Cazimi (the day of miracles), we’re blessed with another astrologically significant day. This coming Saturday (8/8) is the Lion’s Gate, considered a very powerful day for manifestation. Indeed, manifestation is a big mood right now (which is why I’ve created a healing meditation to help; see below). The oracle cards also emphasise the need for compassion right now – especially towards yourself – and with Venus shifting into Libra this week, its natural home, striving for balance, harmony and compromise in relationships will go a long, long way.

Get the lowdown in my energy forecast video:

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Ever since World Kindness Day was introduced in 1999, there’s been a big social movement towards treating people with kindness and empathy, and of course this is largely a positive shift. However I’ve noticed there are some occasions where people are mistaking ‘kindness’ for ‘tolerating disrespect’. Allowing someone to make you feel uncomfortable or self-conscious about your body is not a virtue, it is a failure to protect yourself. Telling someone they’ve overstepped and acted inappropriately isn’t being unkind, it’s being assertive and self-respectful.

Another example is a friend of a friend who wouldn’t challenge her boyfriend when he belittled her publicly (and, I assume, privately). He’d gone through a bad divorce previously and she wanted to be sensitive to his feelings given what he’d been through. While it can be helpful to understand the reasons for people’s bad behaviour so we can humanise them, we still need to set boundaries and push back.

Part of the problem in situations like this is that many people confuse being ‘nice’ and being ‘kind’. The latter is a genuine desire to care for others and respect their feelings, often done quietly and without fanfare. The former is often done for the sake of propriety or to show others that you’re a good person or well-behaved. The woman not challenging her boyfriend’s shitty comments thought she was being kind by not making him feel bad about his behaviour. But this was an act of niceness, done to convince him of her goodness, so that she felt more secure in the relationship. When done repeatedly this doesn’t make her a good person, it makes her a doormat.

People often forget that what’s most important in the way we treat other people isn’t intentions, it’s the impact of our actions. Case in point, this Melbourne woman who was given flowers by a random stranger in 2022. The video went viral, and she told the ABC that it was a dehumanising experience. The video creator said his mission was to spread kindness, but he didn’t stop to think about whether the people in his videos actually wanted flowers, or to be part of his gross quest for viral likes, shares and praise. I wonder how many people would have read that story and nodded in empathy for the woman, and how many people would have thought of her as ungrateful for rejecting this display of so-called kindness.

When I think about the person who was having her weight commented on, honestly, it’s baffling to me that there are people who still think it’s appropriate to talk about someone’s body at all, let alone imply they’re winning at life if they’ve become smaller. Even though her workmates’ intentions might have been good – they might have genuinely thought they were paying her a compliment – the impact was not, and that’s what matters most when it comes to how we define kindness. You can have the best of intentions and still cause harm to other people, and your intentions do not absolve you of responsibility for that impact.

I think in general it’s great if people are prioritising kindness in the way they treat other people. What’s not so great is if they’re using it as a vehicle for tolerating poor behaviour, or excusing disrespect. Kindness isn’t intended to be a means to sidestep our responsibility to teach people how to treat us, and it isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card for those who believe their intentions are more important than the impact of their behaviour.

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We’ve got a full moon in community-minded Aquarius this Thursday, and Cazimi on Wednesday (more about that in Spirituality 101). In the oracle cards, we’ve got messages about the need to treat ourselves with kindness and care, and an always-reassuring reminder that we are being looked after by the Universe.

More information in my energy forecast video:

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I am no longer interested in defending my life choices.

In the past, when I’ve been asked whether or not I have children, I’ve been really cautious about how I reply, sensitive to people around me who might be navigating the heartbreak of infertility, and to those who are in the trenches of parenthood and finding it tough. I’ve felt compelled to explain myself in a way that honours my position – that motherhood simply never felt like my path – but didn’t denigrate anyone else’s experience. This has been tricky, and on some occasions, I suspect I’ve missed the mark. It requires me to assess people’s intentions – are they asking me out of genuine curiosity, or so that they can gather ammunition to judge me and defend their own lifestyle (which, by the way, was never under attack)? I have to make a snap decision, based on language, tone, body language and intuition, while stepping over the social conditioning that implores me to be polite. Tricky.

(Incidentally, I asked my husband how he responds to this question and he said no one really asks him. Make of that what you will.)

These days, I’ve got a different approach.

Now, I navigate the question about whether I have children with a simple one-word answer: “No.” As social media loves to remind us, no is a complete sentence. I do not feel compelled to offer explanations. I simply say “no” and move the conversation on. Because the minute I start tendering reasons for the path I’ve chosen, I’m doing myself a disservice. I’m telling people that I believe my life choices need to defended. They don’t. No one, of any gender, should be forced to defend their life choices in the year 2026 and beyond. And if people ask me why I don’t have children, I usually just change the subject. Unless, of course, they are people I’m close to, whom I know are asking with sensitivity and respect – then, and only then, I might describe how I arrived on this path.

There are so many questions that get lobbed at people, sometimes genuinely in the form of small talk or interest, but sometimes as an opportunity to judge or throw shade:

• Why are you single?

• Why aren’t you and your partner married?

• Why didn’t you stay home with your kids?

• Why did you go back to work after having kids?

• Why didn’t you have more kids?

• Why didn’t you change your surname when you got married?

• Why aren’t you in touch with your mother/father?

It goes on and on.

I am no longer interested in investing time and energy convincing people why I feel the way I do, or why I’ve chosen the path I’ve chosen. I’m happy to explain my thoughts, ideas and feelings to people who approach from a stance of genuine curiosity and interest, but those who are coming at me with an agenda of judgement? I’m not going to entertain that.

If we try to defend something that doesn’t need to be defended, we’ve already lost.

What’s more, if people have already determined I’m living in a way that is unacceptable (to them), no amount of reasoning will convince them otherwise, and I’ll lose time and energy trying. Our time and energy are so precious, and the older I get, the more important it feels to protect this.

Everyone is entitled to make the life choices that feel best to them. No one is entitled to an explanation.

How do you approach comments or questions – or worse: criticisms disguised as jokes – about your life choices? I’m interested in hearing ways other people have ringfenced the sanctity of their own inner world from external critique.

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Goodbye touchy-feely Cancer, hello OTT Leo! The season of the lion begins on Wednesday, a day before Mercury retrograde comes to an end. A couple of interesting manoeuvres by Jupiter could get your imagination firing, but be careful to do your homework before you jump into anything. Meanwhile, the oracle cards caution against stubbornness – flexibility and open-mindedness will be your best approach.

Get the lowdown in my energy forecast video:

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Many of us grew up in religious households where we were taught that the divine power is a vengeful God who will punish us if we sin or transgress in some way. Conversely, if we are ‘good’ and follow ‘the rules’ (whatever that means), we’ll be rewarded. In modern spirituality we know that that’s not how the Universe works – the Universe is not judging us, nor is it doling out punishments or rewards like a school principal. As we’ve all witnessed, terrible things can happen to ‘good’ people, and there are also plenty of examples of people making poor choices but prospering anyway.

If we can’t figure out why something crappy has happened, we might be inclined to assume the Universe has got it in for us. Or maybe we might take the Universe out of the equation and conclude that we’re just unlucky – but what does that even mean?

In this Psychology Today story, US researcher Dr Christian Busch wrote about his struggle to make sense of the devastating California bushfires that destroyed his house last year. While there are some tangible causes he could point to, including climate conditions, his exploration led him onto a new path of researching different types of ‘luck’ – in other words, how much what happens to us is due to human agency, and how much cannot be ascribed to a cause. A driver suffering painful injuries after a car accident might be seen as experiencing bad luck, but if we learn the driver had been drinking before they got behind the wheel, we might be less likely to call it bad luck, due to the role their choices played in the outcome.

The difference between ‘passive’ and ‘active’ (bad) luck is key for how we interpret and prevent setbacks, Dr Busch writes.

From a spiritual perspective, that interpretation is key. As an energy healer, I’ve had clients who believe deep down they are unlucky, and that bad things will likely continue happening to them. I’ve also worked with others who feared they were cursed in some way, or that they are destined to suffer – perhaps as a result of something they’ve done. My work is on clearing these limiting beliefs in their energy field so they can have a more neutral outlook.

If you were raised with the ‘expect the worst, hope for the best’ mindset, I’d suggest rethinking that approach. If we expect the worst – even if we don’t want it – we’re more likely to attract negative outcomes. Not because the Universe is actively harming us, but because the Universe responds to the vibrations we’re sending out. But expecting good things all the time isn’t necessarily helpful, either, given how much of life is out of our control.

Personally, I try to aim for middle ground – feeling optimistic about the potential for good outcomes, and confident I can deal with whatever happens, no matter how unpleasant. This means I’m less likely to interpret events as a punishment or reward, or try to categorise them as good or bad luck.

For me it’s about being less attached to why things happen, and more active in my response. That doesn’t mean disengaging from the emotional responses – here I wrote about my pity party response that helps me process difficult emotions after a setback – and it also doesn’t mean overlooking or excusing the poor choices I’ve made that may have contributed to unwanted outcomes. It just means not interpreting a bad event as being part of a pattern of doom. And being less casual about throwing around the word ‘luck’.

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The sign of Cancer is ruled by the moon, so when a significant lunar event hits that sign, I tend to pay attention. And when it’s a supermoon, even more so! This Tuesday’s new moon in Cancer is an excellent time for hibernating at home, spending quality time with your fam, and letting your emotions flow.

More about this in my energy forecast video, plus why next weekend is an excellent time to overhaul your life:

Find out more in my energy forecast video:

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“There are some promising medications in the pipeline, Rachel. So even if it progresses, there might be treatment available in the future,” the doctor said.

“Yikes,” I said, and he said, “A little bit of yikes. You can visit with the fear, but don’t hire a van and move there.”

What excellent advice, Past Me thought. Fear is most assuredly not a good place to live – though it’s probably the only postcode left in Australia where property prices are still affordable. And, indeed, as I reread that paragraph, it reiterated something I’ve been going through lately.

Two weeks ago, I was trying on some leggings in a garishly lit (aren’t they all?!) changing room with an unforgiving mirror, when I spotted something that made my stomach drop. My knee, which has been slowly recovering from an issue (I wrote about that here), was noticeably swollen in a way it never had before. I’d been experiencing a flare-up of pain for the past 24 hours but assumed it would ease. However when I saw the unequivocal evidence that all was not well, I panicked. And honestly, if you’re going to panic about anything, a garishly lit changing room might well be the most poetic setting. My inner knowingness said: ‘Mild issue, ice and rest will probably sort it.’ But my brain said: ‘DEFINITELY A DANGEROUS BLOOD CLOT YOUR HEART IS CERTAIN TO STOP’.

This is not unfamiliar territory for me. The health anxiety, that is, not the changing room. (Although I do try to avoid both as much as possible.) It’s been going on for years.

Health anxiety is a constant vigilance over your body, thoughts spiralling to dark places at any hint of a problem, no matter how easily that symptom can be explained away. A belief that a health crisis is always minutes away. A relentless poring over Dr Google, and ending up more fearful than ever. Here are a few examples from over the years: A swollen, scratchy eyelid that I was terrified was an eye infection but was just dry eye that I could manage with eye drops. Throbbing gum pain that I thought must be a gum infection but was just a mouth ulcer that disappeared within days. Bouts of dizziness and headaches I feared were a brain tumour but were resolved by physio treatment on my neck.

It’s always something.

It’s (usually) always nothing.

But what if… this time it’s not?

I first landed on the term health anxiety a couple of years ago and all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. I haven’t sought out a formal diagnosis because I don’t really care about the anxiety part, honestly – I care about the deep-seated reasons it’s there. The lack of safety that is manifesting in fears around the physical body. By focusing on healing that lack of safety, and learning to trust my own body, the anxiety has become less potent, less arresting. (I’m not saying this is appropriate for all cases of health anxiety, but it’s the best approach for me – you should always work with your doctor to find the best approach for your circumstances.) I know this intensive energy healing work has been moving me in the right direction because in the past 12 months, when various physical symptoms popped up, I was mostly able to nip fear in the bud quickly. Until the changing room episode.

I managed to calm myself down, and reassure myself the grotesque swelling was likely a temporary issue. When it hadn’t improved after a few days, I saw a physio who diagnosed mild inflammation of the bursa, and gave me some advice to help it improve. As you will have realised, it was not a blood clot.

This experience is proof of two things:

1. Our underlying issues often don’t go away entirely. With healing, they can reduce in intensity and frequency. A return of old issues is not a sign you’ve regressed, it’s a sign there is more work to be done. I was able to bring myself back to a neutral state within a few hours, which is definite progress.

2. Fear is normal and not a sign of brokenness. It flourishes in the absence of information, and also – when Dr Google is involved – when there is too much information. Fear is a bad neighbourhood but not one we can set our navigation system to avoid entirely. Not too many years ago I was living in that neighbourhood – I had the garden, the letterbox, the whole shebang. Now I only cruise through from time to time, mostly without hitting the brakes. That is what healing looks like.

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Getting out of judgement and into a more compassionate mindset is the message across both oracle cards for this week. Ditch your inner critic, and avoid the tendency to jump to damning conclusions about other people’s motivations. The best approach: take a step back before you respond to problems. That’s especially relevant given Mercury’s retrograde, clouding our judgement and making miscommunications more likely than usual.

Find out more in my energy forecast video:

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Late last year I read a letter to Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax which has stayed with me. A woman wrote that she’d been single for many years after her divorce but, after being coerced into dating again by her friends, she had now been in a relationship for two years. She wanted to break up because, while she was making a large emotional investment in the relationship, her partner was not – and as a result, she felt lonely. However her friends were imploring her to stay.

“He’s a good man, they say. He has a stable job. He has never been to jail, he doesn’t yell or hit, and even if he doesn’t tell me he loves me, he clearly loves me (they say). They know what’s out there in the middle-aged dating pool, and they know he’s the best of it … Dump this guy, they say, and it’s not likely I’ll find someone better.”

Yikes!

I’ve heard a version of this before. I’ve worked with clients who know they want to leave their relationship because it no longer feels right for them but feel they cannot leave, because there’s nothing inherently wrong with their partner. I’ve actually had a client say this: “It’s not like he’s violent or anything.” I gently pointed out that this was a very low bar.

Why is it that so many women feel they cannot leave a relationship unless there’s something objectively abhorrent, perhaps even criminally damning, about a male partner? The answer is right there in the letter – the fear that they won’t find anyone better. A scarcity mentality and a fear of being alone – not to mention, financial insecurity – is what drives women (and, I’m sure, many men) to stay in sub-par relationships. It’s difficult for me to understand this, because it’s abundantly clear to me that being alone is vastly better than living in a permanent state of disappointment. Moreover, being alone is often just as fulfilling, purposeful and joyful as being in a partnership, if not more so. But on the whole, society feels otherwise.

Complicating matters, there’s also a vociferous portion of the population who believe that people walk away from relationships far too easily. In my experience as a healer and as a human, the opposite is often true. Many people stay a long time in sub-par relationships because they fear they’ll regret leaving. Ultimately they tend to only regret not leaving sooner.

I would love to see a societal shift where we finally realise that being single is a state of completeness rather than a failing. Beyond that, I wish people could understand that it’s okay to walk away from a relationship when you know in your heart of hearts that it has run its course. I don’t know exactly what happens to us when we die, but I very much doubt there will be medals handed out for tolerating a situation that made you feel small or lonely.

“You don’t need a reason to leave,” the wonderful Cheryl Strayed (another excellent advice-giver) once wrote. “Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That’s all. Be brave enough to break your own heart.”

Of course, knowing when to leave a relationship is never easy, especially if there are children involved. Since the future is not yet written, you can’t know what’s ahead. But it might be helpful to remember that the question isn’t whether there is “someone better” out there, it’s about whether being on your own is – more days than not – better than the relationship you’re in. The letter writer knows she’d be happier in her own company, and that, I suspect, is all she needs to know.

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As we approach the full moon in goal-oriented and work-focused Capricorn, it’s fitting that an oracle card about career transition has come up for the back end of the week. So if you’re considering making changes to your career path, or the way you work, consider this a sign.

Partnerships are also in the spotlight, particularly in a work sense – but that doesn’t mean every person or every collab is worthy of your time and energy. As always, use your discernment.

Find out more in my energy forecast video:

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There’s a common misconception that communication with spirit, the Universe, the divine, whatever term you want to use, is only available to a select few people – those who have a ‘gift’, to use a common phrase, and ‘guru’ tends to suggest something similar. I know the work and spiritual services I provide are valuable, but I am wary about giving the impression, even inadvertently, that I have some sort of rare talent. It feels a bit elitist, and smacks of spiritual gatekeeping, which is a problem in some parts of the community. Ultimately I want everyone – or at least, everyone who feels called to – to work at harnessing their own intuition. But they’ll be less inclined to do that if they think communication with the divine is a gift only bestowed on a chosen few, and that would mean missing out on the opportunity to develop a skill that could make a big difference to your personal growth.

Being able to talk to spirit and understand the answers that come through is not a highly guarded secret like Colonel Sanders’ 11 herbs and spices recipe. In truth, every single human on this planet has access to their intuition, but not many people recognise this, or take the time to develop it. I did this because it felt like something my soul called me to do, but this doesn’t make me special. It just means I’m now able to help people heal at a deeper level than they might be able to do on their own.

But you don’t have to become a spiritual practitioner to make the most of this ability. By developing your own intuitive abilities, you’ve got a helpful tool to make decisions, navigate uncertainty and feel calmer in your everyday life.

Like a muscle that gets strengthened at the gym, connecting to your intuition and understanding its guidance is something that gets better when you spend time on it. Here are some tips that might help.

How to develop your intuition

• Slow down. Intuitive messages often aren’t immediately available, in my experience. If you’re always racing around, it’s harder for your intuition to cut through all the noise in your brain. Having a regular practice of stillness or calm time – and no, watching TV or doomscrolling don’t count – is immensely valuable. Meditation is one way to do this, but I appreciate that it’s not for everyone (I struggle with it, to be totally honest).

• Buy time to make decisions, whenever possible. When you leap into something without taking time to reflect, you’re robbing yourself of time to let your intuition kick in. This is another reason not to say ‘yes’ on the spot when someone asks you a favour – especially if you’re prone to people-pleasing.

• Write, write, write. The act of writing in a journal or on a screen is an invitation for your intuition to come to the fore. Creativity is an intuitive act. Writing also helps you get clarity.

• Trust your own judgement. Reassuring yourself that your judgement is accurate and reliable will go a long, long way towards strengthening your intuitive muscle. You can call on Archangel Michael for a boost of courage and confidence whenever you need it.

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