If you’ve been following my work for a while, you’ve probably heard me say that I believe we are moving toward a more relational way of being. (Even when the world seems to be offering plenty of evidence to the contrary.)

And when I say relational, I don’t only mean learning to be in better relationship with the other living humans around us, though that is important too. But I mean remembering that we are already embedded in relationships that extend beyond the human world, and beyond what we can ordinarily see.

I had one of my earliest glimpses of this many years ago.

After I’d mostly recovered from the illness I wrote about the last two weeks, my husband surprised me with tickets to a performance I’d wanted to see for years. He’d quietly saved for months to buy them.

I was thrilled. I was also terrified.

My body had largely healed by then, but my nervous system hadn’t gotten the memo. Other people’s energy felt almost physically abrasive, like my whole energetic body had turned into one exposed nerve. Crowds were the worst.

By the time we walked into the theater, I could already feel the panic blooming.

The conversations, the bright house lights, the orchestra tuning…it was all chaos to my system. My heart pounded, my hands shook, and I started sweating like someone turned on a faucet in my scalp.

When the lights dimmed, I stopped thinking about the performance altogether. I wanted one thing: out.

I stood up, scanning for the nearest exit, and then I felt the slightest tug at the back of my blouse. I turned, expecting my husband, but he apparently hadn’t even noticed I’d stood up.

Instead I heard the collective voice of my spirit team, clear enough to cut straight through the overture:

“Excuse me. You’re blocking our view.”

I still laugh every time I think about it.

Because it was perfect.

If someone had told me to breathe, calm down, or trust, none of it would have reached me. My guides know me too well for generic advice. They know the strange little pathways of my mind. They know my ridiculous sense of responsibility. They knew exactly what would reach me.

The panic simply stopped. I sat back down and the show began.

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But that isn’t actually the part of the story I think about most.

As I settled into the performance, I became aware that my spirit team wasn’t simply there FOR me, they were experiencing it WITH me.

One of them seemed completely caught up in the music. Another was absorbed in the story. Another seemed to hold the whole evening as one small piece of some larger tapestry I couldn’t see.

They were each experiencing the same performance differently, just as a group of friends sitting side by side would.

And suddenly I understood:

The experience wasn’t just mine.

I wasn’t sitting in a theater seeing a show while my guides hovered somewhere nearby, watching over me. We were watching the performance together.

That realization rearranged something in me. Until then, I think I had unconsciously understood my relationship with my guides largely in terms of what they could give me: guidance, protection, and answers.

And yes, they have given me plenty of all three.

But that night I began to understand that the relationship itself is the biggest gift. I’m the one with the body. I’m the one who gets to hear the music, taste the food, feel the wind, laugh until my stomach hurts, hold the people I love. And my guides get to experience all of that with me, through me.

Now, when I watch a spectacular sunset or hear a piece of music that undoes me, I check in with them:

How are you experiencing this?

That one question has made the world feel so much bigger. Every moment becomes something shared. And this, more and more, is what I mean when I talk about moving toward a more relational way.

It is a way of remembering that we live inside an enormous web of relationship. With one another, certainly, but also with ancestors, guides, spirits, the living Earth, and beings we may not yet even know how to perceive.

And perhaps some of those relationships have just been waiting for us to notice them.

One of the things that gets in the way, I think, is that we’ve been taught to approach spirit guides almost entirely through the question of what they can do for us.

Can they give me an answer?
Can they tell me what choice to make?
Can they protect me?
Can I get a clear enough message to know they’re really there?

And when that’s the only way we know to approach them, connecting can start to feel like another self-help to-do list.

But relationship changes everything.

When you begin to know the beings who accompany you—their particular presence, the ways they communicate, the role they play in your life—you don’t have to manufacture a profound spiritual experience every time you want to connect. You simply recognize them and begin to trust the relationship.

And, over time, you begin to discover that they aren’t only here for the crises and crossroads.

They’re here for the music, too.

That is a part of what Allysha and I will be exploring in Meet Your Guides & Spirit Team on August 28: how to recognize the beings already around you, understand the different kinds of support they offer, and begin building a relationship with them that can become part of your actual, everyday life.

Because getting guidance is wonderful, but being in relationship with these beings changes what it feels like to be alive.

As always, I’d love to hear from all of you about the ways you relate with your guides! Hit reply and let me know.

Blessings and love,
Jenna 💖💖💖

Last week, I told you about the first time I met one of my spirit guides.

That meeting was profound, but as it turned out, it was really just the doorway. Once that door opened, more guides started coming into my awareness.

First came another primary guide. Where my first guide always stands at my back, this one took her place directly in front of me. She explained that she goes out ahead, helping me stay on my path or nudging me back when I’ve wandered off.

She also faces me directly. There’s something about that position that has always hit me deep. She sees me. When I’m overwhelmed or wondering if I can keep going, hers are the eyes I feel on me, gently saying: Keep going. This way.

Over the years, others have shown up, each with their own role in helping this whole collective of “us” move through life. Runner guides who help smooth out the snags of ordinary days. Elemental guides who act like a bridge to the natural world. Teacher guides showing me beauty and joy. And guides who show up specifically around my healing work.

And somewhere along the way, I began to understand something I hadn’t expected: The energy doesn’t just run one way.

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I’m the incarnated one on this team—at least this time around—but I’m not just sitting here passively receiving their wisdom and protection. My life moves through them, too. What I experience, they experience.

I learned this the hard way during a time of grief and chaos. I was struggling so much that one day I finally snapped. I looked at my team and basically demanded: “What is the point of even knowing you if I still have to suffer like this?”

Yeah. Not my finest spiritual moment. Grace under pressure has never exactly been my strong suit. 😂

They just looked at me with so much love. One of them stepped forward, came close, and said gently:

“We don’t know why suffering happens. But we know you aren’t alone in it. When you suffer, we suffer. When you love, we love.”

That changed everything for me. A few years later, during another rough patch, I found a note I had texted myself as a reminder: It’s most important in times of trouble to remember that you are a collective.

I still come back to that.

My suffering wasn’t something happening to me while my guides hovered somewhere outside of it, watching. I wasn’t being abandoned or somehow failing to receive the help I was “supposed” to receive.

We were experiencing it, together. And that shifted the way I understood spiritual relationship altogether.

Spirit stopped feeling like a safety net—something outside myself I was supposed to grab onto when I started falling—and started feeling like a true, intimate relationship. They are part of me, and I am part of them.

We are in this human experience together: Guides. Ancestors. Deities. Spirits of place. The great consciousness itself. A living web where I just happen to be the one wearing the physical body right now.

Your web might look completely different than mine. It probably does. Across history and cultures, people have called these companions by so many names. Every tradition has their own distinct wisdom, and we don’t need to flatten them into one single system to recognize the common thread: We’ve never really been alone.

Maybe today, you could sit somewhere quiet for a minute and ask yourself: If my life is a collective effort rather than a solo performance... who have I been living it with?

And before you ask them for anything at all, you might just say: Thank you.

If you feel like sharing, hit reply and tell me about your own experiences with your collective. I’ve loved hearing your stories, and I’d really love to hear more. Who has shown up for you, how you experience them, or even what you’re still wondering about.

With so much love,
Jenna 💖💖

If this leaves you curious about who might be part of your own spirit team, I’d love to invite you into our upcoming workshop:

Hello, my friends! 🤗

I realized recently that, for all the years I’ve been talking and writing about spirit guides, I’ve never really told you the stories of how I met mine. How I first came to know that I had a spirit team at all.

These relationships are such an important part of who I am and how I move through the world. So, over the next few weeks, I thought I’d share some of those stories with you, beginning with the first guide I ever met.

If you know a bit of my backstory, you might remember that time I was impossibly sick. There was a period where it literally took me all day just to swallow a quarter cup of rice, grain by grain. My doctors were stumped, my body was giving out, and every single morning was a conscious choice to just keep going.

Around that time, I had this vivid moment where I heard a voice tell me I had a choice to make: choose to die, or choose to live and learn how to heal myself. I’ve told you that part of the story before. It’s the dramatic part. The kind of moment that divides a life into before and after.

What I don’t talk about as much was the long, exhausting, unglamorous blur that came after. The days of sheer fear, praying constantly, and celebrating tiny victories that nobody else would’ve cared much about. At the time, my connection to God/the Divine was my absolute lifeline, and I truly thought I was already accessing all the spiritual support available to me.

Turns out, there was more.

One night, I was lying in bed feeling miserable, sweating, nauseous, desperately begging for relief. The room was dark, but the moonlight caught the outline of a figure standing at the foot of my bed. He was tall, over six feet, wrapped in a dark hooded cloak.

What’s wild to me looking back is that I wasn’t scared at all. I just looked at him and said out loud, “I’m not scared of you.”

He let out this incredibly warm laugh and said, “Of course not. Why would you be? I’ve always been with you.”

Listen, I know how this sounds! Maybe I was delirious. Maybe my brain, pushed to its absolute limit, just conjured up what I needed to survive. I can’t prove otherwise. But what I do know is that whatever happened that night didn’t go away when I got better. It became one of the most stable, steadying relationships of my entire life.

He gave me his name, explained he wasn’t human (though appearing that way for my sake), and told me to think of him as a primary spirit guide. Then he moved to the space right behind me, literally at my back. And it felt so natural, like he was just settling into the spot he had held my entire life.

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I didn’t magically get healed the next morning. I was still super sick and struggling to eat. But mentally, everything shifted. For the first time, I felt held. And not just metaphorically, but as a literal, tangible presence at my back that was completely trustworthy and knew me inside and out.

Going from “I’m doing this all by myself” to “Someone who loves me beyond words has my back” completely changed how I walked through the world. Fear was still there, but it was no longer my foundation.

Over the years, working with so many people, I’ve come to realize something: this kind of support isn’t rare. We all have guides at our backs. What’s maybe more rare is just becoming aware of it.

We don’t have to wait for a dramatic moment to meet our guides. It can be subtle, gentle. We can just slowly begin to notice a presence, a pattern, a feeling of being accompanied, and realize it’s been there the whole time.

When I teach about spirit guides, this is always where I start: with the possibility of an ancient relationship that began long before you knew to look for it, one that never required your belief to exist, but might just be waiting for you to turn around and notice it.

I’d love to know…have you ever felt anything like this?

Maybe not a six-foot hooded figure at the foot of your bed, but that subtle, quiet sense that you’re not as alone in your life as you thought? A sudden feeling of comfort, or a sense that something trustworthy was standing right behind you?

You don’t have to have it all figured out or even put a name to it. But if you’re open to sharing, I’d love to hear about it. Just hit reply whenever you have a minute.

Blessings & love to you and your guides,
Jenna 💖💖

If this reflection on meeting my first primary guide stirs something in you, I’d love to invite you into our upcoming workshop:

Welcome, dear ones! I’m so grateful you’re here! Your presence, curiosity, and the beautiful community we’re creating together mean the world to me. Together, we really are ushering in the more relational way. If you’re new, you can learn more about Spirit Connections on the About Page, and if you’d like to journey more closely with us, you can subscribe below. 💖💖💖

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Here in New Mexico, summer doesn’t arrive, it insists. By the time the solstice rolls around, the days are already long and ruthlessly bright. My morning walks have turned into an elaborate game of shade-hopping: one patch of shadow to the next, trying to make it to the end of the block without getting scorched.

The other morning, mid-hop, I stopped and actually looked at the sun. Not for long—after all, this is the high desert, not a poetry retreat—but long enough for one word to drop into my mind and stay there:

Radiance.

I’ve been sitting with it ever since.

What radiance actually is

We use the word a lot. We tell people they’re radiant. We talk about glowing. But standing there in the heat, watching the sun pour itself out onto the cracked earth, I started to feel what the word actually means in its bones.

The sun isn’t trying to shine. There’s no effort in it, no performance, no internal pep talk about showing up brighter today. It just is. Its light is pure overflow, it’s what happens when something is so full it simply can’t help but move outward. You see it all the time in smaller ways: sunlight hitting water and scattering into a thousand directions. Laughter that escapes before you’ve decided to laugh. A child so absorbed in joy they start twirling.

That’s the version of radiance I’m interested in. The kind that doesn’t ask us to generate anything from scratch, but just to be so full that something spills out.

So I’ve been feeling this solstice as an invitation to do just that. To expand the intake. To really receive what’s being offered, to the point of overflow, rather than immediately jumping to giving it away.

And here’s what I’ve noticed: when I actually let something good land in me, really land, it doesn’t stay stuck. It moves. A few minutes of sitting in genuine gratitude and something in me softens and naturally wants to reach toward someone else. No striving. The filling and the radiating aren’t two separate things. One just naturally becomes the other.

If you want to try this out for yourself today, here is the gentle structure I’ve been using:

A solstice practice: Become the overflow

This is simple. It takes about ten minutes, though you can stretch it longer if you want. It works best in the morning, but honestly, any time is fine.

1. Find a moment of stillness. Sit somewhere comfortable. Outside is lovely if you can manage it, even a doorstep, a fire escape, a patch of grass. Close your eyes, or soften your gaze downward.

2. Choose something good. Think of one thing that has genuinely filled you lately. It doesn’t have to be enormous. It could be a conversation, a piece of music, the way the light looked at a particular moment, the feeling of being understood by someone. Just one real thing.

3. Let it land and expand. This is the practice inside the practice. Don’t just think about it, actually let it arrive in your body. Where do you feel it? Does your chest soften? Does something release in your shoulders? Stay here longer than maybe feels necessary.

4. Notice when it wants to move. There’s usually a moment—subtle, but real—when the feeling shifts from receiving to something that wants to go outward. A quiet fullness. A warmth that has nowhere left to expand except toward someone else. Just rest here until it happens.

5. Carry it into your day. Without it being a project or another to-do, just let that quality of warmth move through your ordinary moments exactly as you feel like it. Maybe a text you send, the way you listen to someone, the patience you extend in a frustrating moment, the way you look at a stranger. No forcing. Just overflow.

That’s it. Nothing to get wrong. It’s just a practice of becoming, for a little while, a small sun.

A Summer Solstice offering

I also have a downloadable Summer Solstice/Litha ritual pack available for anyone who would like a little more support for this season.

Inside, you’ll find reflections, simple practices, journal prompts, and a ritual for working with the energy of the solstice in a grounded, accessible way. It’s meant to be something you can move through slowly, return to over time, or simply let inspire your own way of honoring the longest day.

Since paid subscriptions are currently on pause, I’m making this seasonal pack free for everyone.

You can download it here:

https://spiritconnections.love/downloadable-library

May it help you receive the light, tend your own radiance, and carry a little warmth forward into the days ahead.

A small note before I go:

I’m turning much of my creative attention right now toward writing the book version of Sacred Roots, my ancestral healing course and body of work, which means my posts here may be a little less frequent for the time being.

I’m also keeping paid subscriptions on pause for this time. This gives me room to tend the deeper work without feeling like I need to keep producing on a set schedule, and it also allows these seasonal offerings to be shared more freely.

This isn’t a goodbye, just a season of deeper tending.

I’m so grateful for all of you who continue to read, gather, practice, and walk beside this work. I’ll still be sharing here when there’s something meaningful to offer, and I’m especially looking forward to sharing a few upcoming workshops and evergreen resources as they come into form.

And if you ever want to reach me, ask a question, or share something with me, you’re welcome to send me a direct message here or email me anytime at jenna@spiritconnections.love

For now, may this Solstice offering meet you gently.

I wanted to let you know that I’ll be taking the rest of May off from writing and publishing here. It’s been a busy season, and I’m taking this time to disconnect, travel, and recharge so I can come back with renewed energy in early June.

Because I’m pausing new content for a few weeks, I’m also pausing payments for all paid subscribers. You won’t be charged for this downtime, and for our annual supporters, I’ll be extending your expiration date to make sure you get every bit of value you signed up for.

Looking for something to read while I’m away?

Here are a few curated options to settle into:

Thank you so much for reading and for your continued support.

Wishing you a beautiful rest of May, full of good weather, quiet moments, and inspiration of your own. I can't wait to reconnect with you all in June.

Love and blessings to you all,
Jenna 💖

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Welcome back to the Spiral, a deer-inspired model of community where we place a vulnerable need at the center and gather the herd to tend it.

If you’re just jumping in, here’s where this series began:

The Hearth of the Herd: Seeing the Whole Spiral

For the last five weeks, we have been weaving a sanctuary. We have traveled from the hushed, tender center of our needs to the vibrant, expressive edges where our stories meet the world. We have discovered that the Spiral is not a ladder to be climbed or a system to be mastered, but a hearth to sit around.

In a world that demands we be cogs in a pyramid—structured for dominance and exhaustion—the Spiral offers a different way of belonging. It reminds us that we are part of a living collective, an ancestral herd that knows exactly how to hold what is most fragile.

Today, we step back to see the full architecture of this care. This is the map for those moments when the world feels too loud and you feel yourself starting to fragment. It is a reminder that you do not have to carry the weight alone; you simply have to find your place in the ring.

The Architecture of Care: A Comprehensive Reference

At the center of every spiral is the Heart-Need: the most tender or vulnerable part of the community asking for intentional relationship rather than a “fix.”

To hold this center, the community arranges itself into four distinct rings of participation. Each ring houses two specific archetypes: foundational currents of care that respond to the need with unique forms of protection, insight, and creativity. As you look at the map below, notice how the questions asked by the Spiral and the Archetypes create a constant, breathing conversation between the center and the herd.

Going Forward: Tending the Spiral

The Spiral is not a static destination; it is a living rhythm. There will be times when the center need shifts or when the spiral enters a season of integration between tendings. As you move back into your daily life, use the following as a compass to help stay in relationship with your own capacity and the shifting needs of your herd:

1. Check the Pulse of the Center

Every now and again, return to the middle to ask:

• How is our “Heart-Need” feeling now? Has the preferred state shifted, or is a different medicine being called for?

• Is another need coming in? The spiral moves because life moves; stay open to the next “vulnerable thing” asking for the herd’s attention.

2. Look for a Missing Ring

If your spiral feels “stuck,” exhausted, or fragmented, it is often a signal that one of the ancestral rings is empty. Instead of trying to “work harder,” look at your spiral and ask:

• Do we need the Inner Ring? Are we rushing toward a solution or a “fix”? Is there a part of us that needs permission to just be with the discomfort for a while ?

• Do we need the Second Ring? Do we feel like we’re running on empty? Are we missing the resources, the support, or the fresh perspective needed to sustain this effort?

• Do we need the Third Ring? Are we feeling drained by outside pressures? Is our energy leaking because our edges have become blurred or unprotected ?

• Do we need the Fourth Ring? Are we just moving from one crisis to the next? Are we missing the space to make sense of what’s happening and turn it into something lasting ?

3. Integration: Long-Term Sustainability

To ensure the work of the spiral is nourishing over the long haul, check in with the deeper vision of the Ancestral Eight:

• The Companion: Are we still staying near the truth of our experience, or have we started to exile the parts of us that feel “slow” or “messy”?

• The Healer: Is our chosen “medicine” still serving a more-preferred state, or has it become a rigid rule we’re using to override ourselves?

• The Procurer: What is our most sustainable resource moving forward? Do we have a grounded sense of “enoughness” to support the next turn of the spiral?

• The Genius: Where are our “growth edges” right now? As we adapt, are we staying in relationship with the discomfort of growth, or are we shaming our “inadequacy”?

• The Guardian: Have our boundaries remained fluid protectors of our integrity, or are they becoming rigid walls of defense?

• The Sovereign: Are we still standing in our internal authority, or have we begun to leak power by looking for external permission slips again?

• The Artist: Are we still “digesting” our experiences into shared meaning, or are we letting our stories become stagnant and isolated?

• The Maven: What is the legacy we are carrying forward? Which of our insights have successfully moved from a “one-time act” into the muscle memory of our daily lives? And can we can use this as a steady foundation as the spiral turns?

Our Spirit Connections Spiral Story: The Empowerment Arc

Look at how far we’ve come in our shared spiral for Empowerment:

• We Began at the Center: We admitted that we were exhausted from trying to fit our deep sensitivity into rigid, urgent systems. Our Companion sat with that exhaustion, and our Healer discerned that our “Medicine” was the permission to only engage if we could bring our whole, nourished selves.

• We Gathered Support: Our Procurer noticed where we were overgiving and underreceiving, while our Genius sparked the “Aha!” that our sensitivity isn’t a flaw, it’s our primary power source.

• We Claimed the Realm: Our Guardian fought for our capacity by saying “No” to the compulsion of the “shoulds,” and our Sovereign took the throne, refusing to ask permission to be less sensitive.

• We Wove the Meaning: Our Artist turned our “too-muchness” into a North Star story of hope, and our Maven began the steady, daily practice of the “Middle Way”, blending our depth with the world’s demands without losing our essence.

There is no final arrival here. No moment where the spiral is complete and the work is done. There is only this ongoing returning, this quiet remembering that we belong within the rhythm of care.

You are not meant to hold everything. You are meant to be held within something.

And when the world feels too loud, too sharp, too much, may you find your place in the spiral, trusting that, together, every need is tended.

Blessings and love to you all,
Jenna 💖

May each one of you have the knowing that you belong; that you are a necessary part of all you are in relationship with. 💖💖💖

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I had actually written a different post for today (one about dreams and closets), but my guides stopped me and brought my attention to this post from my archive. They told me that someone among you needs to see this. If it’s you, please know that you don’t have to carry the weight of your entire lineage on your own shoulders. Sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do isn’t to solve the puzzle, but simply to reach out and let ourselves be held. I want you to know that I’m here for you, and I’m holding space for your journey today.

For decades, I have done work as a spiritual healer, but over the past few years, my focus has shifted towards healing the dead. Working closely with the ancestors has become my deepest passion. I am constantly awed by the glimpses they give me into their lives: stories of their struggles, their triumphs, and, most of all, their spiritual beliefs, which includes their devotion to different faces of the Divine.

Early on in my ancestral healing work, I came across a simple song by Shoshana Jedwab called “Where You Go.” Some of the lyrics are:

Your people are my people
Your Divine is my Divine

Those words landed in my heart like a calling. If my ancestors revered something as sacred, could I do any less? Whatever or whomever they called Divine must also be Divine to me.

I decided to take this on as a mission of sorts. Whatever they held sacred, I would hold sacred. I would honor this without question and not let them down.

Or so I thought.

The ancestors come from many lineages, and their beliefs are as varied as they are. Some of these beliefs, unsurprisingly, conflict with one another. My once-clear mission of honoring their sacredness quickly turned into a complex puzzle. Still, I remained committed. If we are collectively moving toward a more relational way of living—a message my guides remind me of often—then surely this was an opportunity to practice that very relationality.

I began to see myself as a vessel of reconciliation, capable of holding all the paradoxes my ancestors carried. It felt like an honor to be the bridge, the place where centuries of discord might finally find harmony.

And it worked! Some of the time. Ok, once or twice. And then I was faced with a real life, in-the-moment situation and had no idea what to do.

My parents live in a small mountain town, where they’re active members of the church community. On a recent visit, my mom asked if I would attend a service with them to meet their new minister and I agreed to go.

Both of my parents sing in the church choir, which meant they’d be sitting up front near the pulpit during the service. I found a spot in the congregation and, as it turned out, had an entire row to myself.

As soon as I sat down, I could feel a great many ancestors all around me. Generations upon generations from every lineage had belonged to the Christian faith and they were immensely pleased about gathering together to worship that day. I smiled and settled in, happy to be sharing the experience with all of them.

But then, something shifted.

The new minister was engaging and articulate, delivering a sermon that held my attention.

Until he made an offhand remark.

He was discussing Roman culture in the ancient world and, in passing, referred to the Roman gods as mere fantasy.

Immediately I sensed the presence of my Pagan ancestors. Here it was! My opportunity to be the living reconciliation of differing beliefs as it was unfolding in real time.

And I blew it.

I felt defensive and protective of the Pagan ancestors. I wanted to reassure them that their beliefs are not inferior in anyway, and I felt myself pushing away the Christian ancestors. Rather than being a vessel for reconciliation, I was taking sides.

I stopped listening to the sermon entirely. My thoughts whirled: How do I stay neutral? How do I hold both points of view? How do I reconcile this?

By the time the benediction began, I was still lost in my thoughts. As the congregation rose, I noticed that everyone was holding hands, but I had no one next to me since I had chosen a row to myself. My isolation in that empty row now felt glaringly symbolic.

Mostly, though, I was consumed with guilt. I had failed to hold the paradox. I had failed to be the bridge. Silently, I pleaded with the ancestors, Show me what to do.

I turned back to face the front of the room. There, in the choir, with an expression of profound love on his face, was my Dad, reaching towards me with an outstretched hand. My eyes prickled with tears as I ran up and took his hand.

I’d gotten the answer I needed. The ancestors did, indeed, show me what to do.

It was never my job to be the sole vessel of reconciliation or to hold paradox alone. In my mission to embody relationality, I had forgotten to be relational. I’d slipped into the familiar pattern of thinking I had to do it all myself, as if healing the ancestors—or myself—could ever be a solitary act.

And then there was my Dad, reaching for me with an expression of love so pure it carried the weight of generations. In taking his hand, I was reminded of the truth: reconciliation is a collective practice.

All we ever have to do is reach out. There is always an ancestor’s hand reaching back.

Reconciliation is deep, often heavy work. If the path ahead feels a bit daunting, I do offer a self-paced course called Sacred Roots on my website for those who want a guided container for this healing.

But for today, simply start with the breath. How might you act as a vessel of reconciliation in your life? What hands are reaching for you, waiting to meet you in love?

The Fourth Ring: The Transmuters of Meaning

Welcome back to the Spiral, a deer-inspired model of community where we place a vulnerable need at the center and gather the herd to tend it.

We began by naming a community—be it family, lineage, or your own inner world—and its specific “Heart-Need.” You are also welcome to follow along as we tend the need of Empowerment for our Spirit Connections community. For us, empowerment isn’t “power-over”; it is the capacity to engage with life without overriding ourselves.

We already met the inner ring of direct tenders: The Companion and The Healer; the second ring of supporters: The Procurer and The Genius; and third ring of protectors: The Guardian and The Sovereign. Now this week we turn our attention to the fourth and final ring: The Artist and The Maven.

If you’re just jumping in, here’s where this series began:

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In the fourth and final ring of our spiral, we meet The Artist and The Maven, where the experience of the entire spiral is processed and turned into shared meaning.

Shared meaning is not just a luxury or something we afford ourselves after the “real” work is done. Instead, it is the very thing that prevents our experiences from becoming stagnant or isolated. Meaning is the metabolic process of the herd; it is how we digest what has happened to us so that it can nourish us rather than deplete us. Without this ring, we are just a group of people surviving crises together. With it, we become a community holding a legacy.

The Artist and the Maven act as the interface between the work of our spiral and the larger collective. They take the “medicine” we have created and give it a form that can be carried. It is through this ring that our need is distilled from a private experience into a collective contribution. Here, what we have learned doesn’t just stay with us; it becomes part of the shared wisdom of the world.

The Artist: The Power of Expression

The Artist is the one who shapes expression from raw experience. Historically, this was the ancestral function that passing moments into permanent forms like patterns carved into bone, pigments on cave walls, or songs that held the history of the herd.

The Artist receives the energetic current of the spiral and puts it into a form that can be engaged with. And it supports the spiral in three vital ways:

1. Metabolism: It helps “digest” the intensity of the need so it doesn’t become stagnant or overwhelming. By turning a feeling into a form (a story, a ritual, a garden), the Artist moves the energy so the community doesn’t get clogged.

2. Mirroring: The Artist reflects the spiral back to itself. When the Artist expresses, “This is how it feels,” the rest of the spiral feels seen. It tells the community: Our need isn’t just a problem to be fixed; it is a story we are writing together.

3. Interface: The Artist takes the Sovereign’s vision and makes it relatable. They “write the copy” for the soul, creating the shorthand and the imagery that allow the outside world to understand and support the spiral’s work.

Who or what is in the role of Artist in your community?

Pause and ask: Who is expressing the currents of our spiral?

For example:

• If the need is an an overwhelmed child: The Artist is the one who says, “Let’s draw what your ‘Angry’ looks like.” By turning the scream into a “red spikey ball” on paper, the emotion moves from the body into a form that can be related to and soothed.

• If the need is tension in a partnership: The Artist is the creator of “shared shorthand”: the inside jokes or the unique language that turns a recurring conflict into a common story that you both own and navigate together.

• If the need is the land: The Artist is the one who creates a shrine or a poem that allows others to see the spirit of the place. They move the land from property to sacred relationship.

• For the inner world: The Artist is the way you curate your home or your appearance to reflect the safety you’ve claimed. It is your life as a visual testament to your healing, signaling to yourself and others: This is who I am now.

The Maven: The Power of Practice

If the Artist is the creator of expression, the Maven is the steady hand of continuity. This is the archetype of the craftsperson and the teacher, the one who knows that a discovery only matters if it can be sustained. Historically, the Maven was the toolmaker, the weaver and the shelter-builder; they knew the materials so well they could make the structure last through the seasons.

The Maven is the bridge between a one-time breakthrough and a way of life. While the Genius provides the ‘Aha!’ moment, the Maven does the daily work to turn that insight into a habit. If the Artist helps us understand meaning, the Maven helps us live it. They ensure the wisdom of the herd moves out of our thoughts and into our muscle memory. The Maven supports our spiral in two vital ways:

1. Mastery: They translate intuitive discoveries into repeatable skills. By building a "tool-kit" and establishing a steady rhythm, the Maven ensures we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time a need arises. They turn a one-time intervention into a relational hygiene that sustains us for the long haul.

2. Lineage: The Maven acts as a bridge across time. They are the ones who preserve and pass on the knowledge, ensuring that the work of the spiral becomes a lasting contribution to the collective wisdom of the world.

Who or what is in the role of Guardian in your community?

Pause and ask: Who or what is helping you turn the meaning into a sustainable legacy?

For example:

• If the need is an overwhelmed child: The Maven is the consistent routine. It is the “knowing” that comes from years of trial and error, turning parenting from a state of constant reaction into a honed craft of nervous-system regulation.

• If the need is tension in a partnership: The Maven is the daily practice. It is the mastered habit of the “evening check-in” or the “active listening” that you have practiced so often it has become muscle memory.

• If the need is the land: The Maven is the keeper of the seasons. It is the one who knows which plants thrive and how to maintain the soil balance year after year, ensuring the land isn’t just visited but truly tended.

• For the inner world: The Maven is the part of that has become a master of your own tools. You no longer just hope for relief; you have a reliable set of practices that you trust because you have used them a thousand times.

Working the Spiral: Questions for the Fourth Ring

Below are questions to help us engage with the fourth ring. You might bring these to your community, sit in meditation, or pull cards as I have done for our Spirit Connections collective.

For our Spirit Connections community (The High Priestess):

The High Priestess tells us that the story isn’t a loud, plot-driven epic; it is a story of unveiling. The Artist looks at our collective experience and sees that our need is trying to tell the story of what lives beneath the surface. This is the medicine of the unseen. Our story is one of reclaiming our intuitive depth and honoring the mystery that doesn't always have a "productive" explanation. The Artist’s role here is to take our wordless, High Priestess-style knowing and turn it into the imagery and rhythm that allows us to recognize our own souls.

For our Spirit Connections Community (The Lovers):

Awww, I love that The Lovers came up here! We make the medicine of Empowerment visible through the art of aligned choice. The Lovers represent the moment we choose a path because it resonates with our core, not because we’ve been pressured to take it. Our "Art" is the visible evidence of our integrity; when we refuse to override our own hearts, we show the rest of the world that they have permission to do the same.

For our Spirit Connections Community (Five of Wands):

To stay Empowered, we’re invited to master the messy middle of our own internal friction. The 5 of Wands represents that moment when our different needs, fears, and desires all start clashing at once. Maybe in the past we’d override some parts of ourselves, picking one voice to silence the rest. The Maven suggests that the practice we need to master isn’t silencing the clash, but learning how to coordinate the dance. We turn this into a sustainable rhythm by learning to stand in the center of our own internal “rumble” without letting it scatter our energy. We practice staying present with the friction until a new way forward emerges.

For our Spirit Connections Community (The Hanged One):

Oh my gosh, what a perfect card here! We transmute our experience through Sacred Perspective. The Hanged One reminds us that enduring wisdom doesn’t come from the rush to act, but from our willingness to pause and look from a different angle. For our community, this is the ultimate practice of not overriding ourselves.

We turn experience into wisdom by listening to the perspectives of all our brilliant, sacred parts before we move. This pause allows us to see what our true capacity is in any given moment, so we can engage with life from a place of integrated truth rather than forced will. The Maven’s greatest craft is building this internal space of stillness, ensuring that the medicine we offer the world is seasoned with the clarity that only comes from deep, patient witnessing.

Integrating the Spiral

It has been a deep honor to walk through these four rings with all of you!

Next week, I’ll be sharing a special “Spiral Cheat Sheet”…a post that brings all four rings together into one cohesive map. We’ll look at the model as a whole so we can fully integrate these archetypes into a practical, daily rhythm for our lives and our communities.

I would love to hear from you in the comments: As we reach this final ring, what “medicine” from your journey is starting to feel shelf-stable?

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May your hands be steady as you weave the new story. May your voice be clear as you share the medicine you’ve found. May you remember that your work is an act of sacred continuity.

You are the Artist. You are the Maven. You are the Way.

With so much love,
Jenna 💖

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Dearest readers,

May this season remind us that blooming is not a solo act.
We are made for connection.
We are made to come alive together. 💖💖

At Beltane, the world leans fully into aliveness.

What has been stirring quietly now begins to bloom. The sap rises, blossoms open, and fires catch.

And to me, Beltane is not just about fertility in the shallow, decorative sense it sometimes gets reduced to. It’s about relationship. It’s about the sacred meeting place between Earth and Sky, body and spirit, self and other. It’s about the life force that moves between beings and reminds us that creation is never solitary.

Our ancestors knew this. They marked this turning with fire, flowers, song, sweetness, blessing, and embodied joy. They understood that there are seasons for descent and seasons for blooming, seasons for silence and seasons for saying yes to life. Beltane is one of those yes seasons.

To celebrate all of this magic, I created a Beltane Downloadable Pack filled with ritual, reflection, seasonal correspondences, sacred practices, and more to help us enter the spirit of the season with intention and beauty.

To get your pack, visit: https://spiritconnections.love/downloadable-library

And to my beloved paid subscribers: thank you! ❤️🙏🤗

Your support allows me to keep creating, teaching, and tending this community with my whole heart. As a gesture of gratitude, you’ll find a free download code for the pack below.

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The Third Ring: Protectors of Coherence

Welcome back to the Spiral, a deer-inspired model of community where we place a vulnerable need at the center and gather the herd to tend it.

We began by naming a community—be it family, lineage, or your own inner world—and its specific “Heart-Need.” You are also welcome to follow along as we tend the need of Empowerment for our Spirit Connections community. For us, empowerment isn’t “power-over”; it is the capacity to engage with life without overriding ourselves.

We already met the inner ring of direct tenders: The Companion and The Healer; and the second ring of supporters: The Procurer and The Genius. This week we settle into the third ring of protectors: The Guardian and The Sovereign.

If you’re just jumping in, here’s where this series began:

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In the third ring, we meet the archetypal forces of The Guardian and The Sovereign. These are the Protectors, the ones who ensure the coherence of the whole structure.

There is a reason we don’t start the spiral here. In dominator culture or patriarchal models, leadership is almost always placed at the top of the pyramid, or centered and prioritized above all else. But in the Spiral model, leadership is not the point. We do not gather for the sake of the Sovereign or to obey the rules of the Guardian. Instead, they both watch over the spiral so that the vulnerable need at the center can exist in safety.

While the inner ring tends the need and the second ring gathers the resources, the Protectors ensure the space around the need remains sacred. They guard the boundaries and hold the long-term vision, ensuring the community doesn’t lose its “sense of self” to external pressures. This is the ring where the hope of the spiral truly lives; for only when a space is fully protected can it finally begin to imagine a future.

The Guardian: Protector of the Power of Choice

The Guardian is the archetype of thresholds and structure. This role protects the integrity of the community, ensuring that the “inside” of the spiral stays true to itself and isn’t overwhelmed by what belongs on the “outside.”

In the spiral, one of the Guardian’s jobs is to stop the leakage of energy that occurs when we are constantly on the lookout. When our edges are protected, we finally have the capacity to choose instead of merely react. This isn’t about creating a rigid wall. Instead, it is a healthy, relational boundary that says: “Right now, this belongs here, and that does not.”

Who or what is in the role of Guardian in your community?

The Guardian protects the integrity of the spiral so it can do its work without being drained or interrupted. Pause and ask: What is currently protecting the integrity of your community?
For example:

• If the need is an overwhelmed child: The Guardian is the firm “No” to an extra playdate. It protects the child’s nervous system, keeping them in a space where choice is possible rather than falling into pure reaction.

• If the need is tension in a partnership: The Guardian is the agreement to not discuss heavy topics after 9 PM. It protects the integrity of the container, acknowledging that fatigue might remove the power of choice and replace it with the compulsion to defend or attack.

• If the need is in the land: The Guardian is the fence that keeps out the grazers or the legal protection that prevents development. It ensures the land’s purpose isn’t hijacked by external pressures.

• For the everyday: Sometimes the Guardian is the friend who steps in to advocate, and sometimes it’s a ritual…closing a door, cleansing a space, or unplugging the router. It is any act that builds containment around the Yes and No.

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The Sovereign: The Power of Identity and Belonging

Where the Guardian manages the border, the Sovereign holds the vision. The Sovereign is like the True North for the spiral; the archetype that reminds the community who they are and why they are here. The Sovereign ensures that while we are busy tending the need, we don’t lose sight of the “Big Picture.”

This archetype leads by modeling Internal Authority: the radical act of standing in one’s truth so clearly that the rest of the spiral remembers exactly what the realm stands for. The Sovereign refuses to let the community’s identity be defined by external circumstances or temporary storms.

Who or what is in the role of Sovereign in your community?

Pause and ask yourself: Who or what is holding the vision of the community?
For example:

• If the need is an overwhelmed child: The Sovereign is the parental clarity that remembers who this child is at their core, refusing to let their identity be defined by a “tantrum” or a “bad grade.”

• If the need is tension in a partnership: The Sovereign is the shared “Us”…the higher vision of the relationship that remembers the “Sacred Union” even when the individuals are struggling.

• If the need is in the land: The Sovereign is the Old Growth tree or the Spirit of the Place, asserting its right to exist in its own ancient majesty. Its mere presence dictates the identity of the forest.

• For the inner world: Sometimes the Sovereign is the quiet, internal voice that says: “I am the one who decides how my life is shaped.” It is the shift from acting out of obligation to acting from true sovereignty.

Working the Spiral: Questions for the Third Ring

Below are questions to help us engage with the third ring. You might bring these to your community, sit in meditation, or pull cards as I have done for our Spirit Connections collective.

For our Spirit Connections community: Two of Pentacles/Gems
The Guardian looks at the Two of Gems—that endless juggling act—and identifies it as a safety issue. When we override our capacity to keep all the balls in the air, our nervous system enters a state of high alert. The Guardian’s practical move here is The Great Pause. It helps us get clarity on which coins we can put down for now, declaring that we will not value the movement of the “coins” over the stability of the “hands” holding them.

For our Spirit Connections community: The Devil
The Devil represents the “invisible leash”…those automatic compulsions, "shoulds," and survival habits that take the wheel before we even realize it. For our need for Empowerment, the Guardian doesn't try to "fix" or shame these habits; instead, it performs the practical act of interrupting our loops. The Guardian’s move here is to help us simply name the leash. When we feel that familiar, frantic tug—the urge to over-explain, to say yes when we mean no, or to override our exhaustion—the Guardian steps in and allows us to say: “We see the leash. This is a habit, not a requirement.” By naming the compulsion in real-time, the Guardian breaks the spell of the "automatic" and restores our power of choice. It builds a boundary not against the world, but around our integrity, ensuring that when we step forward, we are doing so as conscious agents rather than reactive ones.

For our Spirit Connections community: The Moon
The Moon tells us our highest identity isn’t “productive worker” or “reliable helper.” It is “Wild, Enchanted Soul.” The Sovereign protects this identity by ending our habit of apologizing for the conditions we need to function. We often feel "too much" because we are trying to navigate by the harsh sun of other people's expectations. The Sovereign reminds us: Our realm is the deep forest. Just as certain plants only bloom at night, our brilliance requires the Moonlight of a slower pace and intuitive depth. Empowerment means we stop trying to force ourselves into the daylight of normalcy and start trusting the instincts that come alive in the dark.

For our Spirit Connections community: The Hermit
We leak power when we prioritize external sources of wisdom. Maybe it’s waiting for a professional, a book, or a teacher to tell us we’ve done enough. This is the leak of external validation. The Sovereign corrects this by reminding us that the Hermit’s path of introspection is a non-negotiable prerequisite, not a luxury.

Practically, we must “hermit” first to find our own signal before we bring it back to the herd. Our power returns the moment we stop looking “out there” for a permission slip that can only be signed “in here.” The Sovereign reminds us: Community is a gathering of authorities, not a collection of followers. We aren’t here to tell each other what to do; we are here to witness one another standing in our own truth..

It has been profound to witness the way this community is beginning to stand its ground. I see the Guardians among you already practicing the “Great Pause”, choosing to set down the coins you’ve been juggling to favor the stability of your own hands. I also hear the voice of the Sovereign rising in your reflections, as you reclaim your moonlight and stop waiting for outside permission to trust your own depth. Together, we are building a realm where sensitivity is seen as the brilliance it actually is.

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Next week, we move to the final ring of our spiral: The Artist and The Maven. We will explore how we integrate this work into the long-term story of our lives and how we stay connected to the larger web.

May you trust the boundaries that act as the sanctuary for your heart-need. May you find the quiet courage to “hermit” until your own signal is clear enough to follow. And may you remember that while the herd gathers to support you, the authority to name your truth belongs only to you.

You are protected. You are sovereign. You are becoming.

With so much love,
Jenna 💖

Welcome back to the Spiral, a deer-inspired model of community where we place a vulnerable need at the center and gather the herd to tend it.

We began by naming a community—be it family, lineage, or your own inner world—and its specific “Heart-Need.” You are also welcome to follow along as we tend the need of Empowerment for our Spirit Connections community. For us, empowerment isn’t “power-over”; it is the capacity to engage with life without overriding ourselves.

Last week, we met the inner ring of direct tenders: The Companion and The Healer. This week, we move to the second ring of supporters: The Procurer and The Genius.

If you’re just jumping in, here’s where this series began:

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In the second ring of our spiral, we meet the Procurer and the Genius. These are our Supporters. While the inner ring (the Companion and Healer) focuses deeply on the need itself, the Supporters hold a wider gaze. They look toward the center to witness what the tenders require to sustain their work, and they look outward to the "herd" to see what can be gathered, reimagined, or reclaimed for care of the need.

The Procurer: The Wisdom of Enoughness

The Procurer is the gatherer, the provider, and the steward of resources. In the ancient vision of the Ancestral Eight, this function ensured the collective thrived by anticipating the group’s needs—food, materials, or security—and securing them for the well-being of the whole.

But the Procurer isn’t just about acquisition; this role holds the wisdom of enoughness. It asks: What resources will best support us? Do we know when to stop gathering? What can we offer in return?

The Procurer ensures everyone—especially the Companion and the Healer—has what they need to stay the course. They are the stewards of the balance between tending and being tended.

Who or what is in the role of Procurer in your community?

Pause and ask: Who or what is ensuring your spiral has the resources it requires?

For example:

• If the need is a child who is overwhelmed: The Procurer might be the parent handling logistics so the Companion can stay present, or the steady routine, or the physical comfort of a warm blanket and a full belly.

• If the need is tension in a partnership: the Procurer might be the shared savings that allow for a weekend away, or the time carved out specifically for a difficult conversation.

• If the need is something in the land: The Procurer secures the seeds, the water, and the tools required for the Healer to restore the soil’s rhythm.

• If the need is ancestral grief: the Procurer is the one who gathers the altar items—photos, candles, and specific foods—ensuring the “Well Ones” have a landing place.

The Genius: The Spark of Innovation

Where the Procurer ensures we have what we need, the Genius illuminates and expands. This one is the spark of innovation and the energy of adaptability.

The Genius isn’t about “intellectual elitism.” It is about the innate capacity to see the world with fresh eyes. It is the driving force of inspiration and course correction. When the ways of tending a need are no longer working or otherwise need a shift, the Genius asks the big questions: What if we looked at this differently? What breakthrough is waiting just past our current assumptions?

The Genius supports the spiral by providing the “Aha!” moments that allow the tending to continue, even in hard times.

Who or what is in the role of Genius in your community?

Pause for a moment and ask: Who or what is bringing a new way of seeing to this need?

• If the need is an overwhelmed child: the Genius might be the sudden insight to turn a difficult moment into a game, using the medicine of play to shift the energy.

• If the need is tension in a partnership: the Genius could be the spark of curiosity that reframes a partner’s behavior as a signal of their own unmet need, rather than a personal attack.

• If the need is in the land: the Genius is the one who notices a new pattern in how the plants are growing, suggesting a radical change in direction for the garden’s care.

• And sometimes, the Genius is found in the unexpected: maybe a mentor’s passing comment that sparks an insight, or a change in environment—turning off the news, leaving the room, or taking a walk—that helps the energy of care flow better through the spiral.

Working the Spiral: Questions for the Second Ring

Below are questions to help us engage with the second ring of the spiral. You might bring these questions to your community and discuss them; sit in meditation and listen for the answers; or pull cards like I did.

For our Spirit Connections community (The Star):

Wow. This one hit me right in the heart. The Star is the light that remains after The Tower falls; it is the quiet, persistent glow that appears when the structures we relied on have crumbled. In short, the star is hope.

Last week, we identified that our “more preferred state” of empowerment is stepping into life with our full selves, without overriding the parts of us that are exhausted or overwhelmed. The Procurer reveals that the fuel we need to get there is hope. In our current world, hope can feel scarce, but here’s the magic: I truly believe that hope is contagious. If you find yourself carrying even a small spark of it this week, you are the Procurer. Spread it around. It’s one of those amazing things that multiplies the more of it we share.

For our Spirit Connections community (King of Pentacles):

We will know we have enough when Hope moves from a fragile feeling to a grounded reality. Like the King of Pentacles, we will feel so anchored in our abundance that our hope naturally overflows, providing shade and security for everyone around us.

And in this way, hope stops being a fleeting emotion and becomes part of the structure we stand on…something reliable, something shared, something that sustains not just ourselves, but the whole community.

For our Spirit Connections community (Justice):

Last week, we saw that the Healer’s medicine is about making our internal parts feel safe enough to engage. But safety isn’t a static destination; it’s a constant negotiation. Justice enters as our Genius to offer a radical idea: Maybe safety is found in calibration.

Justice moves us away from the “all or nothing” mindset. It brings the insight that fluctuating energy isn’t a failure of consistency, it is simply a natural cycle. When we adjust our output based on our capacity, we aren’t “flaking”; we are practicing the high art of balance.

The Genius asks: What if your sensitivity is actually your diagnostic tool? If we stop seeing our “too-muchness” as a burden and start seeing it as a precision instrument, we navigate the world with a new kind of authority. Justice tells us that when we honor our limits, we aren’t shrinking, we are finally standing on level ground.

For our Spirit Connections community (4 of Wands):

Our capacity to adapt isn’t just high, it’s jubilant. Often, when we talk about “innovation” or “adaptation,” it sounds like hard work or a steep learning curve. But the 4 of Wands suggests that this shift—moving from seeing our sensitivity as a drain to seeing it as our brilliance—feels less like learning and more like remembering. We get to step into the knowing that we belong in our own skin and receive it as the blessing it is. In short: We aren’t just managing this change; we are thriving in it. The innovation of the Genius has found a stable, welcoming home in our community.

Tending the Ring Together

It’s been so moving to sense the shift in our Spirit Connections community as we tend our spiral. Some of you are already acting as Procurers, offering up stories of hope that act as fuel for the rest of us. Others are stepping into the role of the Genius, sharing those “Aha!” moments that help us recalibrate how we show up without burning out. Watching you all weave this safety net together is a beautiful reminder that we don’t have to carry the weight of change alone.

Next week, we’ll move to the third ring: The Guardian and The Sovereign. We’ll look at how we protect this sacred work and how we step into the vision for the whole herd.

May we trust that we are already resourced for the path ahead. May we be gentle with ourselves as we learn the art of calibration, and may we recognize the brilliance in our own sensitivity.

You are supported. You are inspired. You are becoming.

With so much love,
Jenna 💖

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We miss so much when we only trust our eyes.

I believe that modern life has trained us as a collective to be surface-dwellers. We can easily fixate on what is seeable, measurable, and confirmed. We look at a room and see furniture; we look at a person and see a body; we look at a forest and see trees. We’ve become habituated to the “flatness” of things, believing that if we can’t see the strings, there is no web of connection.

But when we only trust our eyes, it seems to me that we can end up living in a fairly lonely world.

The truth is that we are in relationship with “more-ness” all the time, whether we realize it or not. The dead, the Divine, the emotional resonance of a space…none of these are in a different realm. They are right here, woven into the fabric of our everyday experiences, just waiting for us to notice.

The Question to Carry

There’s a simple question that has been quietly reshaping how I move through the world. I’ve been carrying it with me—letting it follow me into ordinary moments—and I want to offer it to you as something you might hold as well.

You might turn to it in the kitchen, the car, the grocery store aisle, or even in the middle of a difficult conversation. I wonder if, over time, it might become a kind of habit, something that begins to feel like second-nature.

Here’s the question:

What is present here that I cannot see?

We don’t need to strain when we ask it, or try to extract a profound message.

Just see what happens when you let your perception extend exactly one inch beyond the visible.

When you ask it, you might begin to notice things like:

• The thick, warm memory held in an old armchair in the corner of your living room.

• The emotional “weather” that lingers in the kitchen after a shared laugh…or a quiet argument.

• The subtle, steady sense of being accompanied; the soft presence that sits beside you in the car.

• The almost-imperceptible shift in a conversation, where something unspoken moves between you.

• The way a space holds you differently depending on what has been lived there.

• Or simply the inner structure of the wall next to you.

The Ordinary Habit of Connection

This isn’t about escaping the physical world for a spiritual one (because these aren’t two separate things). It’s about finally, fully arriving in the world as it actually is. Vibrant, crowded, and deeply connected.

When we practice noticing what we cannot see, we stop being surface-dwellers. We begin to repair our own access to the relationship that was there all along. We move from the flatness of “matter” into the depth of existence.

Try it once today.

What is present here that I cannot see? Then sense one inch deeper, wider, further into the unseen.

To me, that tiny shift in attention is where the world becomes whole again.

Welcome back to our journey through the Spiral—a Deer Goddess-inspired model of community where we place a vulnerable need at the center and gather the herd around to tend it. (If you’re just joining us, you can find the map and the first steps of our journey here.)

Last week, we were invited to name a community—your family, your lineage, or your inner world—and the “Heart-Need” at its center. You’re welcome to walk with your own community and its need. Or join us—our Spirit Connections collective—and the heart need of Empowerment: the need to come into relationship with our capacity to engage with life without overriding ourselves.

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Today, we meet the two ancestral archetypes that hold the inner ring, the ones who stand closest to our need at the center: The Companion and The Healer. They are the ones who stay near what is most fragile until the truth of the medicine is revealed.

The Companion: The Power of “I’m Here”

The Companion is the archetype that reminds us we were never meant to walk alone. In the ancient vision my guides shared, the Companion was the one who made sure no one was forgotten or exiled from the group.

The Companion doesn’t try to steer the situation or offer unsolicited advice (which is often just anxiety trying to control the room). They simply stay. They listen in a way that says, I’m here with you.

Who or what is in the role of Companion in your community?

As you look toward your community, remember that you aren’t meant to fill every role yourself. In fact, if you are the vulnerable member at the center—the heart-need being tended—allow others to step in. If the community you’re focusing on is your own inner world, different parts of yourself may take on these roles. But if your community includes others, there may already be someone—or some presence—sitting in that inner ring, staying close to the need.

Pause for a moment and ask: Who or what is already steady in relationship with the need itself?
For example:

• If the need is a child who is overwhelmed, the Companion might be the adult who sits quietly nearby, not rushing them out of their feelings.

• If the need is tension in a partnership, the Companion might be the one willing to remain present to the discomfort without trying to resolve it too quickly.

• If the need is something in the land—a place that has been neglected or harmed—the Companion might be the one who returns again and again, bearing witness.

• And sometimes, the Companion is less obvious. It might be a rhythm, a practice, or even a place that holds the need without trying to change it. A chair you return to. A stretch of water that receives everything. A piece of music that lets the feeling exist exactly as it is.

And if no one is currently functioning as the Companion in your community, is there someone who could step in?

The Healer: Moving Toward the Preferred State

If the Companion is the one who stays, the Healer introduces movement and discernment. In our modern world, we’ve been trained to assume a position of supremacy over our problems. We decide what’s “wrong” and we dictate a cure. But the true Healer gives the wound—or need—a voice.

Historically, the Healer responded when something was out of rhythm, whether in the body, the spirit, the land, or the dreamspace. They worked across visible and invisible realms, drawing on whatever tools could serve: plants, prayers, hands, song, magic, or even silence.

We often think of healing as “becoming whole again,” but that can feel exclusionary to those living with chronic issues or long-held grief. So I’ve come to a definition I like a little better:

Healing is the process of moving from a less-preferred state to a more-preferred one.

Along with the Companion, the Healer listens to the need until this more-preferred state begins to emerge. Sometimes that state isn’t a cure. Sometimes it’s simply a more supported way of being.

Once the direction becomes clear, the Healer discerns the Medicine. They hold the potential to access medicines of all kinds, on all levels…and it isn’t always a pill or a ritual. It is whatever bridge is needed to bring the need closer to that more-preferred state.

Who or what is in the role of Healer in your community?

If your community of focus is your internal world, the Healer might be your Intuition or your Future Self. In a wider community, the Healer is often a specific presence—human or otherwise—holding the wisdom the moment is asking for.

Pause for a moment and ask: Who or what is helping the need find its medicine?
For example:

• If the need is an overwhelmed child, the Healer might be a grandmother offering a hug, or the warmth of a bath…something that helps the child’s nervous system shift into a more supported state.

• If the need is tension in a partnership, the Healer might be a shared value or a mediating presence—a therapist, or even a boundary—that helps both people move toward a more workable relationship.

• If the need is in the land, the Healer might be the mycelium beneath the soil or the pollinators returning to a garden. It could be the person who knows which native seeds will restore the rhythm of the earth.

• Sometimes, the Healer is found in the clinical wisdom of a doctor, or in less expected places, like the unflinching truth of a poem, or the silence of a forest that finally allows us to hear what the soul is longing for.

If you look around the inner ring and find the Healer’s chair empty, don’t panic. You don’t have to generate a cure yourself. You might simply ask: What wisdom is missing here? Is there a teacher, a plant, an ancestor, or a practice we could invite in to help us listen for the medicine?

Working the Spiral: Questions for the Inner Ring

Below are questions to help us engage with the inner ring of the spiral. You might bring these questions to your community and discuss them; sit in meditation and listen for the answers; or pull cards like I did.

For our Spirit Connections community (10 of Wands):

When I first discovered that our community need was about the capacity to engage with life, I was puzzled. We are a collective who already feels it all. We notice the shifts beneath the surface and care deeply about the world around us. Aren’t we already “engaged”?

The ten of wands helped me hear the need in a deeper way. It said that we are engaged, yes, but not always in ways that nourish us too. Our engagement has come to feel like a burden. We’ve tried to pour our deep awareness into structures built for urgency and getting to the top, and it has left us depleted. To stay afloat, many of us have learned to override our own senses, forcing ourselves into engagement out of obligation.

For our Spirit Connections community (Six of Swords):

When we don’t rush this tending, we realize we don’t have to force any movement at all. The transition is already happening. For a community that has learned to override itself just to engage, this is profound. We’ve been trying to swim toward participation, expending all our energy just to stay afloat. But the Six of Swords shows us we can allow ourselves to be carried.

For our Spirit Connections community (The World):

Ooooh, I love The World here! To me, it’s showing us that the more-preferred state isn’t about doing more. It’s about coming into right relationship with our full selves, where we’re not overriding our burnt out nervous systems, or ignoring our sensitive awareness. I believe The World is helping us see that the more preferred state is engagement without fragmentation. Participation without self-abandonment. A state where it’s not just the bullheaded parts of ourselves participating. But we are fully here…resourced, connected, and whole within our own experience.

For our Spirit Connections community (Queen of Pentacles):

Gosh, this feels perfect. To me, the Queen of Pentacles is the one who guides us to her overstuffed sofa, covers us with a lush chenille blanket, offers tea & cookies, and says, “My darling, you’re safe here.” And so, I think the medicine, the step we can take toward the more preferred state is to help all parts of us feel safe first, and then to engage from that place. This might look like a boundary, a slower pace, or a refusal to participate in urgency. It is the wisdom that reminds us: stepping in only counts if we can bring our whole, nourished selves with us. If not, then we wait.

Some of you are, right now, already stepping into the roles of Companion and Healer in our Spirit Connections community. You’re sitting with the need for Empowerment, witnessing one another, listening deeply in the comments, and letting Wisdom move through you as we begin to take these first steps toward a more preferred state, together. I am SO grateful for all of you!

And I’d love to hear from all of you how The Companion and The Healer might be showing up in your communities. Let me know in the comments below.

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Next week, we’ll move to the second ring: The Genius and The Procurer, bringing insight and resources to support the tending.

May you meet what arises with the same tenderness you would offer a beloved. May you remember that pain is not a punishment, but a signal, and that we were born with the wisdom to listen. We are not broken. We are becoming.

With so much love,
Jenna 💖

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Dearest readers,

I’ve been thinking about you.

I know that all of us who are drawn to this space—to the more relational way of being—are invested in making it a reality. We’re wanting to do something to shift the current, dominant paradigm.

We truly feel the connection, to ancestors, to the land, to Spirit, to each other.

But right now, many of us are just feeling…fragmented.

I’ve heard many of you say that you’re exhausted. Overwhelmed. Pulled in so many directions, carrying so many responsibilities. It can start to feel like all of these threads we care about are living in separate places, instead of woven together into something that actually supports us.

So how do we bring it back into relationship? Where do we even begin?

I took those questions to my altar and prayed. I sat in silence until the sweet voice of Wisdom spoke to me.

She reminded me of a three-day ritual I had the pleasure and privilege of participating in during Yule season. It was an experience dedicated to The Great Mother—the Deer Goddess—and was led by an incredible priestess who shared so much about deer magic.

One of the things she spoke about was how deer organize their herd. She said that, unlike the pyramidal shape of most of our societies—where dominance is concentrated on top and everything else is structured to support that—the shape of deer community is more like a spiral.

In this model, there is a center and what goes in the center is the community’s greatest need. This usually looks like the herd’s most vulnerable members. And then the rest of the community arranges itself around that need, tending it as each member is able and best aligned to do so. And because life is always moving, the spiral moves too. The center changes. The needs change. Those closest to the center change.

The moment I heard this, something deep within me me recognized it.

The Ancestral Eight

A while back, one of my ancestor guides shared a vision that changed how I understand archetypes, lineage, and belonging.

This guide lived tens of thousands of years ago, in a time when people did not experience themselves primarily as separate individuals, but as parts of a collective. In that world, people moved in and out of roles based not on identity, status, or fixed position, but on what they could offer and what the community needed most in that moment.

These roles, he said, were like the first archetypes. And there were eight of them:

The Guardian
The Genius
The Sovereign
The Procurer
The Companion
The Artist
The Healer
The Maven

(These are probably familiar to some of you as we spent time with each one last year. Those posts can be revisited here.)

Over time, I’ve come to think of these as the Ancestral Eight: eight foundational currents of care and contribution that still move through human communities today, even if we don’t always recognize them clearly.

These ancestral eight are living functions in community. They are ways of responding and participating. Ways that protection, insight, leadership, provision, companionship, creativity, healing, and structure hold community in vibrant coherence.

And this is where I recognized the spiral. These ancestral eight are already oriented towards the community needs. The spiral simply gives us a way to see that more clearly.

So I began playing with arranging them in relationship to the center—to the need itself—as a kind of living map for how community might be tended.

(And I want to say this clearly: this arrangement is something I’m exploring with you, not something fixed. These roles are fluid. They move. You may experience them differently.)

In the center of the spiral is the community’s primary need at the moment.

Closest to the center are the ones who tend it directly:
The Healer and The Companion.

Further out are those who bring insight and resources:
The Genius and The Procurer.

Beyond them are the ones who help protect the integrity of the whole:
The Guardian and The Sovereign.

And in the outer ring are those who help what is learned, created, or tended move outward into lasting form and shared meaning…the ones who carry the wisdom of the process outward:
The Maven and The Artist.

Sometimes this spiral map will be quite literal with different persons in our communities fulfilling these different roles. And sometimes this becomes more metaphorical where we find the roles within ourselves. Sometimes we’ll be the ones taking on the roles and sometimes we’ll witness as others (including other than living humans) tend us in the center.

Let’s shift to a spiral community, together

I want to invite us to play with this spiral model over the next few weeks. My intent isn’t to give us a new project to manage, but I’m really seeing this as a way to let ourselves be held. If you’re feeling fragmented, the last thing you need is another “system” to master. Instead, let’s see if this baby step can help us feel more integrated and a little less alone in the weight we carry.

To begin, we simply need to notice where we want to lean in. You don’t need to fix the whole world today. Just pick one “web”, one community, you are already woven into.

Perhaps it’s your family, where the roles often feel static and tired. Perhaps it’s your friendships, or your internal family systems, or even your own body…that inner collective of cells and soul that is so often exhausted by our demands. Or maybe what’s calling to you is the land you walk upon everyday.

There’s no “right” choice. Just notice which which community feels like it’s tugging at your sleeve. If nothing speaks up immediately, that’s okay! You can just practice along with me right here in the Spirit Connections community. This community of me and you is the one I’ll be focusing on in the spiral model over the coming weeks.

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Identifying the Heart Need

Once you have your community in mind, we look for the center. In the deer herd, the center isn’t the “strongest” or the “alpha”, it’s the most vulnerable. So we ask:

What is the most tender need asking for our attention right now?

Please, let’s leave the pressure at the door. This doesn’t have to be a “Global Crisis.” It might just be a small, parched corner of your daily life that needs a drop of water. The spiral isn’t about “solving” a problem; it’s about entering into intentional relationship with community and what feels fragile within that.

Sometimes this will show up as an individual within the community, and sometimes as a need shared by the community as a whole.

For our Spirit Connections community, I’ve decided to turn towards the archespheres to find our heart need (and you’re welcome to do this too for your community of choice).

If this approach feels supportive, I’ve included a downloadable list of the archespheres and their calls below. Feel free to utilize your divining method of choice, or preferred way to listen, to pick one.

The Calls Of The Archespheres Downloadable

2.69MB ∙ PDF file

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For our Spirit Connections community, the archesphere I drew was Empowerment. When the archesphere of Empowerment comes into our lives, it issues a call, an invitation, for us to step into our capacity to engage with life.

I kind of love this for our community need at this time. It’s both collective and personal. As a whole, the community will be tended as we all step into our Empowerment AND we can only each, as individuals, know what it means to engage with life and what our capacities are to do so.

And then I also sat with the word ‘empowerment’. I could almost hear our nervous systems tightening around it. It sounds like pushing. It sounds like "finding the strength to do more." But in our spiral, I believe we are reclaiming the word.

Instead of seeing it as “power over” (including the power to overcome), let’s see what happens if we think of power as the ability to turn the lights on or power up the machine. To get the juices flowing and become conductive.

So, then, our community’s “need” at the center of the spiral is this:

To come into relationship with our capacity to engage with life—individually and collectively—without forcing, overriding, or abandoning ourselves.

Sometimes “engaging” looks like taking a step forward. But sometimes, the most empowered thing we can do is rest in a way that is truly restorative.

Both are sacred in the spiral. We aren’t adding anything to our plates here; we are rearranging the table so we can finally sit down.

Over the next four Sundays, we’ll move through the spiral.

Next week, we’ll begin with the inner ring—the place closest to the need—and explore what it means to truly tend something, rather than just “managing” it. We’ll invite the tarot in, using it as a mirror to see the path more clearly. I’ll share a simple spread for you to use if you’d like to explore your own community’s need, or you are welcome to simply rest into the cards I pull for our shared space.

From there, we’ll move outward, layer by layer, noticing how support, protection, and expression all play their part in weaving a vibrant, coherent community.

For now, I’ll leave you with two quiet questions to carry this week:

1. Which community is tugging at your sleeve today? (Remember, it’s okay if that community is just your own body.)

2. What is the small, tender need that wants to be placed at the center?

You don’t have to be certain or have a plan. Just be willing to look. I believe the spiral has a way of revealing itself once we stop trying to outrun it and simply begin to listen.

May you feel the strength of the herd around you today.
May you recognize that you are not the center of the world’s burdens, but the heart of a living spiral that knows exactly how to hold you.

With so much love,
Jenna 💖

To continue with this series, click on the posts below:

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If you’ve been hanging around this Substack for a while, you know I’m a little obsessed with what I call the more relational way.

I’m always drawn to frameworks that bring us out of mental analysis and back into relationship with the living rhythms of our lives. Because again and again, I notice how easily even the most magical ideas can become something we hold at a distance. Sure, we might learn about them and come to understand them, even fluently.

But to live inside them—to let them shape how we move, feel, and relate—that’s a different kind of knowing altogether. So when I come across someone who doesn’t just teach a framework, but creates spaces where we can actually enter it, I get really excited and HAVE to share it with all of you.

My friend, Wendy Rule, launched a podcast called Darkness and Light and the first episode drops today!

What struck me most when I listened wasn’t just the content, it was the pace. The way it refuses to rush. The way it invites us out of analysis and into something more felt, more cyclical, more…participatory.

Listening to it was like getting to relive an amazing experience I had last year, one that changed the way I relate to cycles entirely. What was this amazing experience, you ask?

For four delightfully magic-filled days over Samhain, I had the very good fortune to attend a retreat hosted by the very same Wendy Rule from the podcast.

I originally went for the ritual and the chance to gather with others around the ancestors. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was about to step into a framework that would reshape how I relate to the movement of life itself: the cycle of darkness and light.

A Living Cycle

Wendy first introduced this framework through her album Darkness and Light, where she composed a series of eight-minute meditations for each phase of the journey.

But at the retreat, we didn’t just learn the cycle intellectually. We moved through it. We lived it.

Over the course of the gathering, we spent time inhabiting each phase. Sometimes through meditation, sometimes through ritual, sometimes simply through reflection and conversation. The pace was slow and intentional, allowing each stage to settle into our awareness rather than just passing through our minds.

The cycle itself is beautifully simple:

VOID — Darkness
STARLIGHT — Darkness Reveals Light
DAWN — Darkness Becomes Light
DAY — Light
SHADOW — Light Reveals Darkness
TWILIGHT — Light Becomes Darkness
NIGHT — Darkness

At first glance, it looks like a poetic way of describing the turning of a day. And of course, it is that.

But as we spent time inside each phase, it became clear that this pattern isn’t just a description of what is happening in the sky. It’s a description of how experience itself unfolds.

We can see it in the great cycles of the world—the turning of the seasons, the waxing and waning of the moon—but also in the quieter, more intimate movements of our own lives:

A creative idea emerging from nowhere.
A period of clarity and momentum.
A shadow appearing inside something that once felt certain.
The quiet dissolving that makes space for the next beginning.

What moved me most about Wendy’s framework is that it doesn’t treat darkness as a problem to solve or light as something to reach for. Instead, both are recognized as essential movements in a living cycle.

Darkness is not scary. Light is not the final goal.

They are partners in an ongoing rhythm of revelation and return. And once we begin to recognize that rhythm, something opens up. Instead of trying to escape the Void, we can listen for what is gestating there. Instead of grasping at the Day, we can allow its light to move naturally toward Twilight.

It becomes less about trying to control the cycle, and more about learning to dance with its movement.

The Guide Behind the Cycle

Of course, when you encounter a framework that begins to reshape how you see the world, it’s natural to become curious about the person who carries it.

If you haven’t encountered Wendy Rule before, she is something of a legend in pagan and magical arts circles.

For decades she has been creating music, ritual, and performance that weave together myth, astrology, magic, and storytelling. She’s an award-winning musician whose work has been part of the soundtrack for many people’s spiritual lives (including mine since 1998! 🤗)

But what struck me most when I spent time with her at the retreat wasn’t just her body of work.

It was her presence.

Wendy has that rare quality of someone who has clearly walked with these ideas for a very long time. The mythology, the astrology, the magical frameworks she speaks about…they’re not just intellectual theories for her. They’re living landscapes she knows how to navigate.

And she has an uncanny ability to guide others through those landscapes with both depth and humor (she’s hilarious).

There’s something wonderfully grounding about that combination. She can speak about profound spiritual concepts one moment, and the next she’s laughing, telling a story, or making some wry observation that brings everyone back down to earth again.

During the retreat I found myself realizing that while her music is powerful, her storytelling might actually be the deeper magic. She has a way of holding space that allows people to step gently into places of insight that might otherwise feel intimidating.

Over the course of those days—between rituals, shared meals, conversations with new friends, and long hours spent exploring the cycle of darkness and light—something else happened too.

I had the unexpected joy of getting to know Wendy as a person. And I can honestly say that one of the things I treasure most from that retreat is that I now get to call her my friend.

There’s a particular kind of sweetness that happens when someone whose work you’ve admired from afar suddenly becomes part of your actual life. The mythic figure becomes a human being you laugh with, talk with, and continue to learn from in more ordinary ways.

It makes the whole experience feel even more relational and so perfectly aligned with the very framework she shared with us.

Wendy has a way of creating spaces where ideas don’t just live in the mind—they become something you can step into.

I’ve felt that through her music.
Through her rituals.
And I’m honestly so excited that she’s brought that same experience into her new podcast.

The Darkness and Light podcast is an invitation into the cycle itself—through meditation, storytelling, and reflections on myth, magic, astrology, and the turning of the seasons.

It’s not something you just listen to. It’s something you enter.

New episodes are released every two weeks on Thursdays.

Click your favorite platform below to listen. Enjoy!

Apple Podcasts:

Spotify:

YouTube:

Welcome, dear ones! I’m so grateful you’re here—your presence, curiosity, and the beautiful community we’re creating together mean the world to me. ✨ If you’re new, you can learn more about Spirit Connections on the About Page, and if you’d like to journey more closely with us, you can subscribe below. 💖💖💖

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Each Sunday, I draw an archesphere and a tarot card to receive our collective message for the week. These reflections are part of our shared practice of moving toward a more relational way of being—of listening for how Life itself wants to be in dialogue with us. (If you’d like a deeper explanation of how this practice began, you can find that here.)

This week, we’re working with the archesphere of Emptiness, paired with Death. Together, they bring us into sacred territory: the vastness that follows an ending.

The Archesphere of Emptiness

The call of Emptiness is: to rest in the void and experience nothingness.

Emptiness is not disorientation (that’s Lost). It is not completion (that’s End). It is not even absence in the way we usually mean it.

Emptiness is spaciousness.

It is the open field where form has fallen away and nothing new has taken shape yet. It can feel like stillness, or silence, or a vacuum. It’s a vastness without edges. It can also feel like loss.

Without ______, I am empty.

Emptiness asks us not to rush to fill that blank. To not fill the cup or the cauldron. It invites us to notice the container itself; the awareness that remains when what once defined us has dissolved.

It asks:

What is here when there is nothing to grasp?
Can I sit in openness without narrating it?
Can I let the space be space?

Death

In the tarot, Death is rarely about physical dying. Instead, it is the great transformer, the completer of cycles.

In many traditional decks, a skeletal figure moves steadily forward on a pale horse. And in the distance, there’s often a rising sun. That detail matters to me. It suggests that what’s ending is part of a larger movement, not an isolated collapse.

What strikes me most about the Death card is that it doesn’t ask us to decide whether something should end. It reveals that the ending is already underway. An old form is dissolving. We may still be holding onto it, but it’s no longer holding us in the same way.

When Death comes up, I think we’re simply being asked to notice where life has quietly withdrawn its energy or what has completed its arc.

How Does Death Help Us Relate with Emptiness?

If Death is the realm of ending, then Emptiness is calling from within that stripped field.

I know it might seem counterintuitive, but I don’t believe this pairing is about mourning or grieving what has ended. I think it’s about the field around that. The strange, quiet space where we no longer know ourselves in the same way.

• After the breakup, who am I without being partnered?

• After the children leave, who am I without daily parenting?

• After burnout, who am I without over-producing?

• After a belief collapses, who am I without that certainty?

If you’re like me, the tendency might be to interpret that space as something gone wrong. And there might be a sense of urgency to reinvent ourselves; or replace what was lost; or tell the story of our transformation; or fill the stillness with movement and production.

But Emptiness, in the realm of Death, invites something different. Really, it’s asking us to wait. To rest in un-differentiation and experience ourselves that way without immediately becoming something new.

This pairing asks us:

When something ended recently, what did I immediately reach for?

What does the empty space actually feel like in my body when I don’t distract myself from it?

If I allowed this openness to exist without naming it as loss or opportunity, what might change in how I move this week?

The Four Ways We Might Respond to the Call

Like all archespheres, Emptiness invites a response. And in the realm of Death, those responses can feel especially charged. There’s no right or wrong here, only noticing.

Curiosity / Observation

Here we simply sit with the post-ending silence and observe what remains. We might notice the discomfort of not knowing who we are in the same way or the anxiety that comes with feeling like we’re not moving forward. Perhaps we allow ourselves to experience the blank space for the first time ever. We ask gently: What is here now, if anything?

Pushing Away

This might be the response most of us are familiar with. Here, we rush to refill the space because Emptiness feels unbearable. We might jump into a new relationship or launch a new project or even reach for a new identity. The void feels threatening, so we stuff it with form. And, sometimes, a form to hold is exactly what our nervous systems need.

Grasping

In this response, we cling to Emptiness itself. We want to dissolve. We long to detach. And so we numb out or refuse to return to form. We also might spiritualize the void, mistaking absence for transcendence. Instead of resting in openness, we hide in it.

And sometimes, that retreat into vastness is the only way our systems know how to feel safe. If the old form was constricting or painful, dissolving can feel like the relief we need. But when we stay there indefinitely, the spaciousness that was meant to hold us can quietly become a place we disappear.

Resonance

Resonance with Emptiness in Death’s realm looks like this:

We simply melt into space for a time. We don’t rush to rebuild and we don’t dramatize the void. We just wait for impulse and trust that what truly wants to move will move in its own time.

As weird as it might sound, we allow ourselves to exist without differentiation for a little while.

Moving Toward Resonance

If you feel drawn toward a resonant response this week, here are a few gentle practices that have helped me.

Waiting for Impulse

Choose one small area of your life where something has ended, even if it’s subtle.

Instead of replacing it, ask daily:

What genuinely wants to move here? Not what would look good or prove anything. But, what impulse is truly wanting to emerge?

Wait for that.

Noticing the Container

When you feel empty, instead of asking, “What’s missing?” you might experiment with a different question:

What is holding this space?

And then look for something concrete.

• Maybe the container is your calendar. There’s an open afternoon where something used to be scheduled. Instead of filling it, notice the fact that the day itself is holding you.

• Maybe it’s a room in your house. A chair that’s no longer being used in the same way. The walls are still there. The floor is still steady beneath your feet.

• Maybe it’s your body. The way your lungs continue to breathe even when your identity feels in flux. Your heartbeat doesn’t stop just because a role has ended.

• Maybe it’s a friendship that remains even though a shared project dissolved. Or the land beneath your feet, unchanged by whatever has fallen away in your life.

Pause long enough to recognize that something is always holding the space open.

Relationally

If someone you love is in a void—between identities, after an ending— experiment with not rushing them toward becoming (even if it makes you uncomfortable).

Resist the urge to fix anything or offer silver linings. Can you offer only sacred presence?

Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is let the space be space.

There is something profoundly sacred about the moment after form dissolves. Death has done its work and now Emptiness holds us.

It’s almost comical that I’m writing about this while simultaneously scheduling my life back into full color. Spring is here. The winter cave has opened. And instead of lingering at the threshold, I’ve pretty much run straight into the village with a clipboard.

So yes, I may be demonstrating the Pushing Away response in real time. (That seems to be my usual m.o., doesn’t it?) The good news is I’m noticing it.

Who wants to join me in waiting for impulse this week?

May we rest in the field when form falls away.
May we trust the silence without forcing it to speak.
And may we recognize when the next perfect impulse arises.

With so much love,
Jenna 💖

Go Deeper: Living the Archesphere

Each week, I offer a companion post with a guided three-card tarot spread to help you enter into a more intimate, personal relationship with the archesphere.

This week’s spread explores the threshold after an ending, the quiet intelligence of the empty field, and how to wait for the next true movement to emerge.

👉 Click here to access this week’s Go Deeper spread. 👈

This week, Emptiness is the one reaching toward us, and it arrives through the realm of Death, the great transformer, the one who clears what has completed its cycle.

Together, they invite us into a quiet threshold. Not the grief of the ending. Not the excitement of what’s next. But the space in between where form has dissolved and nothing new has yet taken shape.

As you draw your three cards for this pairing, imagine yourself standing in an open field just after something has fallen away. The air feels different. The landscape is simpler. There is less to hold.

Take a breath.

Allow yourself to remain in the openness for a moment before asking what comes next.

Opening Question

Where in my life am I being invited to rest in the space after an ending, rather than rushing to fill it?

When you’re ready, draw three cards for the positions below.

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Spring is here! Something in all of us is beginning again.

(And, for some of us, summer heat has already arrived with it!)

In case you didn’t already grab your copy, I’ve made this year’s Ostara downloadable pack free for everyone as a small celebration of the season.

If you feel called, you can gather it here (or click the image below) and explore the magic of this season in your own way.

May this season meet you gently.
May it remind you that growth doesn’t have to be rushed.
May you feel the quiet support of life returning all around you.

Big blessings and love to all of you! 💛💖

P.S. Just a gentle reminder that the sale on Sacred Roots (a self-paced yet community-based ancestral healing class) ends on March 22…

20% Off Sacred Roots: My year-long journey of ancestral healing course. If you’ve been waiting for a sign to begin your own process of lineage repair, let this be it. 💖

• To sign up, visit: https://spiritconnections.love/sacred-roots

• For 20% off, at checkout enter discount code: 20OFFSACREDROOTS

• Discount valid only until March 22, 2026.

Welcome, dear ones! I’m so grateful you’re here—your presence, curiosity, and the beautiful community we’re creating together mean the world to me. ✨ If you’re new, you can learn more about Spirit Connections on the About Page, and if you’d like to journey more closely with us, you can subscribe below. 💖💖💖

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Each Sunday, I draw an archesphere and a tarot card and sit with them until I begin to sense how their pairing might offer guidance for the week ahead. These reflections are not predictions. They’re more like invitations or ways of listening for how Life might be asking us to relate with the world, with others, and with ourselves.

The Archesphere of Order

The call of Order is: to come into relationship with systems and structure.

Order is the principle of structure itself. It is the invisible scaffolding that supports the weight of existence, governing everything from the mathematical precision of a snowflake to the social contracts we navigate daily. It is the realm of patterns, sequences, and predictability.

Order asks us: Where do I find alignment within the systems—natural, communal, or internal—that shape my world?

In its purest form, Order isn’t about restriction; it’s about the rhythm that allows life to function. It is the seasonal shift, the beating heart, and the laws of physics. But it is also the human-made constructs…the schedules, the hierarchies, and the “shoulds” that we often mistake for the only way things can be.

Some questions Order invites us to contemplate:

Where in my life does structure feel like a supportive skeleton, and where does it feel like a cage?

If all my current plans were stripped away, what fundamental patterns would remain?

The Hanged One

In the Tarot, we often see the Hanged One suspended upside down, one leg is bound while the other bends freely. Their arms are relaxed, their gaze serene. The binding on just one ankle suggests that this is not a punishment but a choice… a deliberate pause.

This card is often described as a change in perspective, and that’s certainly part of it. But because The Hanged One belongs to the Major Arcana, to me the invitation runs deeper than simply “looking at things differently.”

The Hanged One shows us what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to step outside the normal orientation of our world. When we’re willing to hang here for a moment, the familiar map rearranges itself. The branches become roots. The sky becomes ground. And things that once seemed obvious begin to loosen their grip on us.

Valentin Tomberg offers a beautiful way to understand this inversion. He speaks of terrestrial gravitation and celestial gravitation. Normally, with our feet on the ground, we move within terrestrial gravity. We gather experiences, knowledge, and insight toward ourselves. Life flows inward.

But when we turn upside down, as The Hanged One does, something shifts. Our feet point toward the heavens. Instead of drawing everything toward ourselves, we begin to radiate outward. We become conduits for something larger, letting wisdom and grace move through us for the benefit of the whole.

From this perspective, The Hanged One isn’t just about seeing the world differently, it’s also about allowing ourselves to be rearranged by what we see.

How does the Hanged One help us relate with Order?

In this pairing, the archesphere of Order issues a call to engage with the systems and structures that shape our world. But because this call comes through the realm of the Hanged One, it arrives with a twist.

We aren’t simply being asked to look at the structures we already understand… the ones that feel familiar, comfortable, or aligned with our own worldview. Instead, we’re being invited to notice the ‘Order of the Other’.

The Hanged One has a strange gift. By turning our perspective upside down, they help us see the internal logic of things we might normally dismiss as chaotic, irrational, or simply “wrong.”

And sometimes that can feel unsettling.

Because when we slow down enough to look carefully, we often discover that even systems we disagree with deeply have their own internal scaffolding. Their own assumptions and rules of coherence. Even harmful systems are rarely random.

But here’s where the wisdom of the Hanged One becomes important: seeing the structure of something is not the same as agreeing with it. In fact, very often the opposite is true.

When we can see the underlying order of a system clearly, it stops operating invisibly in the background of our lives. We begin to recognize the assumptions holding it up. We begin to see the mechanisms repeating themselves.

And once we can see those patterns, something important happens. We regain choice. Often, the world becomes easier to navigate once we can recognize the structures at play.

What system or worldview currently feels confusing, chaotic, or irrational to me?

Once I recognize the structure of a system more clearly, what choices become available to me that I might not have seen before?

The Four Ways We Might Respond to the Call

Like all archespheres, Order (in the realm of the Hanged One) invites a response. When we’re called into relationship, we can respond in a number of ways. None of them are right or wrong. This is simply about noticing how we naturally relate when we begin to see the systems and structures operating around us… especially the ones we hadn’t recognized before.

Curiosity / Observation: Here, we begin to notice the structures we usually look past. We ask: “What is the logic of the system I disagree with most?” or “What assumptions are holding this structure in place?” We’re not trying to agree with it or adopt it. We’re simply learning to see the scaffolding clearly.

Pushing Away: We feel threatened by the “Other Order.” Seeing the internal logic of a system we dislike can feel destabilizing, so we instinctively withdraw. We dismiss the opposing structure as irrational or chaotic so we don’t have to sit in the discomfort of the Hanged One’s suspension.

Grasping: We flip perspectives too quickly. In the excitement of discovering a new viewpoint, we abandon our own structures entirely and rush to adopt another. Instead of gaining clarity, we swing from one framework to the next. The Hanged One’s invitation is actually slower than this. They ask us to see, not to immediately switch allegiances.

Resonance: Here we find the point of suspension where we can see multiple orders at once. We recognize that our own worldview is one structure among many. From this place, we gain something precious: the ability to move consciously. Instead of being unconsciously shaped by the systems around us, we begin to recognize them, question them, and choose how we want to engage with them.

Moving Toward Resonance

To move toward a resonant response this week, you might experiment with stepping briefly into the realm of the Hanged One. These practices aren’t about solving anything. They’re simply invitations to loosen our usual orientations long enough for a different kind of insight to emerge.

The Sacred Suspension

Choose one situation this week where you would normally react quickly…offering an opinion, correcting something that feels “wrong,” or trying to fix a problem right away.

Instead of responding immediately, let the moment hang. Stay curious and notice what becomes visible when you allow yourself to remain in the in-between for a little while.

You might even ask yourself:
If I weren’t trying to control the outcome here, what might this situation be revealing about the larger pattern at work?

Sometimes resonance begins with the willingness to remain suspended long enough for deeper understanding to move through us.

Turn the World Upside Down

The Hanged One reminds us that the body can help shift the mind.

Try physically changing your orientation for a few minutes. Lay on the floor and look at the ceiling. Hang your head gently over the edge of a bed or couch. Sit somewhere you’ve never sat before and observe the room.

Notice how the world rearranges itself when your vantage point changes.

What do you see now that you couldn’t see before?

Ooof. This pairing feels a little spiky to me this week. When I let myself look at the systems underlying some things on the “flip side,” I’ll admit… what I saw wasn’t exactly comforting. Some structures are truly built on domination and on assumptions about who deserves power and who does not.

But when I let myself pause as the Hanged One, I did realize that even those systems have patterns. And noticing patterns not only helps to settle my nervous system, but it also feels empowering.

May you find the courage to let your perspective hang suspended.
May the structures that feel like cages reveal themselves as maps.
And may the clarity you gain help you choose which systems are truly worthy of your allegiance.

With love and blessings to all of you!
Jenna 💖

Go Deeper: Living the Archesphere

Each week, I offer a companion post with a guided three-card tarot spread to help you enter into a more intimate, personal relationship with the archesphere.

This week’s spread explores the structure of the “Order” you currently inhabit, the hidden logic within a perspective you’ve been resisting, and how you might remain centered while holding both in view.

👉 Click here to access this week’s Go Deeper spread. 👈

Together, they invite us to step into the systems of a different perspective. This isn’t about changing your mind or abandoning your own structures; it is about recognizing the internal logic and the hidden “Under-Order” of worldviews or patterns that usually feel foreign, messy, or wrong to you.

As you draw your three cards, imagine yourself gently suspended. Take a breath. Let your perspective soften. And consider whose “Order” you have been most resistant to seeing.

Opening Question

What system or worldview currently feels confusing, frustrating, or “wrong” to me—and what might I discover if I looked for its internal logic?

When you’re ready, draw three cards for the positions below.

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