Radical self-care is the theme of this new moon. Focusing solely on others is the fast-track to burnout.

To work with this new moon, pull the cards in the spread then choose one to set an intention on. Turn your intention into an affirmation. Commit to visualizing your goal around it daily for this lunar cycle.

In the last year or so, I have taken to being less frugal.

And by “frugal” I mean so damn cheap. Two paths led me there.

The first came from a business class I was taking. The instructor was talking about getting sales leads and said matter-of-factly, “There are billions of people in the world. You can get all the leads you want.”

Mind blown.

The second came from hearing some people complain about not having enough money, but “knowing” that being rich would only lead to trouble. What? There’s no reason they can’t be rich. Do you know anyone like that? Someone who says having money would only cause trouble?

Don’t you believe it. Because we can do whatever we want with our money. We can give it to our less fortunate relatives. We can donate it to a worthy cause. We can start a charitable foundation. We can hoard it. We can spend it like there’s no tomorrow if we choose.

There is unlimited money in the world. One person being rich, you being rich, doesn’t keep wealth from someone else.

Money is not dirty. It isn’t evil. Nor will it transfer those qualities to us. Money is energy and it does best when it flows.

“Money flows to me and through me with ease” is an affirmation I used for close to a year.

Then the lightbulb over my head went off. To me and from me.

Get the floors redone, Toni. Remodel the bathroom and don’t base hiring the contractor on the lowest quote. And remodel it because you’ll love your house even more, not to increase the resale value.

In Buddhism, generosity is to releive the stain of stinginess. There is plenty to go around.

Generosity leads to releasing attachment. When we loosen our grip on something, money, love, control, whatever, we allow that something to flow with ease.

We see this in the 6 of Pentacles. There is a sharing of the wealth we have, whether it’s money or knowledge or time. There is also a willingness to receive. Those people who say that having money will only cause trouble? They are showing a reluctance to accept abundance.

I taught a class years ago called Building Your Own Theology. A woman taking the class shared with the group that whenever she was down to her last ten dollars, she’d give it away because she knew the Universe would send it back.

That is some radical thinking.

That is a woman who is allowing the flow of money, both in and out, who knows how to harness the Law of Attraction. She believes that Abundance-with-a-capital-A has absolutely no limits.

What do you have to share? What would you like more of? Where do you hold the reins too tightly?

How radical are you wiling to be?

Do you have a friend who complains incessantly? (If it’s me, tell me right now so I can stop.)

Someone who never has anything positive to say? Who feels life is one big punch in the nose?

I need some advice.

It’s never easy to watch a friend flail, especially when you feel she’s bringing it on herself. This friend wants to find her Person but won’t talk to anyone new. She hates her job but won’t consider looking for another one. Has a complaint about almost every product or service she purchases, but never asks for what she’s looking for.

Which is better?
A.) Listen with an open heart
B.) Listen and offer suggestions with kindness, or
C.) Admit that the friendship has probably run its course

None of those options feel right. I don’t think I can listen with an open heart. Not anymore, anyway. No one likes unsolicited advice—and I know that’s not what she’s looking for because I’ve offered my opinion and it’s been ignored. But cutting the ties to her seems harsh.

As I’ve said before, it’s easy to see where someone else might want to do some shadow work. I need to reframe this and look at which patterns of behavior I need to change.

As I write this, I am in an ankle brace inside a boot that has me walking like Frankenstein’s monster. Unrelated, I’m also doing physical therapy for my knee. And I have a huge stye on my left eyelid.

I want someone to throw me a surprise pity party. I can just see me walking in. All my friends jump out and yell, “Surprise! We feel sorry for you!”

But I’m trying not to wallow. P.S. Can I get a “There, there” and a pat on the head?.

When we’re grateful for everything in our life, we open ourselves up to receive more. Thankfulness for every little thing harnesses the Law of Attraction.

Hot water that comes right out of the wall? I am grateful for this every single day. An attached garage? Yes! With a car that gets me there? Yes! A green light? Thank you—more please! The opportunity to learn to slow down, ask for help, and then accept it? I can say thank you, but I might not ask for more.

When we’re insecure or fearful, it can be difficult to admit it. Instead, we shift the blame. Rather than facing our anxiety about rejection from a potential job, we say we have to stay where we are to get our year-end bonus (never mind that there might be a sign-on bonus at that new place). Rather than feel vulnerable and ask someone out, we make excuses. “Online dating? I’ve heard nothing but horror stories!”

But we pay for our insecurities. Insecurity is always a collect call. (Does anyone know what a collect call is? I’m pretty sure I just dated myself.)

Maybe we’re not all the kind of person who grabs life by the horns. But what will you regret most in the end? What you did? Or what you didn’t?

Each time we’re grateful, the Universe sends us more to be grateful for. When we open our arms and accept it, we step closer to our purpose. What did you come here to do? Are you ready to fulfill your destiny? Or would you rather sit there and bitch about all you don’t have?

And don’t forget to give me your advice about my friend.

This full moon is where work meets family. If you identify with the Queen of Pentacles, you’ll understand this moon’s energy. How can you get everything done? By harnessing that Capricorn energy.

I was staring down into a thirty-foot ravine, a large group of people waiting to cross a bridge that was not much more than wire and planks and… my feet refused to move.

Will Smith has a short video, it’s on YouTube, called What Skydiving Taught Me About Fear. It’s a motivational talk about the time he jumped out of an airplane in Dubai. In it he says,

“The point of maximum danger is the point of minimum fear.”

He also asks, “Why were you scared? What do you need that fear for?”

“God’s placed the best things in life on the other side of fear,” he concludes.

I’m not so sure I agree.

That time? In Hawaii when my feet could not be convinced to budge? That was not my first time crossing that bridge.

I had already made it across once, terrified beyond belief. We were on a rainforest hike with a group of my husband’s coworkers. We had to cross the bridge once going into the rainforest and then again coming out.

The only thing that would have been scarier for me was to have made the others in the group, people who had paid good money to go on this hike, wait for me while one of the guides led me down the ravine and up the other side.

I had somehow managed to do it the first time, never dreaming that I’d face that same rickety, swinging, primitive, terrifying, unsafe thing again. When I was staring down at it for the second time, I did not feel bliss. I had not been released from my fear by doing the thing that scared me the most.

It had not been conquered. I can feel the vertigo and nausea as I write this.

But I did it. I somehow got my feet to move even though they felt like they were in cement shoes and bolted to the ground.

Would I do it again? Hell, no.

The top fears are public speaking, heights (that’s me!), bugs and snakes, blood and needles, flying, and strangers. And, for some reason, zombies. But there must be a spectrum between ick and terror because some fears are resolved by pushing through and others become worse.

I’ve never been afraid of public speaking. I may get a little nervous sometimes, I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t, but never afraid. There was a guy in one of the French classes I took in college who was petrified by it. And it wasn’t all that public—we all knew each other, he was well liked, we each had to get up and present. Why was he shaking and almost unable to speak? I didn’t understand until I met that bridge in the rain forest.

Tomorrow, I start teaching my class, Inner Wisdom: Finding Your Guide Within. It’s my first online class. My first time recording myself. My first time on Facebook Live. Am I nervous? You bet. Scared? Yes, I can admit I am. Will I let those feelings keep me from doing it? Absolutely not.

Because even when we’re afraid we shouldn’t let anything hold us back. As FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

I have a confession to make. I watch Hoarders.

I feel I have to now defend myself. I don’t watch every day, only when I’m feeling overwhelmed. It’s somehow comforting to know I’m not as buried, figuratively or literally, as the people on the show. I had never expected to find wisdom in an episode. But there it was, the psychologist saying,

“It can be difficult to accept the loss of things that could be, but will never be.”

There it was, loss summed up in one little sentence.

I remember the smell of pipe tobacco, Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream playing on the hi-fi, freshly-baked cookies delivered to us… I loved Denise Meisel’s house when I was a girl.

It was 1968 in Detroit. The riots had shaken us up literally the summer before, helicopters flying low over our neighborhood. The teachers’ strike was over. Things were back to normal.

Except they weren’t. My friends started moving away. Nori, Julie, Tracy, Jimmy, Lisa, Denise. Each loss hurt a little. But I was young and resilient. Until we were the ones who moved. To Wisconsin. From Motown to Moo-Town.

I would always be someone who spent the first ten years of her life in Detroit, but it would never be my Who I Was. All these years later, it still stings a little bit. I identify with the city, not some Podunk town. Under the microscope it seems irrational.

Can we make sense out of our feelings of loss?

Where is your clutter, be it physical or emotional? Do you hang onto two different sizes of clothes, hoping you’ll someday fit back into the thinner one? Does throwing out that size 8 pair of pants mean having to accept you may never be that thin again? Of course not. Stores are full of clothes, size 8 and even smaller.

Is your basement full of stuff from your parents’ house because you can’t bear to get rid of it? The memories live in your head, not in the things. But donating them can feel like we’re letting them go, not just their possessions, before we’re fully ready.

How about the clutter we carry around in our heads? “I should have bought that house overlooking the lake when I could have gotten it for less than $300,000,” we think, having no intention of moving, only of regretting.

“Why didn’t I have a serious conversation with him about marriage when I had the chance? My life would be so much different.” Sure, but would it be better?

“How did I let myself gain this much weight?”

“Why didn’t I keep up with those friends?”

Loss can shatter us. It can crack us right open.

But if we release things when it is time, we open the space, both literal and figurative, for new beginnings. Clearing out our clutter, our stuff and our outdated thought patterns, tells the Universe that we’re ready for something fresh, something even better.

What one thing can you throw away, give away, let go of this week in order to make room for the new?

A tarot card spread

“I’m not busy—I can do it,” I imagine I said to God as I was wherever it is we hang out before our soul gets sent down to earth.

In this imagining, God had been searching for someone to go and take care of other people’s children. Being the helpful sort, I opened my mouth before I thought it through. I don’t even particularly like children for more than about fifteen minutes. But it’s the only explanation I can find for how I ended up caring for so many that weren’t mine.

About nineteen years ago, as my aunt’s husband lay dying of cancer, he told her that his soul’s mission hadn’t been completed. In fact, he hadn’t started it. Instead of singing and entertaining people on cruise ships, he should have been doing healing work. In short, he felt he had wasted his life.

That shook me to my core.

I’m not saying that there are unimportant jobs. People need to make money and so they need someone (preferably for free, like I so often was) to watch their kids while they go off to, say, make refrigerators. Everyone needs a refrigerator, which makes all the various positions involved in manufacturing, delivering, and repairing them vital if we’re to keep our food from spoiling. What’s more, a sympathetic ear on the assembly line can many times be more valuable than a therapist.

But was taking care of the children of others my calling?

Was working at my father’s various companies or at Harley-Davidson my purpose?

How about working at Unity Temple, as spiritual as it is?

I was employed there right around the time that my aunt told me that her husband, Scott, said he hadn’t fulfilled his mission. A month later, I quit my job.

And my aunt asked me to perform Scott’s funeral—my first.

There, I met someone who helped me receive my ordination.

Two months later, an acquaintance offered to walk me through being a wedding officiant.

And two months after that, someone I had never met contacted me and offered me all the weddings he had booked for that summer. He had made a sudden decision to move to Virginia.

When we’re on the right path, Spirit supports us and opportunities almost fall from the sky and straight into our arms. All we have to say is, “Thank you. More please!”

Nineteen years and almost six hundred weddings, memorial services, and baby dedications later, I’ve decided to move on to the next chapter. Who says we only have one soul mission?

Do you feel you’re living your purpose?

Sometimes, to move forward we need to reflect on our past. What have been some of your favorite moments? What experiences and people have brought you happiness? What would bring more joy to your existence? What would satisfy your soul?

Know that you are always a powerhouse of possibility. Optimism and ambition lead to success. Planting a seed, knowing its watering schedule, figuring out its unique needs bring it to bear fruit.

And that fruit will be satisfying on both the financial and soul levels.

As the poet Mary Oliver said,
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”