EsotericErin

Author: EsotericErin

  • The Edge of Enough: When Irritation Is Telling the Truth

    Resentment doesn’t start loud.

    Resentment does not begin as rage.

    It begins as a flicker.

    A quiet tightening. A small resistance. A “not this” that you immediately override.

    Last week we talked about the pause between feeling and action.

    But here’s what happens when that pause never comes.

    The flicker hardens.

    The tightening becomes tension. The resistance becomes resentment. The “almost” becomes collapse.

    Most of us don’t notice the cost of overriding ourselves in real time.

    We notice it later.

    When we snap. When we withdraw. When we feel used. When we feel invisible.

    And then we tell ourselves we should have handled it better.

    But irritation isn’t a flaw.
    It’s early boundary information.
    It’s your body registering misalignment in real time.

    Productivity culture teaches you to tolerate misalignment.
    To adjust yourself before you adjust the expectation.
    To absorb what doesn’t fit.

    But every time you override the flicker,
    you keep the peace — at your expense.

    The edge of enough isn’t dramatic.
    It’s the moment before you override yourself.

    And that moment is small.

    Which is why it’s powerful.

    You don’t need to burn anything down.

    You don’t need to confront everyone at once.

    But you do need to notice when something inside you says:

    “This is enough.”

    Resentment is rarely sudden.

    It is accumulated silence.

    And you are allowed to interrupt that accumulation earlier.

    Not because you’re dramatic.

    Because you are paying attention.

  • The Doorway Between Feeling and Action

    Feeling is not the opposite of action. It’s the doorway to it.

    Last week we talked about thaw.


    But thaw isn’t the end of winter.


    It’s the return of sensation.


    When the ground softens, you feel where it was frozen.


    And when you begin to thaw, you start to notice what you’ve been overriding.


    Feeling isn’t indulgence.


    It’s orientation.


    It tells you where you are.
    It tells you what something costs.
    It tells you what your body already knows.


    But most of us weren’t taught to treat feeling as information.


    We were taught to treat it as inconvenience.


    Or weakness.


    Or inefficiency.


    In cultures that reward output over awareness — and disproportionately demand that labour from women and gender-expansive people — override becomes survival.


    We’re praised for finishing.
    Rewarded for accommodating.
    Seen as reliable when we endure.


    Productivity culture glorifies collapse.


    It quietly teaches that exhaustion is evidence of virtue.
    That overextension is proof of commitment.
    That if something feels wrong, the problem is your sensitivity — not the structure.


    So we skip the doorway.


    We feel something —
    and immediately override it.


    We justify it.
    We minimise it.
    We call ourselves dramatic.
    We tell ourselves to push.


    But between feeling and action, there is a pause.


    A threshold.


    And in that pause, something radical becomes possible.


    If you stay with sensation for even a moment —
    without performing,
    without explaining,
    without correcting yourself —


    it becomes information.


    Information becomes discernment.


    Discernment becomes choice.


    Stopping before collapse isn’t laziness.


    It’s a refusal to put productivity before your humanity.


    It isn’t dramatic.
    It’s quiet.


    It doesn’t burn the system down.


    But it begins by helping you notice where you’ve been saying yes without realising you had a choice.


    Many of us move through expectations automatically.


    We comply before we assess.
    We accommodate before we check in.
    We agree before we consider the cost.


    Not because we’re weak.


    But because we were trained to survive within systems that rewarded our compliance.


    Awareness doesn’t demand that you dismantle everything at once.


    It simply gives you back a little room.


    And sometimes a little room is enough to choose differently.


    You don’t have to overhaul your life.


    You don’t have to become someone louder.


    You don’t have to make a scene.
    You only have to meet one moment differently than you did before.


    Feel.


    Pause.


    Choose.


    Again.


    And again.


    Alignment is quiet at first.


    It often begins as nothing more than a little more room.


    A breath you didn’t rush.


    A no you didn’t justify.


    A pause you allowed to exist.


    And sometimes, that small shift is enough to change everything.

  • Thaw is not Weakness

    There is a particular kind of tired that feels noble.

    The kind where you tell yourself you are resting.
    Protecting your peace.
    Holding your energy carefully and deliberately.

    And sometimes, that’s exactly what you’re doing.

    But sometimes — and this is the quieter truth — you are not resting.

    You are refreezing.

    There’s a difference.

    Rest is warm.
    Even when it’s still.

    Refreezing feels tight.
    Controlled.
    Contained.

    Rest allows breath.

    Refreezing restricts it.

    Winter is not the problem.

    We need winter.

    We need the quiet seasons where nothing is demanded of us, where the ground hardens and we retreat inward. There are winters in nature, and there are winters in people.

    But winter is meant to move.

    Even when you cannot see it, something shifts beneath the surface.

    Water loosens.
    Light lengthens.
    The air changes before the landscape does.

    And if you pay attention closely enough, you can feel it.

    That faint irritation.

    That small restlessness.

    That whisper of:
    “Okay. Enough now.”

    Not in a dramatic way.
    Not in a “burn it down” way.

    Just a subtle refusal to stay frozen.

    There’s a particular discomfort that comes when you have been small for a little too long.

    Not small in worth.
    Small in expression.

    Small in visibility.
    Small in momentum.

    And the irritation can be confusing, because it doesn’t look like ambition.

    It looks like:

    A desire to show up more consistently. A desire to speak more directly about what you’ve built. A desire to stop pretending your work is a hobby.

    It can feel inconvenient. Slightly embarrassing. A bit exposed.

    But irritation is information.

    It doesn’t mean you need to leap.

    It doesn’t mean you need to bloom overnight.

    It means something in you is thawing.

    And thaw is not weakness.

    Thaw is readiness.

    It is the stage where the ground softens just enough for something to begin.

    You do not have to hurry it.

    But you also do not have to refreeze it.

    You don’t have to slam the door on your own expansion because you are afraid of being visible.

    You don’t have to shrink what you’ve built in order to feel safe.

    There is a version of growth that does not require abandoning your peace.

    There is a version of visibility that does not require performance.

    There is a way to move forward that feels like a stretch — not a tear.

    This is the work I call Holding Court — staying with yourself even as you step forward.

    If something in you is thawing, you don’t have to force it into spring.

    Just don’t press it back into ice.

    Let it soften.

    Let it move.

    Let it take one small, unremarkable step.

    Sometimes that step looks like speaking a little more plainly.

    Sometimes it looks like showing up twice a week instead of when inspiration strikes.

    Sometimes it looks like naming what you’ve built without apologizing for it.

    Not because you need to be louder.

    But because you are ready to be proportionate to your own work.

    Winter served its purpose.

    Now something is stirring.

    You don’t have to leap.

    You just have to stop pretending you’re still frozen.

    There’s room for you in Holding Court

  • Welcome

    This is not a post about fixing anything.


    It’s an invitation to pause, to notice, and to sit with what’s present—without needing to resolve it.


    If you’ve found your way here because something feels off, unclear, or quietly resistant, you don’t need to name it yet.


    You’re allowed to sit with this.

    I don’t offer answers here.

    Not because I don’t have opinions, or experiences, or things I’ve learned the hard way; I do. But because answers, when they arrive too quickly, have a way of replacing something more important.

    Listening.

    This space exists for something slower than certainty. It exists for the questions that surface when you finally stop pushing through, the ones you might not have known how to ask because you were too busy coping, performing, or keeping things moving.


    If you’re here, there’s a good chance something in your life isn’t working the way it used to. You may not know exactly what it is yet. You might not have words for it. You might only have a vague sense of friction, fatigue, or quiet resistance.


    That’s enough.


    You don’t need a fully formed understanding to be here. You don’t need to articulate anything neatly. You don’t need to arrive with insight, or clarity, or a plan for what comes next.


    You’re allowed to sit with this.


    A lot of spaces promise resolution. They want to help you fix, optimize, heal, or transcend. Often, very quickly. Often with the best of intentions. But I’ve learned, both personally and through years of listening to other women, that rushing to make meaning can become another way of overriding ourselves.


    Sometimes the most honest thing you can do is admit, quietly, that something feels off, and stay there for a while.

    This is not a space for emotional bypassing. It’s not a place where discomfort needs to be reframed into a lesson, or smoothed over so it’s easier for others to digest. There’s no expectation that you move on, stay positive, or make your feelings productive.


    There is no requirement to be consistent. No urgency to get anywhere. No pressure to turn what you’re feeling into something useful.


    Insight can arrive slowly.


    I’m not here as an authority over your inner life. I’m here alongside you, holding space for inquiry without coercion.

    What you notice, when you notice it, belongs to you. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for it, and you certainly don’t need to make it comfortable for someone else before it’s true for you.

    If this feels like an exhale, you’re in the right place.

    You’re allowed to sit with what’s present, without judgment or demand. You’re allowed to take your time. You’re allowed to feel your feelings without having to justify them.

    Nothing needs to change right now.

  • Making Authentic Connections With Clients

    Making Authentic Connections With Clients

    If you’re reading this post, I want to talk to you!

    Authentic connections are vital to me in my work. I have no interest in sitting down to do a reading with someone where all that matters is getting paid for my time and lip service. If that’s what a customer wants, they should get a fortune cookie because it’s a lot less expensive than a reading with me and is its own delicious snack. What I crave, those authentic connections, is a meeting of our souls.

    I was taking a look at my followers on a popular social media website this weekend and noticed someone who had started following me had posted some thoughts or shared posts from other people that had some views that I don’t hold or even condone. How could I have made an authentic connection with someone whose words showed such a different perspective from my own? Is this the point of view I want my business to be connected, even tenuously, to in the minds of others?

    If someone follows me on Instagram or Twitter, I’d like to follow them back so that we can engage on multiple levels. However, I can’t just hit a subscribe button without knowing a bit about them. That’s not an authentic connection, it’s a bit of code that ties our names together on the internet.

    Walking my talk…

    Saying I want authentic connections isn’t enough, I need to put that desire into action. I don’t want to simply attract people who follow anyone, I want to both attract those who resonate with my energy and repel those who don’t. This is a luxury I’m aware others can’t necessarily afford to have, but this is important to me so I’ll do my best.

    What I’m asking of people who follow me is twofold:

    1. What things are included in pages or profiles for businesses/personalities that make you feel comfortable following and supporting them publicly? Is it enough to have emojis in a bio? Are there posts you’d like to see? Do they have pictures from events where they’ve supported a cause at fundraisers? What kind of content sparks your desire to make authentic connections with a business?
    2. Conversely, are there red flags that it’s a business you don’t want to give your money? Is there language in their writing that turns you off? And what makes a business look like it’s trying too hard to tick too many boxes? Do too many causes make it look performative and insincere? Does too much diversity of issues make you worry that the passion is diluted?
    Dreaming of authentic connections

    My plan going forward

    Any insights that readers can give me would be very helpful! I want to do good in the world and I don’t believe that it can be achieved by allowing bigotry and hatred to be fed. If authentic connections can be forged between people who are willing to put in the effort, we can make it happen!

    If your input on authentic connections is something you’d rather not have immortalized on a blog until the fall of the internet, you can reach out by email or on any platforms you see listed below. Thanks so much for reading this post and I hope to hear from you soon.

  • A Magical Autumn Equinox 2022

    A Magical Autumn Equinox 2022

    It’s the autumn equinox!

    The solstices and equinoxes have held a special allure for me as far back as I can remember. I’m sure it can be attributed in no small part to my birthday being on the summer solstice. It probably ticks a lot of subconscious boxes for my Cancer side.

    This year, the fall equinox is today, September 22nd, and I’d like to give you a few, small ways to mark the specialness of the day. A portion of what I’m including will relate to some Pagan tenets that I am not the right person to teach others. There’s a brief list at the end of this post that has books and authors that I recommend if you’re looking for more information. Also, the information given is applicable to where I live, the Northern Hemisphere, so things would be different in the Southern Hemisphere which means I feel even less qualified to talk about correspondences there.

    An Autumn Equinox Overview

    Spring and fall (or autumn) both commence with an equinox, vernal and autumnal respectively. The word “equinox” is from two Latin words—æqui meaning “equal” + nox which is a derivative of noct meaning “night”—describing how the hours of daylight and those of darkness are of equal length. Each solstice and equinox marks the movement of the sun into a Cardinal astrological sign from a Mutable sign.

    Spring EquinoxPisces (mutable water) to Aries (cardinal fire)
    Summer SolsticeGemini (mutable air) to Cancer (cardinal water)
    Fall EquinoxVirgo (mutable earth) to Libra (cardinal air)
    Winter SolsticeSagittarius (mutable fire) to Capricorn (cardinal earth)
    Solstice and equinox transitions

    The Origins

    The autumn equinox is the second holy day related to the harvest (Lammas is the first, in early August) and is a time of mysteries. It’s a period of bidding a grateful farewell to the abundance of summer in order to start preparing to survive the less fertile winter. In some traditions it represents the slaying of the Harvest Lord and the descent of the Goddess into the Afterlife to find her lost love. In Greek mythology, this is the story of the goddess of the harvest, Demeter, and her daughter with Zeus, Persephone. I’ll give a quick summary that may leave out details for the sake of brevity.

    Zeus promised to allow Hades to marry one of his daughters and Hades chose the daughter he had with Demeter, Persephone. The two gods knew Demeter would never permit Persephone to marry Hades and concocted a plan to abduct her. Without Persephone, Demeter was wrathful and neglectful of her harvest duties which led to famine for the mortals. Hermes was dispatched by Zeus to retrieve Persephone who had (shockingly) fallen in love with Hades after he made the goddess of fertility her own personal garden that flourished beautifully.

    When Persephone was reluctant to leave the underworld, Hades gave her six pomegranate seeds which she ate—in Greek mythology, it was believed that they would always be able to return if they ate food from their captor—and Zeus, after going head to head with Demeter and Persephone over where their daughter would reside, decided that she would spend the same number of months in the underworld each year as the number of pomegranate seeds she had eaten. Thus, the goddess of fertility leaves for the underworld on the fall equinox and the plants we rely on for nourishment wither, only to return for the spring equinox and give new life to crops.

    Sumerians celebrated the goddess Inanna for the autumn equinox. Some Wiccan traditions call the fall equinox Mabon which is taken from Celtic and Welsh mythology. Mabon was known as the Child of Life and he was the son of Modron, the Earth Mother Goddess.

    How You Can Celebrate the Autumn Equinox

    Now that you have all this new information about gods and goddesses, you need to remember that they’re very vainglorious and love to be praised. You can still offer thanks to the earth even if you don’t have a particular affinity to one pantheon. Plus, if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, the autumn equinox marks the start of temperatures cooling down so it’s a great time to take advantage of the last little while before it could be too cold to go outside for more than a few minutes.

    • Visit a local orchard for agricultural offerings
    • Collect leaves in fall colours
      • Make a specific project out of them
      • Sprinkle them around your home (I suggest outside because uninvited guests can hitch a ride)
    • Decorate with pinecones, acorns, and chrysanthemums
    • Feast on apples, blackberries, grains
    • Infuse your life with autumn colours
      • Reds
      • Browns
      • Oranges
      • Yellows
      • Dark pinks
      • Mauves

    It’s okay to do all of these suggestions, some of them, or even none of them. I think it would be good for all of us, though, to take a minute outside to just think, and breathe, and give thanks to the world that sustains life. If you’re not feeling grateful about your own life (which is a disheartening but valid way of feeling), think about someone you love and be grateful their life has been sustained.

    Books and Authors

    • Scott Cunningham
    • Silver RavenWolf
    • Raymond Buckland
      • Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft
      • Wicca For One: The Path Of Solitary Witchcraft
    • Doreen Valiente
      • Witchcraft for Tomorrow
      • Charge of the Goddess

    Enjoy your autumn equinox!

  • Survive Mercury Retrograde in September 2022

    Survive Mercury Retrograde in September 2022

    Mercury retrograde is September 9 – October 2 and will be going through Libra (09/09-24/09) and Virgo (24/09-02/10) before righting itself. The best advice during this period is to try to avoid burning the candle at both ends. In Libra, your balance will be thrown off and Virgo’s perfectionism might have you scrambling to steady the boat by overcorrecting. Realize that resources have times of ebb and of flow, temporary excess doesn’t have to last forever.

  • Intense Back-to-School Emotions 101

    Intense Back-to-School Emotions 101

    September Means School’s Starting

    It’s been an extremely busy summer for my family and, while we’ve had an absolute blast, I’m ready to send my kid back to school! Even if she might not realize just how much she grows when she’s around other kids, her father and I definitely do. She was a preemie and has experienced some delays so seeing her bloom has been incredible. Since she started attending, though, I’ve struggled with working through my feelings about my own time in school.

    To be brief, it’s a work in progress. I want my daughter to have a childhood unmarred by my own baggage so I’m trying to focus on how I can enhance her experience and foster a love of learning that will be able to withstand the turbulence of growing up. That includes addressing medical issues that may crop up as she ages.

    School Pix
    Most of these are the results from school Picture Days

    My Baggage in School and Beyond

    This is something I’ve thought long and hard about writing, but I think I’m finally ready to commit to sharing it. I take psychiatric medications.

    That statement can be a loaded admission in some circles, and I know other readers who don’t agree with the idea. The anti-anxiety and anti-depressants have literally kept me going more times than I can count and aren’t even a question if I want to keep being alive. In early 2022, however, I added a new ingredient to my cocktail—Ritalin. The idea of my having ADD or ADHD wasn’t a new one, it was just difficult to discern which symptoms belonged to which diagnosis.

    Lack of focus/concentration (not just in school!) is a frustratingly common symptom. Has it been 2 years since I’ve finished a non-fiction book because I’m depressed or is there another culprit? (See also: diagnosing ADHD in a dreamy girl in the 1990’s)

    Happily, the last 18-24 months have shown a marked improvement in my anxiety and depression. The problem was I wasn’t finding sitting still or finishing things I’d started any easier to do. My husband has complained for years about my constantly moving hands; my sister would tell me to just watch a movie, but I retained more of it if I was also playing The Sims on my laptop; I had always felt like there was background noise in my mind.

    Whenever I would broach the idea of an attention disorder with doctors or therapists as an adult (24-31), I was told I would have been diagnosed by now. Again, getting this kind of diagnosis at school without hyperactivity as a girl in the ‘90s was an enormous task, and the addition of my pronounced anxiety, depression, dysthymia, and borderline personality disorder (BPD) with overlapping symptoms in my adolescence made getting diagnosed for ADHD not only harder but less pressing. There doesn’t seem to be much point to helping a to helping a depressed anxious girl focus on a class if the anxiety keeps her from going to school or the overwhelming negative thoughts make her want to harm herself.

    There I was in early 2022, anxiety at bay and depression under control but still not able to complete tasks or achieve goals (ironically encapsulated in an abandoned vision board from December 2021 whose last bullet pointed affirmation was “I have the focus to complete tasks I’ve committed to tackling”) so I scheduled an appointment with my GP to talk about an assessment. Long story slightly shorter, I “tested very high” for ADHD and we were going to start me on a low dose of Ritalin to see its effects.

    When I say Ritalin has changed my life, I’m not exaggerating. I’ve also been receiving a nerve block to treat a chronic headache issue and these two additions to my healthcare routine have me feeling like a new person! I always hated being told I had so much potential that I was falling short of, and it always felt like there was an intentional reason, even if it was subconscious, so I was to blame. I feel like I can access my own potential with medications handling the hurdles. You’ll still never see me using the word in a shaming way because I know how much it can hurt!

    In the context of my tarot readings, though, I have seen a difference. I’m able to hear and feel my intuition more clearly with the static in my mind turned down. Articulating my thoughts and perceptions comes more easily. There’s still stumbling over my tongue though I’m fairly certain that’s more a result of my brain working faster than my mouth and being a fast speaker.

    I guess what I’m wanting to achieve with this post is twofold. Firstly, it lets people who take issue with a tarot reader being on psychiatric medications a heads up that I’m possibly not the right reader for them. Secondly, and more importantly, to be true to myself by not pretending to be something I’m not and by owning that my psychiatric medications—a positive one!

    Me at school circa 2008

    Moving Forward

    My incredible daughter continuing to love school is so important to me. Her grades and achievements are secondary if she’s miserable when she has to attend or wants to harm herself because she can’t live up to others’ expectations. I owe it to her to not have my pain overshadow the benefits she gets from the school environment.

    Your Turn?

    If you feel like you want insight into past experiences (that don’t need to be handled by doctors, legal professionals, or the like) and you can relate to this post, reach out to me! They don’t have to pertain to school, but I do see September as its own new year with its own new year.

  • Discover the October 23rd Healing Light Holistic Fair

    I am off to the fair!

    Given the pandemic our world has been battling since the beginning of last year, one of my favourite activities hasn’t been able to happen. In my current town, a group of amazingly talented and incredibly passionate individuals get together at a community centre and offer their services. I’ll be reading tarot.

    There won’t be as many people participating in this fair as other fairs we’ve had, unfortunately. We also have COVID-19 protocols we’ll be following that are in line with our area’s safety guidelines. It’s so important that everyone does their best to keep themselves and others safe in these uncertain times. Please, wear your mask and get your vaxx!

    2021-10-23T10:00:00

      days

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    until

    Healing Light Holistic Fair

  • Pearl for May 27, 2021

    Pearl for May 27, 2021

    Gemini and Sagittarius (Mutable Air and Mutable Fire respectively) are strong today—be on the alert for flightiness. It’s okay to not be grounded all of the time, but with the Fixed modality being particularly weak, we can harness our mental agility at this time to write out a wish list to enact when it’s the right time. Don’t get so caught up in fantasies and dreams that you never put them into action.