Walking the path of infertility was one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced during this lifetime. If you’re walking this path, I see you, and I send you my love and encouragement because I know how hard it is. For four years, I was unable to conceive naturally, and I tried all the things. Eventually, after four years of walking the infertility path, I became pregnant and birthed my sweet twins, Ellis Andrew and Lillian Hart. Here I’m sharing some of the tools that helped me through this journey.Let me preface this post with a gentle reminder that your experience is unique, and so was mine. Please, take what you like and leave the rest. My suggestions are based on my individual experience and may or may not work for you. I’d want to be extremely transparent about all of the tools that I relied upon throughout my infertility journey. I am a huge advocate for therapy and found a therapist that specialized in working with women who were struggling with infertility (she actually went through IVF herself!).

There are so many ways to tune into Mother Moon. But did you know, there’s a powerful tool you can use to align yourself with lunar energy that requires nothing more than your mind? Meditation is the ultimate tool to tap into the cycles and energy of the moon. Meditation grants you the opportunity to shift your energy on a deep level. During meditation, you can visualize and experience your desires on a physical and energetic level in a way that produces real change. Now, line these powerful energetic shifts up with Mama Moon, and you’ve got some real magick.

The moon’s influence over the tides serves as a constant reminder of its continuous push and pull of energy. Each phase of the moon imparts a specific kind of energy onto you and any magickal workings you perform. When we zoom out and take a more straightforward look at lunar energy, we can understand it as expansive vs. contracting energy.

What is your relationship with letting go?Ritual and magical practice can help us with more than manifesting, attracting, and calling in. It can also help us shed, let go, and transform ourselves and parts of our lives. The winter season invites us to incubate, release, and hibernate. It is an ideal time for release work (as well as the fall!). The phases of the moon that correspond to release are all the waning phases - the waning gibbous moon, the last quarter moon, the waning crescent moon, and the dark moon. Learn more about the phases of the moon with The Ritual Deck (pictured below.)

The dark moon is one of my personal favorite times of the cycle. It’s the last few days of the waning time of the cycle, when the moon continues to shrink and eventually disappears from the sky.Different traditions honor the dark moon at different times. Personally, I honor the dark moon when you can’t see the moon at all in the sky--which is technically the new moon. Others honor the dark moon the last few days before the new moon. I recommend using your intuition and noticing how you feel during these days to understand when to honor the dark moon versus new moon.

Whether you’re in full-on crisis mode or wading through a stressful season of life, knowing which direction to turn for relief can feel overwhelming. A quick fix like reaching for a glass of wine or a shopping splurge might help now and then, but it’s not a long-term solution. What tools can you rely on to help keep your cool when things seem to be falling apart around you?

We’re often encouraged to ignore our darkness. To pretend that we don’t have inner demons, that we can be all love and light, that we can be “healed” without diving into our wounds.The truth is that we can’t, and that’s where shadow work comes in.Shadow work is the conscious practice of exploring your dark feelings, often ignored in your subconscious, that you feel ashamed and afraid of.

Intuition goes by many names: sixth sense, inner knowing, gut feeling. I’m sure you’ve had at least one experience when you “JUST knew.” Maybe it was a safety concern, a work issue, or about a relationship.If you look back you probably didn’t say, “hey intuition, can you please give me some information about…” Nope. The insight came in a flash and you knew exactly what to do.What if you could call on that flash of knowing anytime you wanted? This post will help you do that with 5 simple tips on how to improve your intuition.