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The Shadow Worker, a free online journaling experience

“To know thyself is to be the ruler of one’s own universe. “

Carl Jung

This journaling experience will provide you with the tools and the opportunities to recognize, resolve, and embrace all parts of yourself, including your shadow side. By doing this, you can move forward in your life, in a more holistic and balanced way, leaving all negativity, and/or any unwanted patterns, beliefs, or behaviors behind you.

Click here to more info and to join the challenge. ❤️

Breakups are lame. Divorces are even lamer.

I’m so hurt and confused.

My husband admitted to having an emotional affair with a colleague at work, after initially lying about it.

As an INFJ Empath, I knew he lied because I sensed the moment that he pulled away, and that was actually years ago. But this recent incident has been since January, right around my birthday, and has ruined my entire year. I realize that people make mistakes, and that all choices are not the right choice that we could make at the time, but after lying about it the first time, it took him six months to come to me with it. And meanwhile, my heart has been broken and I’ve been sitting here wondering what I’ve been doing wrong, and why he doesn’t want to pay attention to me. And I have tried to fix it so many times.

And now I don’t want to.

I realize that emotional affairs are not sexual, but I almost would prefer if he had just gone out and had a one night stand, rather than becoming emotionally involved with a woman that he spends eight hours with every day. This woman, Sarah, spends more time with my husband than I do, especially quality time. They eat lunch together, she calls and texts his personal phone, all day long- and he doesn’t text me unless I text him. I get him after he’s been with her all day, and he’s tired and he doesn’t want to talk, or hang out. He just wants to go to bed.

If he had even once invited me down to his school this year, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But there are so many things that were strange and so many emotions that I felt that didn’t sit right, such the feelings he got whenever she called , and not answering the phone or talking to her in front of me, asking one another why they’ve left without saying goodbye, organizing, and planning to move to the same school next year and then when it didn’t work out, deciding to stay at that school together…And the fact that he lied tells me there’s so much more to it than just a friendship. but he never did say it was a friendship. He still blames her for everything that happened, although he’s the one that opened the door and let her in.

I know that it takes two to tango, and I know he was a part of that dance number. I wish I felt like I knew the whole truth, and I wish I had thought that he was telling it. but a person who won’t take responsibility for their own actions is not a person of character. And in that case, why would I stay here?

He is doing all of this.

How much longer would it have been until they were to get physical? And how many more doors is he going to open?

Does it even matter?

I guess the bottom line is that he doesn’t want me. And since he doesn’t want me, I have no business staying here and interrupting his future and reminding him of his conscience. At this point, I’m pretty certain that he doesn’t have one.

The bottom line is, he doesn’t want me if he’s gonna do that. So I will go.

Love, Shilo

Yep. It is what it is. And gravity is everything.

Trigger Warning:
I’m just giving you guys a heads up that there is change coming and if I’m not on here, I’m just taking care of it quietly. But shit is changing.
♥️

I have been spiraling, literally, into a darkness that I’m just fucking tired of going into, without a flashlight and an atlas. I will never stop going there because it is a part of me, but I have learned to balance that part with light. And also to carry directions. And most often, even with light and direction, I somehow managed to still get lost in the dark. I have a very complex personality, and it ruled me until I started ruling it.

For real. Or don’t say it.

Let’s talk personality type:

I am a INFJ, but also Sigma. I have been fighting to be myself my whole life. I have never been allowed to just comfortably be me, unapologetically be me. I have been told I think too much, that I waste my time worrying. I’ve been told so many things about myself that I eventually started to believe it all… because I couldn’t figure it out, I made no sense, I felt lost! And all INFJ’s do not like to feel lost, or to be lost at all. It’s like the worst feeling in the world for us, because we have to be able to find our own way. We often even use our own atlas, one that we have created, in order to traverse our lives. We make that shit up as we go. And then we rewrite the atlas multiple times; and it might even seem like we’ve had multiple lives, all in one lifetime. We have. We change ourselves up, thinking of it as a constant “level up” to fulfilling our journey, which is to be worthy; to be seen and still be worthy. We get confused on who needs to see us in this way. We think that it’s everyone else that can’t see us. Our “level up” in our journey has only to do with us believing we are worthy of our journey, of our lives. That who we are matters, and makes a difference. We need to find our own worth. We don’t know it, and we can’t believe it. No one else seems to. Why should we?

Rare? No. Not in the way you are thinking. Scarce? Yes. But also, not in the way you are thinking. Complex? Fuck yeah. Duality? Fuck yeah. Confusing? Fuck yeah. We are all of this. And a bag of chips. We don’t give ourselves enough credit for our brain, and how it functions. Many of us don’t even know this because our brains have been shut down in functioning (debilitated) by people who didn’t want to try to understand us. By people who probably had no cognitive ability to understand us, because our brains process in a very unique way. We have come to “see,” without being seen. In an introverted way, we watch the world, and we never take our eyes away because we can’t. We are trying to understand it. We are trying to understand why we are here, and what the purpose of life is. We are the people who must find a purpose. We kind of flop around in the world until we find a purpose to be here. And our purpose is one of a “light worker: a person who learns to balance light and dark, good and evil, right and wrong.” We need to be able to bring light to our darkness, transcend pain and rejection, by transformation. Transformation is basically a nice word for death. We can’t be born again until we die. We can’t unlearn what we’ve been taught if we can’t kill it. Unfortunately, we can’t lead from where we have never been, and we can’t show, by example, how to do something we haven’t done. We are defeating our own purpose if we do not teach other people how to do these things. We transcend these things and show people how to do them in order to change the world, to make a difference. Most of us feel like we have this calling. There is no point in denying it, because you’re just lying to yourself then. We are very opposed to lying because we believe that the truth will set you free.

Mirrors are wonderful things. And also not what you think. Especially for an empath.

Society has referred to INFJ’s as many names throughout history, such as Spiritualists, Shamans, light workers, empaths, intuitive empaths, intuitives, psychics, clairvoyant and claircognizant, sages, witches, sigmas, seers- the people who see, hear, feel, and know the things that they shouldn’t, the unvoiced things that screamed to us anyway. Our function stack is very strange, because we use our intuition and the way that our intuition makes us feel in order to vacillate in a circular thinking pattern that will allow us to connect tiny pieces into a big picture that we can then judge immediately for validity. We can do this in about two seconds flat; on any given day, with any given idea, but we don’t stop there, because we have to think of it from everyone’s perspective, on every given day, mix it in with how these perspectives made us feel, and then make connections between those feelings and thinking parts, make a judgment about all of it, and then connect our prior learning and background knowledge in order to see a big picture. We always have to get a bird’s eye view. We then go through all of these different “what if‘s” and/or possibilities that could or may happen. And we literally do this with every thought that we have, so much that we forget that we are in a living body that has senses- (extroverted sensing is an inferior function- it doesn’t come naturally for us , and about 95% of us don’t know how to be intimate. We don’t know how to be touched or touch others. (We crave it. We want it. But we have no idea how to get it because we are so busy living in our head, our body sometimes wishes it could move there. It has its cravings too, but we don’t go out of our way to make sure those are met.) We are too busy considering the multiple incarnations we have lived, in our own heads, while the multiverse of possibilities, is playing in the background. It’s exhausting. At least that’s what it feels like sometimes, “when genius borders on crazy.” We often begin to believe that we really are crazy because there is only one percent of the population that are INFJ-type people. Until we realize that there are others like us, and there are people that actually think like us, and can follow our crazy thought processes, and understand what we’re doing, and why were doing it, we feel like we may even be aliens, with nowhere that we fit into this universe, though.

It’s. True.

And there may just be some truth in this. We don’t really fit into this world. We are very different, and we know that from a very early age. The way that people respond to us is how we gauge who we are, and if they don’t know how to respond, which often times they don’t, it feels like another slight. Like another person that rejected us, or another person that called us weird. We are weird. I am weird. But weird is not always a negative term. It actually means different, and different is good. All I know is that I never felt good enough. From an early age, I took on this personal mission to improve myself, and that is what I have tried to do daily for my whole life. But it wasn’t based on self-actualization in the beginning. It was based on trying to make people like me, and I spent several years trying really hard to make friends with people who thought I was weird.

You’ll wish you hadn’t asked. I will not lie.

But if you call a highly sensitive intuitive empath weird, then you are calling me weird, too. But the thing is that I have transcended that because my purpose in life is to transcend the pain, and find the happiness, in order to make the life worth living for the person living it. That person is me. I no longer care who thinks I’m weird, or at least I try not to. It doesn’t hurt me anymore, though, when I’m rejected, because I’m very used to it, and I’m usually the first one at the door before the rejection even happens, and I walk out of it, and shut that door behind me first, before they even knew that I knew it was coming. It’s a character flaw. It’s based on past rejection and past experience of rejection, and it’s a hard one to let go of. For real. We could say it’s impossible, but nothing is impossible. That’s a crock of shit.


I have spent years overthinking about why I am this way, over-analyzing myself, judging myself way too harshly, using symbols and metaphors to connect every little thing in the puzzles that my brain creates, even creating stories for the lack of truth that was realized in situations. I have even blamed myself for everyone else’s bad behavior, and really believed that it was inspired by something I did.

I have tried to believe the best about people. I can only do that until I am proven wrong.

I hated me. I really hated me. I couldn’t make it stop, or change it. I was born this way. I was born to be a walking contradiction. It’s almost like I’ve been “damned if I do, and damned if I don’t,” for my entire life. The truth is: I am even a contradiction to myself. But the Sigma helps me out a lot, because I don’t identify as someone who is assertive, (INFJ-A) and I don’t identify as someone who is turbulent, (INFJ-T). I am similar to assertive, but I don’t assert myself in the way that people expect me to. I actually flip a fucking switch. And it’s not a good one. And I have to always remind myself about light and dark, and about balance. It is a walk on a trapeze line, while holding a monkey. The monkey is always moving and so is the line and so am I but I have to balance this shit, or I’m gonna fall.

Before I go further, let me explain Sigma INFJ’s…

You can compare INFJ personality types to the three types of wolves in a wolf pack, with the alpha, the beta, and the sigma wolves, comprising all the dogs in the pack. The alpha is said to be the leader of the pack, the boss, the one always calling the shots. They take control of every situation, have to have their noses in everyone’s butt, and their eyes on everyone’s plate. The beta are not celebrated as leaders, but they are peacekeepers who are afraid of the alpha for whatever reason- size, status, upbringing, inability to be savage, or a fear of disrupting the natural order of the pack. The Sigma doesn’t give a shit about any of this; he stays behind in the back of the pack, and watches it from behind, always keeping an eye on the pack. He is not trying to lead in any way, but he’s got no beef with the leader. He is considered savage, and he is responsible for keeping the pack safe. But he is not leading so he’s not taking responsibility for where they go, but he is going to make sure they get there. He is usually the wolf that is unseen he stays behind, and he watches from a distance for the predators that the alpha isn’t seeing. He is kind of leading from behind. If you know anything about horses, you know that this is how you’re supposed to lead. That way, when you’re leading from behind, you’re actually supporting whoever you’re leading, but you’re not taking over everybody else’s idea of where to go. You’re not trying to control the movement of the pack. You are controlling the movement of everything else but the pack. But in an instant, if you howl in a certain way, the alpha knows it’s serious, and the alpha turns to you- the one in the back. So you are really in control of the pack. Just from the back.

As a sigma INFJ, I don’t have to be the boss. I don’t have to stand in the front to lead. I don’t have to control the movement, or the speed, or even the direction of where the pack is going, but I guarantee I will know where we are going, and if we can go there safely, before anyone in the front does, including the Alpha. It’s my job to make sure that we’re going to get there safely. And I will know where we are going, or I would not be able to guarantee safety. When you see wolves are investigating some thing happening up in front of the wolves, the one that will go investigate is the sigma. They alpha will stay with the pack. The sigma is the right hand man, who would rather not be the one in the front, and in control. Sigma INFJ’s spend their entire life transcending control issues. They don’t want to be controlled and they don’t want to control. They are simply born to be intuitive (paying close attention to what they feel) and watch over the pack keep it safe, and be the all-knowing right hand man, from the back, (they transcend the concepts of “fitting in,” “needing to control others,” “needing to please others,”-save for one- the Alpha, the one being that they actually sort-of “switch back and forth in submission” to, and l they are generally not required to observe the rules put into place by the Alpha. The sigma is generally equal to the alpha, but in an opposite way the sigma will step up and leave the back when the alpha isn’t there but that is the only time they want to come to the front. they don’t really care about the “pack rules”and they typically don’t associate with the pack, other than they get special mating privileges that beta’s don’t get. This is because sigma is very different from beta, and also very different from alpha. They like peace, they like solitude, they like being in the back. They don’t like rolls. They don’t like to be put into a box that makes them conform to a certain role. They like to be the underdog they like to be the least expected. they like to protect, but they don’t want the recognition. They just want to be left alone to do the job they were born to do, from the back. But they are the first ones that will kill you if you come to try to mess with the pack. They will be the first one to stand up and fight for the pack. They will be the first one to die for the pack. But they not in your face telling you what to do, what food you can eat, where you can go, and what girls you can mate with. That’s the alpha.

That’s not me. I’m the loner who stays in the back. I will come unannounced. You won’t see me coming, but you can bet your ass that I saw you. I’m probably the least expected, and the fiercest one that will kill you for my family pack of dogs. Hahahaha! If you know me, in real life, I know you are laughing right now. That’s cool. It’s fucking funny! 😂 I am just a dog! 😂 Sigmas are your teachers. But they’re not your smiley kindergarten teacher. They are the teacher that hold you accountable by failing you based on your effort, and they will always give you what you deserve in order to teach you a lesson. I will always identify with being a teacher. INFJ is are the advocate. They are the counselors. They are the people who take the time to listen, and the people who actually hear what you’re saying. They will hold space for you, and they will be severely hurt when you don’t return the favor. But they will be silent about it because they are so used to that shit happening.

INFJ ‘s have many interests that always connect, but don’t seem to connect to other people. Even with two masters degrees, most of my self education (aka rabbit holes), has been about astrology and tarot. I am deeply into ancient systems that can provide support with helping me find balance, with bringing light to darkness. My natal chart is ridiculous and the more I discover the more ridiculous it seems to me, because it is also based on duality, and it is a huge contradiction.

Let’s learn about the planets in Astrology…

I’ve never seen a transit chart light up like mine has- and activate all of these “destined” and “fated” points, including one called a “Finger of God,” that ends up giving Chiron control of my entire chart. I swear, the things I’ve learned just this last week all went into full effect suddenly when Transiting Pluto stationed retrograde at 29° Capricorn, sixth house, directly on my natal 29° Capricorn Mercury. And within one degree of my descendent and 3 degrees of my SUN!

Now “have a seat while I take to the sky.” Click to see video.

Before that happened, I knew a lot about astrology, but I didn’t know a lot about what it meant for me in my own chart based on all of those aspects. The aspects draw lines in the middle circle of the chart and those lines are connecting planets by degrees depending upon where those planets were at the exact moment you were born. The lines form shapes, and the shapes have meaning. And then you throw transits in. And all the other coast amount of information… I really did not get there until I was supposed to, and right as I arrived, I got a quick memo from Pluto saying , “hi, I’m Pluto, and you’re late.” I have a “finger of God” that has been activated. And now, Chiron has activated everybody because I am in a full swing Chiron return. I feel like I’m spinning. It’s hard to catch my breath. The energy is confusing; the energy is raw, and it’s supposed to be healing me by opening wounds, but all I feel is the warm blood gushing out. Chiron in a natal chart represents your main wound in your life, and also how to heal it. We call him the wounded healer.

The influence of your rising sign is more powerful than your sun, I believe. You can think of it as your beginning- or where you are starting from birth. it’s called your ascendant, because it’s where the sun was ascending on the eastern horizon at your exact time of birth. Your rising sign is your physical form, it’s the face that you show the world. So in a way, it is the raw and true essence of who you are. Your descendant represents where you’re going.

Your Sun (often called your star sign) represents your soul. It is not really who you are, though, because it is an ideal, your soul’s projection of your potential. (It can be thought of as who you aspire to be, AKA your ego.) In my opinion, your sun shows where you put your energy in and how you energize things, but it’s nowhere near the most important, and I don’t know why people even check their sun sign horoscope, as it’s pretty much a waste of time because it’s just an outward projection that you show people- not really you. I mean I hope to be as responsible as your typical third deacon Capricorn, who is born on the day of the dominatrix, but I doubt I’ll make it there. Although it’s a good outward projection and it’s a good high bar to have.) The sun enters with the question: what will it take for you to understand who you are? What energy can you project to express to your future soul? You see, everyone is under the impression that the sun is the ruler of their chart. They think that their entire “horoscope sign” is their sun sign, their “outward projection,” or how they see themselves, but that is just what you are hoping to become if you follow the map correctly. It’s not just that, though- it is actually your soul’s projection of who you are supposed to become. It is an ideal, a projection of the future, but it is not who you are at birth, but rather it is who your soul wants you to be when you grow up. Lol The sun is the way you outwardly express yourself. It’s the essence of your soul.

It’s time.

The transiting sun was exact (degree as it was at my time if birth) on my natal (where Pluto was the day I was born) on the day my dad died. The planet of death and destruction and transformation introduced himself, and then took my dad. In doing that, he also took my ability to access my sunlight to fight my darkness, and my darkness swelled and got huge and had no end. My sun was suddenly gone. All happiness had left me. I didn’t care anymore and I really just wanted to die. It took me years to break out of it. It took me years to find my sun again. Pluto and I have a very, very complicated relationship. It is one that I complicate, not him. You can’t fight death. You can’t fight transformation. You must surrender to it in order to transcend it. But I chide him daily with, “not today Satan.” I pretty much view him as the devil. Pluto enters conversations with a guiding question: what do you love the most and how can I kill your attachment to it? what can I kill that you can build back better?

Pluto will just kill everything you love until you want to die. Pluto does not have patience, and he does not mess around. If I had to compare him to a tarot card, I would say he’s the tower. He’s there strictly to take what he feels no longer serves you. It comes with a backhanded gift though, because whatever he destroys, he promises to build back better, so you might also kind of say he’s the “Trumper” of the zodiac. Lol Pluto and I are not friends. He’s been bringing me to my knees since I realized that my dad died the day Pluto went exact on my natal Sun. Pluto is called the planet of death and destruction/transformation. He wants to “transform,” to kill, and he always takes what you think you can’t live without, mercilessly. It is a lesson, of sorts, to teach you how strong you are. It is also a lesson to teach you how to rebuild after mass destruction. Like I said, he’s not my fucking friend. He stole the light of my sun, and as a Leo rising, I don’t like when my light is stolen. Ever) It would probably be fine if I was only dealing with transiting Pluto in the very last degree (called a critical degree!) of my 6th house, but he is in mutual reception with my sky daddy, Saturn- also called the “disciplinarian,” in the same critical degree, but in opposition (directly across from) where Pluto has parked his wrecking ball until November. He’s been there for years. I’ve got another couple months for one last hurrah. Now he’s taking my home. Or what I have considered home for the last 10 years.

Your Moon can be viewed as your heart. It’s your emotional core. It’s not really your emotions, but it’s how you express them. It’s the energy that you bring to your emotions. It can also be thought of as you’re unconscious mind. The sun and the moon are actually luminaries, not planets. The planets are not truly satellites of the earth, but they have gravity, so they affect the Earth, but the sun controls the earths motion, and the moon controls its tides. Gravity is literally everything. My moon is in Scorpio in the fourth house, and it is square to everything. The squares are 90° angles and they argue, they are represented by red lines, and red lines are bad. Square planets fight and don’t get along. My moon can be held accountable for many of my struggles, but it also is always there to save me. It likes to go deep and it wants all or nothing. It will make no exceptions. A Scorpio moon is considered a debilitated moon because it is in fall. 4th house is literally the worst placement for Scorpio. My Scorpio moon is in fall. It’s in the worst placement it can be in, 4th house (the realm of childhood, home, family, mother, and ancestral Karma, the shit that gets passed down the line, over and over and over again, even though it’s fucking wrong.)

I’m tired of not knowing which way to go, and that is something my moon influences. The Nodes of the Moon explain what you can take with you from your past life experiences in order to fulfill your present life experience. North is the future and South is the past. These nodes of the moon are also based on Karma.

Mercury represents how you communicate your thoughts, and how you learn. You can think of your mercury as your mind. When mercury goes retrograde, it seems like all forms of communication come to a stop, or they go backwards. It’s always a big joke. Because everybody uses it, like it’s a great excuse. My sun and my mercury are conjunct (together in my 6th house) in my natal chart, so they express energy in the same way, and they work together, so to speak. My mind and my ego express in the same way, with the same energy.

You can’t fight mars either. Have you ever met an Aries? It’s a lost cause to try to fight. Mars controls how you express your energy and if you try to fight him, he will fight you with your own energy and you will lose. Mars is how you express your energy to accomplish your goals. You can think of mars as how you fight and how you fuck. And how you use your energy to express desires, wishes, hopes, etc. Mar’s questions: what is it gonna take to move you? How mad will I have to make you before I can break you? What can I do to lose you? What will it take to fuck you over again and again?

Saturn is the disciplinarian and he’s kind of like “Sky daddy.” If you kind of slip him into the father role, you can see how wherever he is you have something that controls you there in a disciplinarian way. He’s like the fuck around and find out guy of the zodiac. Saturn keeps coming back with the same lesson over and over and until you learn it, Saturn has lots of patience and you will keep learning it and learning it in learning it until it’s learned, even if it takes you all of your fucking life. Or several lives. Saturn question: Have you worked hard enough?

Venus is all about beauty. How are you express it, how you see it, and what you find beautiful. I think of her like a big goddess , and also the lover, as she represents your desires.

Oh, you will gain something alright.

Neptune is linked to escapism and how you cope with your problems. He is also linked to mysticism and spirituality, and what you will do to solve them for your own sanity. Or if you will drown in escape. He is also linked to Pisces in a very real way.

Key takeaways for Shilo:

I am seeing so much duality in everything- good and evil, black and white, and I’m getting taught new Chiron lessons that are bringing up shit I thought I had healed. I have everything swinging in opposites on every axis. I’m taking the opportunity to learn, and I’m learning some very good information from some very great astrologers. I honestly didn’t see myself in chat forums, and in direct messaging with professional astrologers that actually respected my insight and noted my observations, especially people who are my personal friends. I’m actually getting really good at this now.

My lesson is to go forward in my truth and be me. Do it. Don’t be afraid to talk. Don’t be afraid of what people think. Don’t care if people listen because the people that need to hear it, will. And those are the people who will get it. It doesn’t matter if the people who don’t get the message I’m sending, don’t understand it, because it wasn’t meant for them in the first place. But that is nearly impossible to do when you have been made to repress yourself your whole life. When you have been told that you are too much and you need to bring it down. When it was never explored, and it was never allowed, and it became a problem for you because it was a problem for everyone else. And especially since it was a problem to the one person that you needed to listen to you most; the one person who was the one who told you to shut up all the time. In fact, the last thing that my dad said to me was “shut up Shilo.” I was 45 years old, and he was still saying it to me. He said it multiple times, every time I opened my mouth in his presence. I don’t know why, but my dad did not want to hear me. He did not want to see me. He did not want me to know who I actually was. And that is one thing that I will never understand. But it is one thing that has held me back exponentially in my own growth, and in my own life. And it is one thing that I am going to transcend in this life.

Always. And. Forever.

To believe that some wounds are deep, so deep that they can never be healed, is a cop out for a person who wants to stay wounded and broken. A person who says that they want to fix themselves, but then they do nothing to try to fix themselves is a lazy person, who doesn’t mind seeing themselves that way… like I could fix it if I wanted to, if I cared enough. But I don’t care enough, so I’m just gonna sit here being broken and unfixable. Lazy. It is true that we hide some of these wounds so deep because we never want them revealed. Some are related to love, some to money, some to other people, but ALL of them are our wounds, and blaming others for the ways we respond to someone picking at it, well that’s our shadow coming out to play. And they come out to play. Every chance they get, anytime that one is packed. And until you turn around and encounter and face it. It brings fears, and it brings shame, and it brings all of those feelings in with a rush, and you can’t stop it…because you haven’t done the work. You haven’t cared about yourself enough to try. You’ve decided that laziness is better than healing. You’re going to let transformation and death be the death of you. But I have learned that burying things in your body, repressing these deep wounds and emotions will keep you stuck in a loop that you will never escape. I don’t think of my body as a place to bury things. Burying things are what make people sick releasing things are what makes people better you can’t release it until you know what it is. You can’t know what it is until you try to see it. You can’t see it until you can conceptualize it and realize that there are two sides to you…always, and maybe even more. There is a conscious side and there is a subconscious side. Your shadow lives in your subconscious side, which controls approximately 94% of your brain. Your conscious thoughts are not in control at all. You are relying on the wrong part for your answers. You are relying on the part that you actually can control and it is kind of wasting your time, if you ask me.

Not today, Satan.

Fuck that.
Bringing light to darkness…
I prayed for it.
And this is what the universe delivered.

But I see some shit in there that is cringe, like no. But it makes me dive deeper. And it helps me transform anger and darkness into something tangent. I have control over tangent things. I can either care for them or I can destroy them, but I can hold them in my hand. Emotions are wild. They are energy. They can’t be controlled, but they can be channeled. Be like the river.

Don’t try to find anything outside of yourself to determine your flow, your energy, your happiness.

It was never real in the first place.

Transcend it.
Life is beautiful.

My light will still be shining. ♥️ Phoenix style.

♥️ Shilo

INFJ: Rituals and Practices to Be Healthy

😂 Well, I try to be healthy… I really do.

INFJ’s must develop daily self-care practices to be healthy, in both mind and body.

Being an INFJ means spending too much time in your head and in your heart. Intuitive, empathic, highly sensitive introverts are always open to the feelings and energy of others, and the INFJ is constantly absorbing energy and feelings from others, which can be very overwhelming for us. When we get emotional or sensitive to the energies and emotions that come swirling through us, our brain does something sort-of like a “malfunction.”

INFJ personality types truly have a need for deep understanding in all topics we pursue, and then we have to judge everything as it comes in, and that can mean a deep dive, down a rabbit hole, for an indefinite amount of time. When we get caught up on something that we can’t use our intuition and empathy to figure out, our wheels start spinning. If we are unsure of how we are feeling, we can get stuck on that wheel for an indefinite amount of time. When the wheel spins so fast, it can be hard to jump off.

It is during this “malfunction” that the INFJ will start using Introverted intuition (Ni- their dominant function) combined with Introverted thinking (Ti- their tertiary function) and completely bypass the Extroverted feeling (Fe- their auxiliary function that supports the dominant function) and the Introverted Sensing (Se- their inferior function that can be a source of failure or a gateway into the unconscious). Introverted intuition (Ni) and Extroverted feeling (Fe) are the main brain functions of the INFJ, (Ni-primary/ Fe- auxiliary) work in tandem, so when the INFJ brain malfunctions, we suddenly become aware that we have been sitting in one position, locked in the confines of the “walls” of our brain, while our body has been completely forgotten, and we did not even notice that our bodies were feeling bad. And we are caught in a loop of intuition and thinking.

As an INFJ, these are the rituals and practices that I incorporate into my daily life:

Public Service Announcement

Prioritize yourself and your health over others. (It may sound selfish, but it is not! It is responsible… stop letting people pour their problems into you, especially those who don’t reciprocate. You are not a doormat! You can’t let every single person you know dump on you because it fills you up with their emotions. Draw a line by saying, “Hey, let’s chat about this later, not right now. Thanks.” Then, change the subject.🧙)

Dig into that Inner Child of yours.

– Prioritize deep self-awareness through inner child and shadow work processes to revisit your childhood and reevaluate situations from your childhood. (We really don’t know everything that we think we know about the situations that occurred in our childhood. Exploring these things lead to freedom, and is a sure-fire way to get to the root of the things.)

Experience Se daily.

– Practice self- care routines and rituals that includes mental and physical types. Physical activities improve Se function and allow you to get out of your head and experience living in your body, such as gardening, swimming, yoga, or just stretching in the sun. Mental routines can include journaling, creating art, or meditating. (This is crucial. Get outside of your head and into your body. Feel everything you can feel.)

I am me, no matter who, or what, you want me to be.

– Be authentic and stand in your power. Be exactly who you feel you are intended to be, after so many years of people telling you that you are too much, or not enough, too sensitive, or too… anything. Fuck them! You are amazing! (Don’t let anyone make you feel “smaller” than you are, and NEVER allow people to tell you who or what you should be. Let people judge who they think you are. Most wouldn’t be able to understand you, even if you broke it down into bite-sized pieces for them. Let them choke.)

It is okay for me to say NO.

– Be unapologetically happy to say “no,” or to leave a situation, and not feel bad about it. (Stay strong, and have boundaries drawn in concrete, rather than sand. We try to fill our plates with the problems of so many other people, that it gets ridiculously old. Seriously. Say no. Leave.)

You are so shiny, like a diamond.

– Have gratitude for each day and a positive mindset. (No one should be able to dim your shine, and you have to make sure that you are not keeping yourself dim in a world that needs your light!)

I spend a great amount of my time in my “sacred space.”

– Take time daily for solitude and recollection. (A “Sacred Space” is essential for the INFJ personality type, a place where they can follow their dreams and explore all the questions of their heart and mind in isolation, with no interference.)

I would not have made it thus far if it weren’t for journaling/ art journaling.

– Cultivate a daily journaling/ art journaling practice to clarify thinking and to use both hemispheres of the brain. It is also beneficial to write it all down, and get it out of your head. Or draw it intuitively, and then analyze what you draw, as if it were a mirror. (Art has a way of releasing emotions, and reflecting your emotional state back to you.)

I dance and sing all day, even when brushing my horse!

– Listen to lots and lots of music. (Life is so much more bearable with music. INFJ’s have a particular knack for matching the energy of a song to their current mood. Put it on repeat, and dance and sing while you work, clean, cook, etc… MINDSET is EVERYTHING!)

Laugh as much as you can!

– Look for the silver lining in every situation, and always try to find humor, even if you have to go looking for it on SnapChat! Laugh every time you can! (I have been saved from some of my saddest moments by laughing at myself!)

I always enjoy the memes of INFJ groups!

– Join INFJ groups on social media just for the memes! 😂 (I couldn’t laugh at myself so readily, nor as easily, until I found out that the way I move through this world is NORMAL for my type. INFJ’s are low-key comedians! And downright funny!)

Let them go if they ain’t good.

– Release toxicity (people, places, and things) that no longer serve you. (I am not saying to ignore conflicts by checking out, with no conflict resolution. However, leaving something that is no longer leading you towards your greatest potential and your highest good in order to climb your mountain is a good thing. Be a GOAT! 🐐)

Who cares if someone gets mad at you because THEY crossed YOUR boundary?

– Stand up for yourself like a LION! When someone has crossed a boundary, let them know! Who cares if they get mad?!? (With INFJ personality type, many people will mistake your character as weak because you are accommodating and attentive to other’s feelings. INFJ introversion may also keep you from confronting people about their shitty character, as they are taking advantage of your kindness. This is another possible reason why people may mistake you for “something else.” If you were your “advocate” in this situation, what would you do? DO IT FOR YOURSELF THEN!)

INFJ’s can accomplish whatever they set their sights for!

– Practice subconscious mind training activities to recognize when you’re in a loop, and practice redirecting your brain to stop the loop! (Sometimes, it can be really hard to stop the loop, but if you practice working with your subconscious mind, you will get better at controlling the length of it, or you can at least recognize the patterns so that you can have brain redirection activities ready on- hand. (There are apps for that.)

– Learn about topics that interest you with reckless abandonment, but don’t forget to feel into them! (I recommend studying personality types, spirituality, (in its many forms), cultures, Tarot and Oracle, and Astrology. I have found these things to be priceless tools for guidance along my life journey, and also great ways to get out of my head. Sometimes, I need a kick in the butt!)

Explore in nature.

– Get out into nature and witness her beauty, and restorative qualities, every chance you get! (Mother Nature has a way of renewing the soul, clearing the energies, and charging your batteries- as well as peaking your interests, inspiring creativity, and allowing for intuitive communication with the trees and the sky, the Creator, and all things sacred. )

https://www.facebook.com/reel/808311224205089/?mibextid=cr9u03

These are the things that work for me.

I get better at being me daily. 😘

♥️ Shilo

#cooptylew

Inner Child Artist Oracle is prepared to go live! But does it do what I say it does?

To be perfectly honest, this project has given me more than I could’ve hoped for. Over the four years that it took to create, (avoidance, maybe?!?), I healed so many past traumas, many of which were beyond my own conscious awareness. I’m happy to say that I’m not the girl that started this project anymore. I have evolved; transcended the pain that kept me stuck. Working with the deck in this fashion (non- dominant hand drawing and journaling) has facilitated growth from the inside, and though nobody can see it, they can definitely tell the difference in the way that I respond to them.

For example:

Just yesterday, a very dear friend of mine activated my Chironic wound through something she said via text message. I felt she treated me like I wasn’t good enough and that she was insinuating that I was lying. That activated that little thought in my head that has always plagued my mind, telling me that I am unworthy. She and I have gone round after round in the past, and my first thought was to tell her to “fuck off,” and then never talk to her again. She has no filter, and sometimes she isn’t nice. She can be downright mean.

(She’s a double Aries, and in my natal chart, Chiron resides in my 9th house in Aries. I have realized that Aries activates my Chiron wound every time. This is the reason I mostly avoid people with Aries placements. My mom is also an Aries… go figure.)

Reassuring the child inside me to calm her down!

Instead, I thought about it for hours, and before I went to bed, I texted her to tell her that she had hurt my feelings. I knew she wouldn’t care and she would never apologize, but I wanted to clear my heart space, and so I told her that I felt her words were hurtful. Of course, she made me feel small for having feelings.

Rather than explode, I told her that I’m sorry that she’s upset that I have feelings, and I ended the conversation. She went on to say that my feelings are stupid. I ignored. Even though we are not talking now, (her choice…), I’m proud of myself for handling it from my heart, rather than from my head. I’ve grown. I’m finally feeling like an adult, rather than a grown up child.

I feel like I keep my head about me now, rather than reacting immediately. After doing inner child work, I now think for a long time before I ever react, and I also try to see things from different perspectives, other than the one that I’m carrying at the moment.

That transformation, alone, is worth it’s weight in gold to a gal with a trucker’s mouth. (I know this about myself. It’s no secret. I don’t even have to talk, my feelings write themselves right across my face. My mom used to say it would get stuck like that! Boy, was she right!) 😂

This realization tells me I am on the right path. If I stop and think before I emotionally react to someone now, I have solved a lifelong problem. I mean, there is never any perfect here and there never will be, but if I even do this once a week, I’m winning. The answer is “YES! The deck works!”

If I could give everybody this deck, I totally would. But I’m not rich, unfortunately. 🤷🏼‍♀️💋 But if I was rich, I would totally gift it to you!

The Cards

This deck uses intuition, memories, channeling exercises, psychology, Art, and journaling to facilitate healing.

The Campaign

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cooptylew/inner-child-artist-oracle-healing-through-art-and-journaling

This project will go live on February 19. Until then you can follow it, and Kickstarter will notify you when it does go live. I have a great exclusive Kickstarter deal, as well as an early bird discount. Both are limited! Don’t miss it.

Whether you pledge or not, whether you support any of my other projects or not, thank you for reading this far and spending that time here. For those pledging, I can not thank you enough for helping me bring these projects to life. It is incredibly meaningful to see something I’ve made in someone else’s hands, and for it to be a part of their well-being journey. It is genuinely an honor to be making this deck, and I am very grateful. Thank you.

Blessed be!

How Inner Child Artist Oracle Came To Be: The Progression of the Process is Sticky Sometimes

My inner child is truly enjoying herself now!

The deck started out small, and was meant for personal use only, but it transformed itself many times as I went along. It soon became huge and MESSY!!! And that is OK, as the process for creating it felt huge and messy. There was lots of scribbling and mistakes and I didn’t always like the art created, or the story that was told, but that’s okay because I was not about to ridicule my inner child, when I could clearly see the creative beauty flowing from her so naturally. In my opinion, the nightly art room messes that adult me had to clean up constantly were worth it, because my inner child was having fun and letting negative shit go, while my subconscious was adapting perceived danger protocols to my present life.

The cards in the initial deck.

The initial idea was to create a deck composed of art made in my elementary school classroom, with only the thought of releasing it as an “art activity deck”, each card highlighting a different art style or process, with step-by-step directions on how to do the project on the back of each card. (Of course that was the project! I was an art teacher!) Going with this idea, I used photographs of student work and teacher exemplars created over the course of 11 years teaching elementary school art, in Las Vegas, to create this deck of 80 cards. I ordered one copy, and printed it on-demand for use as a promo deck for my own personal use.

The backs of the original deck.

Around this time, my dad’s health was significantly declining. He was in and out of the hospital several times a week for the last year of his illness. I couldn’t wait to get the promo deck so that I could show him all the things I taught my students. But it was not to be. I received the deck in the mail on the evening that my dad was released from the hospital, after having a pacemaker surgery. I didn’t open it until I got home from his hospital room, later that evening. I was seeing it and photographing it for the very first time, when I received a call from my mother, telling me that my dad had fallen out of his bed, and while she was trying to lift him off the ground, he had a heart attack and died, on the floor, in her arms, at age 63.

My dad.

Needless to say, I had to put this project down for a while until my heart could handle it again. And then I had to ask myself if I could ever be happy using that deck because I associated my dad’s death with it. My dad was the one man that I knew I could count on, although he wasn’t very nice, and he didn’t really accept me for who I was. I was at a loss, so much so that I can’t even begin to describe the sadness and hopelessness that have haunted me in the last four years, since his passing. I realize that it wasn’t the deck’s fault that my dad died, but suddenly the deck wasn’t enough. It was static. I needed something that moved, that changed, that evolved and transformed. At this point, the deck would need to dance to bring joy to my pain.

Contemplating my next goal in life…

After my dad died, my husband and I moved to Oregon in a 31 foot RV. I had always wanted to move to Oregon since I graduated high school, but I had promised my dad that I wouldn’t leave until after he was gone. We all knew his time was limited, because he had been suffering kidney failure for about 7 years. Once he was gone, moving felt like a binding contract. It was a promise, after all. Once I found myself alone, (besides my husband), in a new state, with no family or friends around to support me, I thought of another way to personally use the deck, and after a while, I started using it as a springboard for recalling the past. I wanted to remember everything about my childhood that I could. I missed my dad. I didn’t want to forget anything. And truthfully, I was really mad at my mom for the relationship that we had, which was a very detached one. I did not want another parent passing, without trying to understand their child. I was not even speaking to my sister at the time, and that had been going on for many years.

Our home in Oregon for 4 months.

I had studied inner child work in my Art Therapy program, and I remembered that writing with your non- dominant hand was a way to access the inner child, which lives in your subconscious mind. The practice of using the deck to activate memories through my inner child was then started in my art journal. I shuffled the cards, and allowed the universe to guide the process. In my journal, I would make a quick sketch and write a journal entry using my non-dominant hand. At this point, I was now thinking of the deck as an “art therapy deck,” rather than an “art activity deck,” and I started using it in this way, with the idea of putting art therapy suggestions on the backs, rather than a step-by-step art activity.

Although I found it ridiculously hard to draw and write in this way, I quickly realized that this technique enabled a significant connection between me and my inner child, a part of me that I thought was gone. I was amazed at the memories recalled and the often humorous journal entries that were taking form on the pages. The stories were unexpected and spontaneous, and I didn’t know what my inner child would say in response to the art and prompt on each card. I was remembering things I didn’t even realize I’d forgotten. Best of all, I was remembering my dad. I found it very interesting that my brain was so focused on how to draw and write, in a new way, that it wasn’t censoring my writing.

I allowed it to unfold in its own way. I did not judge it, and I especially loved the process because, although I was grieving, it allowed me a safe space to escape to the past, a place I was longing for desperately. But it also guaranteed a safe travel, with a one way ticket back. It wasn’t like telling these stories to a stranger, or even worse, to someone who may or may not have a different version of my same story. It was my little secret story, and it could always stay that way if I wanted it to. It was in my journal, after all.

My non~dominant handwriting.

I can only write BIG and SLOPPY using my non-dominant hand, and it wasn’t long before this project was too large for my little art journal. Also, the outlines and color on the opposite page were bleeding through the backside of the journal paper, so I transferred the project onto single sheets of oversized drawing paper. After I transferred it out of my journal, I realized that my sole purpose for creating this deck was healing my own inner child. Just as it had grown out of my journal, it had grown out of my heart and mind. It was something that would require a large amount of time to complete. It was never meant to be small or easy. It was never meant to give directions. It was meant to inspire the healing of the wounds that keep me stuck. It was meant to move me. And so we danced.

I got better with practice!

So many things happened as I continued to work with the deck. During the world-wide Coronavirus lockdown, my mom’s house, and the entire contents of it, burned to the ground, taking with it all of my childhood belongings, and the proof that I was ever a child in the first place. The fire was devastating, but we pilfered through the remains for more than a month, trying to save anything we could. During that time, I really got to know and understand my mom. Spending time alone with a parent, as an adult, is both exhausting and fucking legit beautiful. We were finally able to talk about things, all the things that needed to be discussed, in order to actually “see” one another for the first time, through a lens that wasn’t dirty.

My mom’s house.

My relationship with both my mom and my sister had been hard pressed since birth, and we had gone through periods of estrangement throughout my lifetime. I’ve always felt like she loved my sister more, and she didn’t understand me because she didn’t want to. Strong-willed Aries has difficulty understanding a Scorpio Moon baby, and I have always been ridiculed for my sensitivity. When I was young, she and I didn’t get on very well. The favoritisms and double-standards shown by my parents made it impossible for my sister and I to get along. I realize now that my mom didn’t mean to do the things I thought she did on purpose, and that she was trying her best. I was able to share the promo deck with her, and I read her many of the stories. I was outright scared to even tell her about the stories in the guidebook, fearing she would reject me for my idea, and especially for the writing that involves her. I insisted on reading it to her before I let anyone else read it. If she hated it, I was planning on not publishing the stories, but giving generalized ideas for working with the inner child, using the energy of the card instead.

To my surprise, my mom loved both the deck and the stories. She is the one who persuaded me to use my art responses for the deck images, and put the elementary students’ artwork in the guidebook, and she also suggested I add a section after each card that explains inner child versus adult perspectives. It is amazing how many of our adult perspectives are formed when we are little. I have always thought that my mom did not want to understand me, but the truth was that she just really didn’t know how to begin. Perspectives on both sides of the fence have been updated! And not only was she finally seeing me with fresh eyes, I was finally seeing her! 

My family is legit beautiful,

This deck has really benefited our relationship by opening us up to conversations we would have never been able to handle prior to the discussion and viewing of it. Not only that, but my sister and I are closer than ever.  Truth be told: I never hated her. I hated the situations that we were put in that teamed us against one another, and I hated the favoritism and the double standards, but none of that was her fault. She was just another child suffering in an unfair environment, and if anything she had it way worse than me. I was her big sister, and all she ever heard was how much I despised her. I see the error in this now, and I am thankful that I had the opportunity to rectify these very important relationships.

I couldn’t be happier about creating anything in my life, and I have been able to love myself more because of it. 💋♥️

Heal Your Inner Child

Inner Child Artist Oracle, An Oracle Deck That Promotes Healing The Inner Child Through Non-Dominant Art-Based Activities and Journaling

Coming to Kickstarter February 15, 2023!

The Inner Child Artist Oracle Kickstarter is starting on Feb 10, 2023, Y’all!

It has taken me four years to complete this awesome deck, using my non-dominant hand! Talk about HARD, but so worth it.

This is my Kickstarter vid, I think. I just bought a new gimbal so that may change…

Why do inner child work? Well, because…

“No one is coming to save you, but it is not because you are unloved. To the contrary: You are so revered, so adored, so magnificent, that to send to you a savior would be to destroy your opportunity to become what you are in truth, to realize yourself fully, in the glory of your divine humanity.

It is true, there are those who need surrogate representatives to protect their interests: the children, the elderly, the sick, the caged, the oppressed, and the mad, and there are not enough heroines to care for them all.

No one is coming to save you because you are the hero, the heroine who has come to free up life here. Yours must come first. There is no other way.

If you were not required to save yourself, you would not know what it takes, your compassion would be shallow, your eyes would be dull and cloudy, your strength would not hold out.

If you refuse to save yourself, you condemn creation to incompletion. Those you might have healed, might have protected, might have represented, might have loved back into wholeness, may not fulfill their own destinies either. For some of these unknown persons, you may have been the last dry match in the the world, and it would be enough to set them ablaze by your example.

You don’t need the white knight. You are the wild horse racing the wind.

You don’t need the holy man. You are already holy.

You don’t need the medicine. You are the medicine.

You don’t need magic. You are a living miracle.

You don’t need acceptance. You are loved and adored beyond measure.

You don’t need courage. You need faith.

There is nothing wrong with you. Be who you are: who you really dare underneath all the lies inside you.

You are the return of the promise. The peacekeeper. The grace giver. The redemptive force of Creation here to uplift the broken-hearted.

No one is more qualified than you are to do your holy work.

Apply all that secret knowledge. Set it in motion. Give it form in the world, and become the living gift that never empties.” ~ Alison Nappi, Author

If no one is coming to save me, I will save myself. And if this is what I have to offer to humanity in my lifetime, then I’m happy with that. There was so much healing that occurred while I was making this deck, and it was fun to do. However, there was much more trauma to come, and working with my inner child through this deck got me through it all!

The deck started out small, and was meant for personal use only, but it transformed itself many times as I went along. It soon became huge and MESSY!!! And that is OK, as the process for creating it felt huge and messy. There was lots of scribbling and mistakes and I didn’t always like the art created, or the story that was told, but that’s okay because I was not about to ridicule my inner child, when I could clearly see the creative beauty flowing from her so naturally. In my opinion, the nightly art room messes that adult me had to clean up constantly were worth it, because my inner child was having fun and letting negative shit go, while my subconscious was adapting perceived danger protocols to my present life!

The first photo taken of the original deck.

The initial idea was to create a deck composed of art made in my elementary school classroom, with only the thought of releasing it as an “art activity deck”, each card highlighting a different art style or process, with step-by-step directions on how to do the project on the back of each card. (Of course that was the project! I was an art teacher!) Going with this idea, I used photographs of student work and teacher exemplars created over the course of 11 years teaching elementary school art, in Las Vegas, to create this deck of 80 cards. I ordered one copy, and printed it on-demand for use as a promo deck for my own personal use.

Around this time, my dad’s health was significantly declining. He was in and out of the hospital several times a week for the last year of his illness. I couldn’t wait to get the promo deck so that I could show him all the things I taught my students. But it was not to be. I received the deck in the mail on the evening that my dad was released from the hospital, after having a pacemaker surgery. I didn’t open it until I got home from his hospital room, later that evening. I was seeing it and photographing it for the very first time, when I received a call from my mother, telling me that my dad had fallen out of his bed, and while she was trying to lift him off the ground, he had a heart attack and died, on the floor, in her arms, at age 63.

My Daddy.

Needless to say, I had to put this project down for a while until my heart could handle it again. And then I had to ask myself if I could ever be happy using that deck because I associated my dad’s death with it. My dad was the one man that I knew I could count on, although he wasn’t very nice, and he didn’t really accept me for who I was. I was at a loss, so much so that I can’t even begin to describe the sadness and hopelessness that have haunted me in the last four years, since his passing. I realize that it wasn’t the deck’s fault that my dad died, but suddenly the deck wasn’t enough. It was static. I needed something that moved, that changed, that evolved and transformed. At this point, the deck would need to dance to bring joy to my pain.

After my dad died, my husband and I moved to Oregon in a 31 foot RV. I had always wanted to move to Oregon since I graduated high school, but I had promised my dad that I wouldn’t leave until after he was gone. We all knew his time was limited, because he had been suffering kidney failure for about 7 years. Once he was gone, moving felt like a binding contract. It was a promise, after all. Once I found myself alone, (besides my husband), in a new state, with no family or friends around to support me, I thought of another way to personally use the deck, and after a while, I started using it as a springboard for recalling the past. I wanted to remember everything about my childhood that I could. I missed my dad. I didn’t want to forget anything. And truthfully, I was really mad at my mom for the relationship that we had, which was a very detached one. I did not want another parent passing, without trying to understand their child. I was not even speaking to my sister at the time, and that had been going on for many years.

Our Oregon home for 4 months!

The practice of using the deck to activate memories was started in my art journal. I shuffled the cards, and allowed the universe to guide the process. In my journal, I would make a quick sketch and write a journal entry using my non-dominant hand. At this point, I was now thinking of the deck as an “art therapy deck,” rather than an “art activity deck,” and I started using it in this way, with the idea of putting art therapy suggestions on the backs, rather than a step-by-step art activity.

The beginnings of the guidebook.

Although I found it ridiculously hard to draw and write in this way, I quickly realized that this technique enabled a significant connection between me and my inner child, a part of me that I thought was gone. I was amazed at the memories recalled and the often humorous journal entries that were taking form on the pages. The stories were unexpected and spontaneous, and I didn’t know what my inner child would say in response to the art and prompt on each card. I was remembering things I didn’t even realize I’d forgotten. Best of all, I was remembering my dad. I found it very interesting that my brain was so focused on how to draw and write, in a new way, that it wasn’t censoring my writing.

I allowed it to unfold in its own way. I did not judge it, and I especially loved the process because, although I was grieving, it allowed me a safe space to escape to the past, a place I was longing for desperately. But it also guaranteed a safe travel, with a one way ticket back. It wasn’t like telling these stories to a stranger, or even worse, to someone who may or may not have a different version of my same story. It was my little secret story, and it could always stay that way if I wanted it to. It was in my journal, after all.

Moving on to bigger paper!

I can only write BIG and SLOPPY using my non-dominant hand, and it wasn’t long before this project was too large for my little art journal. Also, the outlines and color on the opposite page were bleeding through the backside of the journal paper, so I transferred the project onto single sheets of oversized drawing paper. After I transferred it out of my journal, I realized that my sole purpose for creating this deck was healing my own inner child. Just as it had grown out of my journal, it had grown out of my heart and mind. It was something that would require a large amount of time to complete. It was never meant to be small or easy. It was never meant to give directions. It was meant to inspire the healing of the wounds that keep me stuck. It was meant to move me. And so we danced.

So many things happened as I continued to work with the deck. During the world-wide Coronavirus lockdown, my mom’s house, and the entire contents of it, burned to the ground, taking with it all of my childhood belongings, and the proof that I was ever a child in the first place. The fire was devastating, but we pilfered through the remains for more than a month, trying to save anything we could. During that time, I really got to know and understand my mom. Spending time alone with a parent, as an adult, is both exhausting and fucking legit beautiful. We were finally able to talk about things, all the things that needed to be discussed, in order to actually “see” one another for the first time, through a lens that wasn’t dirty.

My mom’s house.

My relationship with both my mom and my sister had been hard pressed since birth, and we had gone through periods of estrangement throughout my lifetime. I’ve always felt like she loved my sister more, and she didn’t understand me because she didn’t want to. Strong-willed Aries has difficulty understanding a Scorpio Moon baby, and I have always been ridiculed for my sensitivity. When I was young, she and I didn’t get on very well. The favoritisms and double-standards shown by my parents made it impossible for my sister and I to get along. I realize now that my mom didn’t mean to do the things I thought she did on purpose, and that she was trying her best. I was able to share the promo deck with her, and I read her many of the stories. I was outright scared to even tell her about the stories in the guidebook, fearing she would reject me for my idea, and especially for the writing that involves her. I insisted on reading it to her before I let anyone else read it. If she hated it, I was planning on not publishing the stories, but giving generalized ideas for working with the inner child, using the energy of the card instead.

To my surprise, my mom loved both the deck and the stories. She is the one who persuaded me to use my art responses for the deck images, and put the elementary students’ artwork in the guidebook, and she also suggested I add a section after each card that explains inner child versus adult perspectives. It is amazing how many of our adult perspectives are formed when we are little. I have always thought that my mom did not want to understand me, but the truth was that she just really didn’t know how to begin. Perspectives on both sides of the fence have been updated! And not only was she finally seeing me with fresh eyes, I was finally seeing her! 

This deck has really benefited our relationship by opening us up to conversations we would have never been able to handle prior to the discussion and viewing of it. Not only that, but my sister and I are closer than ever.  Truth be told: I never hated her. I hated the situations that we were put in that teamed us against one another, and I hated the favoritism and the double standards, but none of that was her fault. She was just another child suffering in an unfair environment, and if anything she had it way worse than me. I was her big sister, and all she ever heard was how much I despised her. I see the error in this now, and I am thankful that I had the opportunity to rectify these very important relationships.

My family.

I couldn’t be happier about creating anything in my life, and I love the way this deck turned out!

Healing. There is only one way through this portal. You cannot go over, or under, or around… You must go through. This is a door, not a window. SLAM IT!


And now for a funny video of me practicing with my gimbal! 😂 Yes, I’m wearing a neck brace, a posture corrector, and tape holding my glasses from sliding down my nose… It is what it is, y’all. Sorry, not sorry. 😂

Inner Child Artist Oracle is Done, Diddly-Un!!!!

After four years of work, it is finally finished!

This deck is a culmination of everything I’ve ever done in my entire life, from teaching elementary school art , to messing around with graphic design and websites, marketing and advertising, to storytelling and journaling, to card creation, etc.! I have had so many random opportunities to work in so many different fields, and I was certain that I would use it all someday. Well folks, here it is!

In a way, this is the story of my life told by my inner child. I have gleaned so much understanding of the perceptions that I formed as a child. Creating this deck helped me remember my childhood after my dad died. But honestly, it has healed me in ways that are uncountable. I have a better relationship with my mom and sister. I have let go of shit that shouldn’t have been carried into adulthood. I have new takes on things I didn’t understand. I have learned many new things about situations and even discovered multiple things I didn’t know about myself. I have had the conversations that I needed to have when I was a child. I have forgiven the hurt of the past, and now I can let that shit go. It’s never too late.

To me, that’s fucking PRICELESS.

This project has been heavy because it so HUGE and it is full of depth. When I realized the healing power of it, I decided to share it in the hope that other people will use it as a springboard for healing their inner child, and ultimately, their adult selves.

I am just super happy that it is almost off of my art table so I can go back to drawing with my dominant hand, which I find easier and the artwork is way better! Not that the artwork in the deck is horrible, but it’s not what I regularly do. It is hard to draw with your non-dominant hand, and even harder to write with it.

However, as difficult as it was, and as different from my regular artwork as it may be, it was completely necessary to do it this way. There is plenty of research about creating and writing with your non-dominant hand in order to channel your inner child. It really works, y’all. Get on board…

Recent artwork created with my dominant hand.

Everyone deserves happiness, I can tell you one thing for certain… Living in the past is not where you’ll find it, and it never will be.

~CooptyLew

Atlas is so #shilosatlas

Just a month with a professional Mustang trainer, and look at my smart and willing wilding! I was so nervous to see him, afraid that what “those people” said about him (reactive and volatile) was true (even though I knew it wasn’t!) and what they said about me… (I can’t handle him). How and why did I allow them in my head? That’s not my M.O.. .. But I’m relatively new to horses, and I realize I have much to learn. Mustangs are like astrology and tarot- you’ll never be able to master them. You can study them everyday, but you’ll never finish. There is always more to learn… new systems, new techniques, new information, new science… the list goes on. But that’s what I do! I learn.

Speaking of astrology, I have two major returns I’m going though- Saturn and Chiron. My lessons are in boundaries, learning to say “no,,” and letting go of what other people think of me.. I can do anything I set my heart and mind on! Especially when someone says I can’t. 😂 But in reality, what others think of me is none of my business. “Let it go, Shilo.” I’m trying. And Atlas and I are moving on.

The next day, I went back to meet the trainer at the vet for gelding. I didn’t really want to see all of that, but I wanted to be there to support Atlas. Again, he asked no questions and he was a perfect gentleman unicorn. He lead well, jumped in and out of the trailer easily, and came out of the anesthesia well. The vet said he just had a “brain surgery.” Lol. It’s true. His brain is already working better. Not the second one, but we don’t worry about that. His eye gets kinder by the day and he LOVES scratches.

It felt so good to finally see and touch him all over, rather than just on his muzzle. I even took the liberty of looking in his mouth and touching his feet. Shhh. Don’t tell him! He was still under anesthesia!

Look at his baby teeth. ♥️
Wobbly after gelding is totally understandable.

I can’t even begin to explain how proud I am of this baby, and how much love and respect I have for him. When I got him from the Warm Spring Reservation, he was only about 6 months old; he was petrified. He thought we wanted to eat him. At a year old, he has far surpassed my expectations. He is more than stellar! He is like the sun. He energizes me and he makes me happy. And I revolve around him. ♥️

I love Atlas! ♥️

So Nervous!

I get to see my Mustang yearling today for the first time since June 1st, when I took him to a locally known professional Mustang trainer. Finally. It costs a lot, but he’s worth every penny!

We’ve had a rough start. I allowed other people to tell me what I was capable of doing on my own, and I was convinced by these so called “friends” that he was too much for me. I took him to a friend of a friend to “help me gentle him” in exchange for barn work. For almost 8 months,, I went to see him almost every day. I got suckered into helping feed and clean up after 20+ donkeys, mules, and other mustangs daily that were not even mine, while my horse sat untouched. He needed gelded. He needed his feet done. He needed shots and all the stuff, man. And nothing was happening. So I rectified that. Didn’t make any friends, but I got him and it’s all GOOD!

Just feast your eyes upon this gorgeous boy!

Growing Boy!!!

Dude, this is happening!

I have to finish editing 22 stories in the guidebook for Inner Child Artist Oracle. The stories are from my inner child’s perspective, and some of them are not easy to write, and even harder to read.

The guidebook.

We all have our stories. So this is me, wearing my heart on my sleeve, as I’m sharing them with you, in hopes that we can all grow and learn by telling our stories.

Inner Child Artist Oracle by CooptyLew

I’m almost ready for Kickstarter! I had some healing to do… This has been the very best healing project ever. Check it out!

The deck!!!!

This art was created using my non-dominant hand. The art is based off of projects I facilitated in my elementary art classroom. Each card has a real story from my life, retold by my inner child. The idea behind it is to reevaluate situations, and rectify them now that I have grown. I’m ready to let it all go, but not before it has been addressed.

My inner child knows she is safe. But she didn’t before all this.

Healing. There is only one way through this portal. You cannot go over, or under, or around… You must go through.

This is a door, not a window. SLAM IT!

Losing Her

I am so very heartbroken.

It’s all bad guys. When I went out to feed this morning, Calypso was unresponsive and she had white stuff leaking from her nose. I grabbed a halter and called the emergency vet. I made her walk around the yard, she didn’t want to move much, but she never laid down!), and massaged her neck, and then tons of liquidy food matter started draining out of Nostrils, bilaterally. I thought it was choke, but it wasn’t. The vet started treating her for choke, but thought maybe impaction in the stomach, but when the vet tried to out the scope down the esophagus, there was a major impaction there. The small intestine had started dying, and has become septic. But no impaction in the stomach, which the vet thought was strange. Surgery can’t save her. There is nothing I can do for her, but put her out of her misery.

Some things I’ve noticed in my grief…

Ya know I got calypso as a friend for Heart. And to be honest- for my own selfish reason too. I knew when Heart goes, I would need her friend there to help me thru it. I never saw this coming. Thank God that I have Heart, and she has me.

Heart and Calypso immediately and completely bonded, and then decided I wasn’t really a part of their club. They kicked me out. They enjoyed each other every day and every night for a year, almost to the day. See, Calypso was wild, trained but not by her choice. She wanted freedom. Heart was the lead mare, and she would keep me away from Calypso. She saw Calypso’s heart and she defended her. I took notice quickly, and decided to honor them both. I granted them their freedoms in my section on this planet. They were so happy together.

I was just getting to the point where I could walk up and pet them at anytime, and even catch them easily…

Another observation:

Now that Calypso is gone, Heart is suddenly a domesticated trained horse again?

Heart knew who Calypso was, her age, her story, all the things I could never know. She made her feel safe. She tried to explain it all to me, but I didn’t understand what she was saying until now. “Leave her alone, mom. Just let her rest. She is so very tired. I will stay with her so she knows that she is safe.”

It was never about me. I’m not going to make it about me now. It was always about Calypso. I fell in love with her at first sight and I would like to say that it was reciprocal but I will never know now. I would choose her again and again, and I have no regrets. But I really thought she was about 15 years old, rounded up at approximately 9 years old

I’ll miss her forever!

After her death, the vet said, “24 or 25 is amazing for a Mustang that was in the wild for at least nine years.”

Hmmm… she was rounded up in 2016 (approximately 9) and then she has been domesticated for 6 years, with many different people. That would put her at approximately 15. Nope. She was 24/25. Add 10 more years in the wild for her. She was 17-19 years old when she was captured.

Just. Wow. This is really blowing my mind. No wonder she stared out of the fence all day. No wonder she flinched every time a human touched her. No wonder she would only go backwards with a rider. I’m glad she landed here. So I could let her rest peacefully. And when I’m berating myself because I was trying to gentle another Mustang and she was just resting at home (when I thought I should have her in training), I really should be thankful that is what happened. I guess that’s the silver lining.

Still don’t regret a thing. Just wish I would have known she was older, and rounded up so late in her life. I would have never even thought about putting a saddle on her, making her sweat in a round pen. Like WTF?

Me and my girl.

Inner Child Artist Oracle by CooptyLew

I am back to work on my new Oracle deck!

I’m back at it!

Coming to Kickstarter so soon!

My April Tarot Haul, Y’all!

Inner Child Artist: WIP!

Are you happy? Were you happy as a child? Do you know how to be truly happy? 🥰

Emotions are intrinsic, and must be created from within. Happiness is something you become. It can’t be found in other people, in relationships, in travel, in work, or in luxury belongings…

Happiness is something that you must choose to be, no matter what the circumstances entail. It’s a feeling of peace and harmony that you mindfully cultivate inside of you, and can tap into at any time.

Me, as a child.

I have always had a hard time expressing emotions openly, without feeling guilty for them, or feeling that something is wrong with me for having emotions in the first place.

I haven’t always been a happy person. I’ve spent many years of my life depressed. I have heard that I am way too sensitive more times than I can count.

I have heard it said often, “If only I had understood how to handle my emotions as a child!”

Just because you are grown, it doesn’t mean it’s too late! Your inner child lives inside of you. It is the child that you were at one time, but also the child that you will never forget how to be. That child never left. That child still lives there, within you. And that child needs you to reconcile the past so that you can be a happy adult. ♥️

As an adult, I have learned how to transform my angry/sad/etc, emotions by expressing them in an artistic way, and I can tell you that I am much happier because of it.

Art allows me a way to express without overwhelming anyone else with my problems. So, rather than dropping all my problems on one of my friends, like people often do, I drop them on a piece of paper.

Art, literally, saves me, time and time again! It makes me happy to engage in the creative process! And I have to say, my inner child can’t get enough of it! ♥️

I have been writing the guidebook for Inner Child Artist Oracle, and I wanted to give you a sneak peak of how I am doing it! It’s big and…

Messy!!! My inner child’s art process is so messy. It has lots of scribbling and mistakes, but that’s okay because I’m not about to ridicule my inner child, when I can see the creative beauty flowing from her so naturally. In my opinion, the nightly art room messes that adult me has to clean up constantly, are worth it because my inner child is having fun and letting negative shit go! I find my child to be very beautiful. But I didn’t always…

You can watch my process for creating the guidebook and get a glimpse of the cards by going here.

Talk soon!

❤️ Shilo

Inner Child Artist

A deck for exploring your childhood memories…

Y’all…

I have been working on an oracle deck called Inner Child Artist since early 2018. I got the promo deck on the day my father passed. Needless to say, I had to put it down for a while until my heart could handle it again. I miss my dad so much! It’s hurts to recall all of my memories from childhood, because, at the time, it was far too painful. I have reached a point where I am back at it. I can think about him without crying. Finally. Thank God.

I used my non-dominant hand to draw/ write my responses to the cards.

So here is sneak peak of the guidebook for Inner Child Artist. These are my art responses to some of the cards. The writing part will be released as a guidebook for a deck of cards that will take you on a transformational art/writing journey through your childhood. ♥️

A card from the Inner Child Artist oracle deck.

The card prompt is “In my world…”

To complete a deck, primarily of children’s work, I used exemplars and student work created in my elementary art classroom; it features the work of the students I taught. (I taught elementary art for 12 years.) From the chosen card/ prompt, I create a piece of art and a story from my childhood by using my non-dominant hand. When using your non-dominant hand to create art and to write with, you are too busy focusing on how to actually do it, than on what you are writing or drawing. It is a sort of channeling exercise, (a.k.a. free writing), without your ego editing it, as you go. This creates a pure connection to that child that still lives within you; the child you may have forgotten about.

Most of my art responses are shown in this video. It is so hard to draw with your nondominant hand!

I’m more than halfway done!!!Two of the four parts are now completed! The Oracle deck has been done since 2018 and now my art responses, using my non-dominant hand, are complete. Most of the stories are written; only a few left. The last part is the digitizing of it. And then I will be taking it to Kickstarter!

For anyone who wants to get in touch with their own inner child artist, both the deck and the activities/ space that it provides is priceless. When looking into the shadow, with light, we are able to see clearly what was hidden before. And then we can acknowledge, accept, forgive and release, in order to move past that scary shadow.

More to come later…

TBII is here!

The Tarot Banksy II is here! The wait is over! The decks have arrived, and I have been a pop-up shipping shop! I’m getting all of my pre-orders out and then the deck will be for sale in my Etsy shop. ♥️

Follow this link to see the video!

https://youtu.be/J7DmRhFHrwc

Am I a witch?

Yes, my husband saved the dried herbs from the garden for my “spells.” Yes, my friend brought me potion bottles yesterday. Yes, I make candles that smell (and are named) like weed scents. Yes, I can capture your soul with my paintbrush. Yes, I have also been known to help your children hone their artistic talents. Yes, I use symbolism to create art that might mean something else and then I burn it. Yes, I burn lots of things, including sage, incense, and Pelo Santo. Yes, I honor the moon cycles by setting intentions and making moon water. Yes, I honor the earth by using the energy of crystals to do this. Yes, I have an altar that represents all of the elements of nature. Yes, I can speak with animals. I am also huge into inner child work, and I try to help you recognize your own childhood wounds in order to heal them. Yes, I sometimes pray to Gods and Godesses for help in Earthly situations. Yes, I sometimes use divination tools to talk to the spiritual realm. Yes, I do consult and create tarot cards to get a deeper understanding of myself and others. Yes, I will ask you your birthday and use the knowledge gained to study you. But I will tell you I am doing this, and I don’t do it for me. I help you understand yourself. Yes, I call myself a “shadow worker.” I am. I call myself an “Artsy Tarotist.” I am.

So am I a witch?

Maybe. Maybe not.

I’m just Shilo.

Astro Taking Over!

Astro Taking Over

Hey y’all! I have to admit that lately I have been on an astrology learning adventure/overload. I am truly a self-taught astrologer now!

But why do I have an interest in astrology anyways?

It is something about the stars. I love to think that our personalities are predetermined by the constellations. Much of what I’ve learned about my own natal chart has been so important in my discoveries of who I am. It has been a life-long process, taking every minute of every day. In order to understand myself, I believe that a natal chart can be of great value, as it can be used as a guide to help you develop into your true self, your authentic and honest self… your fifth house self. 😳

Natal Art… ♥️

I have been studying astrology since I was 13 years old. I could do a natal chart, by hand, by the time I was 15. Computer Technology has made this so easy. You don’t need to have rulers, planetary tables, and calculators anymore! I love it!

Astrology has assisted in steering the course of my life and ultimately changed my path, by assisting me in understanding the relationships that I have with people in my family, as well as friends and lovers. It is also really interesting when you start comparing the happenings of your life to transit charts. (More on that one later!!!!)

This is my natal chart from Astro.com

It has also helped me to define my life purpose. To do this, you must look at your North Node ( also called True Node.) Your North Node tells you the direction that you need to head in, in order to fulfill your life purpose. Mine is in the fifth house, conjunct, (or with) Neptune. My fifth house is ruled by Sagittarius. That makes my South Node in the 11th house, ruled by Gemini. The fifth house is the house of romance, love affairs, play and creativity, a childlike spirit or your inner child, self-expression and drama…

The Queen of Stars

I love it that I’m moving towards fifth house energy, and away from the 11th house in Gemini, which is groups, social awareness and humanitarianism, hopes and wishes for the future. I’m tired of wishing and having hopes for the future. In all truth, I just wanna play… right now!!! Too bad my Saturn is also in that 11th house in Gemini, in opposition to my North Node! It makes for tricky work, meaning I must always trick myself into working, and that is why I have had to pursue something that I love to do, so that it doesn’t feel like work! Hahaha! True, though.

Saturn is the teacher, the enforcer, the one who makes the rules. He has been hard on me, and he has repeated several lessons, several times. According to AstroMatrix, regarding the Saturn/ North Node Opposition,

“Saturn rules our conditioning or the way we were taught and brought up in the world. It is associated with restriction and limitation but with this it brings structure and meaning to the world and our lives. It reminds us of our boundaries, responsibilities and commitments. It is often associated with a father or authority figures. Saturns lessons actually help us to grow. In you chart the position of Saturn reveals your limitations, fears and sense of responsibility. The Moon’s Nodes are related to the subconscious, the domain of the Moon. Thus, the South Node represents subconscious motivations that stem from the past and to which there is an inner inclination to cling although they may no longer be relevant or appropriate to the individual’s situation and prospects, while the North Node represents conscious motivations relevant to the present and future, characterized by a desire for the unfoldment of appropriate changes in personal psychology. An outer planet in conjunction with one of the lunar nodes is a planet of special significance. This increases the importance of Saturn in your life. With North Node in opposition to Saturn, this suggests you have learnt a good dose of Saturnine attitudes. While this can come out in a positive way, it is a potentially constricting aspect right from the start, due to the limiting and pessimistic nature of old, worrying Saturn. You may have rigid habits or outlook, and your ambitions may be so far removed from what is the accepted norm by modern society that you could create a world of isolation, detached from life, ignoring social duties. This is potentially the hardest past-life influence from which to escape. It is easy for you to become stubborn or stuck in the past. You are bound to the old methods and mindsets, having many connections with elders. The house placement of Saturn shows where ideas or attitudes of the past keep them a prisoner. Your outlook may be gloomy, pessimistic or you may appear as miserly or selfish. Major circumstances in your past life or early childhood may have caused you to develop a restricted, cynical worldview. Your judgmental, overly traditional, sour outlook will inspire much opposition in others. Working on the positives of Saturn discipline, responsibility, organization and respect for boundaries, it provides the opportunity to do work of such remarkable mastery, precision, and expertise you can be in a class of your own, where the competition simply cannot touch you.” AstroMatrix.com

So, heavy… Saturn has been cruel.

Always watching the sky- we have wildfires. But isn’t is beautiful?

Saturn hasn’t stopped me. I was on track with my life purpose before I even realized that the North Node meant something. I left a career in teaching art to actually become an artist, myself. It was hard to do, and I had a hard time with negative self-talk and a very critical inner voice during that time. I create Tarot and Oracle decks now…

Like, who gets to do that?!!!!

A drawing inspired by Inner Child Artist.

I love what I do!!!! My newest deck is called Inner Child Artist. It has an art/writing experience for each card that allows you to confront and reevaluate situations that happened to you as a child. You do this inner work by making art and writing with your non-dominant hand. I have been working on getting it finished, but for me, it has been quite a process… because each card has a written response that evokes a memory from childhood, that is, most often, really hard for me to remember. And when I say “hard,” I do not mean that my memory is bad. I mean that the memories make me very sad because a lot of what I had back then is now gone. In fact, most of it gone. Reality.

I’m a 4th house Scorpio Moon. Knowledge about my moon has saved my life because my emotions were all over the place when I was young, and I have learned how to control them, rather than the opposite. So I’m doing the best I can. The deck combined with the stories in the guidebook are evocative though, and it’s going to be a beautiful deck to share with the world because it really does something special and it has a way of holding this space for you.

Pluto is about transformation. I will kill what I can’t transform. That has been an interesting topic, though, because I haven’t killed anything yet. I just turn it into something better. Something more beautiful. Something I can deal with. My Pluto is in the third house of communication, in Libra. I seek information regarding the things that I am interested in until I have absorbed and processed the information that I need to, and mostly without formal education. I really love this aspect about myself. I am the eternal seeker of knowledge.

I could talk on and on about astrology because it has affected my life in so many ways, and I’ve been studying it for so long. But this post is getting long! However, I hope you have learned something from it. I hope you’ll check your north node and figure out your life purpose. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask or to comment.

I love astrology. It means everything. ❤️🤯

Tarot Banksy (Second Edition) is in the works!

Due to popular demand, The Tarot Banksy is coming back with a second edition!

The requests for another reprint or another edition of the Tarot Banksy have been overwhelming. I get several emails a week, to the point where it is quite impossible to ignore. And why would I? I freaking love Banksy! He is a social activist, and in my opinion… A GODDAMN HERO IN SOME CRAZY ASS CORRUPT AND CONFUSING TIMES. The deck gets straight to the point, which is something that is SO NEEDED right now.

Every person in the world: “Enough with all the fluff, just give it to me straight!”

And…

This decks pulls no punches. It gets straight to the point and it doesn’t try to sugar coat anything for your tender ears. It understands that change requires discomfort. In order to reconcile the changes you need in your life, it will show you exactly what you don’t want to see about yourself to make you think. It will change your perspective, but it will not be easy. (I’m sure that the daily clusterfuck of fake news offered on TV and social media has brought enough discomfort to you, but unless you ponder your reaction to these discomforts, you will never act, and the change you desire will never come.) In light of today’s need for social activism/justice, a second edition of the deck will be printed.

The second edition will have some changes, including a new card back with red metallic foil, and red metallic gilding on the edges. I am going to settle on one image for both the Hierophant and Justice cards, and include two completely new cards, making it an 80-card deck. Pre-order info will be released soon!

Let’s Play Catch Up…

2020 has been fucking eventful, to say the very least. It has been nothing short of dramatic; that much is true!

We bought our first home and moved into it in mid- March, the very same day we were both laid off of work due to the Coronavirus pandemic. It has been very stressful, but we are just trying to remain calm and find some sort of serenity in the fact that we made it here. Now we just need to figure out how to keep it. No one is hiring. America is a mess. The world is a mess. This is so damn sad. 😭

We’ve been keeping ourselves busy by working with our hands. We’ve built a greenhouse, a chicken coop, raised garden beds, a horse area, and even a water feature. We’ve planted an herb garden and a vegetable raised garden bed. We’ve been busting our asses like they did in the old days when they had to grow their food. It has been a wonderful experience and we have learned many things we probably never would have had the time to learn. I can appreciate that. I have found that interacting with the earth makes me feel productive in a way that other things cannot. (So instead of just eating/smoking it, I am growing it, too. It’s a cycle, you see?)

So much good news? There must be some bad…?!?!?

Of course there is. That’s how shit rolls in my life. My mom’s house burnt down yesterday. when I woke up this morning, I awoke from a dream conversation with my dad, asking if he’d talked to her. He replied with, “I already have,” and my eyes opened. Let me just show you and then I’ll talk…

So now I finally have a home and my mom does not?

I don’t really even have any words for this, other than I am so fucking happy my sister and my mom made it out of there unharmed. Today could have been a much worse day than it has been, and I am grateful that my family lives to tell (and be irate!) about it. Disaster was unavoidable, but a complete catastrophe was side-stepped, this time. It does help you to remember what is important in the end. It’s not the cars, the jewelry, the clothes, the furniture… it’s the people. That is all that matters in this world.

I live for this.

Please help if you can!

I created a gofundme account in order to help my mama get back on her feet and start a rebuild. All of her clothes and shoes have been burnt and she is staying in an RV outside of her house, but it needs to be fitted with septic hook ups. She has no dishes, pots and pans, utensils. The entire kitchen went up in flames. She is by herself since my Daddy died, and she is too proud to ask for help. So I am trying my hardest to help her. Please help me do that if you can. We appreciate every little bit!

You can help by sharing and donating here. ❤️

With loads of love and respect,

Shilo❤️

In the belly of the beast!

Drawing is the perfect distraction!

What in the hell would I do, on those days when my head spins and spins with shit I can’t control, without art to distract me? I would definitely be on lock down somewhere, just sayin’.

Me and my Dad

It’s also a good reminder. We can thank God for our creativity on the days when we can’t find anything to thank our Creator for.

Some days are just entirely better than others…

A time lapse of my process

#DECKLUSTAPPROVED!

I scored! I managed to get my hands on a copy of the Idiosyncradeck tarot deck and I couldn’t be happier! Check it out!

The Button Soup Tarot!

This is a collaboration deck that was facilitated by the Cult of Tarot Forum, and online community for Tarot card enthusiasts and collectors. I completed the nine of pentacles card for this collaboration and I’m very happy with the way the whole deck turned out! I especially love Joan Marie’s two pentacle cards and Atilla’s fives/ Magician! Great job to everyone!

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