Chats with Aunt Jacki

What if the real problem isn’t time management?

What if it’s energy management?

In this solo episode of Chats with Aunt Jacki, I’m talking about a concept that changed the way I look at work, life, and overwhelm: ROH, return on heartbeats.

We spend so much time measuring return on investment, productivity, and whether we’re getting enough done. But you can make more money. You can rebuild. You can change direction. You only get so many heartbeats.

So the better question may be: What deserves your heartbeat?

I talk about the energy leaks hiding in our relationships, our to-do lists, our expectations, and all the things we think we should be doing. I also get into boundaries, multitasking, manifestation, gratitude, and the practical magical tools I use to help focus, reset, and manage my own energy.

This episode is for anyone who feels like they are doing everything and still somehow ending the day wondering what they actually accomplished.

Maybe you do not need a better system.

Maybe you need to decide what is actually worth your energy.

Manifesting has gotten weird.

Somewhere along the way, it became less about intention, action, self-awareness, and magic—and more about perfect thoughts, high vibes, expensive coaching, and making a vision board pretty enough for the universe to approve.

In this episode of Chats with Aunt Jacki, I’m talking with author, tarot creator, professional witch, and speaker Jen Sankey about moon magic, manifesting, desire, shadow work, and the part people tend to skip: the actual work.

We talk about what happens when you realize you are manifesting what you think you should want instead of what you genuinely desire, why magic works better when it fits your real life, and how the phases of the moon can offer structure without becoming another set of rules.

We also get into gratitude practices, rest and integration, working with the dark moon, reclaiming the parts of yourself you may have labeled as “too much,” and learning to recognize your own natural rhythms instead of forcing yourself into someone else’s version of a magical practice.

Jen also shares the story behind her book Manifesting with the Moon: A Lunar Guide to Magic, her tarot decks, and the way she has used lunar work as a practical framework for navigating change.

If manifesting has started to feel performative, complicated, or just a little ick, this conversation is for you.

In this episode:
• Why manifestation requires action
• How to tell the difference between desire and “should”
• Building a magical practice that fits your actual life
• Working with the different phases of the moon
• Gratitude, rest, and integration
• The magic of the dark moon
• Shadow work and reclaiming hidden strengths
• Why you are still the most important magical tool you have

Learn more about Jen Sankey and her work at StardustWandererTarot.com

Find Jacki Smith, book a reading, and explore more blogs and episodes at AuntJacki.com.

What if you don’t need a stronger energetic boundary? What if you need a better song?

In this episode of Chats with Aunt Jacki, I sit down with musician, songwriter, magical practitioner, and longtime friend Sharon Knight to explore how music can shift our energy, support protection work, and become part of a magical practice.

We talk about singing as an embodied form of magic, rhythm and trance, drumming when words aren’t enough, singing bowls and resonance, and the music we use to focus, release emotion, or change the way we move through a room.

We also get into the difference between protection that supports us and protection that turns us into full-on porcupines, why you do not have to be a good singer for singing to matter, and how a song can become an energetic container you carry with you.

This is a conversation about music as vibration, expression, protection, communication, and magic—and about becoming more intentional with the soundtrack you bring into your life.

Featuring Sharon Knight.

What does it mean to carry your ancestors with you—even when you no longer live on the land they came from?

In this episode of Chats with Aunt Jacki, I’m joined by my longtime friend Emily Bolander for a conversation about ancestry, place, memory, and the everyday ways we stay connected to the people who came before us.

Emily shares how growing up in Central New York shaped her spiritual life, what it was like to leave a place where her family roots run deep, and how ancestor work became a way of carrying that connection forward. We talk about graveyards, family objects, handwritten signatures, food, ancestor altars, grave dirt, cemetery water, and the strange little ways our dead sometimes make themselves known.

We also get practical about ancestor work: how to begin an altar, what to do when you don’t know where your ancestors are buried, how to work with complicated family histories, and why relationship matters more than doing everything “perfectly.”

This is a conversation about roots, belonging, remembrance, and the magic that can happen when we stop treating our ancestors like history and start recognizing them as part of our living story.

Guest Bio
Emily Bolander is a longtime magical practitioner, tarot reader, Reiki Master, teacher, and spiritual consultant. For nearly three decades, she has worked with tarot, candle magic, folk traditions, ancestors, saints, Hecate, crossed conditions, and the energy of place. She has also founded and led a coven for many years, bringing deep experience in magical practice, teaching, and community leadership.

Guest Contact / Links
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @HaggithaHawthorne
Those are the two contact methods Emily gives at the end of the episode.

This is a special extended episode of Chats with Aunt Jacki.

What happens when magic stops being something you do on the side and becomes part of how you make decisions, build opportunities, and earn a living?

In this episode, Jacki talks with author and Strategic Sorcery founder Jason Miller about the real intersection of magic and entrepreneurship. They get into money, pricing, opportunity, prosperity, spiritual practice, growth, and the very unglamorous reality of having to build something sturdy enough to hold the success you keep asking for.

They also tackle deservingness, manifestation culture, magical “vibration,” the fear many practitioners have around charging fairly, and why magic works best when it is woven into practical action instead of used as a substitute for it.

Along the way, Jacki and Jason share stories about magical business, financial set points, missed opportunities, sacred hustle, and one central idea that runs through the whole conversation:

Magic is real — and it works how other real things work.

We went long because the conversation was too good to cut short.

Life gets lifey—even when you are deeply spiritual, doing your healing work, and trying to stay connected to your magic.

In this episode, I sit down with Wendy Mata, author of Bruja Curandera: Spells and Rituals from a Mexican Healer and Witch, to talk about ancestor work, limpias, spiritual bypassing, and what it really means to become a magical person.

We talk about building a reciprocal relationship with your ancestors, setting boundaries with spirits, calling back the parts of yourself that were lost through trauma, and using cleansing work to release what no longer belongs to you. Wendy also shares why magic works best alongside therapy, medical care, practical support, and the very human process of feeling what you feel.

We also explore cultural appropriation, closed practices, and the difference between respectfully learning from a tradition and claiming authority you have not earned.

This is a grounded conversation about healing, responsibility, ancestry, and remembering that you are the magic.

What if confidence is not something you either have or don’t have, but something you practice one honest choice at a time?

In this episode of Chats with Aunt Jacki, Jacki sits down with Shavonne Readus, also known as V of Red Light Readings, author of Tarot for the Flawed and Fearless: 22 Keys to Master Self-Confidence.

Together, they talk about tarot as a mirror for self-trust, not a crutch for avoiding the messy parts of being human. Using the Major Arcana as a path of growth, Jacki and V explore The Fool, The Tower, Judgment, and The Star as cards that can help us understand new beginnings, collapse, forgiveness, hope, fear, and the courage to keep becoming ourselves.

This conversation is for anyone who has ever wondered how to trust themselves again, especially when life is changing, old patterns are crumbling, or the next step feels uncomfortable.

Because fearlessness does not mean you are never afraid. Sometimes it means you finally stop letting fear be the loudest voice in the room.

Find Shavonne Readus / V at Red Light Readings:
Instagram: @redlightreadings
Website: redlightreadings.com
Facebook: Red Light Readings

Find Jacki at AuntJacki.com for readings, blogs, and more episodes of Chats with Aunt Jacki.

The hardest family pattern to recognize may be the one where we realize we are part of someone else’s story.

In this episode of Chats with Aunt Jacki, Jacki Smith explores family patterns, shadow work, ancestral healing, and the uncomfortable moment when we stop being only the child trying to understand our parents — and become the parent our adult child may be trying to understand.

After teaching about inherited beliefs, family legacies, ancestral contracts, and healing family patterns through the Akashic Records, Jacki reflects on the humbling truth that our children may not experience us the way we experience ourselves. This is especially tender in mother daughter relationships, parent and adult child relationships, and any family dynamic where love, grief, boundaries, repair, and old wounds live side by side.

We know our intentions. They know their experience. Both can be true.

This episode is an honest conversation about motherhood, adult children, impact versus intention, emotional healing, spiritual healing, distance, repair, grief, humility, and the magic of asking better questions before we defend the wound.

Because family patterns are not museum pieces. They are living things.

Most people imagine the Akashic Records as a giant cosmic filing cabinet — distant, mysterious, and only accessible to the extra-special spiritually attuned.

That is not how I experience them.

In this episode, I’m talking about the Akashic Records from lived experience: what they are, what they are not, and how they can help us understand the patterns, fears, blocks, and old stories shaping our lives. I share how I first found myself working in the Records, why consent matters deeply in this work, and how to tell the difference between anxious mental storytelling and true Akashic insight.

We’ll also talk about intuition, psychic information, mediumship, imagination, grounding, and why the Records are not here to help you spy on other people or bypass common sense. They are here to help you understand yourself more honestly.

Because sometimes the wisdom you need does not arrive as a lightning bolt.

Sometimes it feels like memory.

Sometimes it sounds like a strange symbol.

Sometimes it starts with the question, “Am I making this up?”

And sometimes, that is exactly where the door opens.

You can learn more about my work, book an Akashic Reading, or find my book DIY Akashic Wisdom at auntjacki.com.

Until next time, trust your magic and keep your candle lit.

You were never meant to be calm, perfect, and high-vibe before your magic was allowed to work.

What if your pain isn’t blocking your magic, but trying to tell you where the spell begins?

In this episode of Chats with Aunt Jacki, I’m joined by Laura Tempest Zakroff for the final conversation in the Protection Magic for Women series. Together, we unpack the energetic purity trap, the damaging idea that anger, grief, fear, overwhelm, or messy human emotion means your vibration is wrong, your magic has failed, or you are somehow the problem.

We talk about why “high vibration” language can become another ranking system, how shame interrupts magic, and why real witchcraft brings us back into the body, the land, our tools, our communities, and our actual lives. Laura shares wisdom on sigil magic, embodied practice, magical resistance, shadow work, and why sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is simply do the thing, make the mess, and learn from it.

This conversation is about reclaiming magic from perfectionism, purity culture, spiritual bypassing, and the myth that you have to be healed, calm, or perfectly aligned before you are allowed to be powerful.

Your pain is not proof your magic failed.
Your fear is not proof you are broken.
Your mess is not the opposite of magic.

Sometimes, it is where the working begins.

Learn more about Laura Tempest Zakroff at lauratempestzakroff.com.

Learn more about Jacki Smith, book an Akashic reading, or find more episodes at AuntJacki.com.

Until next time, trust your magic and keep your candle lit.