Connect the Dots with Aria

Thanks for joining me live!

Taurus season draws to a close, and this week’s video invites you into a deeper exploration of relational harmony as a living, breathing practice.

In relationships we are often used to performing, creating façades, having uncommunicated expectations, and avoiding being present with ourselves (and by extension our environments and others).

Drawing on the medicine of Maple, we get to reflect on what it means to nourish and tend to relationships with presence and care, much like one would tend a tree throughout the seasons, not just when it's time to receive its sappy sweetness.

✨ When You Choose the Beauty Way, You:

* Learn to trust the pace and intelligence of your healing

* Let love be rooted in reality, not performance or perfection

* The difference between consuming connection and cultivating it

Thank you for subscribing to Connect the Dots this Taurus Season, where we grounded in The Beauty Way. Next week we kick of Gemini Season.

Note: I just went LIVE for the first time! Thank you to everyone who tuned in. This is the recording (the video format is different from what it usually is).

This week, The Beauty Way reminds us that braiding mysteries (holding space for what we do now know) actually strengthens us.

How can that be?!?!?!As children, most of us probably remember the feeling of discovering the world curiously and playfully. At that time, “not knowing” was a doorway.

This video explores the integrative medicine of Sweetgrass (also called Hair of the Mother) as we develop relationship with the unknown. The unknown, and what is mysterious to us can be something we investigate logically, or something to conquer, or avoid. It is also something we can let be at times, so that is softens us into courage and curiosity. This is where we develop layers of resilience and attunements in our subtle bodies. The upcoming Full Moon in Scorpio (on Monday, May 12th) follows Mother’s Day (on Sunday the 11th), which is a beautiful time to allow the mysteries of our human existence to soften us instead of diminishing our sense of self or energy.

In today’s video, you’ll sip on:

* How Sweetgrass teaches us to soften into Mysteries, as a way to honour them

* The threefold braid of what is manifest, un-manifest, and the human who holds both

* The notion of shifting internal gears from our “doing” nature to “being” nature

* How to experience your own presence lovingly, even when you can’t solve or fix something.

* Letting mystery strengthen your presence and sense of self

Note: Sweetgrass is a sacred plant medicine on the Native Medicine Wheel. If you are purchasing, foraging and working with any medicine, please do so with reverence, in alignment with the Honourable Harvest.

When You Choose the Beauty Way, You

✨ Reduce grasping for answers, and let yourself form a relationship with the unknown (the birthplace of all creation) ✨ Remember that strength includes knowing yourself in certainty and uncertainty ✨ Can integrate body, mind, and spirit in quiet harmony✨ Root into being-ness, and find your power not in what you do, but in who you are

Subscribe to Connect the Dots and touch ground with the Beauty Way this Taurus Season.

Last week, we explored how Rose Medicine teaches us to root deeply and weather life’s storms with grace.

This week, we continue walking the Beauty Way, sitting with the medicine of the Cedars—honouring the Sacred.

What is Sacred to you, truly?What is it in your life that you honour and protect?What is your relationship with what is Sacred to you?

In todays video, you’ll sip on:

* Why “doing” your spiritual practice can keep you stuck

* The Medicine of Cedars (and how it helped me shift from hustle to stillness)

* Perspectives on shifting gears to from mechanically living life, to actively honouring our relationship with life

* Distilling the essence of what you love, by going deeper that surface thoughts and actions

Note: Cedar is a sacred plant medicine on the Native Medicine Wheel. If you are purchasing, foraging and working with any medicine, please do so with reverence, in alignment with the Honourable Harvest.

When You Choose the Beauty Way

✨ You stop performing love—and start becoming it✨ You recalibrate your relationship with your heart, mind, body and soul and experience life more gracefully✨ You remember your wholeness, not just your healing✨ You actually experience yourself as a being of deep power, truth and capacity to love, regardless of what the world outside is doing

Subscribe to Connect the Dots and touch ground with the Beauty Way this Taurus Season.

Toronto Substackers: You Are Invited to Sacred Tea Ceremony on May 9th

Sacred plant tea ceremonies offer a unique heart-filling social opportunity to quieten, decompress, listen within, commune with plant teas, and share your authentic presence. In the ceremony, I will serve teas and guide you to inner receptivity where you may savour the harmony of your mind, heart, body, spirit, with that of Earth’s medicines.When: Friday, May 9th at 6:30pmWhere: Laya Spa & Yoga, Queen West, TorontoRegister on Eventbrite by clicking the image below.

The more chaotic and pressure-filled the world outside gets, our invitation is into the stillness and quietude.

Taurus Season, the first Earth sign in the new wheel of the Zodiac. If Aries was our Creative Spark, Taurus is the soil that receives the seeds of what we are growing. Being a Venus-ruled sign, Taurus is about relationships and connectivity to the material—our bodies, the Earth, and to the ebbs and flows of our own being.

This season, we’re walking The Beauty Way—a path stitched with Yin/ Feminine wisdom that cultivates harmony, receptivity and and sacred relationship with the living world, within and around us.

This week, we have the New Moon in Taurus, and today’s video weaves in one of the the tenants of the Beauty Way—harmony with our environment—through the medicine of the Rose bush. You’ll be able to sip on:

* Relationship between the heart-mind and the Earth and how we can begin to come home to ourselves

* How does the delicate seeming Rose plant weathers temperatures intense wind storms and temperatures as cold as -30°C/ 22°F

* Teachings from the Rose on boundaries, emotional and mental resilience

* New perspectives on cultivating a mind-heart relationship

There’s also a simple invitation to help tend your nervous system, so that instead of bracing against the storms in your life, you can trust your deep resilient roots.

When You Choose the Beauty Way

✨ You stop performing love—and start becoming it✨ You recalibrate your relationship with your heart, mind, body and soul and experience life more gracefully✨ You remember your wholeness, not just your healing✨ You actually experience yourself as a being of deep power, truth and capacity to love, regardless of what the world outside is doing

Subscribe to Connect the Dots and touch ground with the Beauty Way this Taurus Season.

Looking source a beautiful Rose Tea?

I buy mine at Helen + Hildegard, a Toronto-based, women-run herbal apothecary; and yes, they ship. All herbs are well sourced.

Alright, you’ve all felt this as I have right? Stuck, doubtful, or like nothing you're doing or creating matters, that feeling of drudgery as one mundane day bleeds into the next. Today’s video is NOT about ‘fixing’ that. Watch and let yourself:

* Learn why doubt, frustration, and/or creative blocks are natural phases of the creative process

* Embrace where you are right now; and how the ‘artist’s lament’ helped me see the chronic roots of my doubt.

* Feel into what it, instead of forcing yourself

* Practice radical acceptance (a 3-step process) to move through emotional lows with compassion

It’s crazy how sometimes the most radical thing we can do in the moment is letting ourselves be exactly as are in the moment. This inner permission is so transformative, because it shifts us out of “fight” and “resistance” and helps us with sustainability in our creative process.

As we shift into Taurus season next week, we are invited to bring our creatives fires (of Aries) to ground (Taurus). This is where we choose when, how, where and what to plant so we can start our cultivation process.

Did you try the ‘artist’s lament’ or your version of it? Share your experience—it’ll be fun!

Got. a friend who is navigating ups, downs and stuck-ness in their life? Share this with them!

Thanks for joining Connect the Dots through Aries Season. Subscribe to keep getting posts as we enter Taurus Season and explore The Beauty Way.

We set measurable goals, we work toward them, and often… we actually reach them!Then what?

I have chased the imagined feelings of achieving my metric-based goals. But my own history shows me, that when I reach them, I don’t feel those feelings. Instead, I just move onto the next project or expand my goal.

In this video, you can reflect on:

* How much of your creative process, and your enjoyment is shaped by metrics of success

* The awkwardness of achieving a goal absent authentic feeling, only to realize it wasn’t your true goal

* The right placement of success metrics in our creative process

* How your measures of success form your identity, how you view the world, other people and situations

My numeric goals pulled me out of my natural curiosity, and I started to overcomplicate the whole process for myself. Simplicity is part of the medicine here, which supports longevity of legacy in what we are creating. This kept me spiralling within in a problem-consciousness mind-set.

Today’s video has all this and more!

Chronic burnout and exhaustion are standard and accepted states of being. It is considered normal.

It is not. It is not a happy or sustainable way to move through our days and weeks.

When I found myself in this place, I realized that my creative process was misaligned from who I actually was.

In refining my creative process I now include two essential elements that help break the burnout cycle. They sound ‘woo-woo’, so, listen on for these two elements can practical support the creative process. They also:

* bring me back to neutrality when I have emotional ups and downs (doubt, judgement, comparison, insecurity, arrogance etc.)

* give me juicy nuances that I can reflect on, and adjusting or pivot as needed (so that I create from neutrality, not emotionality or attachments)

* allow me to communicate with confidence, when I’m ready to (without getting defensive)

* help me flow with creative energy, rather than force it (“I need it to happen NOW!!!”

To me, this is less about achieving mind-created (often, societally-informed) goals, and more about encouraging us to find our way back to the spark that made us start in the first place, and sustain it for as long as required.

New Here?

Welcome! This Aries Season we are exploring the Simplicity & Sustainability in the Creation Process. If you missed the opening post, here it is!

Traditional advice on ‘how to manifest your dreams’ has not always worked for me. It has worked sometimes, and made me feel great; other times, it has crashed!

Eventually, after a lot of trial and error, I figured out why! This video explores my more sustainable, and personalized approach to creative processes.

🔹 Clear Space First – Creativity thrives when we release unfinished projects, old habits, and mental clutter.🔹 Goals vs. Intentions – Instead of fixating on numbers (e.g., 500 subscribers), focus on generating value and meaning in your work.🔹 Authenticity Over Comparison – Looking at others can spark inspiration, but too much can lead to self-judgment and distraction, as it did with me! 🔹 Align With the Season – This Aries season + the Solar Eclipse create a powerful time to clear out and ignite your creative endeavours, whatever they may be. 🔹 Does Your Process Sustain You? – True creativity energizes us,. You heard right: your creative process has the power to sustain you, just as much as you sustain it. It is a beautiful reciprocal relationship, and it is only possible when you make the ‘textbook’ manifestation process, truly and sustainably yours!

Feel into what you are creating in your life already (or, what you want to create, but haven’t started). The example I’m moving through is my desire to improve my Substack publication, and get more subscribers (which means people value my work).

Join me, as I share my downs and realizations in navigating my creative process—which does actually work for me, when I’m not in my own way!

New Here?

Welcome! This Aries Season we are exploring the Simplicity & Sustainability in the Creation Process. If you missed the opening post, here it is below!

Congratulations friends, we made it through the seas of our inner unknowing-ness and formlessness (Pisces season)! Huzzah!!!

I know 12 videos this month was a lot, but what can I say… there is a lot happening and going to unfold as we move through 2025, so I hope this series supported your through what is rising within you.

One fun little reminder: over the coming months, as the Sun transits a zodiac sign, you can return to this series and find the video of the Moon transiting the same sign. It’s a great way to acknowledge how much you’ve grown, expanded or released!

This is the last video of Pisces season, with the Moon transiting the sign of Libra, which desires a synthesis of opposites by honouring opposing polarities. Libra often points to relationships that orbit us closely, such as intimate partnerships and those we consider oppositional (enemies).

A timeless expression of Libra energy is Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement—being anchored in an immovable truth within—and relating to the world from that place.

As you reflect on this past month, as it relates to how you navigate change, uncertainty or aspects of the future in your life, what themes emerged for you?

Our journey through Pisces season comes to its pinnacle today when the Moon is in full illumination in the sign of Virgo. Today is also a Lunar Eclipse—when the shadow of the Earth falls on the face of the Moon.

Virgo and Pisces are polar opposites.

While Pisces is…Formlessness, the Dream, and Dissolving Separation (into the ocean of Oneness)

Virgo is…Form, the Doing, and Refining our Master-craft.

There is a brilliant story in today’s video about the Master Michelangelo, which embodies the archetype of this Virgo Full Moon beautifully.

And, as we are coming to the end of Pisces season 2025, I will share this:

2025 is a massive opportunity for each of us to evolve how we create and care for the Self.

Each of the 12 videos created in this Navigating Formlessness theme is an energetic seed for the rest of the year.

I shared the energies of the Moon transiting each of the signs. Later in the year, when the Sun transits the same signs, you may find that the theme we explores ripples out in all directions.

As such, through the year, you can always come back to videos that resonate!

I AM | Spring Equinox Ceremony

This Spring Equinox is sandwiched between the Virgo Lunar Eclipse (March 13/14th) and the Aries Solar Eclipse (March 29th).

My fellow Priestess Maureen Rose and I are hosting an in-person Women’s Circle & Ceremony on Sunday March 23rd in Toronto, Canada.

In line with the Cosmic and Earth energies, we invite you into a ceremonial container to embody and live you I AM Creator Presence.

DM me with questions about the event.

Journey With Your Stars