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I can't drink flavored creamers anymore.

After *years* of drinking coffee, it just started tasting...off.

I tried to tell myself that I was just being weird. Maybe I’d bought a bad bottle. Maybe it was hormonal. Maybe I just needed to get over it so I could enjoy my cup of joe like a normal person.

But the more I ignored it, the stronger that aftertaste became — until I could finally name it:

Plastic.

Like synthetic sweetness trying to cosplay as comfort but my body (and my tastebuds) weren’t buying it anymore.

These days, I rarely drink coffee (my body really turned on me 😭 caffeine sensitivity is no joke), but when I do, I’m reaching for some half-n-half and brown sugar —maybe a dash of vanilla extract if I’m feeling ✨extra✨.

Honestly, I think that was one of my first real initiations into spiritual discernment — the kind that starts in the body before your mind can catch up.

Discernment doesn’t just live in our minds — it lives in our bodies. Our taste buds, our guts, our skin. We notice when something’s off, even if we can’t name it right away. And just like we can learn to stop drinking something that tastes wrong?

➡️ We can also stop swallowing spiritual junk food.

Right now the spiritual junkfood in question is Lionsgate.

I know! I know!

I kept trying to shake it off or bargain with that same “what’s wrong with me?” instinct. I used to love this portal! I used to prepare for it! I even wrote about it in a recent issue of The Stir!

But…if I’m being honest, I’ve felt this way for a while now. A few years if we’re being candid. 😬 I didn’t want to feel like a killjoy or worse, like I was excluding myself from this collective spiritual energy.

Yet the more I leaned into it, the more that I recognized this feeling of artifice. The plastic aura of this fresh-off-the-shelf, so-called manifesting portal is practically crinkling in my hands.

Because here’s the thing: when something is real — spiritually real — you can feel it. It has presence. Texture. Resonance. Spiritual energy is palpable.

For me, it’s most alive when I’m communing with the divine (on a walk, in nature, when I’m in writing flow, or channeling with my tarot cards) — but it also comes pouring down onto us during specific times of the year. The solstices and equinoxes, for example.

These are observable times of the year, when the cosmos comes into alignment and literally helps shape our perception of space-time. We might have science to explain it now, but it makes it no less spiritual, magical, or energetically impactful.

And yet my spidey senses are NOT tingling with this Lionsgate Portal.

And you know what else? I’m done second guessing myself. I’m not going to gaslight myself into something when energy doesn’t lie.

And babes…the energy right now is flatlining.

​ I was fully willing to trust myself on this whole Lionsgate thing — but I’m a pragmatic wooster. So of course I did some research. ​ First things first: You don’t need a special day on the calendar to open a portal. That power is already yours. ​ A portal, at its most basic, is just a threshold — an opening — a moment where energy is exchanged, transformed, or invited. ​ You don’t need 8/8 or a star alignment to open one. ​Making a decision opens a portal. Shifting your mindset opens a portal. Changing your damn mind opens a portal. ​ So the whole idea of Lionsgate being the one precious “portal of the year” already feels…overhyped. A bit like spiritual marketing-speak wrapped in stardust. ​ And yes, my ✨discernment sensors✨ were already buzzing. ​ What Is Lionsgate Anyway? Let’s break it down: ​ The modern “Lionsgate Portal” supposedly runs from July 26th to August 12th and peaks every year on August 8th, when the Sun is in Leo and the star Sirius rises in the eastern sky. ​ This is real astronomy: Sirius does disappear from the night sky during midsummer and reappears around this time — and in ancient Egypt, that mattered a lot. Sirius was associated with the goddess Sopdet (aka Sothis) — a deity of rebirth, fertility, and abundance. ​ Her return to the night sky as Sirius coincided with the annual flooding of the Nile river, symbolizing a return of life and crop growth. ​ It was literal divine timing. ​ So yes — there’s some legit historical and cultural weight here. But let’s be clear: ​ That reverence was grounded in Egyptian mythology, Egyptian cosmology, and the Egyptian relationship to their land, river, and sky. ​ If that tradition calls to you — beautiful. Honor that. Dig deep. Learn more. ​ But if it doesn’t? If it’s not in your blood, your roots, or your soul’s rhythm? ​ Then trying to assign it personal spiritual meaning might feel…off. ​ ​Like synthetic creamer in spiritual form. ​

​

From Ash's Corner

​

So... I was supposed to teach a class this week for Lionsgate. Like, it was on the books. Public. Marketed. People signed up.

I was the teacher!

And then I had a panic attack.

Not like an annoying tension headache or vague anxiety. I’m talking a full-body NOPE. The kind that turns your breath shallow and your thoughts into mush and your nervous system into a live wire.

(I had to pull out my old tricks which included laying belly down on the floor to ground myself and dunking my face in a mixing bowl full of ice cold water on and off for 15 minutes. Worked a charm, in case you wanna add that one to your own emergency toolkit.)

Anyways, I canceled.

Then proceeded to feel like absolute trash about it.

Because canceling when you're the one leading the thing?
When your name is on the flyer?
When your IG story was like “can’t wait for this sacred portal!!!”
Yeah. Sticky AF.

And THEN — to add insult to spiritual injury — I realized I didn’t even believe in Lionsgate anymore.

YEP.

I was already having a hard time emotionally (hi, solo parenting 3 boys in peak summer while my husband’s away at military training 🫠), but the deeper layer of anxiety was coming from this soul-deep misalignment.

I was about to teach something I no longer felt connected to.

Something my spirit wasn’t resonating with and I didn’t realize just how off it felt… until my body hit the panic button to shut the whole thing down.

That’s when I remembered something I teach all the time — and apparently needed to learn again in a fresh, humbling way:

There is a difference between pressure and presence.

Pressure feels like panic. Like performance. Like bracing.
Presence feels like clarity. Like breath. Like a yes that lives in your bones.

The takeaway is this: the things that nourish you spiritually

• They won’t twist your insides into knots.
• They won’t ask you to perform joy while you’re quietly unraveling.
• They won’t make you fake alignment you’re not actually feeling.

I still feel a little sticky about the whole thing — the part of me that wants to be reliable, strong, “together” is like, ugh. But the deeper part of me, the one who’s finally learning to honor spiritual timing and nervous system truth — is like: “Thank god you listened.”

So if you ever find yourself in that tension — between what you said yes to before and what your body is saying no to now — know this:

You're not flaky.
You're not dramatic.
You're not broken.

You’re learning how to trust your discernment in real time.

And yeah, sometimes that looks like canceling a Lionsgate class… and then realizing you never wanted to teach it in the first place.

You don’t have to keep performing alignment just because people expect you to show up shining. Your radiance comes back faster when you stop faking the light.

Thanks for reading!

In cosmic camaraderie,

​

P.O. Box 532, Cedar Springs, MI 49319
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