“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
— Howard Thurman
Hello, Lovelies!
For this quarter, I’ll be working with This Might Hurt Tarot by Isabella Rotman – a bold, honest, and deeply compassionate deck that doesn’t shy away from truth, but holds it with warmth, humour, and a fierce belief in your ability to grow through whatever life is asking of you.
Our card to guide us for the week ahead is the Ace of Cups – which reminds us that the things we are most deeply called toward are often not things we need to find, but things we need to allow. 💙✨🌊
2026 is a profoundly intuitive and creative year, encouraging adaptability, flexibility, and new beginnings that are both practical and sustainable.
June Energies – Giving Yourself Permission
June continues to invite us into the practice of self-parenting, and this week I find myself thinking about permission. Many of us spend years waiting for someone else to give us permission to be ourselves. Permission to create. Permission to dream. Permission to rest. Permission to be spiritual. Permission to be visible. Permission to want what we want.
We tell ourselves we’ll get to those things later. Once life settles down. Once we’re more qualified. Once we have more time, more money, more confidence, more certainty.
Yet some things refuse to leave us alone.
Certain ideas keep returning. Certain dreams resurface. Certain interests continue to capture our attention. Certain longings remain quietly present beneath the noise of everyday life. Perhaps that’s because they matter. Part of self-parenting is learning to pay attention to these recurring threads instead of dismissing them. It is creating space for the parts of ourselves that want to be expressed, explored and lived.
A loving parent doesn’t mock a child’s enthusiasm or talk them out of their dreams. They listen. They encourage. They make room for curiosity and possibility. This week’s Ace of Cups invites us to offer ourselves the same gift.
What if the thing you keep returning to isn’t a distraction from your life, but an important part of it?
What if it deserves a place at the table?
Which brings us beautifully to this week’s card…
🌿This Week’s Guidance
The Ace of Cups is a card of emotional renewal, creativity, intuition, inspiration and spiritual awakening. It speaks of gifts that emerge from the heart and soul rather than the intellect alone. This card often appears when something within us is ready to be acknowledged.
A creative project.
A spiritual path.
A calling.
A gift.
A dream.
A way of being that feels more authentic than the one we’ve been trying to maintain.
Often, the thing we most need to embrace is already patiently waiting for us. It isn’t something we need to chase or acquire. It’s something that already exists within us, waiting for the right moment to be expressed in a way that only we can express it.
Perhaps you’ve been arguing with this part of yourself for years. Perhaps you’ve dismissed it as impractical, unrealistic, selfish or impossible. Perhaps you’ve convinced yourself that someone else is better suited to it than you are. The Ace of Cups suggests it may be time to stop fighting. It may be time to make peace with who you are and what calls to you.
This is a week for listening to your intuition, paying attention to inspiration, and allowing your authentic self a little more room to breathe.
Practical Applications
👉 Notice what continues to capture your attention and imagination.
👉 Make time for creativity, reflection, meditation or other practices that help you hear your own inner voice.
👉 Stop talking yourself out of something that genuinely matters to you.
👉 Allow yourself to explore an interest, idea or calling without needing to justify it.
👉 Trust that what comes naturally to you may have more value than you realise.
Key Message
The thing you keep returning to may be returning to you for a reason.
📖Journaling Prompt
What gift, calling, dream or aspect of myself have I been resisting, and what might happen if I finally gave it room to be expressed?
🌟 Top Tip of the Week:
Choose one thing you’ve been putting off because it feels too vulnerable, too personal, or too much like “the real you.”
Then spend twenty minutes with it this week. Write the page, sketch the idea, research the course, draft the proposal, start the project. You don’t need to commit to the entire journey. Simply take one small action that says to you and the Universe, “This matters.”
Crystals to support you this week – Moonstone, Carnelian, Rhodonite, Amethyst, Black Tourmaline, Clear Quartz
And speaking of the things that patiently wait for us to pay attention, I’ve had a few encounters with my own here at the Treehouse this week…
🌿A note from the Treehouse
The Winter Solstice arrived this weekend, bringing with it the longest night of the year here in Australia.
We celebrated simply. An afternoon walk on the beach. A seasonal feast of pumpkin soup, green chicken curry and apple crumble. Loved ones gathered around the table. Candles flickering. Laughter, conversation and connection. And then, when the dishes were done and the house had gone quiet, I spent the rest of the evening by myself.
There was meditation, reflection, a card pull, some journalling, and nourishing silence. I let the night wrap around me like a blanket and gave thanks for all that has carried me through another turning of the seasons. Being here at the Treehouse reminded me once again how blessed I am.
The Solstice also arrived at a time when I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting about the future.
For me, it always comes back to writing.
No matter what else is happening in my life, writing occupies more of my thoughts than almost anything else. This week I’ve returned to my second magical realism novel, and I’ve also dusted off an old memoir manuscript that has been waiting patiently for my attention.
Reading through it, I realised something. I held back. Not because I didn’t know what to say, but because I was worried about being judged for including it. These days, that feels like a poor bargain.
I’m at a stage of life where I’d rather tell the truth than spend my energy trying to make everyone comfortable. It’s time to be myself on the page and allow readers to take me as they find me. Some people will connect with that. Some won’t. Both are perfectly okay.
Alongside the writing, I’ve been spending time thinking about where I’m heading and what I’m building next. I’ve been listening carefully – to my community, to my own energy levels, and to the work that feels most meaningful.
What keeps emerging is a desire to go deeper rather than wider.
I have a feeling that the second half of this year will be less about doing more and more about doing what matters most.
There are books to write. Courses to create. Ideas waiting patiently in notebooks.
But underneath all of that is something simpler.
I want to continue creating spaces where people feel less alone, and more able to trust their own wisdom, gifts and inner knowing.
I also realised something that feels important. I don’t actually want to build something bigger. I want to build something truer.
And finally, a Rufous update.
Rufous has somehow worked out that it is bath week, which he considers a grave injustice and a personal betrayal. He is currently behaving as though terrible things are about to happen.
To be fair, tomorrow is also hair-washing day for me, and I can’t say I’m particularly excited either.
Because of my health challenges, washing my hair is not the simple task it once was. I haven’t washed it for three weeks. Not because I forgot, but because I didn’t have enough arm strength to detangle it and wash it in the same week. First came the detangling. Then came the recovery period.
The good news is that my curly, dry hair never gets greasy. The bad news is that it has a remarkable talent for turning itself into a bird’s nest.
So tomorrow Rufous and I shall both suffer our respective grooming ordeals. Such is life. And honestly, there are far worse things than spending a winter day clean, warm and surrounded by people – and dogs – you love.
Love, hugs and scary big hair, Nicole xx
