“A threshold is not simply a boundary; it is a frontier that beckons to be crossed.”
— John O’Donohue
Hello, Lovelies!
Our card to guide us for the week ahead is the Two of Pentacles – reminding us that growth is often a balancing act between who we’ve been and who we’re becoming. 💛⚖️✨
For this quarter, I’ve been 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.
2026 is a profoundly intuitive and creative year, encouraging adaptability, flexibility, and new beginnings that are both practical and sustainable.
As June draws to a close, we’re also bringing to completion a month dedicated to self-parenting. We’ve been learning how to become our own gentle, wise and loving guide – creating healthier boundaries, choosing compassion over criticism, simplifying where we can, and building lives that help our nervous systems finally exhale. Rather than trying to fix ourselves, we’ve been learning how to care for ourselves.
July opens the door to All the Feels, and with it we step into Quarter Three: Pilgrimage to Self – the heart of our journey together this year. This next season invites us to slow down, trust our intuition, honour our sensitivity, and reconnect with our deepest truth. You may feel more emotional, more reflective, or more aware of the quiet nudges of your inner wisdom. That’s not a sign you’re losing your footing. It’s a sign you’re being invited to listen more deeply.
Which makes this week’s card the perfect companion.
The Two of Pentacles reminds us that whenever life asks us to grow, we don’t just juggle more things – we juggle who we’ve been with who we’re becoming.
🌿This Week’s Guidance
The Two of Pentacles is all about juggling. Not just juggling tasks, but juggling the many different parts of our lives – our health, our relationships, our finances, our work, our dreams and everything else that asks for our time and attention.
The interesting thing is that we’re usually already quite good at juggling the life we have.
Even if we’re exhausted.
Even if it’s hard.
Even if it isn’t particularly good for us.
We know how to keep those familiar balls in the air.
This week’s card invites us to do something different. It asks us to introduce some new elements into the juggle. Perhaps it’s a new opportunity, a creative project, a healthier habit, a relationship, a dream you’ve held inside you for years. Or perhaps it’s simply giving yourself permission to finally prioritise your own needs alongside everyone else’s.
Whatever it is, introducing something new changes everything.
At first, it feels awkward.
We drop things.
We make mistakes.
We lose our balance.
That’s not because we’re failing. It’s because every new ball has a different weight, and every new possibility asks something different of us. We need time to learn how to carry it.
The beautiful thing is that this awkward stage doesn’t last forever.
As we grow more confident with the new things we’re bringing into our lives, something unexpected begins to happen.
Some of the old balls we’ve been juggling start to feel too heavy.
Some of them no longer fit the person we’re becoming.
Some of them we’re finally ready to put down.
Without even noticing it, we begin creating a new rhythm. A new balance. A new normal that better reflects who we are now.
As we stand on the threshold of July and Quarter Three, I think that’s a wonderful invitation.
Be open to possibility. Be willing to introduce something new into your life. And while you’re finding your feet, be gentle with yourself.
Growth is always awkward. It’s rarely easy. But it’s always worth it.
📖Journaling Prompt
Don’t rush this one.
Make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere quiet, and give yourself five uninterrupted minutes to simply settle.
When you feel ready, ask yourself these questions:
- What am I avoiding?
- What am I putting off?
- What does my heart really want that I haven’t been making space for?
Don’t overthink your answers.
Just write whatever comes.
You might discover that the “new ball” you’ve been hesitant to introduce into your life has been waiting patiently in the background for you to notice it all along.
🌟 Top Tip of the Week:
Sometimes we get so caught up in what we think we should be doing—or what other people have told us is the right thing for us—that we lose sight of what our own hearts are asking for.
Whenever I find myself stuck in that place, I ask myself one simple question:
If I won the lottery, and I never had to work another day in my life, with all the time and money in the world… what would be calling me?
The answer is almost never, “Nothing.”
Something always rises to the surface.
A creative project.
A place you’d love to visit.
A skill you’ve always wanted to learn.
A business idea.
A book.
A garden.
A slower life.
Whatever appears, don’t dismiss it.
It doesn’t necessarily mean you need to change your entire life tomorrow. But it might just be the next “ball” that’s asking to be gently introduced into your juggling act.
Crystals to support you this week – Moonstone, Rhodonite, Selenite, Lapis Lazuli, Carnelian, Silver
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
This week’s card has had me reflecting on all the different “balls” I’m juggling right now, and I have to admit… there are quite a few new ones in the air.
One of them is my memoir.
I wrote it years ago and honestly thought it would spend the rest of its life tucked away in the bottom drawer. But as I’ve been writing on Substack (you can find me at Still Here) and sharing more about my younger years, I’ve realised it’s time to bring that dusty manuscript back into the light. It needs restructuring, rewriting, and perhaps most importantly, a little more honesty than I was ready for the first time around.
Another ball I’m juggling is business.
The more I write and teach, the more I realise I don’t want to create more and more ‘stuff’. I want to go deeper. I’m missing retreats. I’m missing the quieter, more mystical aspects of my work. So I’m beginning to reshape things to create something with more longevity – something that allows me to walk beside people more deeply, for longer.. For beginners and advanced practioners both.
And then there’s my body.
One of the hardest lessons I’m learning is how to pace myself with life, work and a return to gentle exercise. Living with chronic illness means I can’t keep sprinting until I collapse, resting, and then repeating the cycle. It’s uncomfortable because pacing asks me to stop while I still feel capable of doing more. I’m not very good at it yet, but I’m learning.
As for the old balls I’m ready to put down…
After many years, I’ve realised it’s time for the Journeymaker’s Planner to evolve. Creating a brand-new Planner and Journey Through the Year every year is an enormous undertaking, yet so much of the work has such a short life. I’m ready to create something that lasts longer, serves more deeply, and gives us more time to explore the things that matter most.
And of course I am still gloriously awkward with many of the ‘new balls’ I am playing with. I’m figuring out Substack as I go, making magnificent mistakes and probably doing everything the hardest possible way because I haven’t learned all the rules yet. I’m also wrestling with new podcasting equipment that promised to be “plug and play” but clearly had other ideas. Growth is rarely elegant!
Also… something lovely happened last week.
I was walking along Mooloolaba Beach late one afternoon, right at the edge of the water where the waves were washing gently over my feet. I noticed something pink beneath the surface and bent down, thinking it was a shell.
Instead, I found a hand-painted rock.
On the front were two simple words:
Choose joy.
On the back was a little note from the person who had created it.
It filled me with optimism and joy, and I hung on to that rock the rest of the way home. In fact, I’ve still got that rock sitting with all my precious crystals. Every time I look at it, I smile because I feel like the universe gave me a precious reminder that even on hard days, even while we’re learning new rhythms, letting go of old burdens, and feeling awkward in the spaces between, there is still beauty. Still kindness. Still magic.
I’m sending you love from my Treehouse.
And wherever you are this week, I hope a little piece of unexpected magic finds you too.
Love, Nicole xx
What a beautiful find on the beach Nicole! Thank you for spreading that message to us all, far and wide. I look forward to what you have in store for us…deeper and longer lasting sounds really great to me.