This is Beltane Eve, the threshold moment when the veil between worlds grows thin and the fire is first lit. By ancient tradition, this night was sacred before the feast day even arrived.
Incorporating these beautiful rituals into my regular life has significantly supported me over the past few years and today, I want to share a very simple Beltane practice with you.
Tonight, I invite you to light a candle with me and write down one thing you are calling into full bloom this season... not a goal, but a becoming. Write it, hold it at your heart and then speak it aloud while looking into the flame and letting the fire witness you.
Messenger
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.
-Mary Oliver
Oliver understood what the mystics have always known — that our first devotion is to presence. To show up for the morning. To let the world move through you and then have the courage to say I was here. I felt this. It mattered. That is Beltane energy. That is what the dancing fire is asking of you, presence. wholeness, worthiness. Claim it.
Welcome to Taurus season (from a Taurus girl).
From now until May 20th, we're held by Fixed Earth energy -- slow, sensory, and deeply embodied. Taurus doesn't rush... it savors, and after the urgency of the Aries spring's beginning, this is the time to root down and feel what's growing.
Three things to lean into this month:
🌿 Eat slowly. Taste your food. Taurus rules the senses — pleasure as practice is not indulgent, it's alignment.
📓 Write one true thing each morning. Not a journal prompt. One sentence. What is most true for you today?
🪨 Finish something. Taurus energy rewards completion. What have you been tending? Let May be where it lands.
April asked a lot of me.
I wrote about choosing love when fear is loudest, and published "Grandma's House," which shared my grief after losing my grandmother. And then, on my 41st birthday, I opened the doors to The Memoir Method, the thing I've been building toward for years — and now, it's finally alive in the world.
It was a full, sacred, and tender month.
And now May is calling me into motion... but I plan to remain fully grounded.
After spending half of the month in Florida both at Wellist Week in Miami and with my father during his recovery from sepsis... I'm back in Charleston briefly to support The Live Wild Fest before heading to Texas to be with my kids and celebrate Mother's Day in Austin with them and my mama, which feels exactly right after the kind of April I just had.
There's The Great Curious Cocktail Party in Austin on May 13th, then I'm flying out to California where I'm sitting down to record with the Euphoric Podcast! While, I'm there... guess what!?
I AM GOING TO ENJOY IT. I am going to revel in it. I am going to connect with the land, and breathe deeply into my soul, and work on my very own writing projects.
After than, it will be back to Texas for my son's 19th birthday — nineteen!! — and then I'm closing out the month in Austin at the Beyond Biohacking Conference, where I'll be co-hosting an alcohol-free beverage experience alongside Anahata and Plant Magic.
Shew! I mean... WOW! From curled up in the back of my van - broke and alone to THIS!! Guys... please don't give up. Please don't think that you can't. YOU CAN! You can and you are worthy of it all.
May is full. May is good. And I'll be writing through all of it, so stay tuned and make sure you are subscribed to my Substack!
But before I let you go today, I want you to invite you into something VERY last minute... a little challenge I have put together called Manifestation May.
It is completely free to join, so send it to your friends and family and let's do it together! Simple, but powerful... Every day in May I'll drop a short audio into our private group. A teaching, a challenge, and something real to move through that day.
Whether you join or not, know that you are deserving of all of your wildest dreams! Your littlest you and your 'highest, truest, most fully-expression version of you is waiting - waiting for you to finally know it and claim it!!
Sending you all the lovin's.
More soon. Happy May, my loves!
x Jessa
