1 fish, 2 fish

medical problems and the pisces new moon

I texted a witch yesterday.

For someone who is into this stuff, I’ve sought out way fewer occultists and healers than you’d think.

I was on a real DIY kick for a while. For a few years there, I seemed to cover more ground leading myself than waiting for somebody to prescribe me the next step.

I happened to have the most intel on my situation, and I had grown accustomed to being brutally honest with myself.

Not critical — honest. Which I thought I had been, until I realized all I was ever seeing was whatever story I wanted to tell myself that week. Once I got over that hump, I could map out a pretty solid plan for myself using what I’d learned through self-study.

I’m also a skeptic.

Ironically, I assume everyone’s full of shit until proven otherwise. Social media and the New Age as an industry are to thank for that. As soon as dollar signs are attached, everyone and their mother hops on board.

Doing this for a living doesn’t make somebody a fraud; the ability to make a buck means this work attracts the skeezy types. That’s capitalism, except that paying for help with your spiritual assignments isn’t like buying a used vehicle. It’s definitely harder to discern who can actually back their big claims.

When it comes down to it, you either have it or you don’t. Not everyone needs to be all of the things in this life. But I have it on good authority that she is the real deal.

So, why does a faerie need a witch?

I asked my small but dedicated Instagram audience for a recommendation. I wanted somebody legitimate. One response I got said, “it’s better to do this kind of thing for yourself.” But what I need isn’t a spell or a ritual.

Tomorrow (March 18, 2026, at 9:23 PM EST) is a New Moon in Pisces and the close of eclipse season.

I’m so grateful that shit show is over. It all started with our vacation drama (are we or are we not getting on a plane to Mexico?), and the fun hasn’t stopped since. Now’s the time for a serious integration cycle. It’s pretty much what this new moon is calling for.

For those of you I haven’t regaled with last week’s charming tales, my daughter caught MRSA somewhere between our resort in Punta Cana and touchdown in Toronto. We noticed her legs were rashy on the plane. NBD. My kids have eczema, and it hates sunscreen. But she was hot. Feverish hot.

By the time we unloaded into the house at 2 AM, her legs were markedly worse. Like scary worse. I barely slept. Was it dengue? Yellow fever? Measles? Some unknown flesh-eating disease?

You better believe that at 8 AM, I was first in line for the only Sunday walk-in I know of. I still smelled like chlorine and damp clothes.

Infection, here’s some antibiotic cream. And you know, this is where I kick myself because I didn’t quite bite that bait. I think I was just too tired to fight with the young doctor.

Her fever returned midday, and the rash spread. I should’ve listened to my gut. To the little cherub in my ear whispering he’s wrong. Sometimes it pays to be a skeptic, to trust me more than I trust you.

Off to the hospital we went and we sat and we waited and we took turns holding her and walking around. When it was finally time to be seen, the ER doctor suggested sand mites.

Lazy. It didn’t look anything like sand mites. And to boot, Sissy absolutely hated the sand. She had us carry her every time we went near the beach. Nice try, my guy. It was clear he wanted us out of there.

Ryan and I were beside ourselves. You would be too if you saw it. We did manage to get a script for oral antibiotics, but spent that entire night at home awake with no real answers and her whining and itching and spiking a fever. No rest for the wicked, and that Monday, no work for Emily.

I didn’t trust the nonchalance. So I drove us to our family doctor’s walk-in, at which point I broke down in tears from lack of sleep and frustration. So distraught I was that I even called my mom from the parking lot.

My cap on crying for help is pretty low these days. I’ve developed a bit of an independence complex, which I know is a defence mechanism. An Ego trap. But I desperately needed somebody, anybody, to come be with me.

The clinic staff bumped us up in line, maybe because of Violet’s age or maybe because of how crazed I looked pushing her health card under the plexiglass.

Staph infection. It was a viral rash that had developed into staph. The oral antibiotics we got from the hospital were the right course of treatment. All we could do was be patient. Give her Benadryl to stop the itch. Cover her in calamine.

Surrender to the process.

Monday night was worse than Sunday, so my mom insisted that she take her Tuesday for a sleepover. I didn’t even pretend to protest. That white flag was up and waving at 2x speed.

Violet slept. We slept. It did us all a lot of good. I started to launder our luggage. Got through my inbox at work.

A couple of days passed, and then one evening after dinner, River flipped forward off the back of our dining room chair. We swore he’d broken his arm. Ryan took him immediately to the hospital. I sat with my face in my hands on the kitchen floor, wondering what else might go wrong by Sunday.

X-Ray pending, we were facing our second broken arm for him. I cried a lot of desperate tears that night, too. Violet went to sleep easily.

I’m big on Audible in the car.

I resisted e-books and audiobooks hard forever and never planned to budge. It took Julia Fox reading her memoir to get me to cave. I’ve never looked back. Usually, I’m listening to non-fiction in the car and reading fiction elsewhere, but I’m not strict about it. Why the fuck should I be?

River had a hearing test today. He didn’t break his arm, by the way. When I shared that news with my father-in-law, he texted back:

don’t ever think praying doesn’t matter

My mom calls mine the medical children for good reason. We constantly have appointments, procedures, ailments to tend to, medications to administer. I didn’t grow up going to the doctor for every little bump and sneeze, and I still live by that philosophy. So God amps it up a notch for me. My kids’ dilemmas far exceed bumps and sneezes.

Lucky for me, driving to and from appointments all around the region and beyond means more listening time. River’s big enough now that he plays DJ in my vehicle, but my mom met me at the ENT’s office this morning to take him bowling with my nephew. As I headed into work, I got to finish up Bunnie Xo’s new book.

I didn’t know much about her before, but it had done so well in sales that I figured I’d give it a shot when my coworker said she was taking it on vacation. I’m glad I did. Stripped Down resonated with me on multiple levels. So much so that I could dedicate a whole other post to it. Maybe I will.

In Chapter 30, Bunnie talks about her maternal aunts and the anxiety they experienced from having spiritual gifts and not knowing what to do with them. Check. In this same chapter, she mentions remorse over trying to impose her wants onto her mom’s situation. Trying to control the process. Check. Check.

Driving along, I metabolized the epiphanies Bunnie outlined. I smirked at how timely themes like clair-abilities and acceptance were to the coming new moon. I thought of my own anxieties, my own drive to control what I felt was becoming bigger than me.

The progress I’ve made in that domain has a lot to do with how I relate to my reality. How much I trust. How firmly I hold a boundary when I need to. My ability to see myself and God in others.

Approaching the office, the sun started to peak out. I took a different route than I usually do, being that I’d come from the doctor’s office instead of home. I found myself driving past the Credit Union on Kalar and McCleod.

I can’t recall the last time I got a good look at that plaza. It will always stand out as the place I’d taken my friend the last time I saw her before she passed. I wasn’t sober for that errand. Neither was she.

The two of us stood nervously with our sunglasses on, clutching our purses like the seniors ahead of us might take them, paranoid that everyone was onto us. I’m sure the bank staff snickered about us when we left.

I have come so far from that place. Covered so much ground. And there the building still stood. Same as it ever was. Unchanged by me. Unchanged by her.

Tomorrow’s New Moon in Pisces reminds us of where we stand — amongst the seen and unseen. This type of relational stuff begins in the Svadhisthana, where we learn our own edges and how they can exist in fluidity. From here we begin to feel into the flow of a third force: the water our two fish swim in.

Magic is made of three parts.

There is always something dying for another thing to be born, and there is always a third force allowing this process to happen.

This lets me make sense of what my life takes. It might sound like nonsense but hold onto it, if nothing else that I write will stick.

When we stay out of it in the right way, it all takes care of itself.

Trust keeps this wheel turning. Trust in the right places. Trust and surrender. Not negligence or tolerance. Acceptance. Not imposing our will where we have no business. Allowing things the space they need to unfold. Taking our turn when it comes.

Sometimes it’s accepting the help. Sometimes it’s arguing with the young doctor. I could never tell you which one it is you need, just the same as it is better to cast the spell for yourself.

I can only hold the mirror up high enough. I can only be in the water next to you.

I have felt blocked since Violet was born, like one of my chords to the divine is unplugged unbeknownst to me. For the first time since I got sober, I don’t know what I need.

I trust myself, but I am inviting in third-party counsel. This is why I let my mom take Violet overnight and meet me at River’s appointment this morning. This is why I’m not jumping back into a booked client calendar.

This is why I texted the witch:

I need somebody who can see to help me see it, I guess?

And I hope it’s why she responded:

I can definitely help you out with that.

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YOUR HOMEWORK:

With this past eclipse season in mind (around Feb 16 until now)

• When did you trust yourself? Another person? God?

• What happened? How did you feel? What did you learn?

• What is coming (creation)? What is going (destruction)? And what’s the name of the highway they ride on (quiet force)?

• What is your relationship to the divine? How does shame factor in? How about trust?

No big plans just yet. Let the dust settle into the water.

I love you.