working theories: september 2026
autumn is otw!
what’s on my mind this month
On Convergence: Worlds Colliding
My work sits at an interesting intersection. I’m both STEM-trained (nursing, IT, the scientific method) and an intuitive healer. My weekdays are spent translating clinically backed research into algorithms designed to help the public stay healthy. My weekends and evenings are spent honing my spiritual practice.
The intuitive parts of me pick up on so much: the health of your sacral chakra, an intense feeling from your third eye. But the other part of me never stops asking "Okay, but how do you know that? Show me the evidence."
These two worlds used to run in parallel for me, but I’m finding that my practice forces them to meet repeatedly. Like running into someone you kind-of know at the grocery store, awkwardly bumping into them over and over again in different aisles. For a while, I couldn’t figure out how to make these encounters feel more organic.
My aha moment arrived when I realized I wanted them to merge together. Like mixing oil and water and expecting a cohesive solution.
They work more like a relay race. Each is responsible for their own leg of the track. One passes the baton to the other, both working independently and collaboratively, all at the same time, to reach a shared goal.
Evidence-based studies, meta-analyses, and randomized controlled trials are all important tools and methods for figuring out how to best manage things that should be quantified: Does this drug lower blood pressure? Will this treatment plan appropriately manage complex seizures? Can this chemo drug combination eradicate cancer?
But they’re clumsy tools for questions like: How do I sit with someone in grief? What is this tarot spread telling me what I need right now? What is my spirit urging me to do? This is where intuition and spirituality come in.
These days, it feels a lot less like awkward grocery store run-ins and more like two friends browsing the aisles for a movie hang later that night. They each have their preferred snacks, but they are definitely hanging out and watching a movie together. In other words, they’re reaching the finish line independently AND collaboratively.
okay, so why should we care about this?
This approach - how I see these two worlds converging - led me to yet another aha moment I had that I can't. stop. thinking. about: Intuition is analysis running faster than you can narrate.
When people tell you to “trust your gut”, what they’re really asking you to do is tap into your intuition. Larry Prusak, an expert on Knowledge Management, describes intuition as a compressed experience: pattern recognition built from lived events, over and over again. It's your mind rapidly playing the current moment against everything you’ve come to know, moving way too fast to catch in the act.
I won’t lie, I fell in love with this concept. Because think about it - different parts of ourselves are operating at full speed when we try to tap into our intuition in a busy, chaotic, bustling modern world. Just think about it:
Our brains are computing at insurmountable speeds
Our guts are screaming something we can’t always make sense of
Our tender hearts are feeling a cacophony of emotions
Our spiritual side is often drowned out
It’s no wonder people struggle to listen to their intuition. It’s information overload.
What most of us struggle with is that over time, we’ve learned to ignore that initial flicker of intuition we get when faced with something. We overrule it with logic and societal expectations. And reaching for it gets tougher and tougher as we age. Intuition runs faster than language, so if it isn’t tended to, it can be hard to catch.
HOWEVER, this here is where my brain gets real antsy and excited: if it's analysis moving too fast to narrate….
….then theoretically….
….couldn’t it be captured if we slowed it down???
Which is exactly why I built… (drum roll please!)
card by card
If you have ever dabbled in using tarot or oracle cards, here's a moment you might recognize:
You pull a card, something flickers, and then… nothing. You flip to the little booklet, read "new beginnings, trust the process," and feel about 4% more informed than before. You felt something nudge at you, like something familiar brushing against your core. But it slips away, and you’re left trying to figure out how to derive the actual meaning of this one card. And if it’s a tarot deck, then how the hell are you supposed to get meaning from 77 other cards??
I wrote Card by Card to help you catch that flicker and strengthen your intuition! If intuition is analysis running faster than you can narrate, it stands to reason that slowing down that process and breaking it into smaller, more manageable chunks can help us recognize the exact moment between our mind ingesting information and our gut responding intuitively.
Inside Card by Card is The SPELL Method. It’s what I used when I first started learning to read tarot. And I’ve got it all written down so you can do it yourself!
This ISN’T just more card meanings to memorize blindly and regurgitate later. I’m talking about a method that assigns real, personal meaning in addition to what your guidebook shares with you, AND a way to build up your intuitive muscle, like squats build a booty.
The part my STEM brain loves most is this isn’t something I made up. It’s rooted in actual study methods, and I can attest to their effectiveness because it’s what got me through nursing school!
This is a repeatable way to sit with each card from your tarot deck and derive meaning every single time.
And this matters. Because deriving meaning is how we arrive at wisdom.
schedule notice
As you’re planning out the rest of the year (can you believe it’s already mid september?), I wanted to give you all a heads up on appointment availability for 2026:
I will not be taking appointments for the month of December for a variety of reasons (year-end projects, travel, family time, holidays, and not to mention my birthday!).
If you anticipate needing a session or reading before the end of year, I recommend you go ahead and make those appointments to ensure you’re seen!
thank you, truly
with warmth + light,
angela