Baby Spit and Happiness -by Heatherleigh Navarre

My friend Carol Peters used to talk about her dream of one day finding a community of people – a utopian ideal of men and women, young and old, from every faith, every race, every different background, all learning and growing together. She found her community in her spiritual fellowship, and I often think of her profound gratitude for that as I contemplate my own community, the one that surrounds my work life here at the Boston Tea Room.

For a while I had been taking a back seat at work; I have a phenomenal staff of smart and talented people who can handle any situation, and that left me free to do some work from home, focus on long-term planning, and do some long overdue catching up with our accounting and bookkeeping backlog (not my favorite work duties, by a long shot). So it was a relief a few weeks ago when a staffing change-up required that I get more “hands-on” in the shop. Suddenly I was back where I belong, front and center greeting our visitors and clients each day, having conversations about their families, careers, challenges and victories, dusting shelves, organizing books, and fussing over displays of crystals and herbs. In short, I am back in my element.

Today we were so blessed with people stopping in to our little shop that I ended up working right through my meditation session, ringing up sales and even getting to snuggle for a while with the two-month-old grandson of one of my long-time clients. Even as I type this, I can smell a little of his spit-up that got left behind on my shirt. Luckily, a volunteer generously offered to take over the meditation session for our fifteen grateful meditators, most of whom came down afterward to have a cup of tea and some conversation. This is what I truly love about this shop: the amazing people from every walk of life who come in and share their energy, enthusiasm, and passions with us. I won’t pretend I didn’t come home exhausted, but it was that good kind of tired that follows time well spent, and recognition that, just like my friend Carol, I have found my people. And THAT is what life is all about.

A Note from Our Newest Colleague....

By Kyla Heat
(Kyla is our newest manager at the Ferndale location of Boston Tea Room. She ca most often be found helping clients on the sales floor, or explaining complex planetary influences to Heatherleigh, who doesn't really understand astrology, but might just learn some after all, if Kyla has her way.)


Not many people have the opportunity to work at their favorite store. If they are given the chance, the allure of the place suddenly dies out as they discover the secrets of the establishment.  This is not the case with the Boston Tea Room. The shop is just as mystical from the day that I stepped inside three years ago. The only difference is that this time, I'm on the other side of the counter.

When I initially told my friends where I worked, of course they asked me what type of tea was served. Yes, we do serve complimentary tea, but that's just an added bonus for our visitors. Besides the beautiful jewelry, crystals and intuitive Readers- it's the people and experiences that make this place special.

I have always considered myself to be pretty intuitive, but since working at Boston Tea Room, I feel as if a million little sensors have triggered at once. I'm more in tune, not only with the people that come in, but with myself as well.  I'm sure you have heard the phrase a million times, actions speak louder than words, well it couldn't be more true than working here. We don't know that our bodies are already communicating with others before we realize it. Immediately, I can pick up on if someone is having a bad
day, but pretending everything is "okay" or if Cupid found another target for his arrow. The vibrations are stronger and clearer.

Not only does it help me to be able to serve the customers better, it helps me to slow down so I can become an even better friend, daughter, sister, co-worker and pay more attention to any other relationship I may experience in this life.

Next time you pass by the Boston Tea Room, stop in for a visit and say hello... there's definitely more to us than our name might suggest.

Tarot Love Affair

I am in love. Hopelessly, irrevocably, head over heels in capital L O V E. After spending the last five days in New York attending the Readers Studio, an annual tarot celebration and intensive study event presented by the prestigious New York City-based Tarot School, my love affair with the tarot has risen to new heights of passion and devotion. This is not some adolescent crush, it is no brief assignation, but is instead, like all true loves, a deeply transformative relationship.

There is a powerful alchemy which takes place when several hundred tarot people gather. In this case, there were Tarot scholars and historians, psychotherapists and social workers, professors of psychology, and some of the world’s most influential tarot authors, teachers, and Readers, all gathered together under one roof alongside Tarot enthusiasts from half a dozen countries, including Australia, China, and India. The combined energy of the group felt like an electromagnetic soup, drawing me into its swirling mix and infusing every cell of my body with enthusiasm and vitality.

What is it about the Tarot that has such a profound effect on me and so many of my friends and colleagues? It is, after all, just this innocent little stack of paper and ink images, some of them iconic, to be sure, but many of them merely quaint, or even abstract, depending on which version the deck one considers. What’s all the fuss about?

For me, the real answer lies in the intersection of Tarot and human relationship. When you bring the tarot into your life for the purpose of introspection, spiritual development, or divination, you begin to see your life and the people around you in new ways, as though from a broader and more expansive perspective, and the very landscape of your life seems to unfold in new ways outward toward distant horizons previously unexplored. Tarot brings a sense of adventure into my life. Along with meditation and prayer, it gives me one more way to investigate my inner world, and provides a contextual language with which I can enter into dialogue with my clients. Over the years, it has become for me a way to communicate with the spirit world, a tool for accessing past life memories, an aid to dreamwork and shamanic journeying, and a basis for profound intuitive counseling work with hundreds of clients. Unlike many of colleagues, I do not remember a time when I was unaware of the existence of Tarot. It seems as though it was always there, just another fact of my life, like the childhood doll I carried everywhere, or my grandmother’s hand always reaching out to me as we walked across the street. Likewise, I cannot imagine a life that doesn’t include an ongoing relationship with this little stack of paper and ink. 

Want to fall in love with Tarot for yourself? Join me this Thursday for 

Tarot Fundamentals

with Heatherleigh

A fun and energetic look at how to use the tarot deck for personal development, meditation, spiritual growth, and more. Banish the myths and superstitions, learn the origins and history, and see how this esoteric tool has very modern uses in everyday life. This is a great class for anyone interested in learning more about tarot reading for your self or for others.

Class is open to anyone 16 years or older.

Heatherleigh is the owner of Boston Tea Room in Ferndale, MI, and the

co-founder of the Detroit Area Tarot Guild, a tarot advocacy organization

currently more than 300 members strong.

Thursdays in May, 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd, from 6-8pm

Classes held at 195 W. 9 Mile, Suite 102, $88 per person

Call 248-548-1415 to register.

This Thing Called Love

 "Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself- if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself- it is very difficult to take care of another person. In the Buddhist teaching, it's clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice." - Thich Nhat Hanh, Shambhala Sun, March 2009

Another Valentine's Day is here, and with it a slew of candy, flowers, and expectations, some valid, and some a little unrealistic, being exchanged. So let's talk about love for a minute. We've all said the words "I love you", but how often do we stop to consider what that really means? I like the quote above, because it speaks to the fact that love is not some passive emotion over which we have no control, but is instead a choice that we make, one that necessitates that we take certain actions. I like the idea of love as a verb, something that galvanizes us to strive toward an ideal. The alternative, the concept sold to us by songwriters and screenwriters over the years, is a kind of bizarre idea that love is some external force that will either save us, if we can find it and keep it, or will destroy us, if we manage to find it and are then unlucky enough to somehow lose it. It's a depressing thought, but the reality is far more hopeful. The truth is that we each have a vast reserve of love within us, just waiting to be tapped, so it can flow out and touch the hearts of everyone we know, changing their lives for the better, just as it changes us for the better to give it.

Often, the folks who come in to our shops for tarot or tea leaf readings have questions about love: how to find it, how to rekindle it, how get over it when it ends....these are all questions that I think are universal, and there seem to be no easy answers. The toughest love questions I get, though, are the ones where the love is unrequited. "When will she come back to me?", or "What will it take for him to leave his wife so we can be together?" are just a couple of the all-too-common questions I hear. The inability to move past love that has gone awry seems to affect all of us at some point in our lives. Who hasn't hoped for that certain ex-sweetheart to come to their senses and suddenly see how awesome we really are?  Hollywood has taught us to believe in happy endings and fairytales, and the bestseller lists are filled with impossible stories of love conquering all. There's even a huge a genre of love stories that tell us that being a vampire, werewolf, or (and I can't believe I'm saying this) a  ZOMBIE, doesn't have to stand in your way of finding TRUE LOVE. Ohferchrissakes!

What I come back to over and over again when I think about love, is that it is meant to be a selfless yet joyful act. When I see my kids, the response in my heart is about what I want FOR them, not FROM them. My love for them inspires a desire for them to be happy and to be free. I use that feeling as a gauge in my romantic relationships: I ask myself often what I want for my partner, versus what I want from him. Am I bringing as much to the relationship as I can? Are my needs being met? Are his? Are we communicating honestly and openly and with mutual respect? Are we having fun? When the answers are "yes", then I can be sure I am engaged in the practice of love.

So my wish for each of you is that you have the chance to give some love today. If you have a partner, great! If not, find a way to express your love to someone else you adore - a parent, a sibling, your best friend, a neighbor - reach out and extend the blessing of love, and by giving it away, feel it increase within you as well. My friend Linda likes to say that there are only two ways to go through life, with your heart open or with your heart closed. I want to keep mine open. Join me, won't you?

Illustration from the Sarakina Tarot. Visit sarakinatarot.wordpress.com for more information