continued from page life on ….

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life on hold, and you need to get back to the work of living. Nurture your relationships more, and bring more people into your dayto- day life. And do more things that bring you joy. And your mother’s life has stalled, too, but you need to let your mother work through her own issues— nothing you do will help her loneliness and depression.”

There was a lot of truth and wisdom in the stranger’s message.

Then: “You have a strong relationship with your partner, but recently something has happened, and you’re having to share him. You aren’t used to sharing him.”

Gene had just found his biological family and was building relationships with them. I’d literally told him weeks earlier, “My once-large family is dying off and getting smaller and smaller, and yours is getting bigger and bigger.” The woman was right again.

When Gene went in for his reading, Lady Moonfox mentioned two moms, two dads—his adoptive and biological families. Afterward, she told him, “The woman who came in for a reading before you is clearly your significant other. You two are exactly alike—like you share one mind.”

The card reader got many unusual details right, which raised our eyebrows, but she missed some. She guessed I was in a detailoriented field like accounting, and of course, I’m a writer now. She thought Gene was in law enforcement or the military, and he’s a software guy, though he worked for the Department of Defense for over a decade.

In the days and weeks that followed, we shared the experience with friends and family. Some laughed and rolled their eyes. Some believed we had opened the doors of our souls to let evil in. Others wanted Lady Moonfox’s phone number.

Do I believe cards can tell us about our past, present and future? No. I’m still a trained engineer who needs more evidence than what I collected in 30 minutes. But I can’t explain how she came up with some of the things she did. And I can’t deny that her message—to invest more in human connections, to get back to the work of living and finding joy—was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.

I got what I wanted for my birthday: no gift, just time together doing something completely new, and I got something else, too— one heck of a story.