She means the animated version. The one where Snow White is out in the garden and every creature in the forest comes to her, perches on her finger, gathers at her feet, all of them somehow in on the same gentle agreement.

And I get it. I’m here for it, honestly. The two ravens, three ducks, & Jack the cat. The deer who wander through like they pay rent. The raccoons, and the chipmunk we named Monk. There’s a kind of harmony here that I don’t take for granted.

But let me tell you what Snow White doesn’t show you. The mornings.

A morning around here

Every spring, the two ravens bring their nest to our garden. This year, they hatched five.

Five.

So now my mornings go something like this. The ravens are crying, loudly, at 5 am, swooping down, seven open mouths, begging for breakfast. The three ducks are going off in every direction, wanting to lay their eggs out in the wild instead of anywhere sensible. Jack is tearing around trying to scare the ducks out of their nesting spots. I’m scooping up Jack, carrying him to the far end of the yard so the ducks can lay in peace, and simultaneously getting the bowl of food I set out the night before to the ravens, so they can feed their babies.

It’s a lot. It’s beautiful. And it’s a lot.

This is what the week’s energy actually looks like

I tell you this because it’s the perfect picture of what’s in the air right now.

This week carries one of the warmest, most generous, most big-hearted energies of the entire year. It’s the energy of nurturing, home, and feeding the people (and creatures) you love, with the heart pantry swinging wide open and asking, who’s hungry? Come in. Let me make you something.

It’s lush and tender. It’s love-as-soup, love-as-a-ride-to-the-doctor, love-as-a-bowl-of-food-set-out-the-night-before. The unglamorous, practical, daily acts of care that don’t make it into the fairy tale but are, in fact, the real thing.

All this to say that if you’ve been feeling a pull toward home this week, to cooking, nesting, gathering people close, tending what you love, and all that jazz, that’s the season. Lean into it. It’s gorgeous.

But here’s the shadow

The same energy that opens the heart pantry can also leave you feeding all those hungry mouths before you’ve had your own breakfast.

Generosity is beautiful, until it tips into overgiving, and you’re the one everything depends on, up at dawn, managing everyone’s needs but your own. Until “I love taking care of others”  becomes “I don’t know how to stop.”

Snow White looks serene in the garden, but nobody’s asking who feeds her.

So this week, alongside all that lovely nurturing energy, there’s a more honest question knocking at the door, asking, where are your limits? Can you name them, out loud, like an adult without guilt, apology, and without turning yourself into the villain for having needs?

You can adore your garden full of mouths and still admit it’s a lot. Both are true.

The belief that won’t survive this week

“I’ll rest when everyone else is taken care of.”

You won’t. Because the list never ends. There’s always another mouth, another need, another dawn feeding. “Later” never actually arrives. It just keeps moving, like the horizon.

And under that belief is usually a scarier belief. “If I stop, it all falls apart.”

But I have to remind myself, scooping up the cat with one hand and feeding the ravens with the other, that you can’t pour from a bowl you never refill. The most generous people I know are not the ones who give until they’re empty. They’re the ones who know that tending themselves is part of the job, not a betrayal of it.

Give from overflow, not from fumes. The people (and animals) in your life would rather have a little less of you, sustainably, than all of you, until you collapse.

Why this matters

What truly feeds you?

That’s the question this week is really asking. Not just what you feed others (though there’s plenty of that around here), but what fills you back up. What nourishes the nurturer? What’s in the pantry for you?

I’ll be honest, it’s a question I’m still answering. I’m very good at the dawn feedings. I’m less practiced at letting myself be fed.

But this week, with all this warm, abundant, heart-pantry-open energy, maybe the invitation is to give generously, yes. To love like soup. And also to let yourself be one of the mouths that gets fed.

Even Snow White has to eat.

Jonni

P.S. Next week’s Deep Brief is a special one. I’m sitting down again with my dear friend and brilliant astrologer Marielle Croft for our seasonal conversation, where she brings the cosmic map and I bring the human translation. Watch for it.

P.P.S. The ravens have named me, too, I’m fairly sure. I don’t know the word. But I know it means “the one with the bowl.”