Small, but not nothing.

Monday Oracle — 13 July 2026. Written and read by Nicole Cody.

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.” — Mary Oliver

Hello, Lovelies!

Each Monday I share an intuitive reading to carry us through the week ahead. These aren’t traditional tarot or oracle card readings. I spend time sitting quietly with a card, allowing it to speak to me through its imagery, its symbolism, and the season we’re walking through together. My hope is that each Oracle leaves you a little more steady, and a little less alone.

For Quarter Three I’ll be working with The Hero’s Journey Dream Oracle by Kelly Sullivan Walden, with artwork by Rassouli.

I chose it precisely because it isn’t a tarot deck. There’s a guidebook, of course — there always is. But I don’t work that way, with any of my decks. I sit with the image and let it resonate against my own internal lexicon, and what comes is a message specific to me, and to this moment. Which means a card I drew last year can say something entirely different when it turns up again today.

That’s the whole invitation of this quarter. Pilgrimage to Self isn’t about looking up the right answer. It’s about learning the language of your own knowing well enough to hear what it’s telling you.

And these cards speak to the soul. They remind us that we are souls living a human incarnation, that we get to choose our own adventure, and that no matter how disempowered we feel in the face of life’s circumstances, there is power within us still.

2026 is a profoundly intuitive and creative year, encouraging adaptability, flexibility and new beginnings that are both practical and sustainable. July’s theme is All the Feels, asking us to slow down, honour our sensitivity, and become present to the life we’re already living.

Our card for the week ahead is Breadcrumbs of Bliss.

The word I keep hearing isn’t bliss. It’s breadcrumbs.

Breadcrumbs are what’s left of a loaf. And life is not handing us the whole loaf — not the perfect health, not the manifested dream, not everything we hoped for. So we look at what we have been given and decide we’ve been given nothing at all.

Breadcrumbs are not nothing. They’re small, but they’re not nothing.

And there’s a second thing about crumbs, which is that you can save them. You can put a little by for the woman who’ll be standing in this kitchen on a much harder day than today.

🌿 This Week’s Guidance

The first thing this card asks is the oldest question there is. Where am I at?

Put your hands over your heart. Close your eyes. Take three centring breaths, and then feel honestly into your body.

Where are you emotionally? Are you strong? Are you steady? Are you shattered?

And physically — are you full of life and ready for whatever comes? Are you somewhere in the middle? Or are you wondering how you’re going to get through the next day, the next hour, the next minute?

And spiritually? People forget that spiritual strength isn’t tied to physical energy. You can be steady and clear in yourself while the rest of you is falling apart. You can feel lost, or abandoned, or confused, while your life looks perfectly on track from the outside.

All three matter. Check all three.

Don’t tidy the answer. Take it as it comes.

Because once you know where your energy actually is, you know the kind of day you’re standing in, and you’ll have some sense of the kind of week that’s ahead. Start with the day. But keep the week in view.

Is this a day for gathering crumbs to you? Or a day for leaving crumbs for your future self?

So what are the crumbs?

This past week, mine included a pair of willy wagtails building a nest in the tree outside my kitchen window. They included Ben bringing home a salad wrap for lunch on a day when I was too tired and too busy to cook. A warm shower at the end of a long day, and the smell of rose-scented body lotion afterwards. Hugs from my dog Rufous, and the gentle way he brings me crystals he thinks I might need.

Small things. Not nothing.

And here’s what I want you to notice about that list. Every one of those crumbs was there whether I paid attention to it or not. The wagtails were building that nest regardless. The rose lotion was sitting in the cupboard. What made them crumbs was that I stopped, and I let myself have them.

So be aware this week. Take a moment and actually taste the food you’re eating. Take a moment and smell the soap, the perfume, the cut grass. Feel the hot water. Look up when the birds start.

The crumbs are already there. Gathering them is the practice.

And then there are the crumbs I bank for myself.

On Friday night I got into a bed with clean sheets, and the relief of it was enormous. But I’m the one who put them there — in a burst of energy, when I had it in me to strip the bed and remake it. The woman who made that bed and the woman who fell into it were the same woman, a long day and a great deal of tiredness apart.

There are meals in the freezer. I already know I’ll be drawing on them this week. So on Sunday I cooked more, to replace the ones I know I’m going to take.

There’s a friend on speed dial — a comforting ear when things get hard. That one is treasured, because I know I can reach out to her and she’ll be there, just as I’m there for her.

And there’s a money box in the laundry, next to the washing machine. It’s an old traffic light — stop, caution, go — and it was Ben’s when he was a boy. Every time I wash, if I find loose change or a crumpled note in a pocket, I put it in. Then, on a day when I’m tired and we could do with a treat, there’s always a little unexpected money sitting there — enough for a takeaway, or breakfast out and a decent cup of coffee.

Crumbs, gathered from the wash. It feels like something for nothing. It isn’t. I put it there.

📖 Journaling Prompt

Think back to a time when you were absolutely exhausted, and life was hard.

Now ask yourself what would have helped.

Maybe a meal already made. Maybe a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit. Maybe a list of films saved to your phone, so that on a night when you’re too tired to decide anything, the deciding is already done.

What did you need? Be specific. Not rest — the actual thing. The particular comfort.

Write the list.

Because when you’re beyond thinking, beyond making one more decision, the list will be there, and all you’ll have to do is follow it.

🌟 Top Tip of the Week

Go back to the list you made.

Choose one thing. Not the whole list. One.

And go and do it while you have the energy to do it — because that’s the whole point. The crumbs get left on the good days, by the version of you who still has something to spare.

One day soon you’ll be standing in the kitchen at six o’clock, too tired to think, and there’ll be a meal in the freezer.

That’s not luck. That’s you, reaching back.

Crystals to support you this week: Moonstone, our stone for the year, for the way it softly supports intuition. Rose Quartz, for nurture and gentleness with yourself. Carnelian, for vitality and physical healing. Hematite, for strong boundaries and protection. Smoky Quartz, for powerful emotional support and for moving through negativity and big feelings. And Pearl, born of the ocean — a stone that holds salt and tears and hardship, and helps us meet life’s difficulties with grace and courage.

🌿 A note from the Treehouse

Ben and I have been down at the beach every afternoon this week. By four o’clock I’ve signed off from my desk, and we go.

There’s always something happening — kids in the shallows, kites up, someone out surfing. There’s usually a sea breeze and that salt in the air, and it grounds me and cleans me out. It’s winter, so I’m rugged up from the waist up, but I have to have my feet in the water. From the knees down I’m soaked most days.

And here’s the thing I keep turning over. I can walk to the far end of the beach now, and walk all the way back to the car, and still have something left in the tank. I could not have done that at the beginning of the year. Some of what I’m doing to protect my muscles and look after my health must be working.

We also took the herding ball down to the backyard, and I have to report that it has not been a resounding success.

Rufous wasn’t at all sure what to do with it, on account of it being considerably bigger than he is. So Ben and I have taken to running the ball around ourselves, while Rufous tears along behind us, barking his head off and nipping at our heels. He’s a herding dog. He’s decided to herd us.

We’ll rethink the training. He’s a smart dog. He’s just got bad teachers right now.

And I’ve been thinking about slow-cooked food this week, and about my grandparents.

When I was a girl, going to my mother’s parents for dinner was going to The Palace. My grandmother, Marga, had an antique table, a lace cloth, flowers, wine glasses, the good china. She cooked from French Cordon Bleu books and from magazines, foreign food that nobody else I knew was making.

At my nana’s, we got good honest Australian food. Curried sausages. Apricot chicken. Lamb chops and mash. Grilled steak and veggies. And Nana could do a long, slow casserole better than anyone. She’d often do the apricot chicken that way too.

So this week I’m cooking Nana’s food. Something hearty and simple, enough for dinner and enough for the freezer.

I miss my nana. I miss all my grandparents.

The pot will be on by four, and the house will smell like her kitchen, and that will have to be enough.

It is, actually. It’s not nothing.

Love, Nicole xx

A note for anyone new.

Every Sunday for more than thirty years, I’ve pulled a card for the week ahead. Long before anybody was reading, and long before I ever thought to write it down. I’ve used it to understand myself, and the world, and the week I’m about to walk into.

Nine years ago I started distilling that down into a post I send out every Monday morning on my blog. I called it the Monday Oracle. This is the 460th post, and I’m still doing it.

The essays keep coming too. The Oracle sits alongside them, not instead of them.

It’s free, and it always will be. The shape doesn’t change — a card, what it’s saying, some guidance, a journaling prompt, a top tip, the crystals I’m working with, and a note from the Treehouse, which is where I invite you to come and sit at my table a while.

Come back next Monday. I’ll be here.