This is the first in a new series where I reconnect with my clients and hear about their journey. Not just the website, but what led them to build something, put themselves out there, and what’s happening for them now.
“I want to light the candle.” That’s how Terra began our interview.
“It’s the way every session starts,” she told me. “It creates sacred space.”
Dressed in a soft plum-colored turtleneck, Terra smiled brightly and leaned to the side to light a tall yellow candle, her bright blue eyes mirroring the colors of the ocean painting that hung behind her.
As she did this, something settled and a deeper sense of presence emerged. I could feel it, even through the computer screen.
I invited Terra to this interview after we worked together on her website. I wanted to hear about more than the site itself. I wanted to know what inspired her to share her work, what made her feel vulnerable about putting it out there, and what’s happening for her now.
Terra is a board-certified chaplain with a Master of Divinity. She offers spiritual counseling and tarot readings, and she teaches others to read tarot. At 72, she’s bringing a lifetime of experience into a new chapter that she gets to create herself.
“I’m in a time in my life where I don’t have to work,” she told me. “It really has given me this opportunity to just follow my own spirit and what it wants to do.”
“The number one thing I do is listen”
When I asked Terra what she loves most about her work, she spoke about providing a service the world needs. “It fills my soul,” she said.
At the heart of that service is listening. “Honestly, the number one thing I do is listen,” she said. “Because this is a lost art.”
It’s something she had to learn. During her clinical pastoral education to become a healthcare chaplain, Terra and her classmates wrote out their conversations word for word and brought them to class. Their instructors would ask, Why’d you say that? What were you thinking?
“Nine times out of ten, I was thinking of what I was going to say next, and not listening,” she told me.
She realized that real listening means your response connects to what the other person just said. “That is magical, because people feel heard, and they open up.”
Sometimes her response is simply one word, the word that seems to carry more feeling than the rest. Reflecting it back gives the person room to go deeper.
“I’ll just repeat that one word, and a whole new world will open up,” she said.
For Terra, listening is only part of it. The other part is reflecting back. “This isn’t about me,” she said. “I’m a mirror. I’m a mirror of you.”
As a water sign, she added, it comes naturally. “That’s what water does. It’s a mirror.”
“I was afraid to tell you that I read tarot”
The year before launching her website, Terra began teaching friends and family how to read tarot, or as she describes it, “a beautiful ancient art that weaves a story that validates and empowers you to make the right decisions for you.”
Sharing that with the wider world was another matter. In chaplaincy, tarot wasn’t something people talked about. “It was so untouchable,” she told me. When we worked on her website together, fear came up.
“This is quite a vulnerable place to be. It truly is,” she said. “The fear was putting myself out as a tarot reader and a board-certified chaplain. In that profession, woo-woo doesn’t have a place.”
So one of her very first social media posts was a video of her standing in her garden, surrounded by yellow-orange dahlias, saying exactly that:
“I was afraid to tell you that I read tarot because, as a board-certified chaplain with a Master of Divinity, I didn’t want you to think I was woo-woo.”
What happened next surprised her.
“I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve worked with who have come out of the woodwork as I post my videos.”
Fellow chaplains she deeply respects and admires shared that they read tarot, too. People from her past reconnected with her. A close friend she hadn’t seen in 15 years came across one of her videos and reached out.
Now, Terra says, the moment she hits “post” three times a week is simply “a delight.”
“When will I have enough worth to charge what I’m worth?”
As we talked about what she would say to another woman who wants to share something meaningful but feels afraid, Terra brought up pricing. “And being with your worth,” she added.
Terra set her rates in line with others who hold a Master of Divinity and board certification. She knows what she brings: her education, her certifications, and decades of experience.
“I did that work,” she said. “Not only the certifications and degrees, but also the experience of working in that realm for 40 years now.”
Then she asked a question that stayed with me.
“I’m 72. When will I have enough worth to charge what I’m worth?”
I told her how often this comes up with the women I work with. Knowing what to charge and feeling confident charging it can be difficult.
“We really struggle with it,” she agreed.
She’s faced that struggle, too. Two weeks before her first paid tarot class was due to begin, no one had enrolled. So she reached out privately to friends and family who had been enjoying her posts and offered them a reduced rate.
“I need students. Get in here. Pay me,” she recalled laughing.
Three people joined, filling the class.
She’s still figuring out where her boundaries are. “I’m not going to drop my price for an individual session,” she said. “And I will get to the point where I don’t drop the price for a class either.”
“I needed to be out in the world”
When I asked Terra what she had hoped would change when she first contacted me about creating a website for her, she knew immediately.
“I needed to be out in the world.”
And underneath that desire was the same word she had returned to throughout our conversation: service.
“Service is my driving force and always has been.”
Her work has taken different forms over the years, from caring for people as a nurse aide to serving as a chaplain.
As we talked about the care she had offered people at their most vulnerable, Terra found the words for it. “A service of love,” she said. “Let’s name it that.”
The challenge was finding a way to communicate that work on a website, to give someone who hadn’t met Terra a sense of her presence and what it might feel like to work with her.
“The questions you asked—I couldn’t have done it without your questionnaire,” she told me. “That focused it.”
Still, putting spiritual care into words was difficult. “There aren’t words for it,” she said.
We talked about how her photographs, like the one of her with her hands over her heart, helped communicate what words alone might struggle to express: her warmth, her attention, the heart-centered nature of her work.
Earlier in our conversation, Terra had described herself as a mirror, reflecting back what she hears in others. That image felt fitting for what I hoped her website would offer, too: a reflection of her and her work.
When she spoke about the finished site, what stood out to me was her pride.
“I’m so proud,” she said. “This is me.”
“It keeps unfolding”
Terra now shares short tarot lessons on social media through Tuesdays with Terra. “It just is me giving a lesson in two minutes on a tarot card,” she said.
She’s also thinking about speaking locally, giving people a chance to meet her in person, hear a lesson, and perhaps pick a card. During our conversation, she began imagining offering something at a waterfront community center near her.
It’s an idea she’s exploring, and she’s enjoying watching these possibilities take shape.
“It’s fun to watch this unfold,” she said.
Her website is part of that unfolding, too. She had recently emailed me about adding some of her videos.
“It’s interesting we use the words ‘go live,’ because it’s alive,” she said. “It keeps growing.”
As she shares more of her work, she discovers more of what she wants to offer. The website grows along with her.
“We breathe life into it all the time.”
Terra’s words to you…
“Release your doubts, know your priorities, and take action on them.”
So many women want to offer something deeply meaningful to them, and they’re afraid it will be rejected. I asked Terra what she would say to them.
She went to get her goddess oracle deck. That morning, she had drawn Diana: focused intention. The card speaks of tenacity, of being like a mighty oak with roots planted deep in the earth. Your branches may twist and turn as they reach for the light, but your intention keeps you steady. Release your doubts, know your priorities, and take action on them.
“That’s what I have to say to everybody. You will succeed as long as you don’t stop. You’re bound to succeed.”
Before we said goodbye, she offered one last thought:
“Believe in yourself. Don’t stop. Know you will succeed. Set a price that’s worthy of you. And allow it to grow.”
Thank you, Terra, for lighting the candle, and for letting us into that sacred space.
Visit Terra at TerraMorgan.com and catch Tarot Tuesday with Terra on Instagram and Facebook.
