Fear or Desperation

When I first arrived in NYC,  all the way back in 2002,  I was very unhappy.  New York is a hard city to crack,  I had a young child and a husband who was working every hour in the day and I was very lonely. 

A wise friend said to me I had to wait till my desperation outweighed my fear,  and then I would move forward.   I was indignant!  Why are they my choices?  Can't I have better options.  But he said I was so fear ridden,  I was paralyzed.  Only when I was more desperate than fearful,  could I move forward. 

In the way of super annoying dear friends,  he was right.  There came a time I was so unhappy that it overwhelmed my fear,  and I reached out and changed.  And then I really was in a better place.

When I talk to people nowadays,  I try to give them a  more palatable option.  Instead of fear and desperation,  I tell them if I was going to get 2 words tattooed on my wrists,  they would be life / change.   To remind me that nothing stays the same,  that life is ever changing and the more accepting I am of that fact,  the better I surf through life's vicissitudes.  

So you get somewhere good,  and things shift and if you don't shift with them,  then you go into paralysis and fear.  But if you know that change is inevitable,  that it's not a betrayal,  then you can manage it better.

This is the first time I've ever used AI directly myself,  not to write anything but to create these two tattoo images. 

what do you really want...

I was talking to a client who is facing several life changes,  getting divorced,  finding a new place to live,  figuring out a lot of new stuff.  She said she went to her realtor and he was asking her what she wants,  and she told me that she couldn't actually answer him.  All her set answers were from the 'old' her - the married her,  the one who had to take her husband's views into consideration. When asked what she personally wanted,  her mind went blank. 

I smiled and said it was great she figured this out before buying a new place!  Now that she doesn't have to consider her previous restrictions,  let's look at what is important to her.

Sometimes you are so used to doing things one way,  it comes as a shock when you realize you can do it another way...  the old way no longer dominates and now you really have to think,  what if I have only myself to please,  what do I want then?  

She drew the Fool card,  not meaning she is being foolish,  but rather that she is starting on a new journey,  and she needs to walk out and see what happens... It's a great card for new beginnings. 

Seeing the woods AND the trees

Sometimes I want to write a post and realize it's becoming a maze,  I'm cramming in too much information and meandering through too many trails.  

Sometimes when we are looking at our own lives,  we can't see the wood for the trees - we either get lost in the details or fixated on one issue and can't see the big picture or how things are playing off each other.

That's where a reading helps.  It starts with a big picture overview,  (the celtic cross reading) and then gets down to the nitty gritty (the questions) and hopefully gets you to a clearer place. 

Of course sometimes we want simple solutions to complex questions.  And the tarot can do that too,  but there is always effort and cost (emotional,  spiritual , physical and financial) to shift and you have to be prepared to do that... 

Sometimes it takes a crisis

Sometimes you need a crisis to see a solution.  Sometimes you put so much energy into keeping the status quo,  that it's only when it (you) break that you can find a different way of doing things.

People come to me to find solutions but often, sadly,  the cards say if you keep doing what you are doing,  you're going to keep getting the same results.  If you are looking for love,  sometimes I can pull 10 cards and not find a relationship card there.  Then I say,  we have to do something different.  And we talk about what you are doing,  and what you won't do,  and what needs to be done.   And it can be a different doing for each person that comes to the reading.  Some people are too swift to cut their losses,  some people date for 6 months when they knew on the second date this wasn't going to be what they wanted.  

So if you come and feel a crisis brewing,  that may not be a bad thing - a crisis can give us the energy to change... 

Change is coming

 

Often people come to tarot readings to preempt change.  Or to try to control it.  Change is like an ocean wave,  surf it or swim under,  but you can't control it.  However knowing the wave is coming (it's always coming) and how big it is,  can help us prepare. Do we duck under or crest above?  Can we paddle before it? Often we can!  

But change is always coming... that's life. 

The scariest card

No one wants to draw the Death card.  Even if you know nothing about the tarot, one look at that card,  and you feel deep unease.

But Tarot is a subtle guidance,  and death doesn't mean death is coming for you.  It means change is coming,  deep change,  transformative change.  I wrote a blog on butterflies and change and the death card in 2012 (which just goes to show how old this blog is!) and now I'm thinking of it again.

I used to tell clients that I was thinking of getting a word tattooed on each of my wrists - the right would say LIFE and the left would say CHANGE.  Life, Change.  Life, Change.  Just to remind me and them that all life involves change.  And often is it the resistance to change,  as opposed to the change itself,  that can hurt us the most.  (I couldn't find images of that,  but I did find lots of heart beats,  whose very syncopation says that all life involves the heart moving and changing beat,  so I used that image.) 

If you draw the death card,  change is coming.  Now we can discuss how to deal with it,  see if we can modify it,  but mostly see if we can surf it to get to the shore safely.  Things never stand still,  life is always in motion, and if we can accept that,  then the Death Card need not be so scary... 

Changing Decks

People like reading from old decks, there is something about the sense that other hands have handled these cards, that they have a history, that they (and I!) like. However, over the course of a year, hundreds of people will have shuffled those cards and after a while they start to look tired. I change my deck about once a year, when the old cards start to get frayed and dog eared. The time has come… today I start with my new sleek deck…

I use a version of the Rider Waite deck, called the Radiant Rider Waite Tarot, which is basically a brighter, more colorful version of their original drawings.

If anyone wants the old one, just drop me a line and you can come and pick them up…

Hanging in the moment.

The Hanged Man (12)



Some cards are easier to explain than others, some resonate more in a Western, fast paced culture. The Hanged Man is not a card that New Yorkers necessarily want to find, but it is a card they often need. In the hanging moment, in the stillness and suspension, answers become clear. Solutions to problems are found.



The Hanged Man is about insight. Suddenly the pattern will emerge, and you will something truly, clearly. But there was a reason you weren’t seeing clearly before, and sometimes clarity can hurt. Sometimes a really clear insight means there is no going back. I like the alien abduction card as a visual metaphor, because once you know something so extreme, you can never be the same...