Themes and Readings

I've been trying to make more time to do tarot readings lately. I did a reading back in September for a friend and found myself stumbling and second-guessing my read on things; thankfully, as a practitioner herself, she made me a cup of tea and was very patient. Since then, I've made it a point to do at least a read a week as I work through some other difficult areas of my life.

I've been using the Fenestra deck, which is lovely (and chatty!), but when another friend let me use her Shadowscapes deck last weekend, I ordered it immediately. Working with both decks has been really helpful as they have different "voices" and directions, which have been essential in getting me back into the swing of things. 

Nine of Swords
Shadowscapes Tarot

Part of this practice has been drawing a card a day. I've had some really great insight earlier this week, so when I drew the nine of swords today, my heart sank. Swords as a suit have never heralded anything I've wanted to hear, so I braced myself and looked up the meaning. 

There's a lot to unpack with each card, with multiple applications of meaning to different areas of your life. The nine of swords is the card of fear and nightmares, settling squarely in the psychological/mental realm. It speaks of something within causing fear and anxiety, of internal stories we tell ourselves causing problems in the external world. 

In a small way, I had to laugh at myself -- my minor anxiety at drawing a swords suit proves the point of the card's meaning. 

The nine of swords speaks of negative self-talk, of limiting ourselves by the belief that we can't do something, or aren't good/pretty/smart enough to achieve something we want in our lives. 

I don't know exactly why the title
makes me giggle a little

In a beautiful sense of parallel, this is also what I'm reading in Warrior Goddess Training (gods, that title made me snicker the first -- and second -- time I read it). The first lesson is to commit to yourself, to close the gap between self-rejection and acceptance of who you are. It encourages us to let go of the avalanche of expectations we heap on ourselves and to look inward past our interpretations and cluttered narratives and really, truly learn who we are as women. 

Today I'm working hard to honor -- but ultimately let go of -- the narratives and interpretations I have that inhibit me. In action, that means less apologizing or justifying my opinions and working to be firm but fair in my actions instead. I'm giving myself permission to just BE -- to be myself, to exist without apology --  instead of explaining and justifying myself.

My Heart is a Thrill-seeker

My heart is a thrill-seeker.

I'm not -- I do things because I enjoy them, not because I'm not sure I'll survive them. I don't get a thrill from that razor edge of fear and exhilaration. I actively avoid the adrenaline-pumped frenzy of extreme danger and uncertainty, mostly due to my preference to have a sense of safety and/or control while indulging my sense of adventure.

My heart is a willful and stubborn beast, satisfied only with reckless abandon.

I mean, of course, that my endless chase for the endorphin rush of a runner's high is only satisfied when I've kept my heart rate at about 175 bpm for at least two minutes, which transforms me from a laser-focused workout machine to an awkward asthmatic llama, having been chased to the end of its ability by a pack of roid-raging coyotes. The rush of endorphins is worth it, though, even if I have to keep upping my resistance/incline/speed to make it happen.


It's been a rough couple of weeks. I moved out of the toxic environment I was in, and while I know it's a good thing overall, the guilt is real. One of my former roommates has some mental health issues and needs support, but it was becoming a full-time job that started affecting my real job in a big way. I was always stressed and unable to sleep, and was never sure what I was going to be walking into when I got home. For the past month and change, he's been telling me I need to move out and then changing his mind the next day. I was never sure if I needed to be looking for a backup place to live or if he was just working through some things.

My other roommate moves out in November, citing a need for a healthier environment.

That said, when do we make that call? In trying to be supportive and work with someone who's a lot more likely to be dismissed and marginalized in life due to mental illness, when do we draw the line to protect our own well-being? My (now former) roommate is in therapy and on medication and by all accounts was doing everything in his power to manage his illness, but the stress was such that I just couldn't take it anymore. In a matter of hours, he'd change his mind about something that, for me, was huge.

I don't have a satisfying answer. My usual fallback is the old "put your own oxygen mask on first" adage that airlines tell you in case of an emergency, but that doesn't settle this guilty weight. I feel like I let down someone who already has the deck stacked against him, even knowing that I could barely breathe for all the stress.

Merry Monday

I spent this weekend at my parents' house, where I applied most of my time to trying to sleep or reading/crocheting. It was a good break from the steady stress I've been under, although I didn't sleep much (thanks to stormy, restless weather).

I also didn't exercise this weekend, to which my body responded by tightening all my muscles until sitting still was physically painful. I suppose there are worse problems to have, and it made my gym time this morning feel like sweet, sweet release.

I'm feeling really positively about today. Things have been rough lately and it's been hard to keep my chin up, but I feel pretty optimistic about today. Merry Monday!

Growing Climber

Tonight's climb was really, really good. I completed a 5.7+ which, to anyone who knows the rating system, is admittedly low-end-of-average difficulty. For me, though, it's a huge success. It's been eight months since I started climbing; at first, I could barely make it up the VB (jokingly called Very Beginner) courses on the boulder, which are honestly glorified ladders made out of very easy holds. Even though I struggled, I would climb laps on them until I could make some progress on the V0s. I'm still working on my advancement on the boulder wall -- my fear of falling without a harness to catch me tends to keep me from the more ambitious courses. Top-roping, however (climbing much, much taller walls with a safety harness) is coming along really well.

There was a moment on that 5.7+ where the only footholds I could use put me in a near full split. I honestly didn't think I was going to be able to make it -- how do you even move from there? I had to put faith in my arms, and then sort of gecko-walk up the wall to the next foothold. I've always felt that my arms were extremely weak compared to other climbers, and that I had to rely heavily on my footwork to get me up the wall. Today, though, I felt very coordinated and balanced. My legs and arms shared the load and evenly distributed the work throughout my body. It was a profoundly centering feeling that helped me power through and complete the course.

I feel amazing. There is no way I would have believed a year ago that I was capable of this.

Rain, Endless Rain

Office decor that turned out surprisingly
relevant for this post

It's October 1st, which means I skipped my morning workout in favor of decorating my office with Halloween decor. I'm still climbing tonight -- something I was actually hoping to weasel out of because I'm not feeling it today, but my climbing buddies are (thankfully) having none of it.

This weather is sapping the motivation from me; it's been raining for over a week and my once-bright spirits that delighted in the end to the drought-like conditions are now soggy. I want to eat cheese-smothered foods and hide under the blankets until the sun returns. I'm trying to see this as a dry run for the awful soul-sucking sadness that is winter seasonal affective disorder, but all the carefully laid plans I've made on combating the cold grayness aren't holding up under this rain. Methinks I need to revise my approach.

I need to get a fine point sharpie 

I did do some minor crafting today, though. Behold my tiny putka pod jack-o-lanterns! I set up a little station at work for people to make their own since I was having trouble mustering the energy to make a bunch, but people have been enjoying them.

I'm not really feeling the writing flow today, but thinking about how I feel in winter has me considering something else I read in Spiral Dance about the darker sides of ourselves. Starhawk calls it "Starlight vision" -- but I've seen it referenced in Jungian psychology and a bunch of pagan vloggers as the shadow self, or shadow aspect of who we are. In psychology, it's usually the subconscious parts of our personality, while in pagan discussions, it usually refers to the darker parts of ourselves that isn't all love and light. It's the counterweight of death to life, of sadness to joy, of yin to yang. If we don't explore the parts of ourselves that exist in the dark, we can hardly claim to know ourselves at all. As Starhawk states:

“But the final price of freedom is the willingness to face that most frightening of all beings, one’s own self. Starlight vision, the “other way of knowing,” is the mode of perception of the unconscious, rather than the conscious mind. The depths of our own beings are not all sunlit; to see clearly, we must be willing to dive into the dark, inner abyss and acknowledge the creatures we may find there. For, as Jungian analyst M. Esther Harding explains in Woman’s Mysteries, “These subjective factors … are potent psychical entities, they belong to the totality of our being, they cannot be destroyed. So long as they are unrecognized outcasts from our conscious life, they will come between us and all the objects we view, and our whole world will be either distorted or illuminated.” 

I'm taking this grey, sodden time to look inward at my shadow side and see what she has to teach me. I've done meditations on this in the past, but it's easy to forget to keep up regular internal conversation.