199. Committing to the Leap with Ten of Swords Rx + Recovering Trust after Trauma
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Happy (almost) Scorpio season, loves! Today on the pod, Lindsay dives into the medicine of Scorpio season and the significance of the Samhuinn/Bealtaine portal, and tunes in with an special Anchor Card to help us work with the Death card (ruled by Scorpio) in this coming cycle.
Air date:
October 21, 2022
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About the Episode
Happy (almost) Scorpio season, loves! Today on the pod, Lindsay dives into the medicine of Scorpio season and the significance of the Samhuinn/Bealtaine portal, and tunes in with a special Anchor Card to help us work with the Death card (ruled by Scorpio) in this coming cycle.
We also dig into our card of the week, Ten of Swords, Rx. This card is here to invite us to commit to our leaps, trust ourselves, and recognize when an old, outdated pattern is ready to be fully and courageously shed. Lindsay also answers a listener question about how we can begin to regain trust in God after experiencing multiple traumas.
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Land Acknowledgement
Honoring and acknowledging that this podcast episode was recorded on the unceded land of The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, currently called Portland, OR, with the deepest respect to the Kalapuya Tribe, Cowlitz Tribe, and Atfalati Tribe.
Please Note
CW Tags: colonization, white supremacy, capitalism, ancestral & land-based trauma, inherited generational patterns, grief, death, abuse, trauma, anxiety, ptsd, postpartum complications, postpartum depression, medical emergencies, hospitalization, and surgeries
The content in this episode contains references to mentions of colonization, white supremacy, capitalism, ancestral & land-based trauma, inherited generational patterns, grief, death, abuse, trauma, anxiety, ptsd, postpartum complications, postpartum depression, medical emergencies, hospitalization, and surgeries. We have done our best to identify difficult subject matter, but the labels may not be comprehensive for your personal needs. Please honor your knowing and proceed with necessary self-awareness and care.
Transcript
[Introduction]
(Instrumental intro music)
[0:00:05]
Welcome to Tarot for the Wild Soul, a podcast that explores the Tarot through an inclusive, soul-centered, trauma-informed perspective for growth, healing, and evolution. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack.
—
Hello Loves, and welcome back to the pod. I am your host, Lindsay Mack. And as always, it is just such a lovely honor and delight to be gathered with all of you in this virtual shared space. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for being here.
We have, I think, a really juicy episode. We have our card of the week and our listener question that we're going to talk about, both of which are really deep and beautiful. But first, I would be remiss if I didn't discuss that in just a few days, incredibly, we are going to be transitioning into Scorpio season. Right around October 23, the sun will shift into Scorpio, into the sign of Scorpio, and just a few days after that on the 25th we have a New Moon in Scorpio. So I mean, we're going in blazing (Lindsay laughs), there's just a lot. There's a lot moving through.
Scorpio season is such a big and important time for many reasons. First of all, if you're listening to this podcast episode, you—more than likely, although I would never want to generalize—maybe identify as a witch, maybe identify as an intuitive, maybe are certainly drawn to the medicine of Tarot or at least curious about it, and maybe there's a completely different affiliation or identity or label that you really feel is your own in terms of how you access your ancestors, you connect with magic, you tune in with yourself. Whatever and however you fit into that paradigm or that enormous, massive spectrum of inclusion as to how we connect with the other world or the underworld or, you know, wherever we find ourselves in that, if you're listening to this, that's likely you (Lindsay laughs). Although if you're not one of those folks—hi, see you too.
Scorpio season’s that important time for us. That's just what it is. There are plenty of other times on the Wheel of the Year that are really significant, very impactful. But Scorpio season’s a big one. Scorpio season is Fixed Water. It's the depths. It's the unknown. It's the unseen. It's ruled by Pluto, it's connected to Mars. There's a lot of layering, there's a lot of power that's connected to Scorpio, and there's a lot, of course, that's connected to the medicine of the unknown, of the void, of death, of all different kinds of things.
Now, I want to show love to the other Water signs: those are also highly magical, highly intuitive, highly powerful times, as well. And yet, energetically, elementally, there's something about the element of Fixed Water that allows us to go to a different level in Scorpio season. There's a directness and intensity that allows us to actually—you know, it's not an accident that this is one of the times on the spiral of the year with a Veil that connects us to our beloved dead, to our ancestors, to the other world is the thinnest right? And it's also not an accident that right at this exact time, Scorpio season, that the Southern Hemisphere honors their Beltane. Not an accident.
[0:04:19]
There are many, many parts—obviously, the diaspora of Great Britain and Ireland and Scotland, and I speak of that not because it's the way or more important than another’s, it’s just simply where my ancestors hail from, some of my ancestors—there were sects and parts of that, of folks who lived in that land, on that land, who honored really two seasons of the year. There was winter that started around the Dark Moon, around Scorpio season, very close to Samhain. It wouldn't have probably been on Samhain; it would have probably been on the dark moon around Samhain. And that Dark Moon near Samhain was considered to be the first day of winter.
That was the time when the wheel really turned, where we started to move into one half of the year where the whole idea, inward-looking, deep, inner, again, work, honoring of ancestors, praying and hoping for a good harvest for the next year, all of that was part of what this time really represented. And Beltane, which was honored as the inverse by those same sects of folks as the first day of summer, this was a very, very important day. If we're looking at sort of the kind of high days on the wheel or the spiral of the year, as those sort of harvest festivals started to develop, these were two very, very important gateways.
Now, during those times, really, what the big emphasis in celebrating these days was fertility, was harvest, was farming, was essentially survival and connection with the land. And we are living in a time when those are really important things to think about, when so many of us are existing as descendants of colonizers on land that doesn't belong to us, that was stolen, so many of us don't know our ancestry because of those broken connections, and because of forced movement, and because of all kinds of things that are deeply connected to grief, to rage, to loss. And I believe that Scorpio season really holds the totality of that.
There's something about the energy of it, there's something about the depth of it, that can hold all of the nuance and all of the spiralness of this life, and what it is to feel into this time on the Wheel of the Year when we're being asked to really look at the liminal, at what's not super clear, of what's not incredibly direct, at what is under the surface, and we're fixing our gaze on it, and diving into those waters.
[0:07:38]
Pluto is the great excavator. It's the ruling planet of Scorpio. This is a time when so much has the potential to be unearthed and clarified. We have an Eclipse season coming up in Scorpio season. These are big, big themes. The waves are big, under the waves is very big.
There's something very powerful about connecting to, really, what was considered—I mean, I am wildly glossing over, like, the origination, in terms of the Celtic sense of the honoring of this time on the Wheel of the Year. Basically, there's so many other, you know, the Day of the Dead, there's many cultures that honored this time, as the time to connect with the liminal, the ancestral, our beloved dead; to honor that, to dive into the invisible and tune in with what is beyond the Veil; to become a little bit more present to that. So it’s a very, very, very powerful time. We're not even in Scorpio season yet, but I want to just, you know, whatever. I know, we, generally, most of us really dig this time of year for a number of different reasons, but there's a lot of depth to it.
Like, what does it mean, if we are—I know I am, as a white person who is a descendant of colonizers, who is also very deeply connected as I can be, as somebody who is not native to my ancestral land, of which I'm very privileged to know about. Meaning, I was born there, and I don't have any right to go back there, which is a grief, in and of itself.
What is it to connect with great respect and with acknowledgment to these practices? What is it to do that, as somebody who lives on stolen land? What is it to move into a space of honoring and acknowledging what it is to be in greater respect to the land, and to be in connection with, you know, the larger parts of this theme while being in a process of reparations, being in a process of respectful exchange and connection?
So these are just some of the things that I'm thinking about and that I usually think about when Scorpio season comes a callin’. And for you, it might be a completely different set of circumstances. There may be completely different belief systems, ancestral ties, that you have to this time of year. Whatever it is, I encourage you to feel into it, look into it, sense into it. And regardless, if you want to do that or not, this is such a powerful time to move into a little bit less of kind of the mental stuff, like the mind, the chatter, and move a little bit more into the world of the deeply felt and the deeply feeling.
So yeah, we're looking forward to some good stuff (Lindsay laughs) in the coming week. And, of course, the Death card in the Tarot is our card for Scorpio season and serves as Anchors and as branches to that tree. We have Judgement because it's ruled by Pluto. We have The Tower because it's ruled by Mars. So there's a lot happening here, there's transformation, excavation, composting something and allowing it to become fertilizer—something that no longer serves a purpose, just simply does not serve a purpose.
And we are really working with those themes of regeneration and transformation this week in both our listener question and our card of the week and talking about Scorpio season.
[0:11:56]
I went ahead and took the liberty of pulling a little Anchor Card for us around Scorpio season just to sort of touch in with kinda—well, with the Death card, in particular—asking, you know, as we sort of bow the Death card in and welcome it across our doorstep for the next month or so, as we move through Scorpio season, I tuned in and asked sort of how we could really work with it and what kind of medicine it was bringing and I got The Magician reversed.
Magician reversed has had a very interesting repeated presence with us in the last month or so, hasn't it? We've pulled it a couple times. I've pulled it personally. I believe it was a big part of Spiralic Tarot, which was a big download for the season ahead that I did.
So Magician reversed, as a complement, as a sort of Anchor for our work with the Death card, is essentially reminding us that we only have a finite amount of energy. Mercury is about connection, about communication, about exchange. It's also about energy. Alice Sparkly Cat speaks about it as being connected to labor. It absolutely is. And when reversed, it's an opportunity to think about how we're using that energy, how we're using our resources. Now, many of us don't really have options that are accessible for changing that. For others of us, there are sometimes doorways, windows that are more open, more spacious than we think they are. But because we're not used to reaching for those particular doors and windows, we might not initially see them as potential solutions.
We might not see that it's okay for us to ask for more help. We might not see our patterning around the way we take on too much or think we have to take on what we're taking on. There may be something for us in leaning into this discomfort of asking for help and accepting that or outsourcing or letting go of control in some way.
So Magician reversed, also, I think, in an important way does connect with Lovers energy. Lovers is Gemini, Magician is Mercury. There's something inside of the work we're doing in this Lovers year that Magician reversed is really complementing in Scorpio season because that's kind of Lovers, too.
[0:14:38]
Lovers is a really interesting narrative where I am learning more and more about being in a Lovers year, which I honestly think teaches me more about the Tarot than probably any other opportunity, like, any other situation is being in a year with a card. That's just me, personally. But there's something interesting about Lovers.
Lovers really chokes off the idea of, like, you cannot continue to waste your time and your energy searching for things that aren't going to necessarily give you what you think they're going to give you. You're not going to be fixed by someone else's approval, by a title, by whatever it is, right? You're not going to get anything from that in the way that you think you are. And it's not to say that those things can't be beautiful, but it's an opportunity to change our relationship to it. It's an opportunity to shift the importance, the weight we give it, and to recalibrate: is this actually even what we want, or is this something that we've ascribed or have put on a pedestal or whatever?
That's Lovers work: is that deep, vulnerable, intimate exploration of like, “Do I really want to do this work? Do I really want to be with this person? Do I really want this kind of a life? Or have I sort of been told I do? Did I think I would get something if I moved closer to this or that or whatever?”
So there's some kind of weaving together that's happening here in Scorpio season, that I think is really beautiful; this weaving of Death and Magician reversed and Lovers, being about the year that we're in, Magician reverse, being sort of the helper-clarifier card for what Death is doing and how we can sort of take advantage of this card being here, and the actual medicine of Death itself.
So it's a reminder, a sweet reminder: our energy is finite. We can't really afford to dick around on things that are not really putting fuel back in our tank. What do we absolutely know does not serve us, and yet we keep doing it again, and again, and again? And I'm not talking about the job that you need to work to, like, pay your bills and feed your family. I honor that that may be draining the life out of you, and I am holding a space that that one day can change. And we're living in a world where we have to do what we have to do, and that's the shitty part of capitalism. And what I'm talking about is what is accessible and responsible. What do we know drains the life out of us, and we can shift it, we can control some aspect of it?
And if there is something that's really draining the life out of us, and there doesn't seem to be a way to change our relationship to it this month, this season is actually an opportunity to rethink what we might believe is possible.
[0:17:42]
Many of us do get really caught in like, “Well, you know, it just is the way it is. Can't do anything about it.” And this season is really saying, “Are you absolutely sure? Is it possible to get another person's take on it or another person's eyes on it? Sometimes that can be a fresh perspective. What, if anything, might make it even 10 to 20% more bearable, more enjoyable, dare I say? So all of those things are really connected to the season and this time that is upcoming.
So our card for the week is a big one. We are in some big energies this month. And again, I come back to this idea that there is a lot going on, externally, and I beg of you to take a moment of review, because we are close to the end of October: what has changed for you?
I know, for me, at the beginning of October, I'm not kidding you when I say I kind of feel the same, but actually, circumstances were very different for me, (Lindsay laughs) the first of October, than they are today. And they don't really feel like they've changed that much. But when I look at it, they actually have changed pretty drastically, and I would say are far more aligned. So I mean, sure, it's not perfect, whatever, but, like, it's better than it was on the first of October, when all of this work started to come up. And I'm still working on certain things, and certain things aren't the best and whatever, you know?
But I invite you to take a moment and reflect: are you not giving yourself enough credit? I'm calling myself out. I'm not giving myself enough credit for the change that I've initiated in the last 20 or so days, and I'm taking the opportunity to recenter on it. So for you, I encourage you to think about, like, what and how have you shifted? And I think that that's important because this has been such a deeply internal time, that it's a lot harder, I think, to tether to and track kind of where we're at, externally. It's a lot harder to sense into, like, “Oh, yeah, I have changed. And this is big. And there has been, there have been some evolutions here. And there are some things cooking, and they're not there yet. But just powerful to think about, powerful to give ourselves that opportunity.
[0:20:33]
So our card for the week ahead is Ten of Swords reversed. I'm sure that you can set your watch to this by now. There's no need to fear this card, right side up or reversed. Ten of Swords is an absolutely amazing energy, and we don't have to be scared of it. It's not actually bringing any problems, any promise of anything. I promise you that it's not (Lindsay laughs). It's actually really beautiful. So let's really briefly touch on what Ten of Swords is to really understand what we're going into.
You've heard me speak about this before, that the Tens in the Tarot are kind of like Full Moon energies. When we reach them, there's a sort of a climax point that we get to, a harvest review, where we're kind of complete with a cycle as it's been happening, and we're ready to, again, harvest, review it all, keep what works, and leave what doesn't.
With Ten of Swords, in particular, this has to do with a kind of a way that we've been relating to our thinking. So it has to do with this card coming up and essentially saying, “Sweetheart, the way that you've been going about this, doing this, believing your thinking, identifying with your thoughts, like, kind of living in alignment with a particular kind of worldview is dead. It's dead, it can't take you any further. It does not serve, it's already dead. So you trying to revive it and pump life into it, it's not going to work. So the best thing you can do is shed that skin, shed that exoskeleton, and begin anew.” It is.
I've mentioned this before in this podcast, and I'm delighted to mention it again. I have never—and this is what I mean: many of you have probably heard me speak about the term “field research” as it pertains to Tarot, it’s a Soul Tarot thing. It basically means track what you're pulling and noticing when you're pulling it, because it likely will tell you a lot about the medicine and the message of a card.
There has never been a launch, a course, a big, important undertaking, personally or professionally, that I have undergone that this card has not come up in the middle of, usually multiple times. It's letting me know you can't do it in the way that you've been trying to do other things. There has to be an evolution: you're not going to be able to get to your destination on the old way that you've been relating to your thoughts, believing certain things. It requires a different way of thinking, it requires a different relationship to our thinking. It's essentially a mini Fool card, Ten of Swords, that requires a leap of faith.
How powerful, how frightening, how intense to imagine, to consider that a particular way that we relate to our thoughts is dead. That happens all the time. And because we're not, I think, really overculturally super-clued in as a society, you know, to the idea of considering that what we might have been raised with, or the old belief systems of, you know, something don't really work, or a worldview that we might have held, we've really outgrown it, or a kind of an overcorrection toward—like, I know for me, like it's very easy to get caught in like, “Oh, this will never work,” or, “Oh this…” or “Oh that…” And, you know, it's hard to remember, like, where did those beliefs come from? Where do those thoughts come from? And they're not going to serve me here. So they can come up for me. That's okay, but it's how I respond to them that's different, right?
[0:25:06]
And that's what Ten of Swords is all about. It's a massive, beautiful transformation, one that's not instant, one that requires time, lets us know we're actually ready—like a snake, like an insect of some kind—to shed an exoskeleton, shed a skin, because we've outgrown it, period. And it has to do with the way that we relate to our thinking and our beliefs about what's possible.
And again, going back to how I typically pull this card many, many times, in relationship to, like, a course launch or a personal, big leap, kind of lets me know: you're not going to be able to approach—this is bigger, vaster. This is more expanded than your current worldview. So we have to keep that in mind as we embark on it. Right? That's really the idea there.
Now, how does Ten of Swords—Ten of Swords reverse, for us, in particular—how is that showing up for us this week, as our Anchor Card of the week? So in October, we've been talking a lot about clearing the path, being brave enough and courageous enough to make some room and clear away some of the things that have sort of been crowding up our energetic highway, so that unexpected delights can come through; so that things that we're not necessarily expecting that we never could have predicted can actually come through for us.
This is a very big part of sort of the—I want to be really clear when I say we're preparing for something. I'm not, like, dipping into any kind of doomsday narratives. There's nothing like that. I'm not about that, I'm not about conspiracies. I'm not about that shit, I'm not. So when I say we're preparing for something, what I'm talking about is the way that, really, squirrels collect and store nuts in preparation for the winter. That's what I'm talking about—the way bears get big and fat in order to have enough food for hibernation. There are examples in nature that correspond to the kinds of soul evolutions that we go through all the time as human beings.
So when I say that we’re “preparing for something,” there are moments in the cycles of life, and in cycles of life, death, and rebirth that we go through all the time, that correspond to an invitation of preparation. That's really what we're doing here. It's a Gestation time, it's a time of kind of ordering, getting our nuts, all cozied up in our tree, so that when an opportunity, a move, a different idea, a different concept and awareness, you know, something pops up for us—subtle or overt—we have what we need to greet it, or at least we have some of what we need to greet it, right?
[0:28:05]
So Ten of Swords reversed is speaking to the fear that can sometimes come up when we have committed to something, and we start to get cold feet. It's not about a very logical and smart experience of regret around something that we actually do have to shift course on. Like, you know, we say yes to something, and it's so clearly a no or, you know, whatever it is. We have to change our minds, right? There are moments in life where we do have to change our minds, and that's really important to kind of suss out the difference.
This card is really about the leaps and the commitments we take that are totally a yes, but are gonna challenge our old way of thinking, of believing, whatever. They're gonna invite us into contraction. “This is, absolutely, you know, nuts.” “I can't believe I'm doing this. This isn't okay, this isn't the way I've done things before, oh my God.” Whatever it is, we may have those feelings this week. “I'm clearing the path for fucking what? I don't know what I'm doing. I'm, you know, I'm here and there.” It might not be an experience of, like, “Oh my god!” It might be more rooted in “Whoa, this is really big, this is really powerful,” or it might be rooted in “I'm clearing the path and hope that, you know, if there's a little bit more alignment and a little bit more support for me, but there's actually nothing here.”
What is true of sort of—again, I use that term soul evolution, it's, really, just a process of, again, life, death, rebirth—when we're asked to sort of commit to a leap, when we leap, and we find ourselves kind of trying to twist around and grab the ledge again, because we're like, “Fuck!” You know, that's typically letting us—that's a good sign, typically. And it usually speaks to this idea that we're in contraction because this leap is very, very big. And so the mind is attempting to really protect us by saying, “Hey, whoa, this is way too big, too vast, too unknown. We don't know what the fuck is going on. So let's try to grab onto that board again, because while that's not working, at least it's, like, kind of the devil we know.”
So we may notice an invitation this week to kind of twist around and try to go back to something that is really not working. We may have to, I actually am going to say we might have to try another. We may have to try again, we may have to try to do something that doesn't really work, again, because Michelle often says that, you know, “It's lessons and experiences in contrast,” right? Sometimes we really have to see, like, “Whoa, this totally does not work anymore,” to actually believe it doesn't work anymore.
So for us this week, the theme, the invitation is to commit to our leap, to notice, rather than identify, where we're being called to kind of twist around and grab onto something that has really out-served its purpose. We can thank it. We can appreciate how the mind is trying to protect us by pulling us into something very old or very familiar. We can notice it and continue to leap. We can just be aware.
[0:32:04]
I cannot tell you how many times I pulled this card reverse when I'm in the midst of a new creative process. I’m not right now, so I'm sort of just, honestly, in a period of waiting and kind of preparing, too, where nothing, everything's like, kind of jumbled together in a big soup of like, “I could do this, I could do that.” It's what I told y'all last week, like, I had prepared to do a class during Samhain for, like, almost six months plus, and all of a sudden, I was told not to. So, definitely right there with you on this piece of like things changing shape and moving around. That's a really liminal, swirly time.
But this, in particular, doesn't really have to do with something situational. It has to do with working a new muscle and noticing where we get called, where we want to tap out of something because it's unfamiliar not necessarily because it's a no—so stay open to possibilities. This card says to us this week: just stay open, see what happens, see what's possible, see what might be, right? We’re just being called to stay open to possibilities. That's it. Because that moment where we want to twist and cling is usually right before something breaks open and becomes really clear, right before an evolutionary jump, to put it, I guess, in a different way. So stay open to the possibility of what could go differently, what might actually be better, right?
With Swords, we're always working with noticing the mind, tending to the mind, saying no thank you to the mind—you know, just noticing it. That's, you know, ideally, where we're going with the mind in every moment; just being aware of what's happening and tending to those feelings, not pushing them away or becoming indifferent to them by saying, “Whoa, there's a lot of rage here,” or “Whoa, there's a lot of fear here. I want to give that my time, my attention, and outlet, right?” Whatever it happens to be. So, really noticing we're on the verge of something, notice where we want to kind of turn around and go back (Lindsay laughs), and where we might not, right? Where we might not.
But this week, it's a chance to really think about those themes: what's dead and complete? What do we maybe want to cling on to that's dead and complete, or kind of touch into or go back to? How can we be brave enough, bold enough, to let go of and to compost? And what resources, support systems do we need to do that? That's what we're being invited to look at this week. So really, really powerful energy. It will be, personally, felt by all of us very differently—might be very overt and, like, literal for some folks, might be more subtle for others, might be felt in a little bit of a different way. So just touch in with how this card might be wanting to communicate with you this week what it might have to say. So that is our energetic sort of weekly download.
[0:35:31]
Now I'm going to dive into our listener question, which is a big one. And I'm going to do my best to speak to it to my own personal experience—knowing that, of course, I don't speak for everyone, and everyone's experience is really different. So I just want to proceed by saying that I'm bowing to everyone, all of the different experiences listening to this, as I broach this question.
So this is from Anonymous. Anonymous asks:
How, in your experience, does one regain trust in God/universe after experiencing multiple traumas? I'm in therapy and use multiple somatic methods to heal, but I'm wondering from an oracle/intuitive perspective, what your thoughts might be.
Anxiety is a big part of my experience at this time. I know that there is a more easeful way to interact with life through surrender, but I find that so difficult.
Again, I'm super honored that you brought this question to me, and that you honored my scope of practice, and that I'm not a therapist, and that you're really looking for my experience, and from a sort of intuitive/oracle perspective what might be useful.
This is going to sound so cheesy (Lindsay laughs), possibly, um, but just going right to the heart of you saying “oracle/intuitive,” I want to kind of talk about what helps me when I'm going through my own journey with not trusting life, or not trusting God or whatever, because of multiple traumas, is remembering the journey from The Tower to The Sun. That is not, that is something that has, honestly, like saved my life, in moments. And it's not an idea for me, that's a real Anchoring for me.
I remember that after The Tower, it's part of my job, almost, to try to let The Star work on me. And I find working with The Star difficult because I don't want to go into the heart of the wound. I want to forget, I want to stay angry, actually. I want to, like, numb out, you know? Like, I don't want to work on things. And I find—I remember my dear friend, Jeff Hinshaw, and I talking about this when we were teaching back in I think it was 2017- 2018, those two years, I believe.
We were talking about The Star for our lesson—than I remember being in LAX, talking to him on the phone (Lindsay laughs), before I, you know, I don't think I was there for that lesson, I don't know why—but we both agreed: The Star is an initiation that will not let you skip it. But all of us tend to kind of lighten it or think we can just breeze through it, when, actually, it's a very deep commitment, and it usually does draw us into the heart of wounds. And I think we're often in The Star for a long time, sometimes for many months, for many years, while other cards sort of float around, and I think you're in The Star right now.
[0:39:21]
And I think when we're in The Star, there's a sense of cocooning, a sense of sheltering, of sort of drawing ourselves into this egg, so to speak. And it may feel safe and okay to come out of that egg for certain things, but not so safe for other things. And in The Star, we're just sort of noticing what doesn't feel okay, what does feel okay.
And then The Moon is often an experience that I find that’s very spiralic, that happens with healing, where, in recovering from trauma, where there's a sense of like, “Oh, I'm back in something again. I'm back here.” That, you know, that's a very strong hallmark of PTSD for me, and I think for many of us. The Moon can kind of feel like that. And it's really hard to go through that and remember, actually, no, we're not back in anything. We're safe, we’re okay. It feels that way, and the nervous system is primed for that and activated for that, but we're actually in something totally different. We have different supports and resources available.
I actually think that The Sun is hard because it requires, it does ask for trust (Lindsay laughs). It does basically say, “Hey, the storm actually is over, in this way. In this way, it doesn't mean the internal storms are over, but you're actually, you’re in a different place, you're safe.” So I sometimes have to remind myself like, “Oh, yeah, I'm not in my mother's house anymore.” Right? It's like we forget that. And The Sun is very vulnerable, because it does have to do with trust, and trust is hard when there's been multiple traumas.
So, from an oracle-intuitive perspective, I find the journey from The Tower to The Sun to be the most crucial. It is really an anchor point, and in a way that no other card series in the Tarot is for me, personally. And I could speak on it and have actually taught on it and spoken on it a lot. It's a four-card series that I think really describes the recovery through an experience, through a trauma, through an Underworld Journey, through a shock, how to recover from a shock. So I think I rely a great deal on those four cards when things are really tough, and when I can't get to my deck, and I can't connect with it. And it's helpful for me to even remember, like, “Oh, yeah, there's always a Star after a Tower, there's always a Sun after a Moon. So I know this is impermanent. I can, you know, I can move through this. I have this. I can do it. What do I need around me to ensure my ability to move through this in an okay way?”
[0:42:31]
Personally, the only thing I would add to this is that I think trust is regained in a very spiralic way. And I'll share something super personal, not like private, but it just happened to me. As many of you know, I've shared a number of times on this podcast. I had a particularly hellish experience in postpartum that encompassed lots of emergency surgeries and ambulance rides and trips to the hospital with, like, it was a deeply shattering experience for my family. And going through it while holding it down for my daughter was sort of a different, you know, thing.
And I was probably more enraged at God than I'd ever been and kept noticing: something would happen—there'd be a spike, an emergency, a shock, and it was other things too, like, at a certain point, the fire alarms kept going off in the middle of the night in my house, and we could not—they're wired in—so we could not figure out why. We’d get woken up at two or three in the morning, by the fire alarms wailing. We'd have to pick up our baby.
Even that was a shock, and it started to reinforce, like: this is a cosmic joke. I know that's a very small example for the atrocities that a lot of people go through, but I think with all the work that I was trying to do to just calm my nervous system and believe that this was a safe existence (Lindsay laughs), at least to a certain extent, there seemed to be thing after thing that was proving that it was not.
So my anger kept building because I kept being like, “I am working my balls off here and being asked to hold all kinds of different things, like I don't have support.” You know, of course, I have my wonderful partner. I could always have less support. Of course, some people do it with less. But there was a feeling of like, you know, “Why?” You know?
So, the other night we had something happen outside of my house at night that really shocked and scared my husband and I, and I could not calm down. And I was hysterical and was so angry and was like, “See, this is why it's not okay!” and whatever. So there was still a lot left, there was a lot of chicken on that bone for me (Lindsay laughs). So I'm sharing this in a way to say that this past year, obviously, I've been through many traumas in my life and I've shared about it. I grew up in an abusive and very abusive environment, I was bullied, like, there were a lot of micro traumas on top of macro traumas for me, for most of my life.
But this year, in particular, I had a number of big T traumas. There were, again, emergencies, ambulance rides, surgeries, multiple surgeries over, like, three months, with a newborn baby and PPD, and it was no joke. And I would find that I'd almost resigned myself after one of these things to a brittleness and to a rage and to an anger. And then I would find my heart opening, in spite of myself. I'd be enraged at God and then find myself, without thinking about it, like, tuning in for a question, without even realizing it.
And I remember at one point, having a session with Michelle and asking her like, basically saying, like, “I hate God, and like, my whole life has been a connection to God. That's my compass, and I hate them right now. I feel like they're cruel, and they're bad. What do I do about that?”
And Michelle basically said, like, “Yeah, totally. I hear that, valid as fuck. It's not okay, and like, they're not doing it to you. And eventually, that brittleness will dry out, and will flake up and will blow away. And it will do so in a way where a little bit goes, and then there are other things to work out, and that will blow away.” And she just said, “Eventually, you don't even realize it, and there's some part of your heart that has reopened that its like, ‘Oh, wow, I can't even believe that I just tuned in, in that way, or I opened in that way, or I wouldn't have done that a year ago.’”
[0:47:44]
So I think this is just a really in-depth question. So I don't know that my answer is super straightforward. I don't even think it needs to be.
First, I want to just love you up and name that you're not alone and that I'm here with you. And I know many people listening to this are here with you. And I absolutely want to acknowledge, again, my answer is not meant to be an indication of what is. I was asked about my experience, so I'm speaking about my experience. It's not my job to necessarily speak for everybody. So know that if your experience is super different, I'm holding that, too. I think we're all right. You know, our experiences are all valid.
I think regaining trust in life is a very slow process when there's been multiple traumas. I think that it's very spiralic, in that you just started a place of numbness or of anger or grief or of terror. You work through some of it, or there's a natural evolution, and you start noticing, like, “Oh, I feel okay to do this or that,” or “I was able to go to sleep yesterday and sleep through the night, and like, wow, that hasn’t happened in like two months or a week,” or whatever it is. And then another sort of patch of fear arises.
And I think we slowly, slowly heal over time, if we're willing to. I think for some of us—and I completely, honestly understand this — there's just, we shut down and like, we just don't move forward. And again, I get it. Life is really hard and really cruel sometimes and so it's challenging to stay open. But I would find, in spite of myself, actually thinking like, “Oh, my heart is more open than it was a few days ago even,” or I'm tuning in with Spirit, and they're right there loving me through it and answering me and not holding any accounts with me or whatever.
And so I think it's slow, and it's steady, and it's important to have folks around us who can hold us in that experience of gently regaining trust. But it does happen, I think. Maybe not how it was before, maybe not, with our nervous system, totally cool with all aspects of it, but I do think it happens and can happen, and I think we just need to be really patient with ourselves, you know? I don't think it happens overnight.
And just as I shared, like, yesterday, with that shock that happened, I was like, “Oh, yeah, there's a lot there.” There are a lot of beliefs around me, and, you know, like, something out to kind of, like, make me miserable on purpose, and like, ascribing that to God or whatever. And I know that that's not true, and yet, it's hard sometimes. So I think I'm in a much better place, and there's still stuff going on for me, you know?
[0:51:23]
So, I think, ideally, we stay tethered to The Star and The Sun through those experiences. We know that we have to be gentle with these nervous systems of ours; that they're our animal part, needs a lot of love and patience and tending. We can communicate on their behalf. If we were our own children, our children had been through something highly traumatic, we wouldn't necessarily—especially if they were distressed—we wouldn't necessarily throw them into something. We would likely advocate and communicate, give a little heads up, and we can give that to ourselves, too.
And I think with The Sun, trusting in those moments, when it's like, “Yeah, it's safe to do this. It's okay, I've got you,” you know, calling on that inner caretaker, but sort of knowing and taking comfort in the fact that I think it is a spiral, that it's not necessarily a straight line. It's not that we go through trauma, and all of a sudden (Lindsay snaps), we trust again, and whatever. We trust a little bit, the heart opens, some other stuff comes up, we work with that, we trust a little bit, the heart opens.
I was amazed, personally—again, this is just about me—but I remarked to my therapist, once like, it would literally be like, multiple times a week; there'd be a complication, there'd be something in the house, you know, whatever. There'd be a massive snowstorm, we lost power with a newborn for, like, two days, and our fireplace didn't work (Lindsay laughs), and like there was a tree that got down so we couldn't, like, back out of the driveway. It was like… and because all this shit had kept happening, we weren't able to roll with it as easily.
But I do remember—as we might usually be able to—but I do remember telling my therapist, like, noticing that, in spite of myself, my heart keeps growing like little shoots out of concrete. It's like I keep trying to, like, smooth that concrete over and be like, “Heart just stay in there. Like, let's not feel anything.” And I'd have hope, or I’d feel happiness, or I’d want to do this or that, or I'd enjoy something, and I’d think, “Wow.” So I think it comes in fits and starts, if that makes sense. So I think be patient with yourself.
[0:53:49]
I want to say a more easeful way to react through life, interact with life through surrender—of course, you find that difficult. Your nervous system, the part of you, the alarm system, that's responsible for your survival has been put through multiple shocks. Like, I'm not in a place after multiple shocks where I'm like, “Oh, I should surrender to life.” Because that, like, I'm having a terrible time doing that right now (Lindsay laughs), if you need to hear that, and have had a terrible time doing that my whole adult life, you know? The things that maybe I'll think like, “Oh, Lindsay can just do that,” it takes a lot.
There's a reason I talk about the brain so much in what I do. Because usually there is a massive personal thing where I sometimes like hanging out with people socially, sometimes meeting someone, sometimes doing a collaboration, sometimes doing a new course, doing a podcast episode, there are times where for one one reason or another, my nervous system says, “this is not safe,” and it is safe. It is. And trying to nurture and honor that part of myself, while remaining gentle with that part of myself, like, not forcing it to do anything, but also really wanting to be true to, like, “This actually is safe, and I'd love to show you,” takes way more work than making a course does.
So I want to just really respectfully encourage you to, like, take that idea of just sort of off the table: it's hard for anyone to surrender to life. And I think you're doing a great job, and you're allowed to be healing. And I think healing takes time. So I hope this was useful. And again, I'm bowing to you, and I'm just grateful to be here with y’all. This was a bit longer of an episode. Hopefully, that's meeting everyone in a good way (Lindsay laughs).
I'm so excited. I can't believe we're almost at 200 eps, and I have to really think about something special to do. That 200th episode is going to come out on Samhain because, of course it is, that's very exciting for me. And yeah, just keep sending in your ideas of things you might like. Maybe you want, like a Q&A on a particular kind of topic, maybe you want me to talk about a particular card. I'd love to hear it. Like what do you want to do for 200 episodes? I want to hear all about it from you.
—
[Conclusion]
[0:56:29]
Thank you for being here, Loves. I love and adore all of you. Thank you for trusting me with your questions. It's a huge honor. And I cannot wait to connect with all of you next week. Have a wonderful New Moon in Scorpio, have a wonderful transition into Scorpio season. And until we connect again, please take exquisite care of yourselves.