In which I clear out the mailbag! Please send me more questions, which you can do at this open form here. All questions are anonymous. Image descriptions for the cards at the very end, the deck used is the Hayworth Tarot.
I most recently wrote about the power of allowing yourself the fullness of your wanting and the Seven of Cups. If you’ve been enjoying the newsletter and would like to support the work, here’s my tip jar 💌
4 cards arranged in a 2 x 2 grid, on a background of grey squares with white dividing lines. Clockwise from top left: 10 of Pentacles, 4 of Pentacles, The Magician, 4 of Cups
L1: My partner and I been thinking about having another baby. We want one so much. But my not-so-good experiences from my last childbirth along with the work pressure I’m currently facing is making me think over and over on it. Will I be doing a good thing to bring another baby into the picture? Now or ever? Please guide me.
Letter writer, I remain unsure if I should answer this question. I certainly know I can’t guide you in a decision so deeply personal, so entangled with stories, memories, and wounds I cannot possibly know. But you know, even and especially if you feel you don’t. Your body knows. The contours of your life, and the life you have with your family, are the real guides. But I can tell you about a card, I can tell you about the 10 of Pentacles, and about the idea of home and completion being a shifting puzzle. What are the pieces that make a whole, what are the things you missed in your home(s) as you grew up, and do you now endeavour to make those things reality? What is your wishlist made up of? Whose home are you building to house your dreams — the one your mother told you about as a child, the one a partner described to you in the darkness of night, the one your heart has been singing about since you can remember?
The Ten of Pentacles describes belonging, describes the click of feeling like you’re finally where you feel you should be, the feeling of a door opening to you and beckoning you inside a welcoming and lush garden. We put down big bets to get what we want sometimes, we barter and trade a lot of our selves and our resources. Have you ever tried to cram a puzzle piece where it doesn’t quite fit, to complete a picture of something you want? Have you borrowed from other areas of your life to serve one that sits above all else? Who are you in this card right now — the shrouded figure beyond the arch, or the seated figure covered by blank spots and vines? Who is on the outside, and who is on the inside? Are they envious of the other, are they navigating decisions based on a definition of complete that doesn’t come from within? Who is more complete? And is that a false question? You’re the only one who knows. Tens mark the end of a cycle. What begins after is anyone’s guess.
L2: As I face the prospect of long, tiring and isolated days at home in the service of care-giving and domestic work, how can I cultivate self-care, creativity, joy and self expression?
I hope you’re doing well or hanging in there, letter writer. Your beautiful question came a while ago, and with time shifting the way it is these days, I wonder where you’ve landed with the practices you want to cultivate. The Four of Pentacles is a bit of an audit card, a review of the resources at hand. It speaks of grounding yourself in what you have, sometimes as a means to fend off the itch that comes from contemplating what you don’t have. I ask you, wherever you are, if your nest is lined and feathered with things that make you happy, that inspire you, that make you feel safe, that help you bear the length and weight of the days and the isolation. And do not let that review lead you down the path of what’s not there. Cultivate a joyous duty to the pursuit of small joys, to the celebration of presence not absence, to the satisfaction of getting your hands dirty, of feeling new things emerge from the compost of the old, the already-there, the overlooked. And if you feel stuck (staying too long in the energy of the Fours can do that), tend to the whisper that asks you why you’re scared of your itch, what reservoirs you feel are closed off to you, and why. Happy cultivating 🌱
L3: How do you stand by healthy relationship/communication habits that made a loved one reject you, mistreat you, justify their mistreatment of you, and eventually abandon you? After leaving my ex, I kept asking myself, “Was I wrong to speak out when his way of getting his needs met hurt me? Was I wrong to find better ways? Was I wrong to ask that we acknowledge the things that trigger fights between us and to be mindful of them?” But I am trying to find that unwavering confidence that I was not wrong or unreasonable. I don’t want to lose my ideas of a healthy relationship, my capacity to love and still speak my truth just because a loved one punished me for it.
I want to start by asking you to look again at your question, where I feel the seeds of many answers live. Similar to the first letter, inside you lives a true knowing accessible only to you. And similar to the previous letter, your question has evoked a Four of Cups, a review but this time of the things you are feeling, and where your attentions are caught or tied up. There’s a restlessness here at odds to the reality of where you stand, perhaps because the landscape feels too new, too foreign to what your bones are used to, and within that unfamiliarity doubt grows.
Sometimes it feels easier to sit in the past with well-worn memories than to grapple with the unknown and actively wrestle it into a shape you can recognise with your own hands. And that’s what you’ve already done, letter writer. You’ve started shaping your own reality by standing up for yourself, your own needs, your own boundaries, your own ideas of what feels healthy and good and loving. You stand on this new ground alone, with your truth whole and complete in your hands. Your heart may call back to when you stood beside another, hands clasped, with your truth warped and bent to whims outside of your own needs. Locate your happiness right now, wherever it lives, and locate the freedoms you’ve acquired from this rejection and abandonment. Things were lost, but things were also gained. Live in what you’ve gained, and let the rest flow down the river back to the past.
L4: I’ve noticed that I sometimes define myself based on what I am to other people / what I can do for other people. How can I use the next few months to nourish a stronger sense of self, one that doesn’t hinge on others?
I can’t describe your magic, letter writer, but I think there’s a whole journey, a whole lifetime or more that can be filled with you trying to articulate it for yourself, and letting it serve your own joy. This question you’ve asked is no one-off, it is a long haul journey that is likely to go beyond mere months. The Magician is here to channel and transmute, to make one thing into another, to make one thing into many, to understand the nature and energy of things so as to better shift their molecules. I am constantly preaching self-knowledge and exploration, and I will keep preaching it, because we are each our own languages, our own dynamic, bursting ecosystems of unique sparks and fizz and grit and guts. What delights you about yourself? And what inside you makes you feel a genuine sense of wonder? Make yourself a point of study, be fascinated with your own growth, watch how you go from one thing to the next, how you make magic in your life. Don’t focus on how that works out for others, let that handle itself. Your question already demonstrates curiosity, good observational skills, perhaps a propensity for reflection. These are your gifts and tools, they are already at work. Practice turning your gaze towards yourself and affirming the magic that’s already there, be patient, keep at it, let time and living do some of the work too.
Image descriptions:
10 of Pentacles — A figure is seated and facing the left, wearing a long orange skirt with a light yellow hem and covered in a light yellow shawl. We do not see their limbs or face, their body is surrounded / covered by 10 black circles out of which tall green stalks with large leaves emerge. They sit in front of an archway with smaller vines creeping up the left side, beyond which stands a figure shrouded in a white toga or sari, with cloth covering their face. They stand with their arms crossed.
4 of Pentacles — A short haired naked figure is hunched over four black holes, their long arms and long legs and feet disappearing into each hole. We do not see their face as they look downward, the landscape behind them is a flat green field and a sky lightly streaked with clouds.
4 of Cups — A figure sits by a river with their back against a tree trunk. They wear a long sleeved green shirt, blue plants, and black socks that cover their feet and ankles. They sit with their knees up and their forearms resting on their knees, their hands bent at the wrist pointing downwards. Their whole head is covered by an upturned white curved glass, from which two thin blue tendrils flow down into the mouths of three upturned white curved glasses in the blue water just beyond their feet. One of the tendrils is forked in two.
The Magician — Two disembodied hands face each other, one at the top of the card and the other at the bottom. Between their palms a dripping sword goes through the top hand, while the bottom of a lit wand / match goes through the bottom hand. Behind the lit wand is a two handled cup overflowing with two thin streams of water that also cut through the bottom hand and creating a border of water along the bottom, and behind the sword is a black circle with small green leaves floating upwards from it. The red smoke or flame from the lit wand / match floats upwards to create a border of red above the top hand. the background is a hazy yellow, pink and light purple.