11/21/12—Practicing Love and Light

Today's Draw Classic*: The Sun from Margarete Petersen. What parts of yourself do you hide away in the dark? What aspects of yourself do you place boundaries around? What needs to be transformed in your world today?

The Sun card is welcome in any reading, because it traditionally signifies energy, illumination, breaking through and overall happiness. Margarete Petersen goes further to point out the sun illuminates the "boundary of day and night" and transforms everything it touches. Which is to say that everything you bring out into the light transforms. This is a significant lesson, worthy of its place in the major arcana of the tarot. The Sun appears two cards before "completion" in the 22-card journey of life lessons. And its bright yellow glow aligns with the third chakra, which is the energy center in your body having to do with personal power and self esteem. 

Put it all together and it's telling us this: in order for our dark sides to be transformed, we have to illuminate them, bring them out into the light, and embrace them as we embrace the other aspects of our lives. In the poem that accompanies this card, she writes: 

"Illuminating the dark and light parts of the world, none more attractive than the other."

Until we see that all that we are is made of light—that the dark parts are gifts to guide us on our path and challenge our self acceptance and love—we can only move so far along our evolutionary path. Do you see the couple in the tantric pose beneath the sun? Tantra is all about liberation and rebirth, the coming together of Shakti and Shiva...the masculine and feminine parts of our nature. The way I see the two in this instance is the coming together of our dark and light sides, illuminating them both and fusing them together. 

For many years I pursued a path of illuminating my light side and trying to drown my dark side in the light. To be honest, I'm still doing that to a degree. But over the years, I have illuminated different sides of my personality and transformed them. I used to be much quicker to anger. I was far more confrontational. Well, I still am, but now in a more loving way. And for many years the casual observer probably wouldn't have known about my lifelong struggle with depression. I mean, c'mon, I'm such a bright and cheery sort...haha. But it's true. I do believe that much of my life has been lived beneath that veil. 

In the past six months or so, the gift of dramatic mood swings spurred on by menopause has caused me to address this issue medically. To bring it out into the light. The situation became so painful, destructive and disturbing that I had to seek help. I had to admit to myself that I could no longer handle this situation on my own. So now I take a tiny little pill every day and I am, honestly, transformed. Things that used to send me spinning into darkness no longer affect me that way. 

This is who I am without the disease of depression. But I never would have arrived here without bringing my issue out into the light. My pride kept it in the dark for many years. "This is something I can manage on my own." And to be fair, I kind of did. I never had suicidal depression. Just persistent low grade depression. But low grade or high test, pretending it didn't exist was denying the "me" of who I am. 

Yeah, so this is personal stuff that people don't talk about in "polite society". But that's exactly the point. In our efforts to be accepted and liked, we resort to NOT accepting and liking ourselves. Which means that we put up a boundary between who we really are and the public facade. Which means no one can ever really like and accept us as we are. Which keeps us caught in a cycle of self rejection and self hate! The Sun comes to us today to illuminate those areas, so we can truly walk in love and light. 

For those of you on "the path", consider this today. Walking in love and light can only occur if we turn the entirety of our being toward the sun. The moon, the card before this in the major arcana, always has a dark side and a light side. We never see its dark side. But as we travel around the sun, it shows us all sides. There is no dark side. Just light. And the same is true for us as well.

*From a post on 4/27/11.

9/24/12—Seeing the Light

Today's Draw: The Ten of Feathers from the Collective Tarot. Does everything seem hopeless right now? Have you been out of sorts for so long that you don't even know what normal feels like? Does there seem to be no light at the end of the tunnel?

Last Friday night the picture of a redheaded girl dog popped up on my Facebook feed. It said she'd just been rescued from a high kill shelter. She'd been shot three times. And she was now living in daycare until they found someone to foster her. She had the SADDEST eyes. 

I started thinking about how my boy Kizzie was abused before he was rescued. And how he could tell her his story about how he found a safe place, and maybe make her feel safe herself. And I thought my girl Magick could help brighten her spirits as she does for everyone she meets. So I put in an application to foster her. And she came home with me today. 

So, yes. Marble has three places where there are, I don't know, buckshot? in her body. You can feel the little metal balls. And one thing they didn't say...I'm pretty sure she's had babies not all that long ago because her nipples are very long and she's got a tiny pooch like Magick had when I met her. 

So put yourself in this girl's paws...She's been shot and they just left the shrapnel in her. She's just nursed babies. She lived a life of dangerous mirauding. She somehow made her way to a high kill shelter. Then, practically as they're putting the noose around her neck, two girls from the Bohemian Bow-Wow volunteered their time to drive through two states to pick her and bunch of others up, then bring them all back up here to City Dogs Rescue. Then she spent a few days in day care, with no mommy. And who knows if she ever had a mommy to begin with, because she seems to be in the habit of scavenging for food. 

And just when things calmed down enough for her to think, I go and pick her up, drive her into another state (well, from DC into VA...haha) and put her in a home with two snooty dogs who seem like they've probably never had to beg for food or defend their territory a day in their life! Life must just seem like it's spiraled crazy out of control for Marble. What next? More of the same kind of hellish life that leaves scars on beautiful girls? 

These are the sad eyes I was a sucker for. 

What Marble doesn't know—and what we often don't know when we feel like everything's gone to shizz—is that things are already looking up. That started the second the high kill shelter got in contact with City Dogs. Now Magick and Kizzie and I are there to love her until she finds a forever mommy. And her forever mommy is going to be a good one—one that doesn't want to trifle with pedigreed show dogs. One that wants a mutt with a history and scars and buckshot in her leg. 

When you've lived in stress and pain and disaster for a long time, it's really hard to know when things are going to start looking up. In a traditional deck, this card would deliver a lesson about how someone didn't "see the light" until it was too late. They weren't able to get out of the insanity inside their head—or out of the focus on negative things—in time to see the beauty that was all around them all along. 

That's the thing about Miss Marble. All those babies and buckshot...all that abandonment and abuse...all the stress and chaos in her routine...and she is still a loving girl. Came right up to me the second I met her and kissed me on my face, as she's done a hundred times today. She took a nap in my arms this afternoon, hanging half off the sofa, completely trusting a woman she'd just met. And right now she's zonked out on the carpet, legs splayed in a vulnerable position. Because she trusts. God only knows why. But she still does. 

Today's Ten of Feathers is about those times in our lives when our head is lost in depression, anxiety, chaos, confusion and/or feelings of hopelessness. Times when we're not sure what's down or up. If you're there, think of Marble. Think of how she needed help and got it. Think of how she's trusting the wisdom of life...the course of her path. And think about how all of it is leading toward her hitting the ultimate doggy jackpot—a safe, kibble-rich forever home where every delicious lick of sweet loving she gives is received with joy and returned with profound gratitude. 

9/14/12—Choosing the Consequence

Today's Draw: Two of Swords from the Victorian Romantic Tarot. Do you tend to hold emotions and frustrations inside until you ultimately burst? Or do you find that you dispense your emotions as they come? What is your emotional style?

So it's the final day of the One Card Challenge. Today's interpretation comes from something I saw in the card as I looked at it again this morning. 

She's got stormy skies, rough water and dangerous rocks behind her. So we can interpret that as meaning that the worst is behind her. But we could also see it the opposite way. To me, she looks like she's about to fall backward, like in one of trust tests they do at corporate retreats...you know, where you fall back into the waiting arms of others? 

I have a love/hate relationship with my emotions. Sometimes it feels good to just feel and let your emotions out. Other times, it can be scary. Emotions can be a gateway to depression and wallowing for me. Ain't pretty, but it's true. 

To me, this card seems to be saying "I've tried everything to release this pain short of letting it wash over me. So I'm just going to fall into it and trust I won't drown." That's what all the experts say to do, right? Feel what you feel. Let it all out. Feel it until you heal it.

I used to be really good at crying and "feeling it". But somewhere along the line, all of that went away. I don't know if it's age or negative reinforcement or numbness or what. I can't do it anymore. Which isn't to say I don't still cry from time to time. But now I cry when the rain barrel is full and can't hold any more emotion. Or when really bad stuff happens, like when my brother was dying. 

Honestly, I spent so many years being either content and "normal" or down and depressed (I've never been manic, which is evident by how little ever gets done around this house) that I don't even know what's healthy or "normal" anymore. Is it healthy to just let emotions wash over you? Or is it healthy to just take them by the jugful when you've got the capacity? With my history of depression, falling back into the waters frightens me. 

The good news is that somewhere between making better choices, building self esteem, meditating, gaining a spiritual purpose and starting on prescribed pharmaceuticals, I feel pretty even most of the time these days. A couple of years ago menopausal mood swings made antidepressants wise, if not necessary, for me. But all those years of resisting them makes my knee-jerk reactions err on the side of not swimming in the deep end if I can help it. 

Pretty much every entry I write comes with an answer. But this one does not. Will this woman have the courage to fall backward? And if she does fall in back in trust, will she get taken by a rip tide? Or will she wash gently back up on shore, weary from the waves, but nonetheless cleansed? I really don't know. 

That's part of the dilemma of the Two of Swords. A choice has to be made and every choice we make in life comes with some sort of gift and some sort of consequence. We usually choose based on the gifts. But we do have to be cognizant that we're also choosing a consequence. 

Perhaps that's what she's really falling back into in this card...a choice. And she just has to trust that whatever consequence she's choosing is one she can live with. 

4/25/12—Getting Help When You Need It

Today's Draw: Dreamer Five from Tarot of the Sidhe—Hope Discarded. Are you thinking of making a choice that you KNOW is bad for you? Does it seem like there's always a black cloud hanging over your head? Are you just "not yourself" anymore?

Well, here's a bleak little draw for your humpday musings. The figure in the card has cut her cords of attachment—to hope, to humanity, to source—and she unceremoniously tosses her blade aside. Hope hasn't abandoned her. She has abandoned hope. The blood of her detachment taints the landscape around her. All that is left for her are feelings of negativity, defeat and powerlessness. 

The end. 

So have a nice Wednesday, readers!

Ha! You knew I wouldn't abandon you. Nor would I abandon hope. But sometimes I might forget it. 

I'm like a balanced/depressive. That's different from a manic depressive in that I never get manic...haha. At no time do I ever have crazy unbridled energy. The bipolar people I've known seem to like their manic phases because they get so much done. So I must admit I feel a little cheated. I'm either depressed or normal/balanced. From the depressed times, I know what it's like to forget about hope. And I also know what it's like to just let go and spiral downward as a choice, like this lady has done here. 

And I hate to say what I'm about to say because it makes me feel like every pushy religious zealot I hate, but God is the answer. And drugs. Drugs help, too. Antidepressants, not self medication, mind you. Because when your hormones are out of whack, Prozac will get you back.™ (Lines like these are why I earn the big bucks in advertising.)

I say God is the answer, too. And by that I mean that having faith and a regular spiritual practice that includes meditation or time with your higher power helps a lot. It especially helps keep you centered so you don't get down in the first place. But it's not the only answer and if you really are chemically depressed, your results may be quicker and better with modern medicine.

If you need help, there's no shame in seeking it. I've seen therapists at three different times in my life. And when the mood swings of menopause hit, I finally decided to take an antidepressant. I thought it would make me happy go lucky. Instead it just keeps me balanced. (Foiled again!) So if you're like me and pride has stood in your way, talk to your doctor. You don't have to feel this way. 

One of the things I've learned from the ups and downs of my life is that depression doesn't always look or feel like depression. Sometimes it looks and feels like making choices you know are bad for you, but you make them anyway. Sometimes it looks and feels like staying with someone who makes you feel "less than". Sometimes it looks and feels like a drug or alcohol problem. Sometimes it feels like nobody cares, so eff them all! Sometimes it looks and feels like life sucks and then you die. Sometimes it feels like chronic anger. Desperation. Negativity. Defeat. Powerlessness. All of those things, if they've caught you in their grips, are things your doctor should know about. Even if it feels like you don't feel like telling him. 

The thing about depression is that you usually don't know how bad it got until you're out of it. Sometimes you don't even know you're in it until you're out. When I look back on my life, I'm embarrassed to say I've had periods of YEARS in depression...where depression was my norm. I can even pinpoint times when I was so defeated that a thin line stood between pulling myself back out and cutting myself off from hope. In retrospect, I can see those times as foolish gambles. Because when you're that far gone...when you're feeling powerless...you effectively are. In reality you always have the power, but sometimes you don't care enough to use it. And it's easy to cross the line.

So if you're feeling low or self-loathing/self-destructive and it doesn't look like things are heading up, talk to your doctor. It may not even be depression. Hey, I was severely anemic for two years of my life and that caused a lack of energy and doldrums. Sleep problems can cause emotional strain. Wheat allergies can lower your energy. And sometimes you just make idiotic decisions. There are any number of things that could be going on. And maybe they'll get better on their own. Maybe they won't. 

If you're within the reach of my words, I know for a FACT that you deserve to feel better. In fact, you wouldn't be reading my stuff if you weren't interested in improving yourself and your connection to source, because it's all I ever talk about. So if you're "not yourself" and haven't been for a while, you deserve to know why. Even if it means dragging your ass to the doctor. And if they tell you they don't have an appointment anytime soon, start crying and tell them you're afraid you don't have that long (even if you're just being dramatic). The first step toward feeling better is letting someone know who can help. YOU deserve that.