I am determined to work on my future and prepare myself to retire from my full time job in 4 years. Part of this is working on a book and my plan to become a traveling tarot reader. I also have a dream to have a seasonal tarot and tea house here in Rochester where we would bring in speakers and have retreats. In preparation for all this I am going to be making more posts about the tarot. I want to look at each card in relation to my life and experiences. As a reader for over 30 years my interpretations of the cards have changed many times. I learn something new almost daily. I believe it is important to stay open to new perspectives . Today I start in the most obvious place, The Fool.

The Fool is the zero card. I was taught that the fool walks through the story of the tarot. Story telling is a wonderful way to weave a reading together. If I think of the person I am reading for as the fool of the deck and I read the cards thinking of where they are in the journey it helps me to tell a strong story. I have found that people relate to a story much easier than pieced together symbols that may not mean anything to them. The fool depictions are different in many decks. My favorite deck for reading is the Robin Wood Tarot. I have collected many decks over the years and occasionally I will find a deck that fits well for a particular person I read regularly for. So I am always looking for decks that I resonate with.

Right now I am at that 0 point of my life, the fool, the place of new beginnings. For many months I was stuck at the 10 of Swords. I was desperately trying to pull swords out of myself. I just wanted the pain I was feeling to be over. I fought the grief and was holding all kinds of anger and bitterness. I was damaging myself. I would get to a point where I thought that maybe it was finally over and then something would happen that I perceived as hurtful and it would bring it all back up again. I had that experience very recently. I was shocked at how much still remained and how in a moment all the ground I had seemed to gain was lost. But in reality that is not true. I am standing on the cliff right now with my little dog and my bags packed and what happened? I looked back. In looking back I got lost for a few days. Our brains cannot tell the difference between something happening in reality and what we are telling it is happening so it sets off all the alarms and our body reacts with chemicals to protect us. It feels awful. I am learning to breath and take the time to think these things though. I did not do that with this most recent incident and ended up saying some things I regret. My looking back caused me to question everything. It is time for me to take the step off the cliff. I cannot see exactly where I am headed at the moment but I have some ideas. If we wait on the cliff for a map or for exact instructions we may end up spending our whole lives there. In fact there is a danger that we may just sit down there with our back to the future. I do not want to do that. I am ready to move on and to stop trying to change something I can no longer change. Today I had someone say something that I knew already in my head but I need to connect more to my heart. If we focus on what we have instead of what we have lost or we think we should have we will be much happier people. When we are able to see things in this way we can move on. So …what I am grateful for?

1. My home which is a true refuge and place of love.
2. My consort who loves me in a way I have never experienced before.
3. My close friends who have stood by me through all of this.
4. My life experience which helps me to make better choices and to help others who are on a similar path.
5. My job which allows me to be creative and to also be able to financially live a good life and help those I love.
6. The lessons I have been presented with.
7. My teachers who have both been people who have been loving and warm and those who broke my heart.
8. My heart, it has been broken many times but is still open, loving and empathetic.

There are many other things I am grateful for and I will remember those things when my inner critique, the squirrel committee, starts trying to drown out the positives in my life.

I welcome the fool role in my life right now. I am ready to start over. I must decide if I still have things in my bag for this journey that I no longer need and put those aside. It is time to move forward.