Friday night, I came home from dinner and as I sat my phone down on my desk, one of my three hololithic gem rings, the amethyst one, broke very suddenly. I was kind of surprised by it, given I had just bought these rings a couple of months ago while I was in Australia.
Sunday morning, I'm at a psychic fair that I'm pulled toward without understanding why. I don't believe in psychic abilities as a supernatural power and am sort of convinced that this narrative is the only way people with preternatural empathy can frame what they can do without being held accountable for it. Doesn't matter what art they pick, at the end of the day, they're not reaching to the divine, but inside towards their intuitive skills that are good at reading the micromovements and the imperceptible energy that emanates from each of us.
A tarot reader summons me over, offering to do a reading. She wears a knitted Halloween sweater vest and closes her eyes to focus for a moment on whatever it is "they" want to tell me, not naming who "they" is,.
She pulls the Queen of Swords, Transformation, Archangel Haniel, Strength, Three of Water, a card I can't remember but it featured two dogs playing cards and felt like a cosmically appropriate card of high contrast levity in a spread of cards that told a very profound story arc of a brilliant independent woman who is undergoing an incredible growth journey... only to stop at a reminder to take it seriously, sure, but not so seriously that you don't stop and laugh.
She looked at me and said, "You need to understand. According to these cards, everything is about to change."
And regardless of whatever spiritual backing that spread of cards is meant to have, it was a mirror to me, reminding me of where I am right now with myself in life.
I keep--without thinking--stepping my foot forward dramatically and then have a brief moment of self-doubt and fear that I will at some point step wrong and lose my footing, but so far, each step I take, even the awkward ones, lands in place one way or another.
Last week, I had to lead all of these architecture sessions. I started the week frustrated at the size the sessions had grown to. I was sick, unsure if I'd be able to land the steps. Along the way, people gave me constructive feedback and somehow I managed to take it and thank them for that feedback and actually mean it.
Somehow I managed to be vulnerable enough to share with people that that path I have taken to get to where I am has not been easy and sometimes I feel like I am held to unfair standards as a woman. The feedback was received. I reminded myself, aloud, that maybe sometimes those double-standards are things no longer being enforced on me though and are things I could stand to set better boundaries for myself.
That's the Queen of Swords' story: She's a woman who's endured great pain and turned the pain into something beautiful and spoke her truth while doing so.
Eventually I will have a misstep. But I like to think that maybe it's safe finally to let myself believe that missteps can still land softer than I fear.
