Today I pulled a card titled ‘Taking Care of Ourselves’ which reads as follows:
If you are unable to take care of yourself, how can you take care of anyone else? How can you take care of the person you love? When you are here for yourself, when you have reestablished some basic order and peace within yourself, then you can take care of the person you love. It could be your son, your daughter, your partner or your friend. But if you are not able to be here for yourself, it will not be possible for you to be here for them. That’s why you must come back to yourself.
Yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard this kind of thing before. It’s safe to say the concept of self-care has been overplayed and even for me eventually any lectures on this topic go in one ear and out the other.
But, I tried to keep an open mind and heart while reading this today and a few specific things stood out to me, and then of course I wanted to make them into a tarot spread.
The parts that drew me in: first, the idea of reestablishing basic order within yourself. As someone who often feels like a roiling chaos demon, establishing order within myself sounds very grounding and appealing yet extremely difficult. Emperor energy in the best way.
Also, reestablishing peace within yourself. In my last post I talked about how we are all meant to live in peace but also the complexities of achieving this in a world that often seems so grim. Reestablishing peace within myself is a never-ending process.
I’m also drawn to the notion of coming back to yourself. There are a lot of ways you could interpret the meaning of coming back to yourself, but it feels very energetic to me. It reminds me of a mantra from Danielle Laporte which has stuck with me for years: “I call all of my power back to me now. I am whole and complete.”
Finally, of course, all of this self-care relates back to caring for others. Which is EXTREMELY important. I am acutely aware of this as someone with a lot of luck and privilege. So many people are currently struggling and being villainized. People we know personally need our care, and the whole god damn world needs our care.
I am no one to argue with Thich Naht Hanh, but I do know that to some degree, we actually can take care of other people even when we can’t take care of ourselves. For a while. But it is not sustainable in the long run. So, yeah. Taking care of ourselves is important, all the trite sayings are true.
That was the preamble to lead us into the actual tarot spread! I will offer a sample reading for myself, and as always invite you to try this spread for yourself as well if you’d like.
For my own reading I’m using the Light Seer’s Tarot.
I love those moments when you pull a tarot card and immediately sense it is perfect for the situation. That’s what happened when I saw the Nine of Pentacles representing how I can reestablish order within myself. Before pulling cards, I commented that this concept had Emperor energy, and the Nine of Pentacles does have some similarities to the Emperor. Both have themes of self-discipline, restraint, structure.
But the Nine of Pentacles – particularly in the imagery here – had the addition of joy. This card reminds me that I find order within myself not through punishment. Not through grinding. But through joy. In order to have a true desire to establish order within myself, I need to keep in mind the expansion this offers. The kind of order I’m craving feels good. It feels like: I’m comfortable in my skin. I have my shit together. I trust myself to do what I need to do.
For any of us to have order within ourselves, we have to clearly identify what that means to us individually. And for me, it means exactly what I’m getting from the Nine of Pentacles. Joyful order.
For insight on establishing peace within myself I have the Six of Cups. The imagery here really draws on the passage of time and nostalgia we often associate with this card. This hits hard as I’m still processing the death of my mom. I recently stopped by my childhood home and as I looked at the dark windows I had a sudden vivid memory of the house being filled with light when I was a kid, friends coming in and out. Now I’m a middle aged woman and my mom is gone. Time is a cruel mistress, as they say.
We know that on a metaphysical level time is an illusion. Ask a quantum physicist, they’ll explain it better than I can. I know this on a spiritual level and a scientific level. But on a human level, the passing of time feels very real and sometimes painful. But this card reminds me that to find peace within myself I need to find peace with the passing of time. Something I’m always working on as someone born with a hardcore nostalgia gene.
The Three of Swords offers advice on coming back to myself and yikes. Well. At first I was like screw this card. But in softening myself and gazing at it for a moment a mantra comes to me: pain is real but it does not define me. I can almost feel the person on the card shouting this. So to come back to myself I have to validate my pain but not glorify it. It is one aspect of who I am but it is not the whole.
Now I have the Eight of Cups suggesting how I can care for others. Another card that hits hard. There are certain people in my life that I feel a strong urge to rescue. I want to save them. I want to find the exact right thing to say or do to make everything okay for them. I desire this deeply.
But this card reminds me I can only do so much. Once I have cared for myself, then I can give others the very best and most genuine care I’m capable of. But I can’t control how it is received or what the results will be. I can give in the most heart-centered way possible and then release. That’s all.
Thanks for being here, and if you give the spread a try feel free to let me know how it goes. TAKE CARE!