Card of the Day: Three of Wands

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Wild Unknown Tarot [/caption]

This is my very favorite card in the whole Wild Unknown deck. Leaving aside what this card traditionally means, meditating on this card has given me insight into my own need for a stable container to play and explore. For me, this card illustrates the tension between structure and freedom, discipline and pleasure, containment and wandering. And so it’s a great example for me of the power of tarot and of an image to stimulate deep inner knowing.

I’ve been taking some time during this waning moon phase to let myself be. It’s been a time of painful relational ruptures and rearrangements, of shame, anxiety, and grief. It’s also been a time of joy and pleasure, of laughter and play, and of rest. In other words, it’s been what life is like when I’m plugged into it.

Last night I got to attend the book launch party for my friend Bethany Saltman’s new book Strange Situation: A Mother’s Journey Into the Science of Attachment. Hearing her talk about Mary Ainsworth (looking for an unsung feminist icon? Read the book!) and her own process of writing the book affirmed something so deep for me: that even within a white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist culture, it is still possible to give birth to an idea, nurture it into an obsession, and with enough attention and trust and sweat, a person can bring a powerful, new idea into the universe. And not just any new idea, but a new idea that can actually change the way we relate to ourselves and everything in our world—for the better.

I was pierced last night during the book Q & A when Bethany talked about the attachment system as a “set-goal system” (read the book!). We will keep looking for that “special relationship” that makes us feel felt—FOREVER—until we find it. And that the stories I’ve told myself about all the ways I haven’t felt “felt” can change. And that I can learn to be the one I’ve been looking for my whole life—the one who feels me, who cares, who attends and soothes. And that learning to do that for myself, I am empowered to turn that outward in a genuine way.

To all of the many people in my life who have made me feel felt: THANK YOU for helping me grow into my humanity.