Card of the Day: XI Strength

In some decks, this card is the 11th Major Arcana, the halfway point. In other decks, it’s in the 8th position. I find this interesting. In the 8th position, Strength becomes the prerequisite for the inward turning of the Hermit (IX) and the realization of the larger cycles of life in the Wheel of Fortune (X). In the 11th position, Strength becomes the result of this inward turning and larger perspective.

In any case, I think of Strength as the card of self-regulation. The ability to inhabit our body in all its wildness and power at the same time that we have the skills, experience, practices and resources to hold and contain that wildness—without domesticating it—for our larger desires and intentions. There’s no shortcut to this. I, at least, have had to create a lot of wreckage to get to a place in my life where I have some confidence in my ability to do this.

This came up powerfully for me the other day during a white racial affinity group meeting, where I felt my whole nervous system activate and stay there for close to 90 minutes. A friend asked me later what my body wanted to do when I felt that activation. I said run away or scream at people. Flight or fight. I asked her WHY? Why do I feel like this in these meetings? Her wise and kind response (short version: disrupting systems of power activates our survival mechanisms) has left me wondering…

As a white person, engaging in anti-racist work is not just about disruping social systems. It’s disrupting epigenetic, neurological and hormonal systems that have formed over centuries of participation in or witnessing of acts of extreme violence—against women, against “weak men,” against Black and Indigenous people, against the poor.

It makes it easier for me to hold myself in the work when I understand that these huge feelings are not a mistake, or a mystery. And doing this work means contending with those feelings, and doing it with others, because it’s too much to hold alone.