The Tarot Diaries, my 78-week project has had me delving deeper than I anticipated, much faster than expected. In today’s post I share about self-identity, the myth of Narcissus, the cloudy depths of the subconscious, dealing with the throes of sobriety and memory loss. Trigger warnings are listed at the beginning of the essay. It’s a vulnerable one folks.
The four of wands is a quintessential happy card. I pulled it on the wrong week. It’s my birthday tomorrow. I can’t help but see the people, happy, celebratory, heading off to some stable future they seem to feel very certain of. The past couple of days I have been a ball of anxiety, specifically today.
My life is probably the most stable it’s ever been…but on my birthday, I feel the tug of lack. This is a very silly thing, as I have more than I ever thought possible. I am very grateful for my life…my family, the kids, our health, our home, our pup. 2013 Rikki could have never visualized anything, especially a way into this beautiful life.
My birthday was a time of celebration. The people in the card are celebrating. It used to be an excuse for me to throw a party (I rarely needed an excuse, but still). Birthdays as an adult in recovery with two small children are…ordinary.
There is beauty in ordinary. There is still a yearning there…to be known…to be seen. To be truly seen by our fellow humans is surely worth celebrating.
Inevitably, I end up getting rather grumpy as we get closer to the day (i.e. me yesterday and today), and end up crying at some point because I feel let down. I don’t feel the glamor and excitement I used to around this day.
This is not a bad thing. First off, the kind of partying I was doing was hardly glamorous. The excitement was simply anticipation for my next drink. My logical brain knows this. Second off, we grow as humans and priorities change.
My birthday was one of those times I rarely had to explain my voracious drinking. I usually had to coax others to partake. My birthday gave me the confidence to demand people notice me, spend time with me, drink with me.
I am richer in my life, now. I have two little humans who love every moment we spend together (for the most part, at least for now). I have a partner I am so grateful to…the understanding and love there gives me the ability to stand my ground.
When I see the four wands in the card now, I think of home. I think of the balance that enables us to build our lives confidently. I think of my creativity, that has granted me mental bandwidth and better self-esteem. I think of my body, a long-neglected vessel that I am trying to tend to with more love and care. I think of my family, truly my everything. They are threaded through my being and my everyday in a visceral way I can hardly describe. I am so so lucky, even when I am too stubborn to see it. I think of my spiritual practice, which has led me to know witchcraft, and Catholicism, contemplative Christianity, Zen Buddhism, animism, and ultimately, that everything is god.
Perhaps the people in the card are celebrating not a new adventure or abundance recently won. Perhaps they are sharing praise for the beautiful lives they’ve already co-created with the universe. Perhaps the invitation is to see all that’s there.
What helps to hold you up?
When you are having a day where you are feeling too reactive or overwhelmed, what is one practice that could help you zoom out and see everything as it is?
What do you feel needs celebrating in this moment? It can be any thing, big or small. Who are you celebrating this with?
In the card there is a castle indicating some type of future. What does that look like for you? What is the future you would find worth celebrating? What goodness are you wanting to call in for you, for your loved ones, for the collective?
When I entered the tiny washroom, I could still feel the bass thrumming in my veins. Dance music played outside. I escaped here, if just for a moment, to collect myself after another shot of Jack. Who knows how many shots at this point? My stomach turned, and I took a breath.
These quiet moments in the small bathroom, the only one in this bar, allowed my mind to run away from the liquor-fueled avoidance. I drank to penetrate the veil. It was though I wore a gauze shroud my entire life, every person out of focus. I was unable to touch, unable to connect, unable to truly be seen by anyone. The alcohol allowed me to pulled the shroud off of my body. I was able to be loud, and messy, and seen, and I kept telling myself “this is the closest to the true me I will ever be able to come.”
Of course, this was self-delusion. The hazy cloth that usually kept me separate from all of the people I came across in life now simply took the form of a glass wall. I look in the mirror, but I don’t see myself. I don’t recognize the girl, the person, the woman, standing there. She looks vacant in dirty little room. The light flickers and causes her skin to look sickly. I stand there staring in the mirror, not really seeing, not really recognizing the person who stood there looking back. It was time to re-enter the fray. It was time to go back into the sort-of club in the small town I swore I was going to leave to dance and drink with people I had convinced myself I had connected with.
I think deep down, I knew that I had severed all connection…most importantly, the connection to myself.
This flashback paints a little bit of a picture of the longing that fueled my depression and binge drinking during most of my 20s. Ya’ll, I sat down to write about the three of cups so many times yesterday. But the chalices in the image just keep tripping me up. What is the cheers for? What’s inside those vessels they are about to bring to their lips? Is it fuel for the fire, or cleansing water to truly see?
My initial thoughts on this card from Monday were that community was the essence, and something vitally missing from my life. It almost made me nostalgic from the days of drinking. But as one might be able to tell from the flashback above, being surrounded by people doesn’t mean you don’t feel alone. In fact, there are times it’s more isolating. It’s easy to turn blame inward. You have to be the problem, right?
A collage made with vintage materials found during my artist dates recently. Also used one of my image transfers I tried the first week of The Artist’s Way program. Note to self: do more of these.
I don’t remember the exact moment I decided to start chipping away pieces of myself to try and fit into the ideas I believe society has for me. I don’t think there was a solid moment where I began to shove my true self underwater in order to step forward and fit in.
But I do know my sobriety date. December 11, 2017. The day I decided to allow myself to break the surface of the water, to re-emerge to the world, to start breathing again. I don’t know…that feels like something worth celebrating.
And every single day since has been a lesson in remembering that I can continue to get to know myself. I can continue to change and evolve and grow. In the hopes of making more friends and becoming a friend to my body, we decided to join a gym this week. This is typically not a good move for me. It means wasting money and taking on the guilt of never showing up for my health.
So far it has gone well. There is a spot for the kids to hang out with other kids and play. I get to chill on the stationary bike and crochet. The husband gets to lift or do whatever he chooses. We break apart into our own little worlds, then come back together in our home. Family is also a community. Sometimes this is what can give us the strength to allow our world to expand.
I often share that my husband and kids saved my life. I think this is true. I knew for a long time I had to stop drinking, but honestly didn’t see my own life as worthy of being saved. But I could show up for those I love. I did this long enough, and worked on my own healing long enough, that now I do see that getting sober just for myself is worthy. I am worth re-building a life for. I am worth pursuing a creative career that lights me up. I am worth showing up to the gym for to take care of a body long abused and neglected.
All of this disparate parts make up my ever-shifting and multifaceted community. I celebrate with all of them. My family, my body, my mental health, my creativity, my IRL friends, my online friends, the plants and animals and insects I encounter everyday in this tiny little world I get to walk through.
How lucky to live this life. How lucky to have survived. How lucky to have learned to love…not only others, but myself. Today, I celebrate that.
Art started this morning after my morning pages live; then finished this afternoon once the bottom layers dried. A page from my new journalI finished this painting, first canvas done in a long time
An update on my current journaling and sketchbook setup!
A poem on staying alive and present in a heart-shattering world. Every night I take a walk around sunset, and I almost always take photos of what I see to remember the moments that remind me of the interconnectedness of all things. It’s a reminder that we are all god, and all the space between all things is god, and at our basic level, we are all the same. As a recovering addict, it can be hard to witness this world that sees children and people dying and suffering in unjust ways. The moment I feel my cells buzzing with the call of brothers and sisters all across this planet, I know I am alive…if just for now. And I can keep going. And I will keep trying.
Found my way back to inspiration for my favorite form of expression. Often I will go on creative sprints and then feel the need to take a break from this particular medium. Always a happy return. Completed after doing some Oracle art tonight. Readings still available in my Etsy, and they include a lovely one-of-a-kind mixed media artwork to go along with your message, affirmation and prompts. shops on sale 25% until Valentine’s Day.
My Royal Talens sketchbook has become a catch all for my art journaling.
I was inspired to work with my inner child today. Little Rikki and I flipped through a little Barbie booklet I picked ip the other day — I finally watched the Barbie movie. And it reminded me how much I loved the color pink.
It was combined with my love of ballet and dance. I practiced free dance for the first time this last week. Due to chronic body pain, I have struggled to do move my body, let alone feel confident in moving freely. The past three months I have been focused solely on a gentle yoga practice to help facilitate easier days in my body and to free dance.
Then my grandma gifted me a statue I remember from when I used to stay at her house as a child. It’s a dark metal statue of a ballerina, tutu and all. It’s helped me to address the fact that there are some things I never let myself dive too far into. I quit gymnastics and dance as a kid due to horrible migraines, and by the time I was older, activities such as dance team were far too expensive.
The next time I remember dancing is late nights out dancing. Not fond memories for a recovering alcoholic, though not all bad. Not the type of free dance I’m going for though.
Anyways, all of this culminated on the page, and adding free dance to my habit tracker…although it is one I will be a lot more patient with. It has taken me a long time to get to this point. I don’t want to force it. No freedom in that, either.
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My biggest challenge for most of my life has been my inability to stay consistent with my goals. In recent years, since getting sober, I have been able to push myself through some of the resistance. Ultimately, I didn’t see a huge transformation with it until I received my ADHD diagnosis. Everything suddenly took off.
My creative journaling practice, my writing, and finally a movement practice have all become staples in my everyday life. I am so grateful. I am working through some of the grief, anger and loss that have come with realizing I have been trying to hold myself to unrealistic standards most of my life. Growing up with undiagnosed ADHD didn’t look difficult on the surface (I was labeled a gifted kid) but it was exhausting, and all fell apart once I went to college and no longer had the stability I grew up with.
It is hard to acknowledge that had I known this about myself, so much could have been different. Perhaps I wouldn’t have signed over years of my life to alcoholism. Perhaps I wouldn’t have flunked out of college. Maybe I would have cared for my body as the sacred vessel that it is.
I am sitting with these complex feelings, and often process them as I sit with my art journal, because I know that I must feel them, and let them go. It is not helpful to hang on to this longing for times past. All I can do is manage my life as it is happening right now. And right now, I am pretty proud of how far I have come.
Starmoth Press 