Using with Tarot as a Tool of Self Reflection in My Healing Journey

As I prepare to start a new job tomorrow, it’s time to bring down the curtain on my healing journey and why tarot.

When I was 23 or 24, I had my palm and tarot cards read by someone who lived across the street from The Source, where I worked at the time. He told me I’d had two great loves in my life. And I held on to that in my darkest moments.

10 years ago, I met the woman who would inflict years of narcissist abuse on me. This type of abuse is emotional – when I draw myself with bleeding eyes it’s to represent the pain I feel on the inside since there are no physical bruises. It’s hard to talk about because our culture has bastardized psychological terms that many of us truly need. Gaslight and narcissism are in the mainstream and it feels like uninformed people use these and other terms so flippantly that others I’ve spoken with who have experienced this type abuse are afraid to use the words.

I was targeted. She told me that God put me on this earth to serve her and her children. She made me question my own reality. She isolated me from my friends and family. She told me I was never allowed to quit The Source – because of the ego boost she got when I got us free concert tickets or someone recognized my name in public. She drained me of all of myself and then asked what happened to me. She bankrupt me financially, she dehumanized me in ways I’m not ready to share. She blamed me for everything she did wrong.

But I am healing and growing, coming back to the proud, strong, creative lion that’s always been inside of me. Years of therapy started this journey, but tarot is the self-reflection tool I needed to truly dive deeper within, face the darkness I experienced, as well as my own, and come out the other side. Few take this intense of a healing journey, but I can see how I’ve grown, how I’ve been able to regulate my emotions and trust myself again. I can look in the mirror again. I can take a selfie again. I can see myself again.

I’ve spent this year removing anyone from my life that doesn’t see my value. Clients, friends I had for decades, everyone. I’m starting over not from scratch but from WISDOM. One of the final things I had to let go was my freelance career. She told me we’d be partners, but instead just used it to funnel more of my money into her pocket. Without boundaries, every client’s sob story resulted in my working for little and sometimes nothing. I never wanted to be a digital marketer anyway – I studied film! I’m an artist! 

She has filled my nightmares for far far too long. Time to start living MY dreams without her ghost haunting me from inside my own mind.

I know I have to write very clearly about the suffering I endured, and I will. But I’ll never say her name, because the only way to get rid of a narcissist is to starve them of attention. The story of my healing is what’s going to inspire people, not her grabs for attention, not her abuse. Not anymore.

I fired my last client after I’d asked for change and respect, but they couldn’t even open any of my emails over the course of the first two weeks of August, so I stood up for myself and quit. I’m not taking any more disrespect, I’ve worked so hard in my career and in my personal life – I deserve better and I finally realize that. 

The tarot series is the story of my death and rebirth. The cards represent the inner work, discovering my femininity, coming back into my strength, facing The Devil, allowing my past self to die so the woman I was always meant to be could be born. That’s why I moved to Portland, this work had to be done in isolation. I’m ready for new challenges, and this time I’ll face them with stronger boundaries and a deep love and respect for myself.