162. Tarot and the Inner Child
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On this very special, workshop-sized episode of Tarot for the Wild Soul, we’re revisiting a previously released episode to serve and support your inner child.
We explore engaging with our inner children in the midst of a pandemic and the Tarot cards that are show up as beautiful anchors to support us in this huge work.
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About the Episode
On this very special, workshop sized episode of Tarot for the Wild Soul, we drop in deeply about the Inner Child, and more specifically, what it is to engage with our inner children in the midst of a pandemic.
The majority of folks on the planet are working with fed up, unhappy, frightened, tantruming inner children, and overwhelmed inner caretakers right now. How can we come back home to them, tending to our inner little ones, and supporting the inner parents within?
In this episode, we speak deeply about how we can reparent and find compassion for ourselves in the midst of the current times, and the Tarot cards that are showing up as beautiful anchors to support us in this huge work.
This episode was previously released on April 9th, 2020. May it serve and support you and your inner child now and always.
The four Gateways (and four Tarot anchors) discussed on the podcast are:
Play — Ten of Cups
Feeling our feelings — Six of Cups
Reclaiming our magic — Page of Cups
Compassion — Queen of Pentacles
Land Acknowledgement
Honoring and acknowledging that this podcast episode was recorded on the unceded land of The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, currently called Portland, OR, with the deepest respect to the Kalapuya Tribe, Cowlitz Tribe, and Atfalati Tribe.
Please Note
CW Tags: trauma, depression, illness, birth, pregnancy, motherhood/parenthood, colonization, slavery, inherited generational patterns, ancestry
The content in this episode contains references to trauma, depression, illness, birth, pregnancy, motherhood/parenthood, colonization, slavery, inherited generational patterns, and ancestry. We have done our best to identify difficult subject matter, but the labels may not be comprehensive for your personal needs. Please honor your knowing and proceed with necessary self-awareness and care.
Transcript
[Introduction]
[0:00:00]
Hello, Loves. Just two very, very quick announcements before we get to our episode today. The first is that I am delighted to share that the brand-new, reimagined, completely re-envisioned version of Tarot for the Wild Soul course starts very soon on June 9th.
It's really transformed from kind of a root-level, foundational deep dive to a very expansive mentorship journey with weekly live calls and a much greater degree of emphasis on Tarot anchoring. There's a nonlinear framework, a spiralic kind of syllabus flow, that is absolutely gorgeous.
I’m not even going to get into it right now. It's so beautiful. I just want you to see it for yourself (Lindsay laughs). You can learn all about the course, the new syllabus, all the new changes, check out whether or not it resonates with you by going to the course page with all of the information which is on on — it’s just a link on your show notes. You can go to tarotforthewildsoul.com, and you'll likely see it right on the homepage.
The second announcement is that full scholarships for the course are opening this upcoming Monday, May 10th. They close on Friday, May 14th, which is always what we've done. It's a pretty quick turnaround because we get a gigantic number of applicants (Lindsay laughs). And the course begins on June 9th, so it's pretty quick.
So if you are desiring or needing some assistance to be a part of the course container, if it deeply calls to your heart, we want to make it possible for as many people to join us as possible. So mark your calendars. It's very quick. I'll remind you on Instagram, on the newsletter, that those full at-needs scholarships open on Monday, May 10th. So again, mark your calendars, keep note of the date.
Enrollment for the course, general enrollment, opens on Tuesday, May 18th. So that's another date that you may want to keep in mind. And closes on Monday, June 7th. That was a lot of dates (Lindsay laughs). If you just forgot them, don't worry about it. Just know that Tarot for the Wild Soul course is coming up very soon. I'm very excited to deep dive into it with you.
And if you are desiring to apply for a full scholarship to the course, please check out the link on the show notes. And that link will be up on Monday, May 10th.
Thanks, Loves.
[0:02:35]
Hello, Loves, and welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. I am your host, Lindsay Mack, and as always, just so thankful and grateful to be gathered with you in this virtual space. Thank you so much for being here with me today.
So, as many of you know, if you heard Monthly Medicine, I was not planning to do a podcast episode this week — and in a way, I'm not. This is a fresh introduction on my first ever re-released episode. So this episode is entitled “Tarot and the Inner Child” and was released last year. It's a workshop-sized episode, so, like, 90 minutes. And it is all about honoring and coming home to our inner kids.
And the episode explores kind of these four Tarot cards as anchors for essentially gateways to the inner child. And really honors the individual experience, if we cannot stand our inner kid, if we don't feel like we have an inner kid. The relationship and where we're at, how we feel about our inner kid, is really important.
It's valuable, even if you can't stand them. It's really, really important, essentially, to honor where we're at with that. And to — if we're willing, if we feel called to — see what it's like to lean in to deeper care, even deeper attention, even acknowledgement. The barest minimum is often… even just that is enough to shift a lot, to bring us a lot closer with our inner kids.
And I wasn't planning on… you know, I didn't even think about re-releasing this episode today. But, you know, there's a couple reasons that I chose to do it. The first is that Mother's Day is this weekend.
And I am uncharacteristically — and I may have talked about the complexities, and the wounding, the pain, the grief around my relationship with my mother and my birth parent. And this day is… you know, there's usually some material around this day for me, but I have never felt more grief, more longing, just… and I imagine it's collective, not just personal to me. I've never felt so much grief around this day. And, again, I imagine that I'm not alone.
So I followed a gut instinct that this episode might be useful to some folks today, wherever you are on your spectrum, on your journey with becoming a parent. If you've lost a child, if you've had a child. If you're missing your mother, your birth-giver, your, you know, gestational parent. If you are connecting with them for the first time this weekend. If you are coming into a new stage of being. Whether you're in the deepest grief, the deepest jealousy, rage. If you're celebrating and just having the sweetest time.
Wherever you are, I'm bowing to you, I'm witnessing you on this day, in this time.
[00:06:05]
And, you know, the most powerful thing about this day is that really, all of us are — of course, all of us are our own self-parent. And that's the journey we're walking through our whole life, to be that source of comfort, and care, and nurturance that we look for in other people, that we seek out in other people. Really, it's us that we're looking for.
Which by the way, isn't to say that we cannot, should not be encouraged to wildly open to support, and nurturance, and care from others. We don't have to isolate. But for some of us, we never really even had that option, or we’re all we've got. So honoring the self-parent, honoring the wisdom of the inner kid, is sort of the highest intention of this episode.
Especially given the fact that so much of the hardest ripple effects of this past year have been felt most acutely by our inner kids. They are really the ones that are the most scared. They're really the ones who are the most pissed. Like, we're hearing from them our depression, our feelings of just weightiness and grief. That's often the inner kid, you know — often. Not always, but often.
That desire to grow, to have something more, that's often the inner kid there. Again, the wildest, wisest, most intelligent, most deeply feeling parts of us.
And really, I think the work of our lifetime is to put our arms around them and say, “I see you,” you know. “I see you, and I appreciate you. I'm going to advocate for you.” Honoring what comes up from within.
So really, the self-parenting journey is the place where all of us meet as one. Because that's the journey we're all walking, whether we're like, “I will not go on that journey, I don't want to connect with my inner child.”
Or whether we are actively avoiding our inner child. Or whether we're trying so hard, and we're sort of a little lost in the journey. Or we've absolutely said “yes,” and we're struggling in another level of our parenting journey to ourselves. Or we're really rejoicing in that today.
I see you, you know (Lindsay laughs). As a lifelong self-parent, I really… I see you, and honor you, and have been where you are on every level (Lindsay laughs).
[00:08:59]
And so this episode is sort of a love letter to all of us who are as dedicated as we can be to these inner kiddos. And I also just want to say that this episode won't be for everyone, right? It's been a hard year. And for some of us, like, the last thing we want to do is explore a gateway to our inner kids.
And yet, if it resonates with you, your inner child is not separate from you. It's a part of you. It's you. It is, again, the wildest, wisest, most intuitive. It's our little oracle.
Often, like, the little kid is upset about something when we're like, “No, I'm cool.” And when we listen to that feeling, it can often uncover so much about some old root wound or some unmet need. We’re always answering to them. And most of us feel like we have to ignore our kid to get far in our lives, when it’s actually quite the opposite. It's working with our child that allows everything to bloom open, allows us to come home to ourselves.
There are things that no one can give our inner kids but us, which is a very powerful thing. And we have our whole lives to try it out.
So it's no big deal of if we're feeling like, “Ugh, I can never answer that telephone call.” You know, never say never. Life isn't over yet.
So, again, wherever you are on your journey today, wherever you happen to find yourself, wherever you are, wherever you happen to be, if this is a beautiful day for you, or a not-so-beautiful day. Again, I see you, I love you.
And I'm dedicating this to all of the inner kids (Lindsay laughs), all of the inner children of all of my audience members, including my own. May we come home as much as we can to your wildness, your wisdom, your intuitive capacities. May we treasure you and honor you, honor these parts of ourselves, a little bit more each day.
And I hope that this episode serves you. I look forward to connecting with you next week for our episode on the Sixes, and until then, please take exquisite, loving, beautiful care of yourselves.
—
(Instrumental intro music)
[00:11:38]
Welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul, Loves. Such a joy to be with you in this space today and always.
This is a really special episode of the podcast for many reasons. One simply being that it's been a really long time coming. It's been a cherished… I won't say a cherished dream, but certainly something that's been really bubbling and brewing, simmering on the cauldron for years, has been a “Tarot and the Inner Child.”
I wasn't sure quite what it wanted to be — maybe a podcast episode, maybe a class. And this feels like the exact right time and the exact right medium.
And I also think it's special because the inner child is so special. As much as many of us may struggle to feel like we are connected with our inner children — and we're going to talk a bit about that today.
But I think it's also special because the format of this episode is going to be a little bit like my episode a couple weeks back, “Anchor Cards for a Pandemic,” where we're really going to go into a topic that I think is very particular to the now, very medicinal, in response to COVID-19 and to the pandemic.
And is maybe an area that has been causing some of the folks listening to this a lot of suffering and a lot of pain that you may not have really realized was the source of some of your pain. Maybe not. Maybe there's been a tug on your, you know, shirt sleeve or a tap on your shoulder again, and again, and again, and in some way, in some form.
And for many of us, you know, a tug or a tap from some part of us that might feel slightly unknown to us, might feel a little bit too wild, or too messy, or too intense. Or, you know, we just don't want to fucking go there. We don't want to deal with it.
And that is most likely your inner child. And although we might not be really realizing it, this time, this experience in history of this pandemic, is bringing forward a lot of invitations, you know. We may not certainly understand the full scope and perhaps never will understand the full scope of this experience.
[00:14:20]
We're very much in the present moment unfolding of it. We’re still at a huge time of what my teacher would say, deciding, getting to really decide, make our choices around what we can control. How are we available to be with the things that arise? How are we available to tend those things? You know, what's coming up in our day to day? Everybody's journey is so different through this very collective experience.
And so, there's so much that we don't know still. But what we do know is one thing that we've talked about a lot before on this podcast, which is that we certainly know that there are many things that are happening right now for everybody, many people, everybody is really paying attention to their body. Most people don't even remember they have a body.
And yet everyone's attention is laser-focused. How is my body? Am I okay? Even if it's anxiousness, it's still focused on the body. And that's something. It's not good. It's not bad. It's just what's happening right now. So that's one thing.
Another thing is that there is a lot of calling in, and a lot of attention being drawn to the heart and the lungs, to the grief centers, to what we've been holding in terms of grief and trauma. What's been present, the heartbreaks, the pieces here that have been stored in these areas for so long.
We're being invited to reclaim the fact that we have feelings. Most of us walk around, and we have no perception. Most people (Lindsay laughs) who feel that way are probably not listening to this podcast. I feel like this podcast is full of very rich and vibrant feelers, which is wonderful.
But we are — we’re thinking, we're feeling. We’re thinking about our bodies, our breath, our death. We're thinking about death, we're talking about death, for the first time, literally, for the first time as a planet, as a collective. It's a big deal.
It's a huge invitation to drop into those places and to reclaim part of the medicine that was lost there, including some of the wounding and some of the joy that has been there for a long time, living within our bodies, and how these bodies engage with the world around us.
What is happening right now is also, in equal measure and in equal urgency, inviting us to reclaim, and care for, and tend to our inner children, our inner child.
[00:17:13]
So that's what we're talking about today, is, whether you've been consciously aware of it or not, a thorn in the collective foot that we've been trying to walk around with for the last weeks, months, however long you have personally, depending on where you are in the world, been dealing with the whisper or the brush of coronavirus. And then, you know, perhaps a lockdown, or a shutdown, or social distancing.
Again, everybody, we're experiencing this so spiralically and so holographically, where one… you know, it's the same impetus, but we're all experiencing it on slightly different timelines and in slightly different ways.
So what we're going to be talking about is a little bit about what is the inner child, really? (Lindsay laughs) Like, what is it and why… why is it important to draw our attention to the inner child in general, but specifically now? And how we can do it, and how Tarot can help. (Lindsay laughs). So a couple, just a couple small things.
So I want to really name here, I'm not an expert on the inner child. What I'm sharing is born of what I know for myself, my lived experience. I may speak in ways throughout this lesson that use languaging such as “We have inner children that are” or, you know, that speak on behalf of the whole. Of course, that's not exhaustive. And of course, I'm not the parent of your inner child. So it's truly… imagine, like, a bird flying above the ocean. Like, truly, the most generalized reflections of what it is to be in a body and have an inner little one.
And also, just really laying my humility and my beginner's mind at your feet as well, that I'm the parent of an inner little one. And it's really hard to be the parent of an inner little one. And we can name that. And I fuck up as a parent all the time, and I'm still totally learning, so.
I remember I had a lot of wounding for a long time, thinking, like, ugh, if anybody knows how bad my feelings were about my inner little one, how much I resented her, hated her. How shitty, like, I've been to her. How, you know, all this stuff, they would just be so horrified. So if you need to hear that from somebody such as myself, I'm happy to offer that to you (Lindsay laughs).
I think that's step one here, that we can acknowledge, we are human beings squeezed into these little fucking bodies in this… with these souls that are so huge, and universal, and massive. Trying to parent our little ones, because that is the spiral of life is that the minute we are born, we begin to grow into our own parent.
Most people don't do it, and keep looking for other forms of attachment. You know, hand raised right here in certain ways. But I can speak to what it is to have a relationship with your inner child that's rich and rewarding. And I can speak to what it is to really hate and resent your inner child and move through the other side of that.
So I'm just going to speak from the experience that I know, without in any way claiming to be an expert on this. There are people who are probably much, much, much further along with this than I am. But I did feel called to talk about it today, for what it's worth. And I certainly can speak very confidently to what I do share, and definitely to the piece about the Tarot. So I do hope this serves.
[00:21:31]
So whether you knew it or not, you have an inner child. Whether you like your inner child, feel your inner child, what your perception is of your inner child, you do have one, because you were once a child.
And that part of you is the essence of… the inner child, it's really been shown to me, is this kind of magical bridge between the adult self and the soul. It's very much… the inner child is the piece that kind of helps us remember, à la Peter Pan, that we know how to fly. We forget.
The inner child is a memory keeper. The inner child is a lore keeper. They’re story keepers. They remember. They remember the stories. When things happened, before we were too young to verbally express them, you know, we kept that tucked inside.
If we grew up in abusive environments, the inner child literally kept us safe. And yet we have this crazy, frankly, perception of the inner child being too childish, too juvenile. You know, “I’m adult. I'm an adult. I don’t have time for this bullshit.”
Because we all do that. Like, absolutely, we all do that. Or at least we all do that from time to time, I should say.
But actually, the inner child is the definition of fierceness, and the definition of tenderness, and also of what it means to be wild. And what it really means to be raw, and messy, and deeply feeling, and in all of the things that are essentially coming up right now in what we're going through.
And many of us are really challenged by that right now. Because pretty much everybody on the planet right now has a very in-need inner child, and a very stressed out and overwhelmed inner caretaker, inner adult. And both of them deserve care and compassion. We have to nourish both the inner parent and the inner child, and we're gonna talk about that today.
But we all have these inner children. And whether… it doesn't matter how dressed up (Lindsay laughs), suited up, cinched up we get in this life. It doesn't matter how adult we believe ourselves to be. Our inner children — it is one remark, one comment, one situation away from blowing out from basically, like, underneath us and really taking the wheel of our car.
[00:24:32]
And we all know that feeling, when somebody says something that so deeply, deeply triggers us. And when we maybe do our work around that, we can maybe find that the people to whom we're reflecting it to may be in deep validation of us.
And they may also say, “I don't know if that person had the intention that…” you know, or “We talked to the person, and they…” you know. Completely validate us and say, “I hear you, I honor you. I absolutely didn’t, you know, intend it that way,” and blah, blah, blah.
And sometimes there's absolutely harm to clear up there. And other times, that weird feeling that we can get where we're so deeply, deeply upset, so activated, so triggered, so hurt about something we can barely explain to someone — that's the inner child, feeling wounded, feeling upset.
And ultimately, we can try forever. Most people — I think a lot of people — the majority of us, just try our whole lives to get people outside of us to kind of try to make that constant source of discomfort of the inner child wanting us… we put it out on the external. And we think, “Well, life has to meet me here so that I can feel more comfortable.”
And what we're really saying is, “so my inner kid can feel safe.” And a lot of the time when our inner child gets really wounded, or triggered, or scared, or upset, there's absolutely room, ample room to bring that to a person who may have incited that situation and speak on behalf of the inner child.
But the first place we want to start is not in the confronting, but in scooping ourselves up and saying, “Oh, sweetheart, that hurt your feelings. I'm so sorry. You want to tell me why?” And actually giving ourselves the spaciousness to say, “Yes, I didn't feel witnessed. I didn't feel validated. I feel like that person meant to hurt me by saying that.”
And we may not know — it doesn’t matter if they’re right. The point is that they have the space to say it.
[00:27:01]
So think about where you are right now. Maybe feeling scared yourself right now. Not knowing necessarily what's going to happen, or, you know, what lies ahead with all the uncertainty that's happening right now.
Maybe there's a lot of anxiety, a lot of panic. Maybe there's some feelings of hopelessness or some feelings of despair. Maybe there are some huge rage feelings. How unfair this is. How enraged we might feel with other people right now. How upset we might be that we have to deal with this. How short our fuse might feel.
Those big, big, big feelings — yes, we're feeling that as adults, but so are our inner children, and they're not the same. The inner… what the adult needs in terms of medicine and tending isn't going to be what the little kid needs.
And all of our kids are really needing us right now. And by the way, that's been the case forever. Pre-corona (Lindsay laughs). This is a pre-corona condition (Lindsay laughs), is, like, we're all responding from the inner child. We all say things and will later go, “Oh my god.”
And not judging ourselves, but truly thinking, like, “Wow, that was a really, you know, maybe volatile response or irrational response.” Or, you know, “Wow, I made that decision. And gee, I just wish I hadn’t.”
And it's not contractive regret, it's truly having the feeling. Like, “That feeling that I felt was so valid. And yet, the way I responded from it is not making me really feel like what I was needing or wanting, that it actually got fed,” you know? That feeling, like, “Oh, I tried to pour all this water in my cup, and I still feel empty.”
That's typically a situation where the inner child really needs something. We assume, “Well, I’ll fix it. And I'll fix it like an adult fixes things.” But we completely bypass and miss the opportunity to just tend ourselves. So we have a million opportunities to do that right now.
[00:29:15]
And I think truly, if there was something that could really change the world, that we could really see a shift that could blow the world on its — in the best of ways, not in a bad way (Lindsay laughs). Blow the world in a great way, could completely transform, you know, so much of what's out of alignment, out of balance, not serving the whole collective… it’s people coming to pick up their kids from the place that they left them.
This is the reason we're not able to listen to other people. When other people come, you know, and call us in. You know, sometimes other people come to us, and they say, “Hey, you know, this thing happened. I want to call you in. I want to talk to you about this.”
And even if they are coming from a place that's pure inner child, it's still possible for us to step forward as the adult and meet them as the adult, even if their child is communicating on their behalf. And there are times when, ideally, we have two adults who are in a safe situation where they're both communicating on behalf of their inner kids.
Most of us are just talking kid to kid. I've had relationships where literally, I've never had an adult conversation with the other adult (Lindsay laughs) that I've been in a relationship with, you know. So we don't need to have shame about this. We don't need to have judgment about this. We don't need to have any kind of guilt, any of that story.
Because this is everybody. Nobody is better, far off worse, like, you know. This is everyone. It’s work you do over the course of your lifetime. So some of our inner kids literally run our lives, you know. And some of us don't even know we have inner kids, you know? We’re all… it's all good, wherever you find yourself on this.
[00:31:16]
Inner children are the place where really the hottest, most intense, beautiful, multifaceted, magnificent array from, you know, all the fabrics and textures that you could ever imagine feeling or sensing into. And all of the natural occurrences, be they volcanoes, and, you know, the blooming of spring, and the softness of snow.
Inner children contain all of those multitudes. They are the parts of us that say, “I am not afraid to take up space here. I will cry for what I need. I will respond. I will scream in the middle of your dinner party.”
And we work very, very hard over the course of our lives to stuff that down way far. So we're accepted and we're liked, and, depending on how we were raised, to survive.
But that's still in there. You still have calderas (Lindsay laughs), and mountains, and velvety skies, and the fierceness of a million, you know, horses, and the softness of a breeze inside of you. And in terms of feeling and potency. And that's all thanks to your inner child holding that space for you.
So the parts of us that feel all the things are the inner child.
[00:32:51]
How do we know the difference between the brain and the inner child? I can credit this purely, purely to my teacher, Michelle, who taught this to me. I would never have known this without Michelle, so there's a full bow of honoring and lineage here.
The brain has a tendency to want to attack. There's an accusation, typically, a story in some way, that's hinged on “There's something wrong.” There's a harshness, typically, to the voice of the brain. There's a story about us failing in some way, us fucking up. Wanting to kind of pull us away from expansion, typically back into the safety of what we know.
And those voices of brain and inner child can seem really different. But the intention of them, the tone of them, that's what's different. Is that the brain really wants us to be smaller in judgment. The inner child deeply wants and desires reassurance and comfort.
So it wants… it's a smaller voice. It wants to be tended. It says, “Oh gosh, what if that happens?” You know, that's the inner child. The voice that says, like, “You fuck-up,” that's the brain (Lindsay laughs). You know, the voice that says, you know, “Oh my god, that really hurt my feelings.” You know, that's the inner child. And, you know, the story that says, “They're out to get you” — that's the brain.
You know, not that the brain always talks like a monster, you know, or like a bad guy in a movie (Lindsay laughs). But there's a different tone from brain to inner child. And it's a beautiful illumination that Michelle, my teacher, shared with me and that I've shared with my students with her permission. And this is an extension of that sharing.
[00:35:05]
They, our inner kids, really do respond differently than we do as adults, and we need to give them different things. That's why… you know, to help them move through experiences. That's why it's so important to be having this conversation right now, because everyone's inner child is screaming for them to pick them up, talk to them, pay attention to them.
And we're so fucking overwhelmed. Some of us caring for our own biological children in the house all day. With a job full-time, some of us with no job and our biological children at home. Some of us deeply, you know, desperately missing our biological children, for one reason or another, you know. And perhaps in grief, or in anger, or in, you know, all kinds of situations. And some of us with no biological children who are stressed to shit.
And, of course, the collective cry is, like, “Get the fuck out of here. I don't have time to deal with you right now.”
So we often say that to ourselves, right? Fear and, you know, vulnerability bubble up, and we go, “Get the fuck out of here. I don't have time for this. I’ve got to work,” you know? And it's the equivalent of essentially, like, doing that to your own kid. Like your own literal kid, or a kid that you love, or a dog that you love.
And that's something that you treasure and cherish and would literally, you know, throw a table over in order to kind of scoop them up and… or, you know, not throw a table over — although, if you're like me, in New Jersey, you might. But, you know, like, to sweep everything off of a table in order to kind of, like, sit your child on top of it and give them a big squeeze.
And it's hard to sense into what the inner child is wanting. And a good clue is that it's probably something that you as the adult are, like, “Ugh, what the fuck,” you know (Lindsay laughs). So, you know, sometimes that can be hard. Again, we’ve got to caretake the caretaker too, right? We do.
[00:37:22]
So, yeah, the inner children — often the places we judge in ourselves, that we might wish were a lot less messy, and a lot less wild, weirdly. Because most of us are trying to touch into that wildness again, and yet we often don't assume that that reclaiming of the inner child is a part of that initiation. And it is, it really is.
And the pandemic and all that it's bringing forward really at the root. Now, not at the root of the pandemic, but at the root of one of the biggest invitations. It is a homecoming that's really possible between us and the parts of us that are holding the gate to everything we have been seeking since time immemorial, our sense of psychic and intuitive connectiveness.
That's all the inner child. Our sense of magic, and play, and imagination, that's your inner child. The sense of being able to play, to being able to tap into creativity, the sense of being able to touch into joy that doesn't cost anyone anything. The stuff that is so good that you might never even think of, like, posting it to Instagram or even telling anyone about.
There all of these wonderful moments of truly nutritive sweetness that are possible when we slowly, slowly re-establish a sense of bonding and trust with the inner child. Even to just say, “Hi, I didn't even know you were in there.” (Lindsay laughs). Or, “Hey,” you know, “I’m not sure how I feel about connecting with you right now. But I acknowledge you, see you. And, you know, maybe I might consider talking a little bit. We'll see how things go.”
That's enough to open a million doors, right?
[00:39:37]
And yet, on our journey of touching into the heart, and breath, and the body, and everything that's coming up as a result of being in these times of such extreme… again, unknown. The inner child is actually really the torch holder that's helping us to move through these times.
The inner child says, “Remember that you can take space. Remember that you can be enraged. Remember that tantrums exist for, you know, good reason. Like, we can… tantrums are available to you.”
It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to not read the news and use your hands in some way that is really meaningful to you. Whether that be taking care of yourself in some way that feels meaningful, or doing art in some way that feels meaningful. You know, what did you love to do as a kid? Was there something that really felt like… brought your child joy, or even a sense of play? You know, it's possible now, and really quite important.
And again, this need to be witnessed that's coming up for all of us from the inner child — it is a part of this new paradigm that we're walking into, because we can't really expand in the direction that we're all going in in terms of soul evolution without bringing the inner child with us.
So it's very important to recognize the call here, you know. We’re really being called back in, not just to reconnecting to a part of ourselves so that we actually feel the gift and the joy of what it is to be able to tend ourselves in moments when we're sad, scared, upset. So that if we do need to share, or if it is in alignment for us to share, how something made us feel, it's coming from the adult.
Which is really a wonderful basis for nonviolent communication. Because the inner child has to be able to have the opportunity to really, like, let it rip. And often, we let it rip to other people, when the inner child might not necessarily want us to express that to anyone, it's just for us to receive because we're the parent. So very — you can imagine, so important right now.
And we don't need to do anything about this. You don’t need a fucking ritual. You don’t need, like, a meditation to connect with your inner child. If you're pissed and upset, welcome. You're in (Lindsay laughs). This is it. It's grist for the mill, baby, this is it. Life is the practice, you know?
[00:42:42]
Like, I got triggered today about something that had nothing to do with the person, nothing. They truly did not do anything. Sometimes people do trigger me, and it’s harmful. But my inner child got very triggered by something. And before prioritizing her as my number one priority, which I sometimes forget that. But, for the most part, she is my number one priority, and it's certainly my intention to make her even more than that.
I would have gone right to that person and been like, “Hey, this is how you made me feel. Here you go. Like, you know, this is how this thing made me feel. This was the issue. This is… you know, I need you to not do this again.” By the way, fucking great. I had to work very hard to be able to use my voice like that. I was silenced for most of my life.
And by the way, this is not an advocacy to not do that. Because there are times when it's important to just speak your piece and let people know how they affected you.
But what I did instead of doing that, even though I wanted to, was I dropped right in, and I put a hand on my heart, and I named what I was feeling. You know, there was the triggering, activation, not feeling seen, not feeling witnessed, not feeling heard. Not feeling, you know, like, different things.
And the more I went with it, the more it was, like, just this spaciousness and this opening to be able to let the feelings emerge of, like, you know, “Wow. This is so much deeper and bigger than what this person said. This is about my mother wounding. This is about not being seen. This is about the desperate desire for love that I had as a child and didn't get met by parental figures.”
And I asked my… after really holding her, and letting some tears fall, and really witnessing her, and affirming her, and making the time and the space to let her speak on what bothered her about that. I asked her and said, “Would you like me to say anything for you about this?” And she said, “No.” She just wanted me to witness her. That was all.
And if the time comes for me to say it, and that felt really right to me as the adult… so if the time ever comes where something needs to be said, I’m going to say it (Lindsay laughs). Obviously, I have no problem doing that, very direct communicator.
But I do think… you don't need… the next time you get upset at something — and it'll happen, right — you get the chance to practice this. You don't need to, like… I feel like… I want to just really speak with the utmost respect and care here, because I think everybody's work is their own zone of genius. But we don't need to do, like, any esoteric practices to connect to the inner child at all. Like, you don't need to do any of that.
In fact, where the bonds are really formed is when we have these big experiences, and we sit with them. Because all the inner child wants from us is to know we've got them. And we as adults often think, “I don't got them. I can't — I can't fix it. I can't give them what they're wanting.”
You don't have to fix anything. You just have to be there. Which is, like, the hardest thing to do. And also the easiest thing to do (Lindsay laughs), you know, is to just tend it, to just witness it.
You know, it's so normal to feel like, with anyone, or anything, or any part of ourselves, when something big comes up, we can think “Well, what do I do with this?” And that’s a huge lesson for me because I'm always like, “Well, okay, now that I know this, what do I do about it?” I'm sure I'm not alone in that.
But it's taken me a good deal of practice and repeated situations to realize, like, my kid just wants to be held. She just wants to be upset for as long as she's upset. She just wants to not be ignored or bypassed. And once I let that experience unfold for her, she was okay, you know? She was all right. And even if she wasn't all right, it would be okay, too.
You know, it's a little bit… definitely used this example before, it's a good example. But a little bit… in “Inside Out” the movie, where Bing Bong’s rocket gets pushed off of the edge of that cliff. And Sadness sits with Bing Bong and really just names, “You know, they took your rocket, and they took something you loved. And now it's gone.” And Bing Bong gets the chance to really cry, and then says, “You know, okay, I feel better now. Let's keep going.”
And that's the medicine of being able to sit with and tend to grief when it comes up. And the inner child is really… in this time of huge collective grief and huge collective trauma, we have an opportunity to actually heal some of the deepest wounding for our inner child and have reparative experiences. Because we really can no longer let them be untended anymore, or to identify with them or respond from them, rather than caretaking them and being an advocate for them. Which is a big deal.
[00:48:32]
So it's important to come get our kids, you know? Come get our kids so they're not behind the wheel of the car, kind of squashed in the back with all the luggage. And to let them be free in the car seat, in the backseat, while we're driving. So that they can sing, and play, and scream, and do whatever they want. But they know we've got them.
And that's really what we're recentering into right now, who's minding our kids. We have to be the ones minding our kids. Because the planet can't support it anymore.
You know, pretty much all the major decisions being made in the world are happening from the place of the inner child, typically. So it's really important (Lindsay laughs), you know, to just develop some skills about checking in around that.
So yeah, the majority of folks on the planet are working with fed-up, unhappy, frightened, tantruming inner children right now. And it's not new. We are often walking around with our children, feeling like that. It’s just become more emergent. And with this ping ponging of the adult feeling so overwhelmed and the kid needing so much, it's been really, really hard.
So first of all, I want to just name that that's there. And also to say that I feel like what I'm speaking about with regard to the inner child is really just… you know, it's really scratching the surface, because I'm not an expert. I'm an imperfect self-parent, just like you, who's really trying the best that they can to make life as safe as I can for my inner kid. And I often screw up.
And so this is just an opportunity to start thinking about this, because I think it's really crucial. And it's part of the reason why a lot of us are numbing out right now, dissociating right now, overwhelming ourselves right now, which are all fine expressions of our care, because that's really where it comes from, is the attempt to feel okay.
[00:50:52]
But it is possible to consider, and available for us to consider now, that we can do some different things, if we're willing to touch in with the inner children that are really, really, really calling out for us right now. And all we have to do, all we have to do to make the step that moves the world, as far as that's concerned, is to just name, recognize, and see them. See that they're there.
So if you're feeling a desperate desire, you know, for some kind of external validation. Like if you're wanting something, if it's kind of running your life. If it’s… you know, if you feel like you have a knowing about something that’s really rooted in your adult self, and then all of a sudden, you think, like, “Wait, maybe I shouldn't be doing that.” Sometimes it's brain, but sometimes it’s the inner child, and it's good to check it out.
But all of it comes down to the same thing. Your inner child wants you. As shitty and as ill-equipped as you might feel as a parent, all they want is you. And you don't have to fix anything. You can call in other people to help you be with your kid. I had to do that for years before I could be in the same room with my inner child by myself.
So this is not an attempt to throw anyone in the deep end of the pool, because we're going to talk in just a moment about some Tarot cards that can help us touch in with, I think, like, four little gateways and four Tarot cards that can really help us drop in to different ways of connecting with our inner children.
And some of these ways can be really, really potent, and some of them can be really triggering, depending on what our relationship is right now. And by the way, just want to name once more, your inner caretaker is here to be validated, too. So if you’re like, “Fuck the inner child. I don’t want to do this shit” — of course you feel that way. Because your inner adult is scared, and overwhelmed, and also needs support and care.
So these four things also apply, I believe, to the inner adult. And weirdly, I think that they can exist… you know, these four cards can really help us, you know, feel into what is possible when we look to cards as being an anchor for both caretaker tending and inner child tending. Because both are here for us. Both open different gateways and yet serve the same purpose.
So yeah, just something to start thinking about, you know? Just… you know, what would it be to start caretaking both our little ones and supporting the inner parents within? You know, what would it be like to honor the inner child, to scoop them up, and caretake them? And learn what it is to see what belongs to you and see what belongs to your kid?
[00:54:14]
So what are these four cards, these four tenets? So these are four — again, I’m going to use the term “gateways'' that I believe can provide a little tap on the top of that eggshell, that can really start things moving a little bit in terms of, like, avenues and gateways in to touch in with the inner child and have reparative experiences with them. And, ideally, caretake our inner caretakers.
And those four gateways are play, feeling our feelings, reclaiming our magic, and compassion. So very simple.
The card that really came forward as the space holder for play, interestingly enough, is Ten of Cups. Ten of Cups is a major anchor card for inner child work — major. Precisely because we go on this whole journey in The Cups, this huge journey, seeking, and desire, and wanting, and longing, and making wishes, and all these different things. Not related to romantic love or pursuits, really, in reality, but we go on this journey of knowing ourselves, knowing our feelings, and being able to touch in with these parts of us, and with longing, and messiness.
My therapist, Jen, once said… my beloved therapist, who I adore: It takes a lot of courage to want. It takes a lot of courage to desire, to have longing. And it does. You know, it takes so much guts to do that.
And that's what we really learn about in The Cups suit. What is it to long for community, for forms of love that apply to us? For, you know, nurturance and safety? And what is it to feel the depth of our grief, and to feel when doors open and close, and to actually be able to work with those things so that those parts of us stay dexterous and open?
The Cups, in and of themselves, are really a huge gateway to the inner child. But I think Ten of Cups really is, and can provide us with the medicine of play. Because play, I don't know about you, but is pretty triggering for most people I know who are trauma survivors. And play can feel challenging to me, certainly, as a trauma survivor and as an abuse survivor.
[00:57:02]
But Ten of Cups is very, very helpful for both the adult self and the child self because the old-school, old paradigm definition of Ten of Cups really is centered in, “You got everything you wanted. You get everything you wanted. Wishes granted, done deal. You know, there's harmony, there's happiness, you're gonna have a family, you're going to get married.” Like, that's super old-school.
But usually it's hinged on this idea of all that you've longed for, all that you've wanted, you're going to get it. And as lovely as that is, it’s not true. And I'm not saying that you're not going to get everything that you've ever wanted in this life (Lindsay laughs). Because you may. And I… I can't say I want it for you, because I've wanted some things that I will later look back on and be like, “Oh my god, shudder.”
But there is a sense of being overly preoccupied, as most, unfortunately, older, more old paradigm, old-school definitions of Tarot are. And the truth is something far more powerful, and much more tangible, much less… way less predicated on what we're going to, quote, “get” externally.
Which is… it asks us to be available to the joy and the beauty that is right here. And that can bring up a lot, especially in a situation and in a moment when so many of us are deeply, deeply struggling, we’re afraid. When so many of us have lost our jobs, when we don't know where our next, like, check is going to come from.
You know, these really intense situations. To find the joy in that? To find the fun, the play? To find the stuff in life that really makes us feel like it lights us up? Like, what? You know?
And yet I think that that is really something that is very present and available to us right now. Not necessarily, and really at all, a bypassing of the reality of what's going on. But also being present to some of the reality that the brain hides from us when it tries to convince us that everything is shit.
Because yeah, everything can be shit. And at this moment, is it shit for you right now, other than the story in your mind?
Or are you sitting, maybe looking at nature right now? Maybe you're enjoying a really sweet cup of coffee right now. Maybe you're in a bath right now. Maybe you're in your bed. It might be really nice to be in your bed. Maybe you really like your sheets. Maybe you're sleeping right now with a partner, or with a pet, or with a child, or with a stuffed animal, or with something that feels nourishing.
And that's enough. That's enough, believe it or not, to start sparking the energy of play. That, in and of itself.
[01:00:23]
There's a reason why there's always a rainbow on this card. Not always, but often. And I've spoken about this before. This is an older, much more deeply rooted teaching of mine, but that rainbows — you know, we can be, like, driving. We’ll see a rainbow, we’ll pull over. We’ll be in, like, a line of people. And everyone's like, “Oh my god.”
Rainbows stop the show. And part of it is because they're so beautiful, and also because they fade very quickly. And it can be very easy when we see a rainbow to feel that sense of emergent joy. To be like, “Oh my god, I have to pull my car over. I really want to see it. I want to be present with it.”
That's what Ten of Cups is. It doesn't take away from the fact that eventually, you'll be back in your car, and you'll be working with the same stuff that you were working with when you were driving your car. And it doesn't go away. We don't make any of that go away.
It doesn't negate it, you know, at all. We're just making room for the other piece of it. We're actually balancing out those scales a little bit more.
So it's not so much of… this can really come across sometimes when we're in this energy where, when Ten of Cups is really available to us, and we're sort of denying it, there can be this real sense of, like, no, we keep driving. And then the inner child is unhappy, and they're screaming because they want to hang out with the rainbow. When really, the adult needs the rainbow, too. The adult needs the reminder, like, yeah, there are things that are still happening in life that are beautiful, that bring joy.
And that is actually so much more fucking radical than any over-reliance on… because, again, it's very radical to reclaim what feels hard and challenging. And it is extremely radical, equally radical to say, in the midst of suffering, in the midst of trauma, in the midst of fear, there is this rainbow in my life. And it doesn't negate anything. But it also helps to provide the other side of the sphere.
[01:02:36]
Play doesn't need to be that we're on the floor, playing with toys. And by the way, if that's a part of your experience with your inner child, go for it. But that's not what it means.
It means that we are available to be in the stuff of life that sparks a sense of connection and of enjoyment. It's what's right here. It's what's literally right here. To literally stop what you're doing and look around. What's beautiful?
You know, right now, one of my favorite things in the world, oddly enough, one of the things that I will most miss — I say that jokingly — about the planet once I'm gone from it, is dappled light. I love dappled light. And it's pretty basic. I don't really care what you think (Lindsay laughs). I love dappled light.
And I've lived in apartments for, you know, years where I didn't see any. And there's dappled light all over the house I'm living in in Oregon, and I'm looking at some right now. You know, that's big-time Ten of Cups feel. And it's really sweet.
And it'll be gone soon, because the sun is going to set in a little bit. And that can be enough, to be able to spark some memory, make us feel a little bit more centered, remind us of what feels good, remind us of what feels joyful, remind us of what fills our cup up.
And it can be incredibly nourishing to tune into, what are the rainbows my adult wants to stop the car for? And what are the rainbows that my kid really wants to stop the car for? And can I engage with both?
If my adult really loves these kinds of rainbows and is feeling very ungenerous about, like, stopping the car for these, you know, rainbows that my kid wants? You know, how can there be a little bit of space for both so that all of the cups of joy…
[01:04:45]
And by the way, when I say joy, I don't mean to presume that in any way you're going to necessarily feel happy. Joy to me is an experience of deeply rich enjoyment that is not necessarily connected to a steady emotional state. Joy is a spark. Happiness might be a more sustained thing. I don't know, I'm sure… you know, but happy is is very basic in terms of the descriptive power of it.
And we can feel immense joy in the midst of rage or sadness, even. There can be huge pockets of joy that can be enough to deeply fill our cups. So what does play look like for you, you know? What kind of play is available to you?
You know, my adult loves certain things, and certain things feel like deep play to my adult. I know what my kid loves to do. And I try, especially now with the pandemic, as a priority for my mental health, for my ability to serve, to make it a priority everyday to do stuff that really feeds my kid, and stuff that really feeds my adult.
And even yesterday, I was going through 900 scholarships that took the better part of eight full hours, and then carried over into the next day. And there were pauses in those eight hours that were significant and robust that allowed for, you know, things that my little kid loves to do and pieces of music that both my kid loves and my adult loves.
And I knew that I wouldn't necessarily have time to do some of what I do in my night ritual. I say “ritual” with, like, quotes, but just what I like to do to kind of close my day down.
And so I prioritize some of it in the morning, you know. So what's available to you? And you're at home, you don't have your shit, you can't go out, you can't see anybody. Where's the Ten of Cups for you? You know, what does that look like for you?
[01:07:10]
Feeling our feelings. Six of Cups is really the card that shows us, and helps us, and tells us what it is to feel our feelings.
And this is a big one because, of course, I'm not a therapist. And I'm not here in any way shape, or form to advise, or to tell you to, or to show you to, or to encourage you to feel into or bring up anything that overwhelms your capacity to cope or doesn't feel safe enough to feel on your own.
Always call in the cavalry for that. Always call in the help, you know, the support that you need to feel those things. Like I said, couldn’t be in the room, quote, “alone” with my inner kid for a long time. We can call in support. Support is available now. It really is. Even from afar, even from a distance. Volunteer support, friend support, therapy support, if that's a privilege that is available to you.
Feeling our feelings. If we have feelings, they want to be felt. They want to be experienced. They want to be… they want to move through us. They want to be absolutely witnessed and regarded.
And the only way to really do that is to come home to the heart. And Six of Cups is not a card of nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It's such a lazy, lazy definition. And it's not anybody's fault. It’s what we were taught.
And it's not wrong, because so much of what the inner child brings forward is, you know, huge, beautiful resurgences from memory. So it's not completely off-base, but it's not all that it is. And it's not, certainly not a sense of nostalgia born of being off our path or going off into old, you know, floating away. That's not true. It just isn't.
[01:09:15]
What Six of Cups does do is it invites us to walk into an initiation of heart healing. It reconnects us with our heart.
In the Five of Cups, the card that comes before it, there's an enormous expression and experience of loss, where we're literally so consumed with our sense of loss, be it a truly acute grief or an experience where we might feel the squeeze or the tang — (Lindsay laughs) certainly not the tang — the pang of missing something or, you know, “What if I made the wrong choice?” Those experiences, that's all Five of Cups, that huge squeeze, and tightness, and the doubt, and the fear. It’s really painful in that card.
And typically, there's a kind of a closing of the heart that happens in the Five of Cups that, if we're willing to really be with Five of Cups, can invite us to plunge into that ocean. Like, while it's raining, and, you know, the skies are stormy. And to really be in that feeling of those three spilled cups. Maybe knowing somewhere that the, you know, those other cups will be meeting us someday, but really giving ourselves the opportunity to be with what is.
With Six of Cups, we go back to being children again. You know, in the Smith-Rider-Waite, there's two children on that card. And a lot of people say, and it makes total sense, that it's a memory. Like, we're going back to a simpler time where, you know, we were offering these little things in the cups. And I actually think it's the next step.
Because once we've gone through a Five of Cups experience, you spiral back to where you were as a child. You have to. Because the inner child is the only one that really knows how to feel the feelings.
You know, the inner child holds the feelings. Our job as the inner parent is to hold them as the container to help them grieve.
And this works on two levels, right? Because the inner child gets the opportunity to be seen, to be heard, to be witnessed, to be affirmed, and so much reparation can happen around there. You know, so many of us have so many deep grooves of pain with our inner children, because there's been so much harm to us, on us. And if you feel that way about your inner child, you're not alone. I felt that way about mine for so long.
And, you know, it's been the last few years of my life that, you know, steadily, the harm and the amends that have been made have been enough to create a truly beautiful relationship with myself. But it doesn't mean that there isn't still experiences where my inner child feels ignored or not seen.
[01:12:34]
So Six of Cups is a reopening of the heart. It's a touching back in with what was important to you before bitterness sunk in. Before we felt so much pain and grief.
It's, you know, if Five of Cups is the, quote unquote — because it's not — but if it's the “heartbreak,” Six of Cups is the realization, like, “Oh my god, I can love again. Like, I'm loving again, and I'm feeling my feelings in this different way again.” It’s the dawning after a really hard time.
So it's the opening of the heart, and that deeply affects, and heals, and brings so much medicine to the inner child. And it brings a hell of a lot to the adult. So how do you as an adult, as a caretaker, have your heart tended to?
And I encourage you not to look at it so much as, “Well, I don't have anybody to tend my heart,” because you are the heart-tender. Even if somebody is there with you — they can tend you all fucking day long. And if there's some part of you that feels unavailable to it, or isn't as comfortable receiving from yourself, it'll be really hard to receive that from another person.
So you might as well hang out with this now, because there's really no getting away from it anyway (Lindsay laughs). You know, what makes your heart feel… what makes your heart feel like it soars? You know, what really infuses your heart with a sense of connectedness? What fuels the heart, you know? What helps the heart, you know, your heart feel full and seen?
And if you're answering that question — you're asking that question, rather, you're thinking, “I don't know,” this might be a really, really, really powerful turning point for you.
[01:14:32]
And I also want to say, too, that these four experiences can also promote deeper connections with these cards. So for example, to go back to Ten of Cups, if you engage in play with your inner child, like if you do arts and crafts, or you do… whatever it might be. You are opening yourself up to more Ten of Cups moments.
The more you connect with your inner child in those spacious moments of play, the more you're available for those rainbow moments, both as adult and child.
And the more we feel our feelings, the more the heart expands. The more we feel into the heart, the more we care for the heart. The more that the heart begins to trust us. That we can begin to bring things forward that the heart really wants to share with us and wants to say.
There's so much here that, you know, can be just completely transformative. And they work, kind of… it's an AC/DC thing, right? We can go in one direction, the current will flow, and the current also flows the other direction. So you can go card first or intention first.
But yeah, what does that look like? What does heart work look like for your adult and your child? What would make you feel more nourished? In terms of your play, your connection to those rainbows? What are the rainbows for you as the caretaker? What does that look like for your child?
What does it look like to… do you give yourself any permission to feel your feelings? Do you try to be super calm and super zen all the time? Do you try to do a lot to push them away? Do you feel like you do that because… you know. Are you so deeply in your feelings that there actually isn't any room to weirdly feel them, you know, or to express them?
And there's lots of places that we could go to with this.
But yeah, opening up to that sixth cup, it’s really… it changes something in us. It really, really does, and can be very useful. And especially right now — again, radical to think about, what nourishes the heart in this time of my life?
In this time of experience that all of us are going through right now where, again, so much is uncertain, where we might be suffering, we might be working our asses off, we might feel super scared, super depressed.
You know, what feels like it's within your reach? Even if it's putting a hand on the heart, ragged and exhausted, and just saying, like, “Okay, there's a hand on my heart right now.” Sometimes that's enough, too.
[01:17:22]
The third piece is reclaiming our magic. So for many people listening to this, this isn’t a stretch, right? We know what it is to feel really connected to magic. And yet, many people listening to this might be very established in serving others. And a lot of their juice, a lot of their energy might be going to helping other people. And it might not feel like there's a whole lot of magic left in the tank for us.
A number of us might feel like we have a lot of connection with other people's magic. Like, we like other people's work, what other people have to say. We like magic from other cultures that aren’t our own.
The inner child is — and really, this is a crucial piece. In the reclaiming of the inner child, there is a natural extension to connection with ancestors, whether they are your blood ancestors or your ancestral land.
And you don't have to go to the ancestral land. You don't necessarily need to know exactly where you're from. But there is an uncovering and a slow crawling, a slow walking, a slow feeling the ground, right, for that root. That one root that kind of takes us down into the hole, takes us down into the underworld caves, that sort of says, you know, “Follow that whisper. Follow that trail. Follow that voice. Follow that flame. Where did you come from?”
And again, I'm not talking about… because that's an enormously triggering idea. So many of the people listening to this are descendants of slavery, are descendants of, you know… have been adopted, you know — just simply don't know, it was lost to them. So many of us are crying out to know our ancestry. To know our ancestry and be able to track your ancestry should be a birthright, and it is one of the hugest privileges on the planet, essentially.
And can be hugely, enormously triggering, especially coming from a white woman who was not adopted, and, you know, whose family has not been displaced by colonialist violence or by slavery. It can be hugely triggering to hear someone like that speak about that. And so I'm really honoring that and bowing to it.
[01:20:09]
What I'm talking about is the spirit, the soul of ancestral reclamation, that can happen without us needing to necessarily know where we're from. Because we don't need to know our genealogy, we don't need to know 23andMe. We don't have to… any of that, to open and connect.
Not with what we feel was our past life, but actually where our blood came from. To let images come forward, to work with Tarot decks that are a reflection, that represent us and what our ancestors might have looked like, or the tools that they may have engaged with.
That’s so important, and the inner child remembers, and is that link to the old ways. And that's part of the longer journey of reclaiming our magic.
Because, again, the more connected we are with the inner child, the more that these pieces are going to unfold, and are going to come forward for us in ways that we might not even be able to… you know, I feel like since I've started to do inner child work, very slowly and very quietly, there have been all of these threads that have come forward. And they've been so disparate, little threads, like, you know, really all of a sudden wanting to know about this piece.
And again, I have massive ancestral privilege, I know generally where my family came from. But for many of us, we can have a slight sense. There can be a sense, or there can be a memory, or there can be stories, or there can be maybe not necessarily anything earthly at all. But this connection to something that we might feel very deeply in our body. We may, you know, again, have visions or a sense of some kind.
But we all have magic, and we all have ancestors working with, around, and from us, protecting us and holding us.
And it can be very easy to get caught up in this idea, “Well, I hate all my blood relatives, and they all suck.” And I'd love for us to hold a space that there could have been a complete rewilding on the other side of the veil of your relatives.
Which is why when we work with ancestors, we always invite in the well ancestors, you know. Which, you know, many people before me have said. We can just invite in the well ancestors.
[01:22:46]
But the inner child is the gateway. The inner child remembers. The inner child can lead us to places that we might think, like, “Oh, wow, like, damn. Like, I never even thought about this, and wow, that really sparked something in me.”
Reclaiming your magic might be deeply embracing kink. It might be deeply embracing your expression of gender, your expression of sexuality. It might be deeply connected to your actual ancestral root systems, your culture, you know, whatever it is, if you happen to be lucky enough to learn something about your culture in that very specific way.
But ancestry has everything to do… you know, if we come from a very long line of folks who were deeply expressive of their sexuality, or were the opposite, were not, being in our radical selves, in our radical expression of sexuality, is a massive, massive ancestral healing. It's huge. We're healing the whole line, forward and backward.
We don't need to know anything about the lands that we're from to do that.
That's what I mean, reclaiming our magic. Once we're connected with the inner child, the inner child leads us to these places that we may think, like, “What the fuck is this?”
And it's because the inner child is the purest essence of who we are. You know, we're not our feelings. We’re not. Ultimately, our feelings don't define us.
But, like, I was born a queer witch. I don't — I have no memory of ever being told, “This is what it is to be gay, to be queer.” I just knew. Well, I love everybody (Lindsay laughs). Like, I am interested in all manner of bodies. I'm interested in all manner of expressions. From a shockingly young age. I was born knowing. I knew.
And there are some people who absolutely were not born knowing, and that's just as valid of an expression. Some people are still learning. That's so beautiful — it’s beautiful, exquisitely beautiful, and exquisitely heartbreaking, and so hard across the board.
And it's a huge — but a lot of the time for many of us, we can touch back in and go, “I do remember. There was something.” And that was your magic. And your inner child has been holding that magic for you this whole time. Truly.
[01:25:18]
And that is encased in the Page of Cups. Page of Cups can talk to fish. The Page of Cups dresses how they want to. The Page of Cups exists in this world as an emotional creature rooted to the land around them. The Page of Cups, of all the cards in the Tarot, is the most able to fully be in the world, while being completely in touch with their intuitive, emotional, psychic strengths and gifts.
They are connected to, living from, in deep reclamation of their magic.
What does this look like for the adult in you? And what does this look like for the child in you? How do these things intersect?
I find, of all of these places, this is the most deeply woven and intersected for me. That the things that you might think are, like, purely for the adult, are huge nourishment for the inner child as well. You know, what does it look like for the inner child to be reclaiming their magic? What does it look like for the adult in you to be reclaiming, you know, your magic?
You might imagine, you know, going outside and talking to fairies would not be an adult thing. And yet, you could be the one that's really wanting that, the adult self, where your kid just goes, “Well, I’m cool with, like, writing,” (Lindsay laughs), you know?
Yeah, reclaiming our magic. We’re of and from nature. We are of and from magic. That is the birthright. And there are all kinds of beautiful avenues, be they ancestral reclamations, personal reclamations, reconnection to deep gifts within us that have been coursing through our veins since the moment we got to this planet and long before it.
Reclaiming our magic, it’s huge. Page of Cups reminds us to be in our sacred imagination, to be engaging with those parts of ourselves. To be playing, you know, ultimately, and to be playing in our magic specifically.
But the reclamation is so important because you've had it. That particular part of the way the magic and that magic exists, and unfolds, and expresses itself through you has absolutely been there. Your inner child has been keeping that for you. And the inner child can help us to sense into even more of that as adults. It's quite beautiful.
And so you just want to ask yourself, what does that look like for you, when you think about magic? Sometimes it's important to sort of do an undoing and rewilding and to check in, like, is everything I know about magic told to me? Or, you know, do I get my ideas for rituals or ways to engage from, like, other people? Or do I ever come from my own desires and my own knowing? Have I ever really permissioned myself to just do what felt right or felt good? Or am I worried about it not being, like, magical enough?
So inner child work means we let the inner child guide us to the magic. And we connect with the caretaker — again, hugely radical act — and say, “Caretaker. You're doing everything for everybody. I know you're tired. I know you're worn. I know you're exhausted. I know you're needing courage, and comfort, and strength right now. How can we reconnect you to magic?”
Because it truly is a part of what fills the cup up of the caretaker. It's really important.
[01:29:05]
Our final piece in this four-part harmony is compassion.
So it's easier said than done, you know? Compassion means that we have genuine empathy and care for ourselves. That we can — or at least we can be willing to look upon our inner children.
And although we may really resent them, hate them, struggle with them, wish we didn't have to deal with them, sometimes we can feel little whispers of moments of being able to say like, “Oh, wow. Okay. You know, this is a being that's going through a really hard time right now. I know what it is to go through really hard times and to feel really scared and upset. And I'm wondering if, even though I don't quite know what to do, or even if I feel some resistance, I’m wondering how I might be able to be there for this part of myself.”
And then for the caretaker, huge compassion. This is an essential piece of our inner child work and really being with this time, in general, is just massive compassion.
We have no blueprint for this. No one — there are no books on this subject. No one has ever written a book, I don't think — like, how to handle your inner child in the midst of a pandemic (Lindsay laughs), you know? Like, how to handle your own biological children with your inner child, in the midst of a pandemic, it is a lot.
Compassion, we learn this from Queen of Pentacles. Queen of Pentacles reminds us that the Earth can hold everybody, and so we want to start there.
And this might sound a little hard. We obviously know the Earth is in a crisis right now. And yet, there is still room for us to lay our body on the mother, even if it's on your apartment floor, and feel the sense of being held by your first parent, by your first holder of life, even beyond your own biological parent, or birth-giver, or mother.
[01:31:22]
We can have compassion for the parts of ourselves that are working so hard that inevitably fail, that inevitably mess up, that inevitably don't quite get it right, or, you know, whatever it is. We can have huge compassion for that.
Queen of Pentacles is the one who caretakes the caretaker. Is the one that really understands what it is that caretakers move through.
Is the one that really says, “There are wounds and places in you that you're giving from that are invisible to most people, but I see them. And I want to help. I want to know how I can be of service to you. I want to make you that cup of tea, if that feels right. I want to draw you a bath if that feels right. I want to nurture you in the ways that feel most useful to receive. Not in ways that are, you know, more collectively associated with, with, like, ‘healing,’ quote unquote, or with ‘self-care,’ but ones that really nourish you, ones that fill you up.”
And in order to accept and receive those things, we have to be able to touch in with compassion, to be able to say, “I'm a human being who's really doing my best, even if it's not other people's bests. And even if other people can't recognize that I'm a human being doing the best that I can today in this moment, that is actually what's true,” you know. We always have room to do a little better, and we always have room to do a little worse.
But yeah, Queen of Pentacle says, whenever in doubt, start with hitting the floor. Start with placing your hands on the floor. Start with laying on the floor. Start with giving your weight over to what you're sitting on or laying on. Like, even as I'm sitting on this chair, you know, just feeling my muscles kind of relax into the chair is really powerful, you know? And it's not the floor, and it's not the ground, but it's doing the trick.
So compassion, so important. And eventually — not that all of us can so easefully touch into this… compassion for the inner child.
Because, again, although many of us are hugely triggered and very bothered by the inner child, they are super, super precious beings who are trying to figure this world out. So much doesn't make sense to them. Very often, they have parents who didn't necessarily know the right words to say.
And we're really the ones who get to guide them now, and show them, and be there for them. And it's been some of the finest privileges of my life to be able to say to my inner child, “I know how scared you are, sweetheart. I know how upset you are. But you don't ever have to worry about that again. Now you have me. And, you know, you're not with, you know, this person who treated you that way. You're not around these people. You're never going to be. I've got you. You're safe. And, you know, we got out of there.”
It's very, very powerful to be able to do that.
So compassion, that's the one that really takes the longest but if we can engage with Queen of Pentacles a little bit, it can help to, again, kind of, like, make a little bit more space.
And the more we're able to activate our sense of compassion, the more it leads us naturally to embodying Queen of Pentacles so there continues to be room for us to hold, and be in what we're in, you know, in any given moment.
[Conclusion]
Wow. These are basically, like, full workshops. It’s like the second one in a row that's been way over an hour. I mean, I feel like you can always just turn it off. But for whoever listened to the whole thing, again, this could have been a workshop and just wanted to be on a podcast, so I guess it makes sense that it’s a little longer.
Yeah, I think for the sake of time, I'm going to stop here. I'm sure I could go further, but why would I do that to you?
Thank you so much for listening to this. I really hope it serves some of you. And just be super gentle. You're not supposed to know everything about it. It's just an invitation to start thinking about this a little bit.
Remember, compassion. Compassion means going at your pace, honoring where you are. It's a big part of compassion. You know, take care of yourselves. Be real sweet to yourselves.
As you heard in the beginning of the podcast, enrollment for Tarot for the Wild Soul is open. Huge. It's only going to be open for about two and a half weeks. This is an eight-week Tarot course for anyone who wants to learn how to read how we’re talking about.
And I'd say more specifically, you know, it is a Tarot course for people who want to read from a more inclusive, evolutionary, trauma-friendly perspective, trauma-informed perspective.
But more than anything, it's an opportunity to learn how to read Tarot for stuff like this. Rather than just doing a Celtic cross spread, which is so valid and beautiful. What this course is essentially doing is how do we show up to the Tarot in moments when our inner children are super activated, or in moments when our feelings are so huge? Or in moments when we're feeling jealous or angry? You know, what medicine, what nourishment in the appropriate moments can Tarot bring?
And I think it's really… it's not been like that in prior years. But it's really important for this version of the course to flower into that to meet the needs of where folks are. So I'm really excited to be offering it. So if you're interested, you can go to tarotforthewildsoul.com to enroll or to learn more.
And, yeah, thanks for listening. I love you all. Be well. And I'll see you next time.