170. Calling in Support with The Empress
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How can we open to deeper support, expanding our ability to receive a greater degree of care, pleasure, and tending in all areas of our lives? Today on the podcast, we look to The Empress as a potent anchor for this kind of transformative work, exploring it as a continuation of our journey with Ten of Wands, our card for the month of September.
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About the Episode
Together, we will look at the gifts and the challenges of The Empress, sensing into several different ways to utilize it as an anchor for our Ten of Wands work. I also answer a listener's question about how to work with bitterness + how to ask for support without feeling guilt in the midst of chronic health issues, and we dive into the medicine of the upcoming Full Moon in Pisces (9/20) and the Fall Equinox (9/22).
Links:
Learn about my upcoming course, Heart of Service (enrollment opens on Monday, 9/20!)
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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: Capitalist structures, colonialism, systemic oppression, trauma, childbirth, inherited generational patterns, ancestral trauma, illness, and chronic pain
The content in this episode contains references to Capitalist structures, colonialism, systemic oppression, trauma, childbirth, inherited generational patterns, ancestral trauma, illness, and chronic pain. 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]
[0:00:05]
Welcome to Tarot for the Wild Soul, a weekly podcast that explores the Tarot through an inclusive, soul-centered, trauma-informed perspective for growth, healing, and evolution. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack.
(Instrumental intro music)
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[0:00:22]
Welcome to a brand new episode of the podcast, Loves. So happy and excited to be gathered with all of you for this, as always. Wow, we have such a rich and full episode today.
So, of course, we're going to be deepening even further into our exploration, our unpacking of our card for the month of September, which is Ten of Wands. Last week, we looked to Eight of Cups as an anchor to help us explore one kind of branch of the way that Ten of Wands shows up, which is that it's an invitation to put some wands down permanently. It is a card that does invite us to explore sort of like what made us pick up these wands in the first place. Certain wands — like, why are we still carrying them?
And for many of us, we're carrying certain wands, certain responsibilities, we're holding certain things energetically, because of shame and guilt and shoulds and “Oh, I have to,” and those are incredibly painful things. Sometimes we have to put wands down that we didn't really want to put down. Sometimes we don't really feel like we have. Like there's so many different intersections of how that can show up. And so we explored last week that, you know, Eight of Cups can be an incredibly powerful anchor, to help us to center the grief, the pain, the shame, the big feelings that we can just kind of, as a rule, expect when we do kind of, this first layer of Ten of Wands work.
This week, we're going to be speaking about not quite the opposite, but the next layer, which is how do we shift, change, sort of renew our relationship to the way that we're picking up the wands that are meant to be carried by us? How are we engaged in support? Are we open to support? Are other people willing and able to help us to carry those wands? Is it time to upgrade the people, the caretakers, the sources of support, that help us to carry those wands? And the card that we're going to be looking to as an anchor this week to help to peel back some of those even deeper layers of the absolutely exquisite work and medicine that Ten of Wands can bring into our life is The Empress.
So The Empress is our card for this week, and we're going to see the way that it's showing up for us, how we can lean on it, and utilize it as an anchor for our continued work through this month with Ten of Wands. So again, that's going to be really rich and really powerful. I'm also going to answer a listener question, and we're going to spend a little bit of time at the end of the episode talking about the upcoming Full Moon in Pisces, which is Monday, the 20th, we'll be moving through that, and our upcoming Equinox and shift into Libra seasons. We won't spend a ton of time on that, but I did want to touch on it, of course.
I also wanted to mention this as sort of like the one announcement, that may be of interest to some folks, that my course, Heart of Service, is opening for enrollment on Monday the 20th alongside the Full Moon in Pisces. Enrollment’s only going to be open for about two and a half weeks, and as many of you know, Heart of Service is my seven-week, online, Tarot immersion for folks who desire to shift or deepen into spirit-led, soul-guided service. And you can find out all about it by going to the link in the show notes. I'll give you another reminder next week, but for anyone who's interested enrollment does open on Monday. So that was my one piece of business (Lindsay laughs). Now, we'll be able to really nestle up and sink into all of this goodness as we explore our theme for this week, which is “Calling in Support with The Empress.”
[0:04:33]
So, to recap, Ten of Wands — as I mentioned a couple different times, as I mentioned last week — we'll talk about it again next week, as well. Ten of Wands is our card for the month of September. And it is at its heart, at its core, an invitation to deeply and kind of soulfully, honestly review all of the things, energetically, that we are holding and responsible for.
The Wands have to do with our energetic output, with our passions, our creativity, The Wands are sort of connected to and are tethered to our adrenals, that sort of flame within us. All of us have different kinds of flames and capacities for energetic output. And all Tens in the Tarot represent this really huge, important, Full Moon, harvest, reflection, review energy, where it's really important to sort of pause, observe what the last cycle has taught us, what it brought us, what works, what doesn't, and how we want to shift going forward.
And Ten of Wands brings a very special invitation out of those Wands, because when it shows up in a reading — and again, it is our card for the month of September, so we're really working with this energy throughout the whole month — it really asks like, lay all your wands down on the ground, everything you're carrying, everything you're responsible for. And it essentially calls upon us to do a little walkthrough of everything that comes up. Now, we all know that in life, like, life doesn't work that way, right (Lindsay laughs)? We can't. Like it's a nice idea, but most of us are not able to. Well, we certainly can't literally put all the wands down and look at them, but we, I don't even think logistically or energetically we can do that.
How this card is really working with us — and this is where now that we're sort of at the halfway point in the month. It might be interesting to do some reflection on this yourself. These things usually come up for us. Like, all of a sudden, they're sort of in our face, like, “Oh, this thing used to be a yes, now it feels like it's way too much for me,” or “this thing it used to sort of be on the back burner, but now I want to give it more of my time” or “I don't have enough to offer this anymore. What might need to change?” So that's the core of this card, and that's the work we're really getting to do this month.
It can be really intense and powerful, but I think this card is really showing up, especially this month, as a mixture of our intentionality, our willingness to sort of place on the proverbial ground to be really clear about like: is this for me? Is this not? Like, do I need to shift something about this? Am I no longer meant to hold it, to pick it back up? Whatever it is, it's very often not about the thing, but it's about the way we're engaging with the wand. It's not about whether or not the wand is a yes or no in a broad way; it's more about how we're engaging with them.
[0:07:57]
I think there's something really important, if we're reflecting on the Smith Rider-Waite Wands suit, which is that the person in The Wands suit is largely alone unless they're being kind of lifted up on this horse and celebrated in the Six, or they're fighting in the Five, or potentially defending themselves in the Seven. We don't actually know whether or not there's anyone there holding those wands. It could be real, it could be imagined. When the eight wands get thrown in the Eight of Wands, we don't know who threw them, we don't know where they're coming from.
So there's a lot to be said in sort of this really important root system for the way that we've interpreted The Wands and understood The Wands. It doesn't mean that it, ultimately, is the most accurate, soul-centered idea of what The Wands can do. But I do you think that it's a really important treatment of them because it's very, very easy when things are pitched up a little bit too hot, to try to do everything ourselves, right?
We all are influenced by capitalism, by colonialism, by this sense of “I do everything on my own. Nobody helps me,” this, like, intrepid energy that can really permeate. It's very, very easy, and it's very hard to break that and to remember that it's okay to ask for help. It's okay to call in support. It's okay and expected that we should not have to do it all on our own.
So how does The Empress come in as a useful, helpful anchor for another layer of how we can relate to Ten of Wands? So, of course, last week we talked about, like, what kind of support do we call in when we're placing wands down and not picking them back up for whatever reason? This week, we're talking about sensing into how can we pick the wands up that are a yes for us and hold them in a different way?
What might that be like to consider that we don't have to carry them all by ourselves? What might it be like if you're in a place in your life, where you are carrying every goddamn wand by yourself, to light a symbolic flame of intention, of willingness, of prayer, of wishing, that one day it doesn't have to be like that? Because there are some of us who are carrying all the wands by ourselves, and we don't have another immediate option.
That doesn't mean that we can't draw in an intention. That doesn't mean that we can't start naming every day, “I am absolutely willing to not carry this on my own. I don't know how the hell to call in that support. I don't know where that would come from. I can't afford it. I don't even know what it looks like, but I'm willing.”
The willingness-intention-setting that I just named is something that my teacher Michelle sort of brought into my life, and it has been so honestly transformative for me over the years since I started working with her a number of years ago. Because we're often told and taught when you set an intention, it has to be like so specific. It's often like kind of woven in with like law of attraction stuff like, “I will have this. I will have that.” And law of attraction is incredibly — you know, for many reasons — incredibly problematic. It doesn't account for systemic oppression and lack of privileges. Like there's so much that, you know, is really not all that useful, to be honest with you (Lindsay laughs), at least for me.
But the idea of naming our willingness to receive something, for me, opens a lot more doors because we have the opportunity to name that we don't know how it's possible, but we're willing to consider that there might be a way forward, we're willing to consider that maybe one day there could be something different, right? And that's often how, at least, again, for me, I can only speak for myself, I think that's how little, by little, by little, we change a lot of our patterning and a lot of what we open ourselves and make ourselves available for, just by staying tethered to that willingness; we’re willing to receive it, absolutely willing. So that's one sort of invitation for you to just play around with. It might not resonate, there might be something that works for you better, of course.
[0:13:07]
And the other piece that I want to name here, too, is that working with willingness can illuminate the places where we don't feel like we are willing. And that's really important to look at with Empress.
So Empress, as a Tarot card, its number one job, and invitation, and intention is to expand and dilate our threshold of receiving. And when I say receiving, I mean receiving on every level. Feeling the safety, the permission to take a deep breath, for some folks, that's huge. For those of us who have experienced trauma, no matter what the trauma, that sense of like, “It's safe for me to take a deep breath here, to actually breathe, to actually be here,” that's big. That's a form of receiving. It is.
To receive support and care and help and compliments and pleasure and abundance and to not let it leak out, to not shut the door on it, if it feels — of course, we're talking about safe forms of receiving. So, of course, sometimes certain things come to our door that do not feel safe. That's not what we're talking about. We can always shut the door on those. But if it's feeling like this is truly a person or a resource that desires to be of support to me, it can set off all the alarm bells, all the terror, everything, because receiving is so fucking hard to do.
I don't care who you are. I don't care what your root system is. We've all got — and I will absolutely acknowledge some people way more than others — we all have stuff around receiving. It's one of the great unifiers. Most of us have someplace where we are very uncomfortable with receiving. It may not be in an earthly way, it might not be in an obvious way. But we all have those spots where we go, “Ooh, is this too much? Is this too much for this person? Should I not ask for this? Do I not deserve it? Am I not worthy of it?” or it can feel just really honestly very triggering and uncomfortable. So we cut that off.
And I want to say, too, that that kind of response is not inappropriate. Like I have things that I still am like, “Oooh I’m working up to it, working up to feeling comfortable to receive this,” and that's okay. Like, what I've survived and the trauma I've been through, it's like, I'm happy to let it take the time that it takes, you know (Lindsay laughs). Like it's okay. We're not trying to blow the doors open.
[0:16:01]
But remember that when we dilate, like in labor if we’re dilating, there's pain, there's contractions, there's cramping; it's uncomfortable most of the time, right? That's why The Empress — no matter how much people try to like, doctor it up and make it seem like it's just some happy, special, wonderful card — is fucking intense and uncomfortable, not only because of the really strong, overcultural narrative of this card being about divine feminine and mother and like just this real binary sense of woman, which it can be, but it isn't as a rule.
Empress belongs to everyone and is allowed to be interpreted and reclaimed and honored and integrated by absolutely every being no matter what their identity. And, again, that's why it's really, really important to think beyond those binaries. Tarot, unfortunately, in a traditional way is full of them. So that's why we have to think more deeply, like what is this card doing? What is this card doing? It's asking for us to be open.
The Empress is ruled by Venus. Venus is — and it’s such an over simplification of the medicine of Venus energy and the planet and all that — but in general, Venus is the planet of everything that's sweet, everything we adore, and everything we cherish. It absolutely is an energy that is rooted in love and pleasure and sex and beauty and money, and, again, things that we adore. It doesn't have to matter what it is, or it also doesn't have to be money, but it can be connected with that.
And what's the main thing that's required to even open the door to any of these Venusian sort of delights? Receiving. We can't let love in, unless we're willing to receive it. Very hard to be present to beauty if we're unable to receive it, right? So this this lifelong work, there's a lot of really good, solid, appropriate reasons why most of us are very, very uncomfortable with receiving.
And they are related to trauma, they are related to family legacies, they are related to, like, all this shit. It’s very interesting, the more I kind of deepen into the layers of Ten of Wands, it's very fascinating how last week, too, there were elements of like thinking about family legacy stuff or thinking about ancestral, like what we inherited ancestrally, like what we think we should be doing, we have to do.
I know for myself — and I'm sure that there are many of you out there who have had a similar experience — there was an enormous degree of active, verbal shaming around like, “You should not want too much,” like, “There. This is too much. It's too decadent. It's too whatever,” which is, again, you know, based on the places in the world that my ancestors came from. Again, I'm Irish, as well as a number of different things. The famine is an absolutely massive ancestral trauma. With anyone who shares my bloodline, like that feeling of like there's never enough, even though I'm a white person, like, white folks have plenty (Lindsay laughs) you know.
So, you know, we can't — sort of, in a much, much larger way — can't really heal these wounds in a much broader sense, in a personal sense, without being aware of where they come from, and without being aware of like, “Oh, that's why the record immediately goes to this groove, and here's, with a greater awareness, how I can shift that. Right? Because I do have everything I need right now. I am okay. It is okay to ask for help for support. It's safe now. Right?” So that's sort of where we can start with this card.
[0:20:19]
Now, how can it be a useful anchor for Ten of Wands work?
So, we're looking at with this card, what it means for us, not just to call in support, more support, but to look at our relationship to worthiness, around support. Because it's very hard to call in support, if we don't feel like we're worthy of it. A lot of us have trouble — you know, I have really had to work through this — we have a lot of trouble letting go of control, a lot of trouble, right? It's very, very hard to give over to trust, to open ourselves up to the possibility of someone else coming in and being of service, but potentially not being of service (Lindsay laughs) in the way we really wanted to them to be. And you know, there's some risks to that, right? That can feel super scary.
And that's why many of us just heave those Ten Wands around, and then we wind up forgetting things and not being able to keep up with our commitments or our work, and it's because we're really driven by this sense of like, “I don't want to let anyone in because even if I'm missing, or not getting at things, it's not another person making the mistake: it's me,” right? So that's a really big piece.
So worthiness can come up, fear can come up, trauma can come up, a lack of resourcing can come up. And that's why it's really important, I think, with Empress, to be open to that willingness, because we may not today be able to call in the kind of support we so, so desire. But it doesn't mean that we can't start to build the pathway, right? It's long work, super long work.
So we're looking at, you know, again, that deep, inner, root worthiness. And the place that we start with Empress, that is just like the baseline of Empress is that you are worthy of receiving, period. Worthy, like, it's a birthright. You are worthy of that. Some of us have to work harder, longer, have to unpack a couple of different things, have to move through way taller mountains, way harder climbs, to feel like we have a sense of safety and ability to name or to call in that sense of support, and I want to fully acknowledge that.
And also, the Empress asks us to consider: is there anything that's here, like right now in this moment, that's a source of support, but you have a sense of resistance to it? Like, “Oh, it's gonna be too much to ask this person for that,” or “What if they don't like me anymore? What if I overwhelm them, or what if I'm too much?” That's Empress work, too.
[0:23:28]
So how this relates to Ten of Wands is, now that we've sort of done the work or laid the groundwork for the work of permissioning ourselves, to really honor the grief and the pain and the challenges that can come with laying the wands down that we will no longer be available to pick up, the next layer of that is to think about, “Well, how can I begin to call in a new way of holding the wands that I do want to carry?” What does that look like? Right?
And again, The Empress can help because, like this work that I'm describing to you, has been very present in my life as a business owner and an entrepreneur. I cannot tell you (Lindsay laughs) how long it's taken me to fully let go of some of the things that I've let go of in my work, and to allocate and to delegate. And I will say, that the more that I've — because it's a cyclical process, right? — the more I've put down, energetically or realistically, and realized that I'm absolutely not meant to be holding this wand or this part of the wand, or this Wand is still something I'd like to keep around, but I can't hold it, I have to kind of manage other people to hold it, all that stuff is, it happens with time; it's not overnight. But that sort of seed-planting process is what we're being asked to consider there.
Because again, receiving is really intense. It's very confronting, it's very difficult. And many of us, again, depending on who we are, what we've experienced, have a stronger, greater, more intense degree of resistance to it, and again, for good reason. Because what if we're afraid of making mistakes, we're afraid of not getting what we need, we're afraid of being vulnerable to ask and not getting it? Like, it's so painful. Some of us would rather never ask, because it's too much, or it overwhelms our nervous system’s ability to cope.
So our Ten of Wands work doesn't have to be some grand, performative, like, “I'm going to call in all the support tomorrow!” Like, if that's your thing, I think that's fucking amazing, but it doesn't have to be. We’re just sensing into like, what is coming up around this, right? What is coming up around this?
[0:26:07]
I'm always reminded during course time, which I'm moving into, that there's always a sense of, I noticed last week that the simplest of emails from anyone from that were welcome, that were delightful, that were logistical, and not from my team, from anyone: from my tax preparers, like whatever, were deeply activating. And when I sat with it, I thought: what's underneath this is, I can't answer this. I need time to do the coursework, you know.
And the truth is, I had the time to do the coursework. I wasn't managing my boundaries as well as I could have, in terms of when I'm touching in with email, and when I'm not. And it took a little tweak for me to be able to say, like, I can respond to all of these, and I'm so grateful for all of these people in my life that are helping me to manage all these things. And it's just as important for me to be receptive to my own creative space, which, for me, requires a lot of quiet and a lot of room to be able to sink into something without interruption.
So that, like, aggravation that like, “Ugh, there's so many interruptions!” that's a very, very old wound that I inherited from my mother, from my family, because they had zero boundaries, and there were always a million people. Like nobody ever had their space and time. It has actually nothing to do with me.
And if you can believe it, that's a part of Empress work, too, that there are times in life, especially as it relates to Ten of Wands, where we're not the one holding certain wands, where we have, like, three people on a wand, and we're sort of parallel to it. We're like, “You got it? You got it? Great!” Like, right?
So this isn't a permanent thing. It's just starting to think and broaden our perspective around like, what would it be like to plant seeds of intention for like, the much, much longer view or journey of my life? Like, what would I like my relationship with my wands to feel like, right? What would I like it to feel like? What would that bring me, you know?
And I mentioned that example with my hair-trigger response to my emails. You know, I just want to reiterate, again, I am so grateful for all the people who serve me (Lindsay laughs), and it was not in any way an activation toward them. No, they weren't doing anything. It was an awareness in myself: there's some need here that's not getting met. How can I meet the need? And it was a reminder that this isn’t automatic. This is... it's an invitation whenever we have that sense of like, “I can't ask for this. I can't ask for too much. I can't– this or that,” that we can actually just pause and sit with that part of ourselves and go “Hi, sweetheart. What's coming up for you right now?” or, you know, if you don't want to use the term sweetheart, you can just sense into it and say, “What's really going on here? You know, what are you needing, right? What are you needing right now?”
And then when we can sense into it, we can lean into the inevitable discomfort that's coming up around receiving or feeling like we can't ask for what we need or whatever it is, and see what we can do to shift it. Right? And, and again, it's long work. It's not tomorrow.
[0:29:43]
So we're looking at our innate worthiness, our sense of willingness to receive support, our willingness to start thinking differently, to start visioning something different overall. With our relationship to our wand, in general, like, what does our care look like? What does our support look like? What does that look like? What's accessible to us today?
That's very important not to compare because what's accessible to us today is what's accessible to us today, right? Knowing that it can change at a time, realizing and recognizing that it is incredibly hard and challenging to feel like we are worthy of receiving, but it changes and can heal with time. So holding a space for that.
And the bigger question, which is, how can we say yes? How can we say yes to even the willingness to receive more support in spite of those big feelings and those big discomforts and those big fears? And how can we start to center that a little bit more? How can we cultivate a completely different relationship with the wands we pick up by sensing into: what does the community support look like around this? What are my fears, my traumas, my conditioning? What is my conditioning around feeling like I can't ask for more of this? Right?
So that's what the Empress calls upon us to do, because it was really big work to sense into our Eight of Cups branch, our Eight of Cups layer of Ten of Wands work, which we looked at last week, this is even bigger, I think. Because again, it's not, like, tomorrow. It’s bigger, and it's a spiral. It's not a straight line, it's not a button we push.
So this is helpful for this month, as we navigate like, what's working, what isn't? How do we wish we could pick up these wands, hold them? What kind of system, what kind of resourcing, what kind of support are we longing for? And is there anything that's accessible or available to us today? Is there some kind of intention, some kind of willingness that we can lay down, in order to call in what we're really looking for? Like, I think that's just as important as sensing into what's accessible and available today.
So it's really big work, it's really intense work. And it's work that we get to do over our lifetime. And little, by little, by little, by little, it does shift, it does change, it does. It's just slow (Lindsay laughs), you know. It’s just, unfortunately, it's slower. You know, it just is.
[0:32:40]
And then sometimes we hit a stride and we realize, like, whoa, and we do all of this internal work, and then all of a sudden, bam: there's a big shift. I'm noticing this month, it's interesting, almost exactly what I shared in the monthly medicine is very present in my life. This month, in particular, where a lot of things are starting that I've like, had on my long term to-do list or long term like “hope I can, like make this happen or touch into this someday,” there's been a couple of things that like for years, it’s all been like an egg that I've been sitting on. And now it's like just certain things are just kind of happening or coming into my sphere.
And it's reminding me that, like, we do the internal work to prepare for the external shift for years sometimes. And this kind of work is very similar. It is. There's a preparation, there's a delayering, there's a realization, there's an uncoupling that happens with these really old traumas and really old ways of approaching or resisting support, that are incredibly important to be with for as long as we need to be with them. And then kind of all of a sudden, they can shift and change. And it's really easy for us to think like, “Ugh, why now?” But if we're really being honest with ourselves, for most of us, if we look back, it's like we’ve been doing the fucking work forever (Lindsay laughs). It's like it's been years. So can we give ourselves a little bit of credit for that, right?
And in this time, in this month, that is so incredibly ripe for big changes, huge laying down of things that don't serve any more, big picking up of things that are a completely different shape, like with the way that we're doing something, I think that's very Ten of Wands. It’s like, it's not necessarily the thing, but it's the way we're relating to the thing that changes.
So when we lean into the Empress it can really help us to kind of go down to the bones of like, why is this happening? And some of it is over cultural, some of it is ancestral, some of it is how we were raised, and our caretakers, and some of it is protection and all of the above. And, you know, if we can be aware and compassionate and gentle with ourselves around it, slowly and gently over time, we can really shift our relationship to how we are relating to and calling and support around the wands that we do desire to pick up or that are in our lives right now.
So, I encourage you to think about that, and to sense into it, and to not see it as just like another task, another kind of like, “Ugh I need to do more work in order to get the support I need.” Really, it's not simple, because it's pretty complicated for most of us and pretty fraught, but the actual doing of the process is quite simple. It just really has to do with sensing into what feels like, the available, accessible support in our life is, but we're resistant to asking for it because of some old wound that we no longer have to negotiate with, we don't have to continue forward with it, and/or looking at the places where we don't really have the flexibility to call in or have the kind of support we really, really fucking want.
And can we open up to an intention-setting, to a willingness? Can we start naming in the moment, “This feels like a lot for me to be holding. I don't want to hold this anymore by myself. I don't want to do this anymore by myself. I'm willing to consider that there could be more support for me around this. I can't see it or feel it right now. But I'm open. I'm open.” Right? It's as simple as that.
So again, I invite you to stay open to the medicine of The Empress, let it kind of wash over you. Keep what works, leave what doesn't.
[0:37:03]
And then in light of what we've been talking about, we have a really beautiful question from Amanda. This is our listener question for the week that I'm going to dive into my answer for. There is a content warning on this related to illness. So if you're not in the season of your life where you'd like to hear a question about, then you can just skip to where I start talking about the Full Moon in Pisces.
So Amanda asks:
“Hey, Lindsay, I've been going through a massive health journey with endometriosis that has felt as though it's taken away so much from me: my ability to mother, my ability to tattoo without rescheduling clients, and my ability to sustain relationships.
I'm wondering if you have any advice on how to move more toward radical acceptance and away from the bitterness toward what is. I keep drawing Two of Pentacles and Ten of Wands, but I feel guilty asking for help. I do, and then feel like I'm draining those around me. Thank you.”
So Amanda, I just want to start with my deepest love and compassion and support and tenderness and sympathy and everything toward you, to you. I am so sorry that you're going through this. I'm so sorry that you're going through this. That is the biggest piece. Everything you shared in here, I'm so sad and mad for you that endo has taken so much and has shifted so much and has made you feel like this. I'm just so sorry. And I know that I'm not alone (Lindsay laughs) and that there are so many listening to this who their hearts are breaking and cracking open and kind of raging for you. So I want to start there.
And even though I don't know you, I want to just affirm. You're doing such a great job. This is so fucking hard. There's no manual for us on how to be sick, on how to deal with chronic health issues. I am 1,000% positive you're doing such a fucking great job, even though I know it doesn't feel like that. And so I don't want to negate your feelings, but I just really want to bow to you and say that I'm so sorry that you're going through this.
There are a couple things I want to speak to in here, and you can take them or leave them as always. Number one: bitterness is an inroad to radical acceptance, right? Because when we're engaging in radical acceptance, we're working to radically embrace everything that's coming up. And it seems like what you're saying — well, this isn't what you're saying. You're saying “move more toward radical acceptance and away from this bitterness,” I would invite you to consider, and there are folks who, like Tara Brach is a good example, but there are certainly other ones. There are people who actually are experts at this concept of radical acceptance and of mindfulness, and actually, work with and directly serve those who are moving through a lot of stuff that you are currently moving through, conditions and various things.
And the inroad as a chronic pain person, as a person who lives with chronic pain. And I can tell you, that my inroad toward any kind of touching in with radical acceptance of my circumstances, or at least the willingness to radically accept my circumstances (Lindsay laughs), I don't often get to the radical acceptance stage. But I'm often, I sometimes will get as far as willingness.
Usually, the rage and despair and bitterness are my actual inroad, and I encourage you to explore that because we don't want to move away from the bitterness. The bitterness is valid, it's okay for it to be here. You feeling bitterness is as valid as it fucking gets. And that goes for anybody who is experiencing anything sad and scary and uncomfortable and difficult and chronic, and anything that we've somehow, I think, you know, and I can speak for myself, too, like, tricked ourselves into believing that these heavy, intense emotions and feelings somehow aren’t a part of the radical acceptance circle, when they're often the kickoff point.
So I wonder what it would be like when bitterness is just burning through you, and you may want to do this with a processor, with someone that you trust, or with a therapist. And it's my deepest prayer that you have some kind of source of support like that, or you're a part of a group of fellow endo experiencers or sufferers, or whatever word resonates with you, obviously. I hope that that's something that is a part of your life.
If not, I highly recommend, if you're able, if the energetic capacity is there, that you think about it. But to think about, like, just starting with bitterness, and breathing into that, and just naming like, “Okay, bitterness is here. Like, can I bow to that? Can I let that just get as big as it wants to get?”
Again, if it feels overwhelming, you may not want to do it alone, starting there is the key. And again, for those of us who are really moving through challenges, as you are, that is often the inroad to radical acceptance. So I would say, see what it might be like to open your arms to it, rather than try to push it away in order to feel okay with what's going on because you may not feel that right now, you know. But I think you'll get there faster if you're willing to be inclusive of the bitterness. You let me know how that lands with you. You're welcome to email me about that.
[0:43:20]
Second thing: I don't, this is a very bold response to something that you named here, which is that you feel guilty asking for help. You do, and then feel like you're draining those around you. I would like to encourage you to lean in and ask anyway, and to trust that the folks in your lives, in your life, have the ability to communicate with you and have the ability to draw a boundary if they need to, and that you don't actually know if you're draining them. But I encourage you to name that, if it feels safe enough to some of the people that you're feeling like “I can't ask this person because of X,Y, Z.”
Who knows? Maybe your circumstance is draining them. I would say that that's not really any of your business. If it drains them, that's not on you, actually. They are totally at choice as to whether or not they feel available to come and help you. Right? It's on you. Like it's the only thing you have control of. It’s for us to say, “Hey, if you're available, if you're willing, if you're able, it would mean so much to me, if you may be available for this kind of supportive task. If not, that's always okay. Thank you so much for considering.” Right? That's it.
It's so easy for the thinking mind, for that protective part of us, to go “Fuck no” and just shut the door because we don't want to even risk, like, the potential of that, right? But I encourage you to be courageous, to be vulnerable, and to try and to actually let people, maybe even like, totally correct you and tell you like, “You're absolutely not bothering me. I'm so sorry that you're going through it. It's a pleasure to be of support.” Give them the benefit of the doubt.
[0:45:16]
And actually, you know, this is Nine of Swords work. Like, a lot of the time when something's like swirling around and festering inside, like your fear of like, “I'm so afraid of draining them. I feel so guilty,” naming it out loud and saying, “This is coming up for me. And I'd be curious to see if it's true, you know, because I definitely want to be able to encourage you to not come, right, if you're not feeling that.” So that's another big piece that I would just see how it lands with you.
I don't think you should do anything I'm saying, but just see how it lands with you because I think you might be surprised. I think you might be surprised at what they're actually feeling. And again, if they're drained, they have the agency to say no to your request (Lindsay laughs). So it's nothing you have to hold. That's, I guess, where I'm going with that.
And then lastly, Two of Pentacles and Ten of Wands are huge, like, fireworks to me in terms of your Tarot deck speaking to you, in terms of support during this time. Two of Pentacles says, “Do not hold, attempt to hold, anything that you can't, other than what you can, other than what's yours. Delegate, give certain things away.” You only have, like, kind of energetically speaking, two hands. And there are times in life where we can only hold certain things in our two hands. Some folks don't have any hands, some folks have one hand, but if we're talking about sort of like the, again, this kind of energetic idea, we can only hold what we can hold, right?
So Two of Pentacles, I think, is inviting you to be really, really clear with yourself and with people around you like, “Hey, this is what I can hold. This is what I'm available to offer right now, and I can't offer you anything more. And one day, it might be different, but this is what it is right now.” So I think seeing how that lands with you, in terms of not comparing what you can do now with what you were able to do a year ago, it's really hard. But I think being as present as possible around, like, you're doing such a fucking good job with what you're handling right now. I think giving yourself that space, that acknowledgement, is really, really important. And Ten of Wands is backing that up.
We've been talking about it for a couple weeks, and basically saying, like, put down the wands that are not yours to hold. And I think that also is inclusive of this feeling of guilt and this sense of like, “Oh, I'm draining them” — not yours to hold. They can tell you. They can say, “Oh, I'm not available right now. I'm so, so sorry.” The End (Lindsay laughs). Like, the end. They have agency and ability to regulate themselves, and to be really clear with what they're available or unavailable for, right?
So you can put those down, there are some wands you might have to put down right now. That doesn't mean you won't be able to pick them up someday. Right? And then thinking about like, what would it take for me to pick this wand that I really want to hold back up? Like what would that take?
I realize all these things are potentially more labor, but I think that is the answer that I have to your question that, you know, of course, this is absolutely not an end-all-be-all or inclusive of everything you've shared. It's just, you know, one person's invitation just for you to think about. And, again, I would encourage you to write me and let me know if anything didn't land with you or did land with you, or if there's any sort of follow up that I can support us and just know that all of us are really holding you and loving you and witnessing you in what you're moving through right now. And I hope that this served. I really do. Thank you so much for asking it. So loving on Amanda, so big, again.
[0:49:39]
And yeah, I'm gonna shift really briefly before we bring this episode to a close with our Full Moon in Pisces and our Equinox and our shift into Libra season.
So we have a Full Moon in Pisces on Monday the 20th, and then around 21st-22nd, we have our Equinox which also marks our shifts from the sun being in Virgo to the sun being in Libra. It's also the mark of our shift in the Northern Hemisphere anyway from summer to fall.
I personally find equinoxes to be — solstices, too, but especially equinoxes — they're intense. I feel like they're measurably intense, especially the energetic shift that takes us from summer to fall, holy smokes. So I'll talk a little bit, just a teeny, teeny bit, about the Full Moon in Pisces, and then I'll pivot over to equinox, and we'll talk a little bit about how we can work with that.
So I don't have too much to get to around the Full Moon in Pisces. But there was one thing that I wanted to share that felt really resonant to share, which is to remember that, you know, we've actually been in a lot of Full Moon type energy in the last couple of episodes because we have been talking about the Ten, the Tens, and Ten of Wands. And the Tens are very reminiscent of Full Moon energy, reaching the culmination of a cycle, and kind of harvesting everything, reviewing what are we keeping, what are we composting. That's the function of Full Moons rather, to be able to harvest, to really reflect on what this last cycle has been.
And I find it quite extraordinary that we have the opportunity to move through Full Moon energy, which basically says you've gone as far as you can go in this cycle. Let's, again, harvest what we've been, what we've sown, what we've grown, really look at all of it, decide what comes with us, what doesn't — total Ten of Wands energy, but it's happening in the sign of Pisces.
Pisces, there's so much we could say about Pisces. We could pivot in a million different directions as to how this moon is going to feel. I sense that it's going to be a very intense moon, not to shake anyone's nervous systems up, but there's so much going on right now, like, energetically, that we can't even name. There's so much we can name. There are also other things that are part of the undertow that are so strong and intense, that it's hard to even get a handle on like what they are.
I can't tell you how many times in the last few weeks I've been like — I know, I'm pregnant so it's a little different for me, but it's been happening in my non-pregnant friends and kin — I'm so upset, and I don't know why. And even in naming and acknowledging all the things happening in the world, there's something even more severe and deeper, and I can't sense into what it is. So that's big Pisces vibes. So it may really wind up amplifying, I think, what we've all really been feeling which, again, is this undertow, this undercurrent of energy.
Pisces is also about its mutable water, and it's very much about the deep waves, the echoes. So Pisces medicine with a Full Moon can bring up some kind of old shit from the bottom of the ocean and when paired with Full Moon energy can serve us in actually, finally, clearing some of it, which is really beautiful, also holds the capacity for us to dive deeper into our kind of emotional sea that maybe we're not used to.
But the sort of most significant point that I wanted to land in the space for this exploration of this Full Moon is that Pisces is the sign of the end. It's the last sign in the zodiac, like capital T, capital E, The End. It represents sacred closing. It really represents death cycles. It represents the last crucial bit of work before we're set free, right?
We're in Tethered One that's ruled by Neptune, connected to Pisces. Tethered One keeps us in that chrysalis, keeps us held where we're actually undergoing a metamorphosis. It doesn't feel like it. It feels like we're just kind of stuck, but we're undergoing this huge transformation. And on the other side of the Tethered One is the Death card, when we're actually set free and there can be a real energetic shift, a transformation that can occur, but we can't get there without that Pisces-Neptune-Tethered One energy.
[0:54:49]
Same thing with The Moon, after. The Moon separates our huge work in line two of the Majors into Devil, Tower, Star, it cleaves that in half. And after The Moon, we're in The Sun, and then we're in Judgement, and then we're in The World, and then we're set free. There's a freedom that happens after Pisces energy that is so powerful. Without the Pisces work, we're not able to. It's a crucial part of being able to flip over into, energetically speaking, areas of rebirth, et cetera.
The timing of it being aligned with the Equinox coming, I feel like, is massive. Just sort of, again, energetically what that implies, we have the ability to utilize the Full Moon in Pisces as this huge point of clearing before we leave this summer season behind and pivot over into autumn, right.
So I was mentioning that the Solstice is very big, but the Equinoxes, I think energetically, have the most aftershocks around them, if we're talking about just sort of frequency-wise. Why? Because they represent the biggest, like, if we were to think about like a literal lever that's being pulled or pushed, sort of on or off, when we move through the Spring Equinox, we're shifting from winter to spring, and things are getting turned on in a way that is big, right? Because we're shifting out of this gradual, slow time of release and clearing and shedding to deep breaths, deep digestion, deep kind of hibernation, that happens in fall and winter. And then all of a sudden, the lever gets kicked on, and everything starts waking back up. Everything comes alive, and then we're blooming and blossoming and creating and growing. And that's what's kind of started in the Spring Equinox, right? It pushes the lever up to on.
The Fall Equinox pulls the lever off. And what we're doing here, and it's a beautiful thing, we're no longer going to be energetically blooming, creating, moving, right? There's absolutely blooming and creating and harvesting. And I don't mean to say that we can't do huge and important work in the fall and winter seasons. It's absolutely not what I'm saying. But when we think about the energetics of it, right, there's this sense of like, okay, this is the half of the year where we rest, we restore, we do the inner work that's necessary for the big kind of spring and summer seasons. So when that lever gets turned off, the shift from blooming to shedding, whew (Lindsay laughs), it's big, right? It radiates through our bodies. We feel it. It's really, really big.
[0:57:53]
And that shift from Virgo to Libra is also really big, very big. Libra, oh, it’s such a powerful energy. It's an energy that holds so much, that carries with it the essence of the Justice card, of The Empress, so much, that's so, so big, of course. The Spring Equinox, again, I'm going with Northern Hemisphere. You can obviously click this into reverse if you are Southern Hemisphere-oriented because you'll have your own medicine and own rhythm of the year from that perspective.
But I find it very interesting that the Spring Equinox is always, in the Northern Hemisphere, connected to Aries energy because we move into Aries on that. And so we need Aries energy to kind of initiate. And in Libra energy we're widening that, to be more inclusive of this idea of me plus everyone else because Libra is so devoted to sort of the collective, to being in connection with others, right? So there's an incredible sense of openness that can happen there.
It's also worth mentioning that each of the four seasons have different elemental rulings, in terms of what cardinal sign we're moving into, right? So spring is, we can say, ruled by fire, connected to The Wands, because the cardinal sign that we move into on the first day of spring is Aries season. Summer is water, related to The Cups, because the cardinal sign we move into on the first day of summer is Cancer. In the fall, we're shifting into the Swords. It's an air time, so this is, it's really important on the Fall Equinox to be super gentle with our mind, our body, to really come in with a lot of care and support. It's beautiful.
I love the autumn. I love autumn, rather, but it's a big time. It's a really big time of, it's a big shift to go from Cups to Swords. I love the Swords, but it's a big shift. So they're really powerful. This is the first day where — of the year so far, and certainly since the last equinox we've gone through — where the lever is being clicked off. And all kinds of different energetic processes can start to happen, once that lever is shifted in a different direction.
So it's not, again, like a full spectrum reading of what this is going to be. But I think, potentially, very useful to hold ourselves and to really be quite gentle with the bigness of this shift, especially the fact that a Full Moon in Pisces is directly preceding it (Lindsay laughs). I think it's a very, very strong threshold, I do, and a big portal for transformation. And if we can really lean into it as such, it can be, I think, quite supportive to our process.
—
[Conclusion]
[1:00:57]
So thank you so much for being here, Loves. I adore all of you.
As always, I hope that this episode was as supportive as humanly possible. I look forward to connecting with you next week. And until we find ourselves in that space, please take exquisite care of yourselves.
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