I’ve spent the past few months asking myself a question that feels much bigger than, What should I write next?

Instead, I’ve been asking: What do I want Decked to become?

Because a Substack shouldn’t just be a collection of essays. It’s much more than that. Or at least, it has the potential to be.

When I started this, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I just knew that tarot was becoming a bigger and bigger part of my life, and I wanted somewhere to put that evolution. Somewhere to write about the cards, certainly, but also somewhere to explore all the other things that kept appearing alongside them: ritual, creativity, intuition, community, and the strange experience of learning to trust yourself.

I couldn’t have predicted where it would take me.

A year later, I read tarot nearly every week at one of my favorite local coffee shops. I’ve read at parties, markets, private events, and at a gorgeous hotel beneath the moon. I’ve sat across from strangers who became remarkably vulnerable remarkably quickly. I’ve learned how to read when I have an hour to extrapolate and when I have ten minutes and a big line of people.

I’m very proud of the anxious, unsure Becca who started this little Substack a year ago. She didn’t feel particularly ready for any of that.

But she did it anyway.

Decked hasn’t evolved through some beautifully executed master plan. I’ve changed my mind SO many times. I’ve pivoted. I’ve gotten busy. Then I’ve disappeared for stretches of time, and for longer than I wanted to. But also I’ve come back.

That inconsistency used to bother me. I want to be prolific. I liked great output. I love the satisfaction of looking back at a pile of finished work and thinking, I made all of that, look how great that is.

But there’s been a hidden gift in this season. I’m learning to reframe my creative practice as a system of cycles rather than a constant mode of production.

Some seasons require presence. Others require rest. Sometimes I’m writing constantly; sometimes I’m researching. Sometimes I’m gathering experiences that I won’t understand well enough to write about until months later. Sometimes the garden needs tending more than it needs harvesting.

I’m learning to let that be enough.

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Building Something Slower

So much of our day-to-day lives rewards speed. I’ve found myself craving almost everything that moves in the opposite direction.

Letters. Conversations. Coffee. Moon rituals. Books with dog-eared pages. Things made by hand. Things you keep. The things that ask us to linger, to be present for, to reclaim the increasingly lost art of attention.

I don’t think we realize how deeply our ideas about productivity and creativity have been shaped by capitalism and gain until we stop long enough to pause and reflect. We turn hobbies into side hustles. We turn creative practices into content calendars. We measure whether something is worth doing by whether it can grow, perform, sell, or become useful.

Then we wonder why we’re so f*cking exhausted.

That lingering malaise, that strange sense of dissatisfaction and feeling drained during a season you expected to feel full, content and vibrant. Sometimes those feelings are subtle signs that where you are isn’t where you actually want to be.

I’ve felt this, particularly with social media. I consume an enormous amount of wonderful art online. I find writers, artists, recipes, films, ideas, homes, clothes, places, and creators who genuinely inspire me. But inspiration can quietly become consumption. After enough scrolling, my brain feels bloated. I’ve taken in hundreds of images and ideas and opinions without actually doing anything with them. There’s a grubby little part of my brain that would happily keep going: consume, consume, consume.

Creating Decked has helped me interrupt that cycle. So has reading books again. So has writing by hand. So has physically sitting across from another person and reading their cards. They require something different from my attention. And the more I’ve focused on creation, the more I’ve realized that I can’t rush any of these processes, no matter how badly I may want to.

So I’ve changed it up.

I make the time and space for creative sessions, but I try not to arrive with a grand expectation for what must be accomplished. I sit down. I start. I see what happens. Inevitably, I accomplish quite a bit. The difference is that I’m learning to enjoy the process instead of gritting my teeth through it. And that has been a surprisingly difficult lesson to relearn.

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What’s Happening Behind the Scenes

All of this has made me curious about what Decked could become beyond the essays themselves.

Right now, I’m enamored with tangible media. I want to make something you can actually hold. There’s something almost spiritually rebellious about that to me. A letter doesn’t refresh. A postcard doesn’t send you a notification. A piece of art sitting on your desk isn’t competing for your attention with fourteen other tabs. You can tuck it into a book. Pin it above your desk. Find it again six months later.

So I’ve been quietly experimenting with the idea of a Decked mailing club: handwritten elements, tarot, art, rituals, and other small objects designed to be kept and revisited. I’m still figuring out exactly what form it will take, but I’m incredibly excited by it.

More on that soon.

I’ve also been developing more seasonal tarot prompts. The longer I read, the more convinced I become that so much of our lives moves in cycles. Certain questions return. Certain patterns return. We change, and suddenly an old question means something entirely different. I want Decked to make more room for that kind of reflection.

Poetry will be finding its way in, too. I love the idea of pairing poems with tarot cards and spreads. Not necessarily because a poem perfectly “represents” a card, but because both can illuminate something that ordinary language struggles to hold.

Refer a friend

And then there are the artists.

I’m enormously inspired by my creative friends. Having people around me who are making films, art, writing, textiles, tattoos, food, and all kinds of strange and beautiful things has completely changed my own practice. It’s inspiration, but it’s also accountability. Sometimes you need someone who understands why you’re excited about a half-finished idea and will also lovingly ask whether you’ve actually worked on it this week.

I’ve started noticing tarot archetypes in their work, too: certain energies embodied by the way someone creates, builds a business, makes a home, or brings people together. Once the Moonrise Swim series wraps up, I’ll begin sharing some of those conversations here.

I’m experimenting with what tarot can look like in groups as well. Most tarot is intimate by nature: one reader, one person, a table between them. But I think there’s something really interesting waiting in a shared experience: using the cards as a way for a group to reflect, talk, write, and connect with each other. I’m playing with visuals and presentation styles now, with the hope of eventually creating something live.

Then there are the opportunities I never planned for.

My coffee shop readings and hotel residency were both unexpected. I didn’t feel ready when those doors opened. As it turns out, I was. Or maybe “ready” is overrated. I trusted the practice, trusted myself enough to show up, and figured out the rest while I was doing it. Those experiences have become some of the most wonderful parts of my year. They’ve also changed what I imagine is possible for Decked.

So, What Is Decked?

I ask myself this far too often.

Is it a kitchen table? A coffee date? A handwritten letter? A campfire? A neighborhood bookshop? A porch swing at sunset? A cup of tea after a difficult week? I hope Decked feels like all of those things. Yes, I know I’m being greedy. But also, why the hell not?

When I started, I thought of Decked as a radically honest but hopeful way of reading tarot. I never wanted to promise sunshine and rainbows. Life doesn’t work that way, and neither do the cards. More often than not, life throws us around or gives us a stomp. We end up feeling, well, Decked.

But after hundreds of readings, I’ve realized how what we’re actually seeking isn’t a prediction. We want to be heard. We want to be witnessed. We want somewhere safe enough to admit what we already suspect might be true.

To be Decked, at least as I’ve come to understand it so far, is to be open to the honest reflection the cards offer, and then to decide what you’re going to do with it. I think — I hope — this publication is becoming an extension of that idea. Not just tarot readings. Not just essays. But a place for reflection, ritual, art, experimentation, and connection.

And I’d like you to help me figure out what comes next. If Decked showed up in your mailbox once a month, what would you hope to find inside?

A tarot spread? A ritual? A tea recommendation? A poem? An essay? A postcard? A playlist? An interview with an artist? A journal prompt? A recipe? A pressed flower? A moon calendar? Something I haven’t thought of yet?

Tell me. I’m genuinely curious. One thing I’ve learned this year is that creative work doesn’t begin when something is finished. It begins the moment we’re curious enough to start.

So please: start writing, start experimenting. Just start with something.

That’s what this season has been for me. Not launching. Not scaling. Not being loud for the sake of making noise. Just paying attention. I’m quietly building something I’d be excited to receive myself.

So here’s to making beautiful things slowly. I have a sneaking suspicion they’re the ones that last.

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Love, work, timing, decisions. Who will I meet? What will happen? Am I making the right choice?

The most burning questions we ask tarot always surround one central theme: what’s coming next? But before the cards can reveal anything about where we’re going, they’re going to ask us to look honestly at where we are. Tarot has never felt like mere fortune-telling to me. It has always felt more like holding up a mirror and looking courageously at what reflects back.

I’ve been seeing psychic readers since I was in middle school. My mom was very open to all traditions and spiritual paths, and it’s something I’m incredibly grateful for now. I grew up with the freedom to explore spirituality rather than being told there was only one correct way to understand it. So, over the years, I noticed a lot of different patterns in the readings I received. Readers could sometimes identify eerily specific parts of my personality or some of the dynamics playing out in my life. But whenever we crossed the threshold from reflection into prediction, things tended to get murky. Very, very murky.

So many readers assumed I wanted to know what job I would have or who I was gonna marry. The predictions were often vague and convoluted (“He’s so tall and handsome!”) or occasionally absurd (“He’ll spend all his days spoiling you!”). Ew. One reader emphatically regaled me with details about the tall, blonde man I would someday marry. I left that reading feeling very alarmed: I’ve never been particularly attracted to blondes, so instead of finding this romantic, younger me was annoyed. Others described men who sounded as though they’d escaped from a particularly overwrought romance novel. I was promised intense, all-consuming relationships, which was absolutely not what I was looking for. And so, for a long time, I just stopped asking questions about romance or career.

I didn’t want a weird, puppy-ish mind-reader. I wanted true partnership, with complexity and depth. And I wanted advice on how to achieve that.

Eventually, I realized that the readings I remembered weren’t the ones that insisted they knew exactly what was going to happen. The ones that made the most meaningful impact were the ones that helped me understand who I was and how I was seeing the world.

• How was I viewing the current situation?

• What hidden, less obvious patterns were influencing my choices?

• What kind of energy was I bringing into the room?

• What was actually within my control?

Occasionally, a reading would feel like a forewarning, a necessary “heads-up” about some difficulty coming around the bend. There’s comfort in that. Awareness gives us a sense of agency, and often the blow dealt feels much less painful when we know something’s coming. But some awareness shouldn’t be mistaken for certainty. The awareness led to the practice of self-reflection, and that gave me something to work with.

The Poet Trying to Be a Banker

Many years ago in Los Angeles, in my early twenties, I received a reading from the woman who would eventually teach me tarot. During that reading, she described my attempts to fit myself into a conventional, traditional life path with a phrase I’ve never forgotten: “You are a poet trying to be a banker.”

She was absolutely right. And I also hated hearing it.

For years, I had been trying to compete in jobs, friendships, dating, and the social scene by being everything except myself. I wanted to be good at the things I thought I was supposed to value. I wanted to be practical. Competitive. Impressive. Successful in ways other people could immediately recognize. What I didn’t particularly want to accept was my intrinsic artistic nature. My intuition. My need for collaboration and community. My desire for meaningful partnership over status and competition. My dreams of creating stories and bringing them to life.

And receiving one insightful tarot reading did not magically fix any of this. In fact, I spent years fighting against that very accurate reading.

But eventually, I left Los Angeles and started a new life on California’s Central Coast. I had the rare opportunity of a clean, blank slate, but even then, I found ways to minimize or hide the creative parts of my nature. But slowly, slowly, I’ve changed my ways. My life has begun to reorganize itself around the things I’d spent so long trying to diminish. I built community. I found like-minded people. I developed friendships rooted in comfort, support, creativity, and loyalty. I started treating writing and art as central parts of my life rather than selfish indulgences I had to justify.

And eventually, I learned tarot myself. So, all this to say, that reader hadn’t predicted my future. She had simply reflected something I already knew. But I just wasn’t ready to look at it yet.

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What a Mirror Actually Does

A mirror can’t tell you what happens tomorrow. It shows you what’s here. Here. In this moment, in this present moment, the right now. That’s what I’ve come to value most about tarot. A mirror doesn’t criticize us, although we can certainly criticize what we see in it. That’s how we start to see the difference between the reality around us and the power of how we see the world. How close are those two things? How far and wide apart?

We have a very human, messy tendency to take an uncomfortable truth about the present moment and turn it into a permanent, painful referendum on our entire future.

This relationship is hard work becomes I’ll never have a healthy relationship.
This job is exhausting me becomes I’ve failed and I will keep failing.
I’m struggling to create becomes I’m not a real artist.

We take an uncomfortable circumstance or sensation and turn it into a full-blown identity.

The tarot interrupts that pattern.

A complicated situation gets spread out into a handful of images on a table. Suddenly, you can see the pieces separately. The situation becomes less about What does this say about me? and more about What can I actually do from here?

I can’t control another person’s opinion of me.
I can’t make someone behave differently.
I can’t guarantee an outcome.

But I can…

…regulate my own emotions.
…decide which situations I participate in.
…establish boundaries.
…choose where I put my attention.

That distinction and those simple actions can and do offer tremendous relief.

A mirror doesn’t flatter us, either. And let’s be fair: we’re vain creatures. We want reassurance. We want to be told we’re exactly right. We want the cards to confirm the story we’ve already carefully constructed about what happened, who was wrong, and what should happen next. The cards do reveal what’s going on, but it’s never exactly what we want to hear. But it’s often what we need to hear.

Tarot can be incredibly gentle. It can also be incredibly rude. But I’ve come to believe that a useful reading isn’t necessarily one that makes you feel good. It’s one that gives you something honest to work with.

Shame Is Not the Truth

This distinction matters, so please! Read this again: Shame is not the truth.

Shame says: Something is wrong with me. Reflection asks: What is actually happening here?

Those questions, that simple reframe, can lead us to very different places. Shame keeps us trying to control outcomes, rewrite the past, hide our mistakes, or punish ourselves indefinitely for choices we’ve already made. Shame will never accept our humanness, our mess, and it poisons our hearts and minds. We are too sickly and too exhausted to make room for courage or grace.

But reflection allows us to acknowledge what is true and then decide how we’d like to move forward. I can’t promise that reflection is comfortable. In fact, taking accountability is extremely difficult. Looking honestly at our patterns is difficult. Even the most emotionally grounded, self-aware person you know has not completely mastered this. Because none of us have.

But reflection gives us agency. It gives us hope, faith, grace, and compassion. It lets these wonderful things take root instead of razing the ground of our emotional worlds. This is a major reason I’ve come to value tarot so deeply as a divination tool. It gives you the tools to care for and tend your inner world. You can take something enormous and emotional and invisible and put your cards on a table.

There it is. Now you can look at it.

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The Mirror Spread

This is a three-card spread I use for honest reflection. You don’t need to approach it with a specific problem to solve. In fact, I think it works better when you don’t.

Find somewhere quiet. Take a moment to settle yourself. Choose a journal and find a writing instrument. Shuffle your deck and resist the temptation to manufacture the answer you hope to receive. Approach the cards with curiosity rather than judgment. The goal isn’t to diagnose yourself. It’s simply to practice the lost art of noticing.

Card One: What Am I Seeing Clearly?

Start with recognition rather than criticism.

What do you already understand about this season of your life?
What strengths are already present?
Where have you made progress that you’ve failed to acknowledge?

We are often remarkably good at cataloging our failures and remarkably bad at recognizing our growth. Reflection shouldn’t exclusively mean identifying problems. Sometimes the mirror needs to show you how far you’ve come.

Journal prompts:

• What am I doing better than I was six months ago?

• What have I learned?

• What strength have I underestimated?

• Where am I already trusting myself?

Card Two: What Am I Hiding?

This isn’t necessarily about secrets. It’s about the stories we hide behind. Fear. Perfectionism. Shame. Old beliefs. These are protective behavioral patterns that once served an important purpose but may no longer belong in the life we’re building. Sometimes we continue protecting ourselves from things that just aren’t happening anymore.

A painful relationship teaches us not to trust.
A humiliating failure teaches us not to try.
A season of instability convinces us that stability can’t possibly last.

Eventually, protection actually becomes the greatest limitation. Look at the card you’ve pulled and ask yourself what you’re actually protecting and whether that protection is still necessary.

Journal prompts:

• What am I afraid to acknowledge?

• What am I protecting?

• Is that protection still necessary?

• What story about myself am I treating as fact?

Card Three: What Needs Acceptance?

This may be the most difficult card in the spread. Not everything needs fixing. We’re encouraged to approach ourselves like endless renovation projects: more productive, more attractive, more successful, more disciplined, more healed. For my fellow creatives, we are particularly talented at disguising self-criticism as ambition. There’s always another draft. Another skill to master. Another version of ourselves we imagine will finally deserve the life we’re trying to create.

Acceptance doesn’t mean complacency. You can desire change and healthy evolution without despising the person you currently are.

Sometimes the best healing begins when we stop asking, How do I fix this? and start asking, What would happen if I stopped fighting this part of myself?

Journal prompts:

• What am I constantly trying to improve?

• Who taught me that this part of myself wasn’t enough?

• What would acceptance look like here?

• What reflection is asking for gentleness?

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Sit With the Reflection

Once you’ve pulled all three cards, don’t immediately rush toward an interpretation or action plan.

Look at them together. Notice which card made you pause. Notice which one surprised you. And especially notice the card you immediately want to argue with.

Journal prompts:

• Which card made me pause the longest?

• Which answer surprised me?

• Which card did I immediately want to argue with?

• What part of myself deserves more gentleness?

• Where am I asking myself to perform instead of simply exist?

Write down whatever comes up, even if it doesn’t make perfect sense yet. Then put the reading somewhere safe. Come back to it in a week. In a month. In a few months. You’ll be surprised by what looks completely different. And you may be even more surprised by what doesn’t.

I don’t need tarot to tell me exactly what happens next anymore. I’d rather have something that helps me understand where I’m standing now, right now, and helps me face what is ongoing and needs attention and care.

The most transformative tarot reading I ever received didn’t give me the name of my future husband or tell me what incredible career I’d have before thirty-five. It showed me something much harder: the parts of myself I kept trying to perfect instead of accept.

A poet trying to be a banker.

It took me years to stop fighting that reading, to stop fighting the truth.

Tarot isn’t asking us to become perfect. It’s asking us to become honest. And maybe true healing begins there: not in becoming someone better, but in becoming more willing to see ourselves clearly.

The mirror has never expected perfection from you. Only your willingness to look.

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the hiatus

For something I call a practice, I’ve been strangely absent. The last time I published on Decked was in March. At first, I assumed I would eventually write my way out of it. But the weeks stretched into months, and instead of forcing myself back to the page, I found myself pulled in other directions. I started journaling more consistently. I focused on reading tarot in person. I spent time refining my creative goals and asked myself difficult questions about what I actually wanted to create. And somewhere in that process, I realized that not all creative work looks like production. Sometimes it spirals back to the center, so you can start back stronger again.

One of the things I loved most about writing in college was that I was rarely doing it alone. I wrote in the big library, in the middle of the co-working space. Or sometimes I’d join a shared study room, meet a friend in a coffee shop, or I’d read and draft under one particularly magnificent oak tree on campus. Even when I was working independently, I always felt connected to the larger community of students working and grinding on their own endeavors.

This year, I’ve been journaling consistently, reading more tarot than ever, walking and reflecting. It seemed that on paper, I was doing all the things that were supposed to reconnect me to my creativity. Yet something still felt missing. I couldn’t figure out where the spark had gone. Then it hit me: inspiration wasn’t absent. It was waiting for me somewhere beyond my own head.

The more readings I gave, the more events I attended, the more time I spent in conversation with my community, the more life slowly started to return to my creative practice. What I had mistaken for a lack of inspiration was actually a lack of reciprocity.

I didn’t need more solitude. I needed more connection.

the spiral to center

Over the last several months, I found myself reorienting my creative life. I decided to narrow my focus: I had vague concepts of projects I wanted to complete but no clear plan. So I wrote out every idea, inspired by the Two of Wands energy. I chose to focus on a local research project about water and memory. I began outlining a fiction project rooted in the haunted American Southwest. I narrowed the vision of my poetry practice. I started reading tarot more consistently at markets, coffee shops, and events. And I let Decked rest. At the time, I worried that stepping away might mean I was losing momentum. Looking back, I think it was exactly what I needed.

We often treat creative pauses as failures. We assume that consistency means showing up in the same way forever. That if you can’t give 100% at all times, then you should just give up completely. But life doesn’t move in straight lines. It moves in seasons, in changes, in messy transitions between one state to another.

There were also practical realities to address. I was recovering from lingering health issues, rebuilding routines after a difficult breakup, and I was figuring out what kind of work would support my creative life rather than compete with it. Basically, I was finally learning how to put myself first. The irony is that the season that looked so barren from the outside was actually incredibly productive. I lost weight and became physically stronger. I started therapy and medication. I accepted support from family and friends. I stopped trying to survive and started trying to build. I’m sharing this because sometimes tending to your garden doesn’t look like harvesting. Sometimes it looks like tirelessly turning soil, with the promise of green, but nothing quite yet.

when the wands come to play

When I think about this season now, I see it through the lens of the Two and Three of Wands.

The Two of Wands asks us to hold our world in our hands and imagine what is possible. Don’t add parameters or logic or reason. Just let those precious, fragile dreams come out from some hidden corner of your heart, and step into the light. For years, I’d been holding all of the dreams of other people. Friends. Family. Romantic partners. Clients. But when it came to my own dreams, I always hesitated. It’s so much easier to encourage someone else than it is to confront your own ambitions. So I started asking myself what I actually wanted. Not what looked practical. Not what would impress other people. Not what I thought I should want.

The answers didn’t arrive all at once. They emerged slowly during long hikes wearing a weighted vest up the hill near my house. They appeared in notebooks and voice memos and conversations with trusted friends. Eventually those dreams stopped feeling abstract. They started to become plans.

That’s when the Three of Wands arrived.

Instead of treating my creative goals as precious, breakable objects that could be ruined by failure, I tried looking at them as if they belonged to someone I loved. If a friend told me they wanted to write a book, start a publication, create a tarot practice, or pursue a creative project, I wouldn’t tell them they were ridiculous. I’d help them make a plan. I’d encourage them to begin.

So why wasn’t I offering myself the same kindness?

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the gift of the 6 of cups

Around this same time, the Six of Cups arrived.

At first, I thought this card was asking me to look at generosity in my life, and what that means to me. But eventually, I realized it was asking me to think about exchange and reciprocity. The card depicts giving and receiving, but what fascinates me most about the card is that everyone remains surrounded by the flowers and the sun. Nobody stands completely outside of it. That message became impossible to ignore.

I guess you could say this spring has been defined by what Rotary calls “Service Above Self.” This spring was a season of service. I spent a few weeks preparing for RYLA, Rotary’s annual leadership camp for high school students. I volunteered at events. I showed up for friends. I helped my family finish projects around the house. I spent mornings and evenings reading the cards for strangers who trusted me with their stories. And every time I gave my attention, my energy, or my presence, something rumbled beneath that seemingly barren soil. Each moment of connection planted a new seed, and they’d started to grow. All at once.

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the privilege to give

RYLA reminded me of this most clearly.

Last year, I was exhausted. I was working in an industry and a relationship that were deeply misaligned. My health was suffering. My creative life felt impossible to sustain. This year was completely different. The camp is held at a gorgeous facility in Ojai, California. Many of the cabins are up a steep hill. This year, the hill was a breeze to climb. And speaking of climbing, this year I attempted the ropes course, even though I’m terrified of heights. I had the energy to be fully present with the sophomore and juniors. Watching these teens learn to trust themselves, gain the courage to speak up, and support one another filled me with so much hope.

I grew up incredibly privileged. I attended summer camps, took international trips with my family, and attended private school. Because of these opportunities, more opportunities came my way, and I was uniquely qualified to jump at each and every one.

But this isn’t every family’s reality. So to spend a weekend in April, giving teens the same attention and encouragement I got, feels downright sacred. When I watched my cohort make room for quieter voices, cheer each other on, and genuinely care about each other’s stories, I saw the Six of Cups in action. Not as charity, obligation or virtue-signaling, but as true devotion and attention.

The tarot spreading

The same thing has happened with tarot. At Tribe Coffeehouse, the pace is intentional, conversational and cozy. At Skyview Motel in Los Alamos, the energy is entirely different. The readings come quickly. The atmosphere is vibrant. Guests are often on vacation, floating between cocktails, moonlit swims, and spontaneous conversations and dancing.

And yet, even there, people are seeking something real. Clarity. Permission. Guidance. Connection. Again and again, I am reminded that what people want most isn’t certainty. They want to feel seen.

The Six of Cups teaches us that true abundance isn’t found in accumulation. It’s discovered in circulation. We spend so much time talking about transactions. The card asks us to consider an exchange instead.

• Who nourishes you?

• Who receives your gifts?

• Where are you giving from obligation rather than genuine generosity?

• What relationships leave both people more energized than before?

Reframe the pause

This spring has revealed to me a huge misconception about creativity and the creative practice. We have an ugly belief that stepping away means you’ve stopped participating, that you’ve already failed. But even when I wasn’t publishing, I was still in the exchange. I was receiving support, friendship and so many opportunities to learn. And maybe most importantly, I was giving my attention to spaces that genuinely needed it.

The lesson wasn’t that I needed to force myself back to the page. The lesson was that seasons of service are part of the creative cycle, too. Sometimes the work is the drafting, the deep listening and the quiet rebuilding. Sometimes the work is showing up for your community until your own cup fills again. And there shouldn’t be any shame in any of it.

So this isn’t a grand declaration to announce that “I’m back!” It’s simply a return. A reminder that creative lives move in cycles. A reminder that winters are necessary. A reminder that rest, recovery, service, and community are not interruptions to the work. They are part of the work.

The Six of Cups taught me that when I feel lost and stagnant, I should turn my attention to what is draining me and what is nourishing me. It’s taught me that receiving is just as important as giving. And it taught me that participation doesn’t always look like obvious productivity.

Sometimes it looks like quietly rebuilding your life. And if you’re in a season of silent rebuild, I hope you’ll offer yourself the same gentleness I’m learning to extend to myself.

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The shift from The World to The Magician is subtle, but profound.

The World closes a chapter. It integrates. It asks us to look honestly at where we’ve been and how we arrived here, not with judgment, but with awareness. It invites us to take stock of what has been lived, learned, and earned.

The Magician, on the other hand, doesn’t rush ahead. He doesn’t invent something out of thin air. He surveys what’s already on the table: the tools, the skills, the lived experience, the lessons that have already shaped him. And then he asks a quieter, steadier question:

What can I shape from what I already have?

This is why I like this transition far more than the usual New Year energy of reinvention. The Magician doesn’t demand that we become someone else overnight. He asks us to become more consistent with who we already are. More intentional with what’s already in our hands. More honest about what we can realistically tend.

Tarot, at its best, isn’t a productivity system or a shortcut to certainty. It’s a mirror for realistic, soul-aligned planning, the kind that honors the body, the nervous system, and the rhythms of real life. Going into a new year, I’m far less interested in rigid resolutions than I am in themes. The Magician works in themes, not timelines. He understands that mastery is built through relationship and repetition, not unrelenting pressure and expectations.

So instead of asking What should I fix? I’m more interested in questions like:

• What stories are still unfolding?

• What values want to be embodied, not just named?

• What does devotion look like when it’s sustainable?

We are taught to think of ourselves as problems to solve. To optimize. To streamline. To fix. But I find it much more useful — and far kinder — to think of a life as a narrative, a piece of art, or a living ecosystem. Something that grows, sheds, rests, and evolves in seasons. Not everything blooms at once. Not everything needs to be visible to be valuable.

Our lives don’t move in straight lines; they spiral. We’re allowed to deviate, to pause, to return, to forge ahead, and to circle back again. Yes, this can feel dizzying and overwhelming, but this is precisely where Tarot becomes a grounding ritual rather than a prediction tool. It gives us a snapshot of where we are now, and helps us choose our next step with clarity rather than panic.

The Magician understands and embodies this. He doesn’t try to control the entire journey. He focuses on what is actionable in the present moment. One intention. One gesture. One practice at a time. We don’t actually need to know what's on the road ahead, only to take the necessary steps forward.

It’s overwhelming to look at all the categories we’re told we must “work on” every year: career, health, relationships, creativity, finances, spirituality. Social media glorifies a kind of superhuman productivity that treats people like finely tuned machines. Always accelerating, and never breaking down. That may work for some, but for most of us, it’s a fast track to burnout, illness, and emotional decay.

I’m much more interested in building a life that follows the body and the natural world. A life shaped by rhythm rather than force. By intentionality rather than urgency. I’ve seen what happens, in myself and in my clients, when we push, numb, and override our limits in the name of achievement. Health deteriorates. The heart closes. Creativity dries up. We become shells of the vibrant people we could be. And that, to me, is one of life’s greatest tragedies.

When The World appears, it asks us to pause and reflect on the choices that brought us here — not to shame ourselves, but to listen. What’s needed now? A first step, broken down into something small and doable? Or rest — real, true restorative rest? The World can feel dreamy and expansive, pulling us toward ideas that exist only as concepts for now. Things we want to bring into the world but we aren’t quite ready to name out loud.

And this is where The Magician steps in, not to demand action, but to offer agency. He reminds us that we don’t need certainty to begin. We need presence. We need trust in our capacity to respond, adjust, and learn as we go.

I often find that clients already know the possibility they’re dreaming of. They can feel it in their bodies. But fear and doubt stand guard at the gate, loud and intimidating. And for those who have committed — who have shown up consistently — The World often nudges them to dream bigger. We bargain with the universe far too often, keeping our dreams small so that maybe, someday, they’ll feel safe to pursue.

The Magician refuses that bargain. He asks us to claim our tools, our experience, and our voice, and to begin anyway.

So instead of resolutions, I offer this spread as a way to consciously bridge what you’ve lived into what you’re becoming. Not to force a future into existence, but to partner with it, one small, intentional step at a time.

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The Renewal Spread

This five-card spread is designed to support reflection, visioning, and gentle direction-setting. It pairs beautifully with journaling, vision boards, or quiet contemplation.

1. What I’ve completed
2. What energy I’m ready to release
3. What foundation I’ve built
4. What’s calling for my devotion in 2026
5. What new light guides me forward

You don’t need to rush this spread. Let it unfold slowly. Sit with each card as a conversation, not a command.

Below, I’ll share how this spread spoke to me as an example of how layered and alive this process can be.

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In middle school I discovered my favorite short story ever. It was called JOSHUA TREE by Emma Bull, in an anthology of works about the Green Man myth. There were many stories in that collection that I fell in love with, but JOSHUA TREE really captivated me. It was the first time I’d read a first-person short story that felt like I knew the narrator. Modern, messy but beautifully written, the story captures the ache a young woman feels growing up in the desert and longing to start her life. I could feel the desert air, the parchedness, the larger than life Joshua Trees looming over her like every impossible dream she was dreaming.

Years later, it occurred to me that she may have written other works. That was when I discovered WAR FOR THE OAKS, which, if you know your YA Urban Fantasy, it’s pretty much one of the greatest, most influential works of the genre. Simultaneously poetic and sharp as a knife, it tells the story of a lost punk singer who finds herself caught in a war between brutal faerie courts. The world of music and not quite achieving fame, the slow-burn between the protagonist and a phookah, and the whip-sharp cleverness she uses to stay a step ahead of the conniving faeries is not just remarkable but iconic. The story inspired Neil Gaiman and countless other authors I devoured during my middle school and high school years, which also happened to be the same time YA and Urban Fantasy were taken seriously as commercial endeavors.

And what of Emma Bull? Unfortunately this story was optioned countless times and she didn’t write a sequel for it. It bothered me for a few years. How could she write such an incredible story and not write more? Bruce Coville, Holly Black, and Tamora Pierce were prolific in writing series, and I guess I took that for granted. Still, it grates me. What would it have been like to have more from that universe Emma created?

I find myself at the start of a new year, so much further along than previous years but also so many paces back. I’m newly single, and unemployed after spending years valiantly trying job after job, career after career. In the post-breakup blues, I finally allowed myself to grieve the greater grief: the dream of becoming a working writer and creative, one I’d abandoned in hope of becoming ‘responsible’ and ‘respectable.’ The dream of the twelve year old girl, who read JOSHUA TREE that one day and lit the match of that dream. Do I dare reach for it? Do I dare believe it’s possible?

So when my dad proposed a trip to Joshua Tree National Park, I found myself both spooked and intrigued. He didn’t know I’d been thumbing through the Green Man anthology, soothing my raw little heart. I relented. Sure, I could have done what I always did: postponed it, applied to more jobs, and started the rat race again. But something shifted over this past December. In the dark long winter nights, I realized that anyone could fill those jobs I’d tried to succeed in. (And they swiftly replaced me after I made my unglamorous exits). But no one could sit down and tell the stories I have to tell but me.

When we visited the park, it was the dead of winter, a lull in the usually populated park. Crisp, but not windy, the sky filled with huge gray clouds, only adding to the majesty. It was struck by how knotted and imperfect the trees bent along the horizon, spiky and layered and green. Yes, green. Over Christmas, a huge atmospheric river had dumped inches and inches across the state, a rarity for drought plagued California. So the desert wasn’t just magnificent but also tinged with green, the gravel ground swollen with water. It was a remarkable combination, one that spoke to the quiet song of hope. Hope, because even in the bleakness of this desert, there’s always verdant hope.

I talked my dad’s ear off, about my best laid plans and my fuck-it-I’m-going-for-mentality. I played him songs that have helped me through my break-up and helped navigate newly dating. He gave me magazines and movies to take back to my new apartment, and I promised to read all the books I hadn’t gotten to. We laughed until we cried and sat silently at Key’s View, taking in the immense clear blue vista. We could even see the farthest mountain range out in Mexico. My dad challenged the waitress at the hip, local diner to which-latte-was-better, and she made us a delicious mocha cinnamon cup of joy for us. I stood underneath a big Joshua Tree and felt the silence, coldness, the rightness all the way down into my bones. The land took the weight, took the grief off me. We can handle it all.

Miracles aren’t bolts from the sky. They’re smaller, subtler, but they still pack a punch. I don’t have certainty about what’s ahead of me, but that wasn’t why I came here. A good friend told me to let the desert crack me open.

The first night, my ex’s daughter texted me out of the blue to thank me for encouraging her art. Her first piece had just sold. I drank a large glass of wine, ate Tennessee whiskey ribs, and after my dad fell asleep, let myself cry. We don’t get closure in life, and I’ve trained myself not to expect it. But that text gave it to me.

I’d poured myself out to my ex’s kids in the only way I know how: relentless encouragement, a steadfast loyalty that will, I’m sure, keep getting me hurt. Still, I’m not treating life like a game to win or play safe anymore. I’d rather pour out — like that atmospheric river — over a land as vast as Joshua Tree, than become anything smaller. Anything less hopeful.

Joshua Tree broke me open at twelve, igniting a dream that kept burning. The real Joshua Tree, in its storm-soaked glory, took away the grief of thinking that dream had ended. So I took my friend’s advice and let the desert break me open.

And I’m better for it.

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Not every year ends all neat and tidy. Some years drag behind us, tugging at our sleeves long after the calendar changes, asking not to be packed away, but to be carried through.

I didn’t write this in December. The holidays arrived loud and fast, full of obligations, events, logistics, and a tumult of unresolved emotions. There wasn’t space for reflection in the way I wanted there to be. And then January arrived anyway, as it always does: quiet, cold, and brimming with the feeling of things left unfinished. Maybe that’s just me, that January never quite feels like a beginning. So instead of pushing to craft a vision board or list out resolutions, I took a pause and reflected on the essence of January. What I realized is that January serves a different purpose for me.

January feels like threshold. The place where we decide what we leave behind, and what comes with us into the new year. Sure, calendar changed, but we’re still in the dead of winter, in the Western Hemisphere. It feels more like a time to reflect, to release, and to hold in the unknown of threshold.

2025 taught me that breaking – breaking down, breaking up, breaking with – is not weakness: it’s becoming. A return to a truer version of myself I’d been circling for years. 2025 asked me to shed, to purge, to confront what I’d outgrown. It asked me to slow down when everything around me insisted on reactivity and immediacy. It took great courage to root when it would have been easier to run. A snake isn’t happy and comfortable shedding its skin, and it takes longer than the snake wants it to. But January offered that final exhale, that charged moment of potential, of between.

So if you’re feeling like me, and if you didn’t get a moment to close the year with intention, you’re not behind. You’re right on time. This reflection is not about resetting your life or declaring a new version of yourself. It’s about noticing what’s already integrated. What remains after all that damn shedding. What you’re quietly carrying forward after having the courage to leave behind what doesn’t serve you.

Threshold: The Star & The World

When I look back at the readings I gave in December, and throughout the year, two cards stand out again and again: The Star and The World. Not as conclusions, but as companions for finding clarity in this big in-between moment.

The Star — What Still Wants Care

The Star often gets framed as hope for the future. But in this season, I’ve seen it play out differently. I see it as caring for what remains.

2025 stripped a lot away. There were layers of grief, anger, exhaustion, and a special kind of heartbreak that comes from realizing how far we’d drifted from ourselves. We spent October shedding what no longer fit, November rooting into stillness, and December attempting, sometimes unsuccessfully, to rest and reconnect.

The Star appears after all of this upheaval. It’s a bright, kind and soft energy. It’s not trying to rush us forward. The divine figure kneeling beside the water asks us sweetly but intently: what still needs gentleness?

2025 showed me the ways I had been self-abandoning without realizing it. It clarified my values with startling precision. I learned that for me, consideration matters most when things get tough. That support isn’t just listening but taking action to lessen the load. That compassion isn’t passive or weak: it’s active presence. That open, clear communication, no matter how inconvenient, is a form of respect, and that integrity lives in how we speak up when it would be easier not to.

So many lessons this year were about learning to trust myself, and to keep my promises to myself. The Star reminded me that I don’t need permission from external authority, but from myself. The Star is also that sweet, heart-achingly beautiful reminder that I am allowed to grant my deepest wishes to myself.

It’s a bright, beautiful card. One that asks us to care, to soothe and not to rush.

The World — What Has Integrated

The World is often read as completion. But I think that’s a gross oversimplification.

The World doesn’t mean everything is finished. It means that something big has integrated. It means experience has moved from mere theory or abstraction and into the body and spirit. This is where the Tarot delves into alchemy. How you change from one state to the next. Threshold. Even the word evokes a kind of palpable mystery, lingering on your tongue and in your mind even after you’ve moved on.

2025 was a year of boundaries being tested, and for many of my clients, often relentlessly. A year of learning who respected those boundaries and held the line, and those who eroded them for their own comfort or gain. We had to let go of peace-keeping and reckon honestly with external expectations and our core, unwavering values.

When your identity has been built around what society, family, or partners expect of you, removing those expectations can feel like collapse. I tell my clients it’s perfectly normal to feel overwhelmed, depressed, or even angry in the aftermath. Many of my clients this year encountered suppressed rage for the first time, and the Tarot helped us see it not as something destructive, but as something clarifying.

The World is a card I point to as an invitation to dream a little bigger. We bargain with the universe far too often about what we think and believe we deserve. The World asks us to widen our vision of ourselves, even if it’s just ever so slightly. Because even the smallest expansion can have radical changes for our future.

Remember, the World doesn’t just close the door, but opens it.

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Threshold Pull: Lesson • Gift • Direction

When life feels complex or emotionally dense, I often return to a simple three-card pull for clarity, one that helps us integrate rather than analyze.

If you feel called, you can pull cards for yourself now. Or simply journal with these questions:

• What was the lesson of 2025?

• What was the gift hidden inside it?

• What direction is opening now?

Remember, we’re not looking for definitive answers. Just let what rises be enough.

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Journaling Prompts for January

One of the most healing practices I integrated into my overall lifestyle was free-writing. I didn’t begin the practice to solve all my problems, but to get comfortable with accepting them, learning to witness them. Whether I wrote in the early morning or late evening, this practice helped me integrate lingering doubts and heaviness without urgency.

Here are a few prompts that supported that process. Perhaps they will help you as they helped me.

What am I proud of learning this year?
I’m proud of shedding external expectations. I didn’t realize how much of my happiness was tied to what I thought I should be doing. Returning to tarot as a daily ritual brought waves of doubt at first, but movement, ritual, and community helped me finally release old wounds. I lost friendships, jobs, businesses, and a three-year relationship. It was brutal work. But I’m now clearer than I’ve ever been about what I want and need.

What chapter feels complete?
I’m no longer trying to hustle toward a “normal” career. My calling is different, and I’ve finally accepted that. I’m an artist, a writer, a ritual maker, and a tarot reader. I’m not built for the competitive grind of corporate systems. Being present with people, witnessing their joy and pain, holding space for their humanity – that is my work.

What light am I carrying forward?
That 2026 doesn’t need to be better because it’s shinier. It will be better because I’m choosing to be truer to myself.

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In Closing

It’s just too damn overwhelming when January rolls around and asks, no, demands you reinvent yourself. What I think this month is truly about is asking you to not avoid uncertainty but bask in it. Learn to function in threshold, and see what’s revealed to you.

The Star shows you what still needs care, and how you grant your own wishes.
The World shows you what has already integrated, and the permission to dream a bit bigger.

Abandon the need to explain your three, five or ten year plan. What you really need is self-trust. If you didn’t get to close 2025 neatly, that’s okay. Some years don’t end; they dissolve. And January is simply where we learn how to carry what remains.

Take a breath. Notice what still needs tending, what’s shining. Let that be enough to guide you forward.

Why We Root Down

Rooting is the difficult work most people skip. Not because they think it’s unimportant, but because it asks us to go inward instead of outward. It asks us to pause our navigation of the external world and turn toward our inner emotional landscape.

This inner world is something we’re rarely taught to understand, yet we’re expected to manage it perfectly without speaking of it openly. No wonder connecting with it can feel uncomfortable, unnecessary, or even indulgent. But we can meet this trepidation with a few simple rituals, ones that help us build trust with ourselves slowly, gently, and intentionally.

November is my favorite month of the year. It marks the beginning of the season of descent. Leaves fall. Light shifts. Energy retreats. The earth draws everything back toward its center and we are meant to follow.

In Rooted in the Pause, we explored how The Hermit and the Four of Swords both call us into stillness. Not as escape, but as strength. The Hermit reminds us to listen inward; the Four of Swords teaches us to choose rest as a path to restoration. Together, they show us that retreat isn’t failure but wisdom.

Rooting is what happens when you let the teachings of these cards settle into your body. When you choose to be with yourself, not outside of yourself. When you stop avoiding your inner world and approach it with curiosity instead of fear. And that takes courage. Because most people are afraid of what lives at their roots: their grief, their exhaustion, their longing, and so many other unmet needs.

But roots aren’t dangerous. They are simply deep.

This ritual invites you to explore that depth gently, honestly, and with the understanding that what you find there is not something to fix… but something to finally acknowledge.

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What You’ll Need

• Several small pieces of paper

• A pen

• A candle

• A cup or bowl of soil

• A quiet space

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This spread is for the quiet work: the kind that doesn’t show on the surface, the kind that asks for patience, not instant proof. But trust that just like autumn prepares the earth for winter, the autumn is preparing you for the slowest season. In November, nature reminds us that growth isn’t always visible. The trees are stripped of their color, the air stills, the soil cools — but beneath it all, miraculous life continues. Roots deepen, systems strengthen. This is a challenging time because we don’t always have visible signs of progress. We are addicted to momentum, yet this season calls for faith in stillness.

You can have both in your toolkit: the louder skills for outward success and the quieter ones of inner wisdom. Autumn teaches us to integrate the lessons of the bright months that came before, to slow down, settle in, and let what we’ve learned take root.

October’s work was release. November’s is rest.

This spread helps you see what sustains you beneath the surface — what grounds you, what drains you, and what wants to quietly grow next.

Preparing Your Space

Create a calm, grounded environment before you begin.

Light a candle or an earthy-scented incense. Sit somewhere cozy: blanket, floor pillow, cue your soft lighting. Let your body settle. Sometimes I like to shake my body out before I ask it to be still.

Take a few slow breaths. Imagine your spine as a tree trunk, your breath extending roots deep into the ground. Feel yourself anchored, supported, and held.

Before you shuffle your deck, ask yourself:

What does my energy need to feel safe again?

This is your guiding question — one you’ll carry through the entire spread.

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The Grounding Spread

Card 1 — What grounds me right now

This card shows what keeps you steady in the present moment.
Maybe it’s a habit, a person, or a creative practice that reconnects you to yourself.
Ask: How can I strengthen my relationship to this grounding energy?

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Stillness isn’t the absence of movement — it’s the moment before new growth begins.

The Quiet Between Seasons

That tranquil, autumn moment may be yours. If it is, I envy you. For most of us, November isn’t peaceful at all — it’s the grind of a new school year, the last quarter of the fiscal calendar, the revving engine before the holiday chaos. We rarely get a break from our summer harvest, and I see it in my clients all the time: the struggle to rest, to sit in stillness without guilt.

But November calls for exactly that: a collective exhale after October’s shedding. You’ve already released what was heavy. Now, without that extra weight, you’re invited to pause. That pause isn’t trivial or lazy; it’s foundational. This is the month where you gather strength underground.

Stillness can feel unfamiliar, even wrong. When we stop moving, guilt creeps in. Ask yourself: is that discomfort coming from genuine responsibility, or from obligation? Are you afraid of disappointing someone? If you voiced your need for rest, would those people truly falter without you? If they would, maybe something deeper needs to shift.

Try taking five minutes in silence today. Notice where your body feels restless.

• What does your mind race toward?

• Does it replay old regrets?

• Or does it fast-forward into imagined disappointments?

The mind was designed to spot danger. It just doesn’t know the difference between real threats and everyday uncertainty. But uncertainty isn’t danger. And if we can’t give our minds even five minutes of peace, imagine what that constant tension does to the rest of us.

What if your peace, your stillness, your unproductive moments were just as vital as your hustle?

Two cards capture this season perfectly: The Hermit and The Four of Swords. Both invite a pause: one for insight, and one for healing.

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The Hermit: Solitude as Illumination

The Hermit stands alone on a mountain path, lantern raised. He isn’t lost. He’s chosen solitude to find clarity.

This card isn’t about isolation; it’s a sacred retreat. A chance to turn down the noise and listen inward. We often crave clarity, yet rarely create the conditions for it. The Hermit reminds us that discernment doesn’t come from more data or opinions: it comes from quiet.

You hold more wisdom than you realize. The experiences you dismiss as ordinary are often the ones shaping your inner compass. But discernment requires practice, and practice requires stillness. Stepping back takes courage. Not the cinematic kind, but the quiet, uncomfortable kind: the courage to be with yourself without distraction, to face the truth of what’s working and what’s not.

I’ve learned to “hermit” intentionally. Sundays are my resets. I’ve conquered the Sunday Scaries by treating that day as nonnegotiable rest. If I don’t give myself pause, I can’t show up in the way I want to. My brain works better when I give it space. Great ideas arrive in the silence that never would’ve found me in all the noise. Slow growth doesn’t look glamorous, but it lasts longer. Small pauses add up.

Try this: write down all the ways you think you’ll disappoint people if you slow down. Then, take a bold black marker and cross them out. Watch the fear shrink back to scale. You get to decide what your energy serves.

Like the trees drawing nourishment inward, we, too, must pull back sometimes to deepen our roots. The leaves fall, but life continues — quieter, stronger, unseen, but just as important.

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The Four of Swords: Rest as Restoration

In The Four of Swords, a figure lies in stillness, sword by their side: a symbol of recovery and peace after battle.

This card asks us to rest, not just physically, but mentally and spiritually. It’s giving you permission to stop performing, stop overthinking, stop proving. We treat rest like a reward, something we have to earn after suffering enough. But the Four of Swords insists that rest is part of the rhythm. It’s how we rebuild perspective.

I’ve learned to notice which people and places honor both my energy and my quiet. Some environments only value what you produce. They celebrate your busyness but not your balance. They’ll call you “driven” while watching you burn out. There’s a subtle kind of liberation in realizing you don’t have to prove your worth through exhaustion. If you’ve been running on fumes, this is your card. When you’re so tired that even creativity feels out of reach, your soul is asking for recalibration.

Ask yourself: What kind of rest do I crave most right now — physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual?

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Learning the Language of Stillness

Together, The Hermit and The Four of Swords teach that solitude isn’t absence and rest isn’t weakness. One guides you into reflection; the other anchors you there until healing begins.

The Hermit’s lantern shows you where to look. The Four of Swords teaches you how to pause and reflect.

This month is about redefining stillness as strength: the kind that doesn’t perform, doesn’t announce, doesn’t require applause. It’s the quiet self-trust that grows underground. You are learning subtler things now — patience, pacing, and presence. The kind of growth that can’t be posted, measured, or tracked. The soil looks barren in winter too, yet that’s where the roots are at work. Stillness is not stagnation. It’s soil doing its secret work.

🌙 Closing Reflection

It’s okay to rest. It’s okay not to know. It’s okay to be in between. The sooner you accept the in-between — and its quiet magic — the more peace you’ll find in your daily rhythm. As the earth slows, so should we. Rest isn’t indulgence: it’s essential. It’s how we prepare for what’s next.

Because growth doesn’t only happen in bloom.
It happens here, in the pause.

If you’d like to go deeper with this work, paid subscribers will receive The Grounding Spread — a guided tarot layout to help you see what grounds you, what drains you, and how to restore balance — and later this month, A Ritual for Rooting, a simple ceremony to reconnect your body and energy to the earth beneath you.

This season, let your stillness be enough.

Some endings ask for ceremony.

We shed so many things unconsciously — expectations, relationships, versions of ourselves — without ever pausing to honor what they gave us. Ritual turns that release into gratitude. It’s a way of slowing the pace, re-centering the self, and processing what the heart already knows but the mind resists: it’s time to let go and let be.

Before you begin, take a few quiet minutes to prepare your space. Dim the lights or sit near a window where the autumn air can move through. Play soft music if you like, or listen to the hush of your own breath. Let this be a moment that belongs wholly to you.

As you settle in, reflect on what’s been asking to leave your life. Maybe it’s a habit, a thought pattern, or a storyline that no longer fits. Maybe it’s something harder to name, like an old version of yourself that you’ve outgrown but haven’t yet said goodbye to.

This simple practice brings intention to that moment. While autumn is a natural season of release, you may return to this ritual anytime the heart feels heavy with holding on.

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Hello dear ones,

Thank you for reading Decked: tarot for the chaos. Your presence here — your comments, reflections, and quiet resonance — truly keeps this work alive.

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Lightning only strikes what needs illumination.

The Tower is the card everyone dreads. Lightning splits the sky, the crown falls, and figures tumble from the high walls they built themselves. It looks like ruin, but it’s actually revelation.

I expected people to come to me asking about love, about the people who left them or the ones they hoped would stay. But lately, the question I hear most is, “What is my life purpose?” It takes a hell of a lot of courage to ask that. It means you’re willing to face not just uncertainty, but possibility.

These questions show me that people are craving something deeper. They don’t want quick answers — they want to understand why their lives feel misaligned, why achievement doesn’t equal peace. Most people aren’t lost because they lack purpose. They’re lost because they don’t trust themselves to live without a plan.

Life used to be simpler, or at least more predictable. You followed the map: school, work, family, retirement. But modern life is unstable and constantly shifting, and it’s not our fault. That instability makes people feel like they’ve failed when they’ve only been human.

My readings focus on clarity and ritual: checking where we’re on autopilot, where we can reconstruct our daily choices, and how we might build meaning through rhythm. But as I guided others toward self-trust, I realized the Tower I’d been describing was also my own. I, too, had built my life around survival and people-pleasing, mistaking busyness for purpose.

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Lightning Strikes

In reading after reading, the same cards surfaced: The Hermit, The Star, The Hanged Man, and, inevitably, The Tower.

• The Hermit asked for solitude — for stepping away from all the noise to hear one’s inner voice again.

• The Star whispered about inspiration, about daring to believe in our own light and our own dreams.

• The Hanged Man urged surrender, the bravery to try something in an entirely new way.

• And The Tower, it shattered all the illusions.

I noticed a pattern. Everyone was already in the middle of changing. They just wanted permission to call that change sacred. They weren’t asking what to do next. They were asking if it was okay to trust themselves. Meanwhile, I told them that life isn’t linear, that growth loops back and begins again. But in my own life, I was blindly clinging to linear progress like oxygen. I was terrified of what people would think if I slowed down or shifted course.

I’d built my Tower from survival and people-pleasing, and it wasn’t built to last. I believed in following dreams, but I didn’t recognize that boundaries are what keep you aligned with those dreams. I told others to listen to intuition even as I silenced mine. I was enslaved to perception instead of purpose: terrified to stop hustling long enough to ask what was truly calling to me. And when lightning struck, it didn’t destroy me. It just made everything suddenly so painfully clear.

When the Structure Crumbles

The collapse was the beginning of clarity.

In one year, I lost three jobs. I lost clients I cared about. Every few months, the ground shook underneath me again and again.

At first, I thought it was bad luck, but really, it was disconnection. I’d been choosing from fear: fear of instability, fear of not being perceived as successful, fear of being labeled difficult or ungrateful.

But each job and client had red flags I actively ignored. The moment boundaries were tested, I told myself to be flexible, to keep the peace, that it wasn’t that bad. But broken people resent the people who expose their cracks. They’ll do everything to dim your light, then blame you for the darkness.

It wasn’t sudden. That would’ve been easy to see. It was gradual, with every week full of small betrayals that stacked into eventual collapse. And when the walls finally came down, I was exhausted. Grieving. But also strangely relieved. Because I could finally see what I’d been avoiding: I wasn’t living in alignment. I was living in obligation.

It took those disappointments to remind me of my own strength. The Tower fell, and in the rubble I found something I hadn’t felt in years: clarity.

I’m more creative now, more disciplined, more alive. I’m writing again, lifting weights, focusing on my health, tending to the creative things that actually sustain me. I wouldn’t have had the energy to rebuild my world if I hadn’t stopped trying to build everyone else’s. I wasn’t failing. I was shedding expectations that belonged to everyone but me. And for the first time in a long time, I feel free.

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In the Rubble

Choosing myself feels radical and scary, yet it’s the most honest thing I can do.

I’m learning to recognize the signs earlier: when the “yes” feels tight in my chest and forced, when busyness becomes avoidance, when cheap validation replaces true joy. I’m practicing boundaries the same way I’m rebuilding strength at the gym: one rep, one session, one choice at a time.

Self-trust, like muscle, grows through use. And part of that practice is silence. I’ve learned you have to practice stepping away from noise long enough to hear what your intuition actually sounds like. In a culture that worships productivity, saying no feels like failure. But I’ve learned rest is not regression, and solitude is not failure.

When you pause, you begin to see which parts of your life are just the decor and which are the foundation. The Tower teaches us that collapse is not punishment. It’s a brutal but necessary clearing. And it makes way for better things. The Fool arrives after the fall, leaping without a map, rejuvenated by curiosity.

Every reading I gave about purpose was also a reminder to myself. Perception isn’t purpose. Purpose is a lifelong journey. How you experience the journey is up to your actions, your choices. For me, I created rituals to keep me aligned: morning reflections in journals, grounding walks throughout the day, slow cooking, fun workouts, therapy, and creative work that feels like play. Saying no has become an act of faith. Saying yes has become sacred.

Because being likable isn’t the same as being true. And no job, client, or opportunity is worth the cost of your integrity.

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The Reading I Didn’t Want to Share

When I finally asked my own cards the question everyone else had been asking – what is my purpose? – the Tower appeared.

I laughed. Then I cried. Then I was angry for a week. I didn’t want to share that reading because I didn’t want to admit how afraid I was of being wrong about my own life. But the cards weren’t mocking me. They were inviting me to begin again.

Most people who come to me for readings aren’t looking for prophecy. They’re looking for permission. Permission to quit, to change, to pivot, to dream differently. The Tower doesn’t promise comfort, but it does promise honesty and clarity. And maybe that’s the first step toward true purpose: allowing what’s false to fall away.

The Tower used to terrify me. And sometimes it still does, but I do understand why it’s showing up this year. It’s the one card that tells me the truth even when it hurts.

On my low days, I may still believe I need a five-year plan to feel grounded. To feel in control. I realize now I can’t control how I’m perceived, or how other people think. Instead I’ve shifted that energy to the areas in my life that I can work on. My physical health and my creativity are my biggest priorities now. I look forward to building my sense of self-trust, my rituals, and trust I’ll find the courage to begin again when things fall apart.

Sometimes the hardest reading to face is the one that shows you your own reflection: mid-collapse, mid-awakening.

But I’ve learned from the Tower that from rubble, I will always see the stars.

The Fool: Carrying Nothing but Joy

The Fool stands at the cliff’s edge, head tilted toward the sky, bag slung lightly over one shoulder, a flower in hand. At their feet, a dog barks: a warning or an encouragement, it’s hard to tell. The Fool is about to step forward, maybe into free fall, maybe into adventure. The card encapsulates the energy of joy and wonder we had before we knew the limits, before we learned how heavy life could be. The Fool doesn’t overthink, doesn’t ruminate. They delight in the journey, not the destination.

Why does this 15th-century archetype feel more relevant than ever in 2025? Perhaps because we, too, are teetering on an edge — uncertain, exhausted, but also craving a different beginning. What can the Fool teach us about being kind to ourselves, about changing the way we approach our own journeys?

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0: Where Everything Begins (and Begins Again)

The Fool begins the Major Arcana as card “0,” a space of pure potential. Neither the first step nor the final word, but a liminal pause, a true opening that contains all possibilities. From the Fool to the World, the Major Arcana maps a journey of development: initiation, challenge, transformation, and mastery. It mirrors human life in miniature, tracing the curve of risk and resilience.

Because we live in linear time, we tend to imagine this cycle as a straight line of progress. Childhood → adulthood → achievement → wisdom. But love, spirituality, and developing our inner worlds rarely move in neat lines. They spiral. They circle back. They demand we revisit the same lessons at different depths. The Fool reminds us that beginnings are not just for the young, and endings are rarely final.

If we accept life as a spiral instead of a staircase, we can release the pressure to “get it right” once and for all. Each return to the Fool is not regression, but grace and another chance to begin with openness and curiosity.

The Age of Overthinking

It’s no secret that 2025 feels precarious. Economic and political uncertainty shadows our everyday decisions. Climate anxiety lingers in the background of every news cycle. Technology — AI, social media, automation — is both thrilling and disorienting. Work and life no longer fit into predictable shapes.

And yet, the pressure to “figure it all out” has never been stronger. We’re told to optimize our careers, master our relationships, and perfect our self-care. Even our spiritual growth gets squeezed into programs and productivity hacks. “Girlboss” energy works great in the workplace, but the mandate is to constantly hustle, improve, and achieve in our private, inner worlds, this is too big and too strange of an ask.

The Fool pushes against this tide of constant progress. They ask:

• Must every beginning come with a five-year plan?

• Do we set standards for experiences that could flourish if we just let them breathe?

• Do we ever give ourselves permission to dream, imagine, and explore possibilities without the burden of immediate outcomes?

Consider the rise of “soft ambition” and slow living: people leaving corporate jobs for creative pursuits, and trading stability for flexibility. Or consider the micro-movements of cozy fantasy and intentional rest, where fun and presence take precedence over productivity. These are great examples of Fool energy: risk tempered with play, hope without guarantees.

And there’s our growing appetite for vulnerability, for what some call “cringe.” Where irony once ruled, earnestness now feels radical. To show up wholeheartedly, even at the risk of ridicule, is an act of rebellion. The Fool would approve whole-heartedly.

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The Fool in Modern Life

We meet the Fool in countless ordinary moments. When we move to a new city. When we start therapy. When we accept a date from a dating app or try pottery for the first time. Any step that cracks open new possibilities is the Fool’s territory.

The question is whether we allow ourselves to embrace these leaps with curiosity instead of dread.

• Do we view therapy as crisis response, or as maintenance for a flourishing inner life?

• Do we approach dating as a high-stakes audition, or as an experiment in connection?

• Do we permit ourselves hobbies for joy alone — messy crafts, new hangouts, half-baked projects — or only if they can be monetized, optimized, and justified?

In older traditions, the Fool was often read as naïve or even foolish, the butt of some cosmic joke. I like to interpret the card differently. It’s not about ignorance, but about courageous vulnerability. Where once we prized irony and detachment, now the willingness to be fully present, unguarded, and joyful feels braver than cynicism ever did.

I think of clients who laugh nervously when the Fool appears, saying, “Of course, I’m the fool.” They brace for judgment. But I read the card differently. I see it as a mirror, showing them the impossible standards they’ve placed on themselves. It’s not a cosmic insult. It’s an invitation to stop demanding perfection and start embracing possibility.

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Wonder as a Way Forward

In this era of overwhelm, every decision feels weighted with unbearable significance. Choose the wrong job, and you’ve “wasted” years. Swipe right on the wrong person, and you’ve “ruined” your chance at love. Even tiny choices — what to post, what to buy, how to spend an evening — can feel absolutely paralyzing.

The Fool cuts through this shame. They remind us we can always leap anyway. Not because the outcome is certain, but because life isn’t meant to be calculated or measured, especially by standards that can never be met.

Ask yourself:

• How often do we waste more energy overthinking a choice than it would take to simply act?

• How often has hesitation done more harm than risk itself? Remember, paralysis steals more joy than failure ever could.

The Fool reminds us that not knowing is part of living. That joy can coexist with uncertainty. That risk is not the enemy, but the doorway. In turbulent times, Tarot offers not prediction but perspective, a true mirror for navigating ambiguity without losing ourselves.

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In 2025, embracing the Fool is not about foolishness. It’s about courage. To begin again and again. To delight in the present moment, however fragile. To risk looking silly, and in doing so, to live fully. The cliff is always there. The question is whether we’ll let fear keep us frozen, or follow the Fool and take the leap.

I’ve been thinking about how many of my spells begin with a sentence. Not with herbs or candles or moon water (though I love those too), but with a phrase. A line. A question I turn over and over in my mind. It’s a funny thing, magic, in this modern age. With all the gloom and chaos, it’s hard to think of anything as magic. But if I had to give one part of my life that title, it would have to be writing. Writing has always been my first magic.

Long before I touched tarot cards, I wrote my way into clarity. When I didn’t know what I was feeling, I wrote. When I wished for something deeply, I wrote it down. When I needed to purge and let something go — I wrote it into fire.

Writing as spellwork isn’t about perfect grammar, waxing poetic, or using big words. It’s about declaring what you need, and watching that declaration take shape as you write. It’s letting your desire take up space, and not diminishing it in the slightest. It’s saying: This is what I want. Full stop. Even when it scares you. Especially when it scares you.

Writing as Ritual

There are pieces of writing that feel like portals: scribbled journal entries, fragments of poems, or letters you’ve never sent. Even a grocery list can be a kind of spell if you write it with care, if you use it to nourish the life you’re trying to build.

My favorite rituals usually begin with a blank page and a question like:

• What am I ready to release and let go of?

• What do I want to bring into my life?

• Am I inviting this change in with love or shame?

Listen: this can feel pretty goofy and weird at first. Heck, I’ve been doing it for years and sometimes I still feel ridiculous. And oftentimes, I don’t get a clear answer. But that’s not always the point. Sometimes the act of focused writing clears the static, quiets the noise, and gets the chaos off my mind.

Just that is enough.

Writing for Intention

Lately, I’ve been using writing as a container for setting intentions. Sometimes my goals feel too lofty, too big, too heavy to even think about. That’s where intentions come in. Instead of getting bogged down by productivity metrics or logistics, I focus on something slower, gentler. An intention is a promise between me and my future self: a quiet agreement about how I want to show up while I move toward what I want. Because I’ve spent (and wasted) so many years fueling my goals with shame, comparison, and competition. And all it did was make the journey heavier. Now, I try to fill that space with compassion, grace, and self-devotion. That’s the magic of intentions.

Writing it down helps me remember: this matters to me.

Even if it doesn’t work out. Especially if it doesn’t work out the way I expected. Even if I change my mind. (And honestly, why am I still afraid of the pivot, as if I haven’t survived change before?) Even if the path is long. (The best things in life usually are.) There is power in the written word — especially when you treat yourself well along the way.

Some of my intentions lately have sounded like:

• I want to feel safe, healthy, and at peace in my body again.

• I want to create without rushing—with joy and delight.

• I want to find calm and meaning in the chaos of change.

These aren’t manifestos. They’re lighthouses meant to guide me back to self-devotion when I stray too far in the storm.

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A Tiny Spell for Transformation

Here’s a ritual you can try if you’re in a moment of big change, stuckness, or becoming:

1. Light a candle. Pick something in a color you love, with a scent that soothes you, and a long burn time.

2. Pull one tarot card. Take a few deep breaths and ask: What am I calling in? Let the card speak. Don’t judge it. 

3. Write without editing. Start with the prompt: I am ready for… Let whatever rises come through your pen.

4. Close the ritual. End with a grounding phrase, something like Let it be so or And so it is. Choose what feels true to you. 

5. Seal it. Save your writing. Keep it in your journal or drawer. Return to it when you need the reminder.

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Life doesn’t come with a map or a helpful index. And yes, you can bog yourself down with to-do lists and checkboxes. But if you don’t take time to treat yourself with grace, you’ll find the journey heavier than it needs to be. Sometimes the honesty of a written page is the catalyst we need to come back to ourselves, with more compassion, more softness, more care. And that, to me, is a very real kind of magic.

It was a turbulent week of endings, beginnings, and closure. Closure. Does that even really exist?

I pulled the 7 of Cups far too often in my personal spreads. Too many loose ends, too many tasks hanging over me. It grew from a physical weight into palpable anxiety, the kind that suffocates and fogs up everything else. When I looked at the cards that crossed the dreaded 7, I saw the 2 of Pentacles and 7 of Swords. I was struck by the harshness of those cards, not normally ones I get.

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So I sat down and really sat with the cards, and all the discomfort. Tarot works for me because it helps me ask better questions, questions I might otherwise find every which way to avoid.

Was this more about control and less about clarity?

Was I more worried about resolution because then it would be final, and there’d be no going back?

Those questions gave me the small courage to ask for help. To reach out for guidance from my partner, my family, my trusted friends. And then I pulled The Fool. Take the leap, come what may.

I read for someone this week who was wondering about seasons. Her reading was work-focused, but she wanted to be on a path of purpose. She wanted to be of service, not just to her immediate world, but to something greater. She pulled an array of court cards, so many Knights and Pages. But what resonated most were the final cards: The Star, and the Wheel of Fortune. A beautiful reminder to stay present. To stay awake to this moment. The cards told her emphatically opportunities are already swirling around you. Asking to find your life’s purpose isn’t too big or too silly a question. And there’s no rush, either. Just notice where it’s already calling, leave your ears, eyes and heart open and curious to all the opportunities that come your way.

Her reading made me reflect on my own path.

How certain am I, really?

How much am I limiting myself by thinking only of the future?

I don’t know how long I’ve been confusing closure with control, but it’s a hard truth to swallow. Lately, I feel like I’m being pushed into a quieter season. A season for digging. For recentering. For being present. So many memories have been surfacing: some bitter, some beautiful, all demanding to be felt and reckoned with.

No one warns you how draining it is to stay present with your emotions. This kind of inner transformation feels slow-going and yet somehow impressively urgent. There’s a rush to “get through it,” to arrive on the other side. And again, I return to center: That urgency is just another illusion of control.

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So many coping mechanisms I once relied have warranties that are up, but they still insist they have all the answers, that everything is fine. But when the plans don’t align (over and over again), you’re forced to get real with the moment in front of you. I’ve spent most of my life looking ahead, planning for the long haul. But now I’ve entered a season that’s slower, gentler. One that asks me to yield.

To rest.

To wait.

Not for more, but for less. For peace. For solitude. For the creative parts of myself I’ve long abandoned.

This is the time for art.

This is the time for trying things that aren’t “productive.”

This is the time for all the things I’ve always told myself were a waste of time.

When I forget my keys or what I was just doing, I take it as a critical sign to pause.

What’s the rush?

What emotion am I pushing down by staying busy?

Because that’s really what’s happening. Something wants to come through. And I’m avoiding it.

I’ve become so good at doing only what I excel at that I’ve forgotten how to be wobbly. And it’s in the wobble that the real work happens.

A Ritual for Staying Present & Letting Go | 3-Card Pull

Here’s a 3-card pull I’ve created and worked with this week, one that helps me move from anxious spirals and the illusion of control, and back into curiosity and presence:

What am I trying to control?

— This card brings awareness to what you’re gripping too tightly.

Acknowledge it, name it, breathe into it.

What am I being asked to release or surrender?

— Let this card guide you toward what’s ready to fall away, or loosen its hold.

It might be a belief, expectation, or old story.

What energy is available to support me now, if I stay present?

— This is your anchor. A reminder that you’re not lost.

That clarity doesn’t come from fixing, but from witnessing.

If you have one, light a candle. Pull your cards. Sit with the discomfort, the insight, the invitation.

The answers are never far, they’re just a hell of a lot quieter than the noise.

Today’s date opens the Lion’s Gate: an energetic alignment inviting courage, clarity, and self-expression. While I do know a bit about astrology, I’m by no means an expert. I was inspired by my favorite astrologers Sarah Potter and Fiona Hillery (both of whom you should check out if you want a deep dive into your chart) to explore a little more about this special day. 

What resonates the most about a day like this is activation. I know, I know. I start to sound like those cheesy, annoying ads on your feed, by a bunch of coaches who are driving home a bunch of capitalist propaganda about maximizing your potential and output. That’s decidedly NOT what I want to discuss today. What I’m exploring is, after all of this reforming and changing and pivoting this year, I’m leaning into what really ignites my passions and energy. 

How do I go about lifting out of some of the heavier energies floating around us? How do I feel in the body when I am inspired, motivated and excited? Where am I playing small?

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We can look at the cards that deal with activation: 

Strength (of course). The reminder? Brave doesn’t mean fearless. It means showing up anyway.

The Magician. The lesson? We don’t need to control every outcome, we just need to acknowledge our power. 

The Star. The invitation? Trust the process of becoming. Even if things still feel raw or uncertain, healing is already underway. Let yourself hope: quietly, wildly, without apology.

Knight of Wands. The nudge? Move with the fire, not against it. You don’t need to have it all figured out to take the next bold step. Let momentum build as you go.

Four of Wands. Success comes in many forms, including building the foundation that will stand the test of time. Celebrate how hard you’ve worked building something that can last. 

I’ve been circling my own fears throughout this year. 

What if no one shows up, what if I’m too much, too little, too... whatever?

But then I pull the cards, and they say, You are exactly where you need to be. Now, what’s it gonna take for you to charge ahead? 

For me, the answer lately has been returning to small rituals. Nothing fancy. Just lighting a candle. Pulling one card. Saying the thing out loud I’ve been avoiding. Stretching. Leaving my phone in another room. Drinking water before coffee. Letting myself feel joy, even when the world feels too heavy to hold.

These small acts are part of how I shake off stagnation. They’re how I remind myself that I’m not powerless, just tender. They’re how I remember that activation doesn’t mean burnout. It means noticing the ways I keep the fire burning, hot and steady.

And if you’re in that space, if you’re looking to reconnect, to move forward gently, to ask a better question –I’d love to read for you.

I’ll be reading tarot live this Saturday, August 9th at Tribe Coffeehouse from 11am–2pm. Come get clarity. Come sit with the cards. Come say hi.

In the meantime, here’s something you can ask yourself today: What’s already burning inside you? What would it feel like to stop hiding this part of you that shines?

Post a comment and tell me what you’re calling in this Lion’s Gate. Or better yet, come pull a card and we’ll ask together.

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Another round of readings this past week has left me feeling, as always, in very contrasting states. On one hand, I’m incredibly honored by the bravery and openness shown by my lovely customers, and on the other, feeling unmoored by a new season of beginnings. And as it always is with the Tarot, the cards I’ve pulled for my customers are running parallel with my own personal and spiritual evolution. Let me explain.

This week brought a lot of pulls of TEMPERANCE and THE WORLD. It struck me as odd since I actually don’t often pull those cards. Being of the Major Arcana, both are heavier, bigger energies. They speak of greater lessons and experiences that leave bruises, wrinkles and scars. This is not subtle stuff. TEMPERANCE, generally speaking, asks about how we’ve alchemized these heavier lessons. And alchemy, no matter how groovy a word, is painful. Transmuting from one state to the next - fuel to fire to ash - it’s about as unpleasant a sensation as it gets.

Have we made choices for our highest good, or has some fear taken hold of our navigation?

The cards next to TEMPERANCE ran the gamut, digging deeper into where those fears may lie. Not far off, THE WORLD would appear. When it appeared at the end of the reading, a resounding refrain asked this:

As we’ve drawn this chapter to a close, what are we afraid of asking for?

What dream and wish do we dare not speak, dare not believe is possible for ourselves?

I can relate to most of my customers, in terms of the exhaustion TEMPERANCE brings, and the overwhelming questions THE WORLD asks. Many customers had done the hard work required of TEMPERANCE, had endured hard journeys that left them feeling like completely different people. So when THE WORLD asks what we’re dreaming of, it’s a bit of a shocking contrast. If a customer felt more tired than hopeful, then it was better to discuss what forms of rest and of creativity could they incorporate into their schedules. What rest and creativity would soothe rather than push, gain or dream? But if a customer was ready to dream bigger, where could they start? What pesky outstanding tasks stood between them and the juicy, hopeful asks of THE WORLD?

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I close out this week feeling, as I stated, a supremely hopeful sense of belonging, and also, exhausted. I’m struck by the courage my clients show me, when they open themselves up for a reading and dive right in to ask these deep questions. It’s raw, unfiltered, intensely present and in the moment. It is the most REAL of REAL, and it is anti everything we have come to understand about modernity. When we show up as our most vulnerable, most imperfect, most raw, and despite all of this, seek clarity, guidance and hope, we are back to our most sacred roots. For just a few brief minutes in our infinitely complex and busy lives, we are present WHOLLY for ourselves and our growth. I still don’t entirely know how to comprehend such authentic connection, but it doesn’t stop me from trying.

At the end of this page are some questions inspired by this past week’s reading. Next week, I hope to link to other media that has brought me inspiration or sparked my interest. But, as I have waxed poetically, I’m coming out of my own cycle under THE WORLD’s influence. I am immensely grateful to close out a chapter of resounding disappointments and lessons in boundaries. But right now, my soul needs a little rest. I’ve tended to my herb garden, and resurrected a lavender that I dumped too much water into in my initial purchase excitement. I visited a local succulent society’s show and purchased 4 beautiful specimens: I’m anxious to tend to them and enjoy their blooms. I’m on my third week of making hearty salads full of crunchy bell peppers, chopped salami and turkey deli meat, and an even greater addition — olive tapenade, of the perishable Trader Joe’s variety. There’s enough kick from the arugula leaves and flavor from all the meats that not a single! salad! has! been! thrown! out! It feels like I’m eating summer and I love it.

Now I’ll catch the last warm rays from the sun and drink tea and find something to read. If you use one of these questions and pull a spread, what do you pull? What do you feel is the medicine? Let me know in the comments, and may your final July weekend be full of sun and soothing rest.

What experiences in the past few months and weeks have taught you the most?

If you could distill down to one word that summarizes the last chapter of experiences, what single word stands out?

Have you felt too tired to celebrate your wins, and how has this manifested itself?

Have you felt pressure to work harder because of your wins, and how has this manifested itself?

What is one thing that is holding you back from wishing or dreaming for more?

If you absolutely had to think bigger about your goals and aspirations, what would you do, if there were no limits?

Can you tell the difference between your own fears or the wounds of others?

Is it hard for you to navigate other people’s jealousy, pettiness, and cruelty?

How can you cultivate the space and time it will take to learn the distinction between your fears and other’s ill intent?

What creative practice or time for yourself have you abandoned so that you could complete this chapter? What would it take to bring it back?

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I’m back to doing in-person readings. It’s a long time coming. I’m excited for a season marked by sunshine, tending to a new herb garden, reading new poets, and diving back into pulling cards.

This new season kicked off with a few revelations. Firstly, our chaotic times have brought out an incredible opportunity to discard what doesn’t serve us and change course. The image of the ouroboros has been on my mind. Secondly, I ponder this: how many times have we tried to change, but out of fear, we’ve kept on the same course—cajoling or pushing or telling ourselves this is all we have?

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As I pulled cards this last Saturday, I paid close attention to my senses. There’s a palpable taste of grief—a cloying metallic zing that makes my teeth ache—as I pulled the Eight of Cups over and over again. There’s incredible bravery in finally walking away from what doesn’t serve, but then there’s also a stark revelation that reverberates: we always deserved better.

The cards had various medicine to soothe the loneliness that radiates during this new course. Yes, you are doing the work. Yes, you’re making better choices. But everything is new and unfamiliar, and perhaps the people closest to you don’t relate to your current state of being. It’s perfectly normal to feel out of sorts and lonely during this time of transition. But the cards pointed to different energies: is it time to try something new and go out into the world? Go to a beach cleanup or sign up for a dance class? Or is it a quieter season of cultivating creativity? Perhaps it’s time to return to a long-forgotten craft or start a garden. The activity varied according to the individual, but the overall message was clear: stay the course and take action to soothe yourself during this transition.

We are capable of navigating the chaos, but we can be kinder to ourselves along the way.

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So… maybe life’s been a little extra lately. Maybe your to-do list is unhinged, so you’re feeling tired and fried, and your inner voice is drowning in all the noise. Cool. Same. That’s where the Major Arcana comes in—not to predict the future, but to help you pause, reflect, and cut through the noise. These 22 tiny prompts are here to bring you back to yourself—one card, one question, one honest moment at a time.

Time to Pull

Pull a Major Arcana card today and sit with the question. Let it be a mirror, not a megaphone. Want the printable version? Comment your favorite prompt and why, and I’ll email you the sheets.

Tag @deckedtarot with your pull—I’d love to see what comes through for you.

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Major Arcana Prompts – Tiny Questions for Big Shifts

1. The Fool

   💭 What am I being called to leap toward—even if I don’t feel ready?
   

2. The Magician

   💭 Where am I underestimating the tools I already have?
   

3. The High Priestess

   💭 What does my inner knowing want me to stop ignoring?
   

4. The Empress

   💭 Where can I soften and still stay strong?
   

5. The Emperor

   💭 What structure would support me, not stifle me?
   

6. The Hierophant

   💭 What belief or pattern do I need to re-question?
   

7. The Lovers

   💭 What choice asks me to be fully aligned—mind, body, and heart?
   

8. The Chariot

   💭 Where do I need to claim momentum, even if I feel unprepared?
   

9. Strength

   💭 What part of me needs (gentle) courage right now?
   

10. The Hermit

    💭 What truth can I only hear in silence and stillness?

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11. Wheel of Fortune

    💭 What shift is already in motion—and how can I meet it with clarity and grace?
    

12. Justice

    💭 Where am I being asked to take real responsibility and authentic accountability?
    

13. The Hanged Man

    💭 What would happen if I stopped resisting and surrendered instead?
    

14. Death

    💭 What chapter is asking to close—even if I’m scared to let it happen?
    

15. Temperance

    💭 What needs blending instead of fixing?
    

16. The Devil

    💭 What story am I telling myself that keeps me small and afraid?
    

17. The Tower

    💭 What foundations are crumbling – and what was false about them that made them fail?
    

18. The Star

    💭 Where am I being invited to hope and love again?
    

19. The Moon

    💭 What fears might be a shadows of something deeper?
    

20. The Sun

    💭 What’s bringing me joy—and am I letting myself feel it fully?
    

21. Judgment

    💭 What truth is rising up that I can no longer ignore?
    

22. The World

    💭 What cycle is completing—and what wisdom have I gain living through it?

    

Hi friend,

I’m so glad you’re here.

Decked was born out of a simple truth: life is messy—and sometimes the cards help. Not by telling the future, but by offering a mirror. A moment. A pause. A question worth asking.

This space is for tarot that’s reflective, not predictive. It’s for rituals that work in real life—between emails, breakups, meal prep, and breakthrough moments. I created Decked because I needed a place to land in the middle of the chaos. Maybe you do too.

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Here’s what you’ll find in this newsletter:

• ✨ Chaos Check-Ins — weekly-ish card pulls + journal prompts

• 🔮 Tiny Spreads — tools to support reflection & ritual

• 📓 Notes from the Table — lessons I’m learning through readings

• 🪞 No-BS Tarot — myths, clarifiers, and maybe the occasional “Card I Used to Hate” series

My first live market is July 12 (more on that soon!). Until then, I’ll be sharing mini readings, practical rituals, and invitations to pull a card and see what stirs.

If you want a ritual that fits in your back pocket—or you’re craving clarity with a little humor—you’re in the right place.

Thanks for walking this path with me.

With curiosity,
Becca

📍Follow along on Instagram @bakerhalfacre
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