Seven years ago, when hot flashes and brain fog began disrupting my days, night sweats wrenching me writhing out of sleep, when my mood snapped with feral ricochet, it didn’t occur to me how similar this would be to my eventual teenager’s puberty. (My son was only nine at the time, after all).
I also didn’t realize how much these I would crave rituals and recognition for these key transitions, so lacking in American “culture,” leaving me scrambling to make sense.
Now I’m 50 and my son is 16, and both of us have spent the past few years turning messily, painfully into something new, which still hasn’t assumed its final form. At least our son has parents who let him sulk or vent, direct his confusion and fears somewhere productive. Me, I’ve clutched after metaphors and ritual, trying to turn this sweaty, raging, confounding process of my own into something meaningful.
This was all in my mind several weeks ago when my husband and I shambled through the history-rich avenues of New Orleans’ French Quarter for the first time, a dream trip belatedly celebrating my 50th birthday. I was drawn to every witchy little shop promising potions and cauldrons, windows draped in dried flowers and dark crystals. Despite clerks who played the part dressed in gothic gowns and darkly erudite glances, I mostly found shelves of the same trite tourist dreck: prefabricated “shrunken heads” made overseas and pristine glass vials that spoke nothing of true transformation.
On Royal Street I found a Tarot deck with a bold shiny crow on the box, an Elvira like priestess holding a murder on its side. As someone who has befriended and fed my very own murder, it felt right—if not a witch’s familiar, perhaps at least a messenger to help me navigate my way.
Despite being well versed in the symbols of the written word, I’ve quickly found the symbology of Tarot to be another story. While others my age are learning Spanish or Portugese to travel to far flung places, I’m trying to travel inward, a place lined with pentacles and cups, stumbling along the fool’s, not the hero’s, journey, humbled by it all.
The experience of laying a spread of cards challenges the part of me that likes to know, to control, to logic my way into the world through determined independence, all things that perimenopause has been slowly wrenching away. The cards don’t offer up easy answers, after all—they remind me that there are different kinds of knowing, and that maybe it’s time to lean into the ways that feel like feet dangling on air at the top of a carnival ride.
Humility seems to be the name of this stage of my game, after all. Despite fifty years of mastering a craft and a career, making a life and nearly fledging a child, I feel strangely, vulnerably, like a beginner in so many surprising ways.
Some days it just feels right that my son and I are both undergoing hormonal changes at the same time. He’s launching out into the world, and I’m trying to make a deeper home inside myself, one estrogen patch at a time.
I still have so much to learn about the Major and Minor Arcana, to distinguish airy swords from fiery wands, to understand what the sun, the high priestess and the hierophant have to tell me. While I will keep grasping after transformation, maybe I don’t even need the cards to tell me one obvious thing: very little is in my control and that might not be a bad thing.
Tell me about your own stumblings toward transformation. How are you/would you like to change? What are your road blocks?
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Would you like to join a community of writers who discuss writing craft and process twice monthly with no commitment? Write Lifers is an ongoing monthly group/class for writers who want to stay connected but don’t have the luxury of time for a weekly class.
*We typically meet the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of each month, at 5pm Pacific Time, but this varies depending on holidays, life events and so on.
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There will be only one class in November and one in December, 2024. Register here. (Note: As there will only be one class in November and December each, only pay $80 for two months if you opt to join them).
Each session we will:
Discuss an essay or questions related to writing process
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During the month I will also send out readings and other resources
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*Please note that sometimes these dates may change, due to holidays or other situations, but you will be apprised in advance.
Love, love, love this!
I’ve recently been reflecting on my own relationship with tarot…namely why do I keep coming back to it? Why, after years, does it still feel taboo (beyond the very obvious reasons)? Why did I reach for it in the first place? What was I really looking for?
It feels chaotic, but also not. It started out as “story research” but that was really just an excuse because I was at a point in my life where I needed an excuse. It was a form of reclaiming, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. I was ready to tap into something more while also being terrified of doing so. I wanted to sink but at the same time I was scrambling for the safety of the shore. Yet I returned, over and over. It felt maddening and embarrassing to be repeating the same cycle.
This morning I thought about my Mormon upbringing and the patriarchal blessing I received at age 16. Patriarchal blessings are given by the local Patriarch where he lays hands on head and receives revelation from God about who you are and your future. After it was done and I was back in the car with my parents, my mother remarked how much my blessing “sounded just like me.” Even though I outwardly agreed with her, inwardly I thought, “Really? You sure? Sounded exactly what we expect me to do with my life: keep a testimony, get married, have children. What part sounded “just like me” to you?”
A random memory, but I can see how it connects. Tarot became a way for me to claim what wasn’t given to me. As a teen I didn’t have the tools to push against the tides I was raised in. As a woman, I would never be a Patriarch giving out blessings and guidance. Most forms of spiritual authority within the church were not meant for me. Tarot, along with writing, became a way for my voice to come out and tap into what I already instinctively know. When you’ve lived so long trying to quiet yourself, speaking is terrifying. The taboo I was feeling wasn’t so much about the cards, but about what my voice actually sounds like.
I would say the transformation I’m working towards is trusting my own voice and my own instincts and then acting accordingly.
You have always been traveling inward but shining outward. Menopause is a difficult but wonderful part of life (to be appreciated when you come through the other side...).