it has been more than a decade since i last lived in florida, and i am just now beginning to realize the poetry in it. sometimes i miss the spanish moss hanging from the trees, the “woods” behind the retention pond where our middle school coven made forts, the palm fronds that i always braided after an elementary school field trip. i think this means that some of the wounds i received there are finally healing.
i couldn’t really talk about the wounds at the time, so i tried to heal them in secret, primarily through writing pages and pages and pages in my journals, even as i was being wounded. i couldn’t really live in the world, appreciate the surrounding in which i found myself, and so i lived mostly in my head.
florida was easy to hate: the heat, the humidity, the bugs, the tourists. it also was an idea, so it couldn’t get mad at me. it couldn’t revoke my internet privileges. it couldn’t imply that i would never be able to escape it.
in the end, though, i did escape it. at this point, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with today’s card, the empress, who the mesquite tarot guide book calls “the ineffable mother, […] full of love and comfort.” frankly, though, we all know family can be complicated, so i prefer to think of the energy of this card as “the side of yourself that wants to love more,” as the wild unknown guide book says.
the empress signals creation of all sorts, whether that is a poem or a painting or a parent. however, she also wants us to connect to nature. each of the aforementioned guide books includes an imperative: “go outside, remember that you sprout from this planet” and “go outside tonight & find the moon.”
darlings, let’s try to appreciate the nature we have around us, even if it is a backdrop for our wounds. let’s try to heal ourselves and each other.
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this week’s deck: mesquite tarot
this week’s gems: rose quartz, selenite
this week’s plants: just some dead flowers from a bouquet i got weeks ago