Steady As She Goes
Doing right by the miracle + a tarot spread for these times
All that you touch You Change.
All that you Change Changes you.
The only lasting truth is Change.
- Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
Dearest Camerados-
This is two posts in one - a reflection on how we writers might meet this moment in tender care and a tarot spread I created for anyone who would find pulling cards and journaling helpful right now. Or pulling cards and dancing. Or pulling cards and singing.
You might be tired of reading others’ feelings and this is your chance to dip into your own. You might not want any more encouragement or rousing of your highest self. Or maybe you do. If you do, you can keep reading.
If you just want to do the spread, scroll down to the picture of the tarot card and read from there.
Courage, dear hearts-
Heather
Since Tuesday night, when I sat with others at my Zen center doing lovingkindness practice after seeing those red numbers rise, I have been oddly calm. This is not an unknown phenomenon for me: when the other shoe drops, I can finally relax. The worst has happened, and I am able to focus. I’m good in a crisis, and I bet many of you are, too.
This is trauma’s silver lining: when you have lived in states of deep fear and anxiety and people have hurt you and you have been powerless, sometimes your system actually relaxes into chaos.
Why? Because chaos—things being bad and unrelenting in their badness—is what trauma is accustomed to, especially if that trauma is Complex PTSD. Sometimes we get lucky and our resilience kicks in, as well as any healing work we’ve done, and we’re able to meet the chaos with the resolve of a wizened crone facing down a temperamental dark lord. We are able to move forward and confront difficulty with our eyes wide open and feet planted firmly in the present moment. Other times, there is more healing that needs to be done and we are tossed around, November trees battered by the wind, our leaves falling every which way.
All through Wednesday, November 6th, I was in hypoarousal and out of my window of tolerance—the calm was too calm. I was in grief and I felt numb.
Wednesday was strange, like being underwater while bombs dropped above the surface.
I was social working at the arts high school where I have my field placement—lots of scared queer kids, lots of creative young people who are falling into their art, looking for answers. This was exactly where I needed to be—setting aside my own grief and offering my presence for theirs. I was exhausted, though, and by the time I got home after a twelve-hour day of field work and a grad school class, I was shattered. All I wanted to do was sleep.
I kept thinking, I can’t do this again. But, of course, I have to. We all have to. And still—calm.
A floating kind of calm, but it was there. I didn’t need to cry or rage. I needed to be quiet. To light candles. To sit in silence. To say the Shantideva prayer, wisdom from an 8th century buddhist monk, which I sat with just before I looked at the election results for the first time. This is a prayer I often recite, sometimes before the day, sometimes before I write. It’s good medicine.
May I become at all times, both now and forever
A protector of those without protection
A guide for those who have lost their way
A ship for those with oceans to cross
A bridge for those with rivers to cross
A sanctuary for those in danger
A lamp for those without light
A place of refuge for those who lack shelter
And a servant to all in need
For as long as space endures,
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I, too, abide
To dispel the misery of the world.
A ship, a bridge, a sanctuary, a lamp—I feel certain that, whatever is coming our way, this is what writers and artists of all stripes will be called to. How can our work “dispel the misery of the world”? How can our creative offerings be “a guide for those who have lost their way”?
By Thursday, I was concerned about my calm. How was I not freaking out? Grief was there, yes, but the edge had softened with sleep and moving through the good work of creating containers for others to process the contents of their lives. After another day of working with hurting teens, I drove home and took a long family nap—husband, cats, and I spread out on our long couch—then I cooked curry (I believe in the gospel of soup), then got on Zoom to teach a mindfulness for writers session for Highlights. That’s when I realized where this calm was coming from: I was grounded.
This eerie serenity I had been feeling since I woke up Wednesday morning had a firm foundation: my mindfulness practice.
Where others were expressing shock and fury and were keening or couldn’t get out of bed, I was able to move through these days with an old sea captain’s sure-footedness on a ship tossed by angry waves. Steady as she goes. I understood that this feeling of deep rootedness was the dividend of the hours, minutes, even seconds that I attended to the present moment, that I didn’t look away. This is was how the constant effort of coming back to my body, to tuning in, to being with discomfort and not running was kicking in.
All that you touch You Change.
All that you Change Changes you.
The only lasting truth is Change.
- Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
Mindfulness has taught me to less fearful of change. To take refuge in change. There is comfort in the idea that no thing is static, not ever. There is terror, too, because that means the good things will change. I shared Octavia’s quote above with my mindfulness writing students before we worked with a somatic exercise that I’ll be sharing in the coming weeks, where we touch specific parts of our bodies and engage in gestures that evoke a change. It’s a reminder that we change.
We are fluid. We can be the river moving past those rocks that seem so solid—capitalism, racism, misogyny, and so forth—and we can remember that the force of that water is a long game that softens hard edges, turns boulders into pebbles and it keeps flowing across the earth to nourish it.
There is so much more to say, but I think that’s good for now. I want to offer you a chance to explore your own reflections and insights and words and messages because those are more important than anything I or anyone else can ever say.
Below is a tarot spread that I created to work with this idea of change and being in this particular moment at this particular time. A spread for being human in November 2024, inspired by Shantideva’s prayer. May it be of service.
The Hierophant
Before I looked at the November 2024 election results, I pulled a tarot card. I asked, “How can I meet what is going to come?”
I received the Hierophant, and the message was clear: by doing right by the miracle.
For those of you that aren’t familiar with that phrase of mine, it came through when I was writing Little Universes. The dad in the book, an astrophysicist specializing in dark matter, is trying to articulate the point of us as humans on this planet. It’s a call and response with Alice Walker’s quote that social justice is the rent she pays for living on this planet.
In an Author’s Guild profile, I described it this way:
“The miracle being the mind-blowing amount of things that had to come together so an individual human being exists. I think of my ancestors and the sacrifices they made and the natural or cosmic events and every micro choice in my parents’ lives that led to my particular self. I want to honor–to live up–to all of that, and words are the way I’ve chosen to do right by the miracle.”
I wanted to offer anyone reading this something to do, some way to enter into inquiry about their own next steps. Many people have shared wonderful quotes and reflections online in the aftermath of the election results and I hope to curate some of those and distill them in the coming months. After you pull your cards, you might journal or collage the message. Or write a poem about it. Or dance it.
Do Right By The Miracle Tarot Spread
Query: While shuffling the cards, ask, How can I do right by the miracle?
Pull three cards and set them up in a triangle, with the first card at the tip, the second card at the bottom left, and the third card on the bottom right. The number 3 can sometimes be considered unsteady compared to the number 4, which is solid as an oak table. But the number 3 is sacred and filled with generative energy and creativity. It is the number gods are born from and that the goddess claims as her own (the Empress is the third card in the tarot and the triple-head goddess, Hecate, has three faces: maiden, mother, and crone).
Card 1: How I can do right by the miracle at this time.
Card 2: What and/or who will support me in doing right by the miracle.
Card 3: Where I can draw my strength from to keep doing right by the miracle.
When I did this spread, the tarot threw down some wisdom, as it always does. I drew from The Light Seer’s Tarot and I’ve linked to the meaning of the cards from that deck for you to check out. I love this deck, but you need to find cards that resonates with you. (Low-key shout-out to my Tarot for Writers on-demand course). Even when I use other decks, I keep coming to Chris-Anne’s wonderful interpretations of the cards, so her website is invaluable for that.
Card 1: Hierophant
Card 2: 4 of Swords (reversed, but I read reversals not as the opposite of a card but in the way Carrie Mallon teaches, which is simply that this is a lesson I intellectually know, but have yet to metabolize and actualize)
Card 3: 3 of Wands
So, here’s how I can do right by the miracle, according to my draws:
The Hierophant: From these cards I’m seeing that to do right by the miracle, I need to lean into my practice of connecting to Source and living from the 8C’s of Self-Energy (as described in the Internal Family Systems model of therapy, which I do with my therapist). If you get this card, it might mean something else to you, but I’m seeing my mindfulness practice here and also joy. That’s been a big thing my husband has been saying: we can’t let them take our joy.
The 8 C’s are:
Compassion
Curiosity
Clarity
Creativity
Calm
Confidence
Courage
Connectedness
What’s cool is that “courage” is the word that I have been taking into this election season - it’s what I brought into my Samhain ritual and it’s what I’ve been saying to people, as Aslan did in Narnia: “Courage, dear heart.” I’m pretty sure this will be my word for 2025. (Incidentally, my word for 2024 is Strength). The Hierophant is in the Major Arcana. When you get a major, it’s pointing to macro areas of your life. This means that this card is digging into something big and we know that doing right by the miracle is no small task.
4 of Swords: I see that, in order to live and work from Self energy, I must take care of myself. I’m in burnout and grieving and I must tend to that first and foremost. I know this is reversed because I am well aware of needing to build in more self-care. This is hard when you’re in grad school and have two books on sub and are the Executive Director of a Zen Center and the program director of an organization that supports writers working with trauma on and off the page. Still, the cards are clear: I must dedicate myself to self-care, deep rest, and healing. I don’t think this is for a time—it’s for all the time. I can only be supported in doing right by the miracle if I’m not running on fumes.
This book is a great one if you want to take care of the world and recognize the need to also take care of yourself (and that you can’t take care of the world if you can’t take care of yourself). The swords are in the minor arcana and cover the mental realm. They are the air element and all about logic. Many cards around anxiety can be found in the Swords, but also cards about being discerning, clear, and unflinching. Still, we know the pen is mightier than the sword, and this requires all of us, not just our logic. The caution of the swords is that, when your head is in the clouds (as we cloud dweller creatives often are), you must keep your feet planted firmly on the ground. This swords encourage us to ask: is it true? What’s actually true right now, what do we know?
3 of Wands: Finally, what will keep me strong in this work is my creativity, my purpose, my willingness to go out there with my metaphorical surfboard and ride the waves of existence. Rumi says, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the ocean in a drop.” This is a concept I leaned into a lot when I was writing Little Universes, which I wrote while experiencing a deep depression and living abroad, feeling very scared and alone. This was during the first Trump presidency. Rumi’s quote reminded me that I am a part of the whole and the whole is contained within me. This knowledge of what buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh terms “interbeing” is what sustains me. It’s what brought me here to write this for all of you. It’s what helps me when I wonder if my words are necessary. (If you need a supportive meditation right now, here is my favorite one of his - the graphic on this video is also really lovely if closing your eyes feels like too much).
This is me and my beloved at my favorite place in the world, Artist’s Point on Lake Superior in Grand Marais, MN. It’s me embodying the 3 of wands. This deck’s particular illustration of a woman staring out at the ocean also recalls the 4 of Swords for me in that one way I engage in deep self-care is to take to these waters, to be in the presence of what we up north call the saltless sea. I give the water my hurt and listen to the song of their ancient waves reminding me that I am the ocean in a drop.
And you are too.
Steady as she goes, camerados. We’ll be on this voyage together.
Coming Up
You, me, and a cozy afternoon of writing and meditation.
When I first conceived of this mini retreat, I basically wanted to step into a story like Little Witch Hazel, a genre of picture book I love where anthropomorphic creatures live in cozy dens. As a child - okay, even now - I wanted to live at the base of a tree, with a rounded hobbit door. I'd wear felt slippers and sleep under quilts and live by candlelight, eating berries from my neighbors, the deer. Braided rugs under my feet, cups of hot cocoa, a roaring fireplace despite the fact that I live in a tree.
How to do that in retreat form? I jumped onto Canva and made a little story of what I hope this retreat will feel like for you…all these little images are the sweetness I hope to bring us this November.
Basically, this is the COZIEST writing afternoon. Before the retreat, I'll be sending out a few suggestions on how to prep. It includes some pre-retreat support, like taking more smallish naps, finding the perfect pair of thick socks, deciding on your hot beverages, and why sweats are your friend.
You will have opportunities to grow as a writer with the work we do, but it's all held in tender restfulness, channeling Little Witch Hazel herself.
Love this so much. Thanks, Heather.