How the Chariot Brought Us To The Wordshop
I bought my first set of tarot cards in February 2022.
The Good Karma Tarot looked so cheerful and fun at a time when I felt like my life was falling apart. Two weeks earlier, on my birthday, I had woken up with horrendous vertigo. Turning my head at certain angles was a nightmare, and every night, I felt like I was sleeping on a boat. My family was still in the middle of COVID safety measures; our son was halfway through virtual fourth grade, and we had to skip our holiday travel plans because I tested positive on Christmas morning. Basically, everything sucked and I felt like it was all my fault.
My symptoms went from bad to worse over the next seven months. The doctors I managed to get into see couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Even tiny things started stressing me out. I need to feel some sort of control, so I opened my new tarot deck and read the little book that came with it.
It turns out that tarot cards can’t actually predict the future. They’re more like prompts: pull a card from the deck, look up its meaning, study the image. What does the card mean to you? How does it apply to your life? What can you learn from the card’s message? Experts recommend writing down your thoughts and reactions; tarot cards and journaling go hand-in-hand.
It took the better part of a year, but I was eventually diagnosed with chronic, intractable vestibular migraines. That means I have overlapping migraines that never stop. Migraines are electrical disturbances in the brain. A lot of people’s manifest as pain; mine are painful, but they really mess with my eyes’ connection to my body. My symptoms are exacerbated by stress. **
It may not seem like it, but working in educational publishing is actually super stressful. I was at my breaking point in the fall and winter of 2022-23. Our family needed my income, but I also knew I couldn’t continue at my current pace. I was happiest talking about books with kids at the Oak Hill Elementary and Oxford Middle book clubs, and I had just started the Writing Club at Oxford. Could that…could that be a thing?
I planned it all in my head on the way to Thanksgiving in Illinois, then ran the idea by my husband on the way home. In January, I took a tarot & writing class online and learned that the card for 2023 was the Chariot. According to The Good Karma Tarot, the Chariot cards tells you, “Action is needed. . . You should feel self-confident and in control, ready to start new projects, make moves and aim for success.” Then I picked my own card at random for the year. It was the Knight of Coins, which is all about working hard to reap rewards in the future. I started at that card for a good three minutes. How did it know?
And that’s how The Wordshop was born. I used my little tarot deck to journal about what I wanted and how I would get there. I kept the Chariot and the Knight of Coins next to my computer monitor to keep me moving forward. I took really tiny steps, one after the other, and trusted that my intuition would get me where I wanted to go. And that’s what the tarot is all about: listening to the voices inside you that you usually ignore because you’re too busy, too tired, or too scared. You really do give the best advice of anyone you know.
** My symptoms are much, MUCH better now thanks to a lot of medication, a great neurologist, and a vocation I love. Ask me about my lack of depth perception!