Life Skills

Everyone has something that they find easy,  that other people find hard.  But skills are transferable.  

I was dreadful with food for many years,  eating my feelings and under exercising.  But I was always great with money,  feeling satisfied with staying within my budget and smug when I got things on sale.  There were years where the only things I bought full price were groceries. 

And I met these gorgeous,  thin,  smart young women coming for Tarot Readings,  who were really dreadful with money.  They could control and motivate themselves effortlessly around food and exercise,  but they had no self control around expenditures. 

And I said,  these are the same skills.  The skills that make you not eat a full bar of chocolate,  you can transfer that attitude to shopping.  It was so eye opening for me (sometimes I actually take my own advice!)   It really helped me with food. I began saying to myself, it's costs too much,  thinking about how many calories were in a dessert.

And I'd encourage the girls to look at the shoes and work out much they were paying on interest to get them, and declare them too fattening!  I made a lot of girls laugh with that line,  and then stop and think.  I still get feedback to this day from some of my clients that that idea really helped them. 

My new favorite Deck

I began reading tarot cards so long ago,  that really the only deck available was the Rider Waite.  And so I imprinted on it,  and learnt all my reading skills from those extraordinary, intricate images.  I still recommend it as the best deck for new readers.  Most other decks are influenced by or based on it. 

But then the internet exploded,  and all sorts of new images/visual interpretations emerged. 

Every so often I stumble across a new deck,  and each image is more perfect than the next,  and I get greedy to have it in my hands. 

So my new favorite Deck is the Grand Bear Deck by Lise Abbaddie,  a french designer.   It took me a good hour online trying to find the source of all these amazing cards,  and from what I can tell, the deck is not complete,  I can't buy it. But I want to!  I'll join their mailing list and preorder as soon as I can! 

Let yourself be served

I was doing a tarot reading for a woman who was under a lot of stress.  She drew way too many swords and any positive card was reversed. 

So we discussed ways to reduce stress.  She said she was eating really badly - skipping meals and then doubling down on sugary snacks.  So I said,   go to a restaurant,  order a salad that someone else has made,  and let yourself be served.  You deserve to be taken care of,  and you deserve healthy,  delicious food.  

She teared up.  She hadn't thought about it in those terms before,  but the idea of being looked after,  of not having to buy, cook and tidy up a meal,  was something she realized she really wanted. 

I hope it nourishes her well. 

News Avoidance

We have a habit in our household,  the tv goes on at 7 and we watch the news.  But every so often,  the news is so bleak,  or enraging,  or overwhelming,  that I just can't bear it,  and I mute it.  Of course,  in sunny, safe Sydney,  this is an option I can take.  But I've been thinking about news avoidance,  because so many people, both here and New York, are saying/doing the same thing.  And I guess I want the news channels to start thinking about how they engage with us,  and what the news is doing to us and to them.  We need better options about knowing what is going on and then dealing with it.

It reminds me of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.  I read it way back when and found it so overwhelming in it's portents that I had to put it down and pause for a bit between reads.  It's so well written and I completely believed it,  but I felt powerless before it.  Almost thirty years later,  we've caught up a bit to his rage and knowledge and most accept his viewpoint as true,  but we still have to deal with the next step - what to do about it!

Joanna Macy,  Buddhist and deep ecologist,  has an approach called 'Active Hope.'  She doesn't want us to be reassured and comfortable,  but neither does she wants us to be despairing and distraught.  Instead,  she wants us to see what is true and real,  and then work within our world to make it better.  She writes in her website - in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, this work helps people transform despair and apathy into constructive, collaborative action.

I very much want to have a better world and do believe that collaborative, constructive action is the way to go. So I'm off to find a corner of the world where I can help and make things better...

Wishing you the same calming, foundational energy!

Amanda Knox

I was vaguely aware of the Amanda Knox story as it unfolded in Italy in 2007,  but I wasn't at all invested in it,  as we can be in some famous cases.  

In fact,  when this trailer appeared,  I had to look up if the consensus was she was innocent or not.

Of course that put me down a steep rabbit hole! And I came to this interview with her,  about her book. 

And in it she said so many things I fundamentally agree with!

Every place is the place of someone's worst tragedy and someone's best moments.

Amanda Knox

It's such an important thing to remember - that on the day of your mother's funeral,  someone else is getting married, that there is a ying and yang to every thing, and that that is a good thing! 

I liked everything she said and will go look for her book Free,  My search for Meaning.  It looks really interesting. 

Quote of the Day

"Never make fun of people for mispronouncing a word. It means they learned it by reading." Anon

As someone who was a first generation English speaker in my family, and learnt so many words by reading, this really speaks to me. And English is such a ridiculous language - so many words are spelt oddly and there are so many exceptions to the rules.

I learnt this quote later in life, but really take it to heart. We should be proud of people who learn by their own efforts and be gracious to them!

Teenage crushes

Did a tarot reading for a woman recently divorced.  She put it up on her facebook page.  All of a sudden,  these boys she went to high school with popped up,  25 years or so later,  to tell her that they had had crushes on her in their teens,  and did she want to go out now.  

She told me that her teenage years had been so isolated and lonely,  and she wished she had known then,  that she could be attractive.  She may have chosen a different man altogether if she knew she had options. (Isn't that a wonderful Austen like 7 of cups card!) 

So now she isn't dating any of them (she moved over a thousand miles away from her High School town over 20 years ago,  and isn't interested in going back.) But she's more open to letting people know how she feels in the here and now.  And she knows she can attract people into her life.