EMBODYING THE RIGHTSEEKER

This week, our resilience focus is the Heart Remedy Hope. This card seems so appropriate, right? There is a lot going on in the world right now. With the SCOTUS decisions of last week, I know that so many of us are feeling anxiety, frustration, fear, vulnerability, and anger. I think many of us are also, unfortunately, feeling a lot of hopelessness. So when I did our Resilience Reading, I asked the question: What can give us hope in dark times? I then pulled the Rightseeker card in answer.

Yet, the moment that I saw the Rightseeker I felt an immediate and irrational sense of frustration. Why couldn’t an easier card have come up? Why couldn’t this card deck just give me an instruction and tell me what I should do?

Because here’s the thing—we all know how important it is to seek right and do right. But often the way forward isn’t easy or even visible to us. So for me at least, seeing the Rightseeker didn’t help me to feel empowered. It just made me mad! I needed just a little bit more to go on. With that in mind, I asked some follow up questions specifically focused around the Rightseeker and my own feelings of frustration and confusion. I hope these questions and the cards that I drew in answer can spark some new rightness within you and within your world. Stay safe.

Note: I wrote these answers with a little bit of thought, but I did have a deadline so I didn’t spend as much time as I wanted. Remember that it’s always useful to come back again and again to the questions and the card answers to see what new ideas are sparked as your mind works things out. My answers here might not be the right ones for you.

1. What can help us to figure out the right road forward?

18th Sister THE HEALER

To me, this feels like a really big card with a really big answer. It speaks to me as a woman in a world that has historically never valued women, nor treated them with respect or care. This is such a great, aching wound! A wound so deep that perhaps we cannot even see its roots. How much damage has this wound caused us that we are not even aware of? The trauma of our current post-Roe world is not a new trauma. It lays itself over centuries of trauma we hold already within our bodies. Perhaps this card invites us to focus on healing the brokenness we must feel in this patriarchal world. I do not have the answer. Do you?

Alternately, perhaps this card is simply saying that we must go forward as if we are healers? That the rightness we seek is as healers? What other ideas occur to you when the Healer comes in answer to this question?

2. What can be our first step?

20th Sister THE REVELER

In some important way I really feel that this card is tied to the Healer above, and that she very fluidly continues her wisdom. Last week, we were very clearly taught/shown by SCOTUS that a woman—and the female body itself—has no autonomy and no power of her own. I wonder whether this card is a call to reclaim and celebrate our bodies and our ability to take pleasure and seek pleasure? Perhaps our first step toward seeking right is to remember the rightness of our bodies as personal and pleasurable and belonging to no one but us? To me, this card feels like an invitation to reaffirm a pleasurable relationship with my own body and in that way remember how important and powerful my body is. Let pleasure be the gateway.

What other ideas occur to you when the Reveler comes in answer to this question?

3. How can we navigate conflict with those who do not seek the same right?

8th Gift FREE WILL

Omph. This card. THIS CARD. It reminds me of something a therapist once told me: You are not responsible for other people’s feelings. We can only be responsible for ourselves and for our own beliefs, feelings, and actions. Free Will is tricky because we all have it. We can’t force others to do our bidding (not if we’re ethical and humane), but neither can they force us to do theirs. We all have free will. And this means we will not all see the world the same way. Ugh, but how can others see the world so differently?! How can some of us believe such incomprehensible things? Ultimately, all we can do is live our own beliefs, our own feelings and our own actions. We cannot attempt to understand or live the beliefs of others. If we do, we might go mad.

But maybe I’m just rambling off on a tangent? Perhaps this card says something more meaningful to you. What other ideas occur to you when Free Will comes in answer to this question?

4. How can we seek right and still stay safe and nourished?

9th Heart Remedy KINSHIP

You are not alone. There are so many in the world who support you, who share the kinship of womanhood with you. If you’re feeling burnt out or scared, frustrated or exhausted, remember that nourishment often comes from a hug, a shared laugh, a clasped hand, or a meal with friends. This is what kinship is—knowing that you are connected to others in loving ways. Remember that what connects you to the people who matter is always important. There are many forms of division in the world. But focusing on divisiveness will not nourish or encourage us as we seek the right way forward. Let’s try to focus on the loving and caring relationships in our lives in order to gain energy and drive for the work ahead.

What other ideas occur to you when Kinship comes in answer to this question?