October 2023
October felt like an anguished cry: What is going on? Will I ever get out of this? Will I ever find ease? Why must life be so hard? Will I ever find the support I need? Will I ever feel less alone?
Riding on the back of your desire to proffer your talents forth is the vulnerable fear that you don’t have enough, that you aren’t enough, that there isn’t enough for you—that there never will be.
There is so much despair here. Despite your yearning to offer yourself up in a glowing light of love, it seems that all you can see is darkness and all you can feel is your light dimmed and diminished. You would feel lost if finding yourself back here—back again to this rock bottom place you can’t seem to escape—didn’t feel so unbearably familiar.
Why am I here again?! I’m trying so hard, I’ve tried so many things… Will I ever be—can I ever do enough?
October gave us the experience of what it feels like to be stuck in old, familiar ways of thinking. We drove, yet again, down those weighted and worn neural pathways that serve as the freight routes of our shame, guilt, fear, and lack. The vehicles are loud, heavy, and stifling; the roads grooved and compressed under their weight.
Despite our best intentions, despite the loving hopes and wants we have for ourselves, we can’t seem to find our way. We only know one route to take, as if we’re missing a map for how to go and do differently. Remember: it’s true that things get worse before they get better. We often have to crash down before we can lift off again.
Our struggle was not for nothing. The experience of October primed us to revaluate: I don’t want to do this anymore. Where can I go from here? How can I move in a new way? Brought to the fore was the challenge to get out of our old ways of thinking. To relinquish our all-or-nothing tendency toward binary thought. There is a divide that is asking to be healed and that divide lives within us.
The invitation of October was to open up to the possibility of viewing ourselves differently, to learn how to offer ourselves more compassion. We each are a unique composition of personal strengths and challenges, painful past experiences and vast potentials. Amidst it all, tenderness is available to you here—now in the present. Tenderness is ever-present. What accommodations can you make for yourself? Can you be realistic and loving about what you can and cannot do? When do you need a break?
The low of October set up our ascent in November where we learn what it is to embody the truth that you are the support you’ve been missing. We are not old dogs, we have it in us to learn new tools, new tricks. We’re capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for: we’re capable of loving and caring for ourselves in continuously new and better ways.
“Apparition: A Spirit Speak Tarot Deck” by Mary Elizabeth Evans