Lessons from the eight of swords

Lessons from the eight of swords

One thing I've noticed with traumatised women and dating, is the hyper-vigilance and tendency to cut and run at the first glimpse of reality, that their lover is less than perfect. It is something I've struggled with and I've witnessed in friends. I only became ready to break the cycle when I decided to date a good friend of mine who I knew had my best interests at heart and was fundamentally good and decent. It didn't work out but I am forever grateful for the lessons I learned.

I was talking about this with a friend the other day, and how we confuse legitimate human experiences with red flags. It's okay for my lover to have conflict with myself and others sometimes. What is important is how they speak about the others involved - do their words and actions show a fundamental level of respect? Are they seeking more to understand than to be right?

Conflict can teach us so much about how somebody values us. The healing of the repair makes us grateful for the rupture.

Traumatised women are so scared that if they allow their lover to be human there will come a point in the relationship where they are trapped and can't leave. This is a story they have lived through where they felt there came a certain point in a toxic relationship where it was perceived it was impossible to go. It becomes so much easier to cut and run to not have to face your own lack of self trust. No relationship is binding. Do you trust yourself to walk away when necessary?

If you never let yourself feel uncomfortable you're never going to fall in love. If you want a relationship you need to be able to honour the humanity in another and hold them in grace.

- thoughts on a Saturday morning

I’m Having A Big Feeling

How to feel a feeling

I stopped saying the word "triggered" months ago as I reached a point where I was pathologising my expansive emotional experience. I am not irrevocably damaged. I am a human who feels. I am a feminine woman whose gift is to feel keenly everything. This is not a disorder. This is human experience.

"I'm having a big feeling" makes a huge difference to me.

I had insomnia last night and I was feeling ALL the feelings. Prayer didn't work, meditation didn't work, writing it out didn't work, and I'm not sure how much sleep I ended up getting. I spoke to friends.

I bundled the kids off to school this morning and sat and spoke to myself. I tapped the release points on my body and said what I was feeling. I feel abandoned, I feel unloved, it's okay, I kept saying what I was feeling. It's okay that I feel like this. I acknowledged a huge part of me knew it was "unspiritual" to feel this way but right now I didn't care. The child part of me wanted what it wanted - the easy solution. I wanted somebody to make it better.

I let the tears flow. I knew if I had what I wanted it wouldn't solve my problem because the longing came from somewhere deep inside that cannot be filled by another human.

I prayed on it and asked for a sign. I said that I was willing to see it differently. I cried and cried.

Then I started feeling really angry. My favourite part of my morning is my fifteen minute dance break and this morning was one that left me breathless. Animals shake to release trapped emotion and we have a huge need as humans to consciously do it. Allowing the emotion to come up through the body and letting yourself move however you want to. Even if that is more stamping and punching than dancing.

This whole process took an hour and I might have to repeat it later or tomorrow. Our emotions are like pressure valves and what gets released the amount we are able to deal with at the time.

So now I've flopped down. My head hurts, my eye makeup is smudged, but I feel peace and calm starting to creep back in. The knot feels less. Nothing has been forbidden or left out.

On Catholicism

I am not a practicing Catholic, and the last time I attended Mass was in my mid-teens. I've spent many hours teaching about the effects of patriarchy on women and women's bodies.

I've been observing the posts about abortion going back and forth on my timeline. My heart is with every woman - knowing that as women we have the inalieable right and ability to give and take life, and the simultaneous sorrow that many of these women are trapped and this is their last resort.

Bodily autonomy is my bottom line and I am particularly sensitive to cultural context when it comes to women. And so I leave a flower for all the life that returns to its Mother, and the lives of those who need so much love right here right now.

When I listen to abortion stories, I am always struck by the sorrow, the suffering and the self-love. The woman saying, I matter. I am the child who I am gifting new life to.

I've recently been wondering whether to get back into online dating and thinking of the good things about me... loyal, reliable, funny. What would be the cons of dating me? That I regularly bring home human placentas and statues of the Virgin Mary. Perhaps there is somebody out there who will find my idiosyncrasies charming. That remains to be seen.

When my mother describes her experience of Church I feel like I participate in this mutual love and worthiness. She talks about the flowers for Mothering Sunday and taking them to her grandmother after service, in particular the way that when you announced you were pregnant people were excited and pleased for you, as opposed to friends and family who made comments like "another one?" "what about money?" or "just as you were getting your life back too!"

Nobody thought you were too poor, had too many, were limiting yourself. They just saw the miracle in front of them. My mother said, they saw children as a blessing. This in turn made her feel blessed for that hour every week.

That is one of the beautiful things about the Catholic Church. At the centre of devotion you have a woman, a poor woman, birthing Love through her body. A child who will be a man who works with his hands, who could be classed as "uneducated" but brings forth words of truth and love from his heart. I know this was passed down to me as a shining example, influencing my life path, as all I know and revere is Sacred Mother.


I've always had a difficult relationship with God that I'm trying to heal. For a long time one of my biggest frustrations is that men would treat me like "the virgin mary", my exact words, somebody to be respected from afar but not touched. Then I see how nothing is black and white, that ideas can heal and harm.

Sometimes our biggest insecurities, what we try to run from within ourselves, is our biggest gift. It turns out she is the face of the Goddess I most relate to, who always answers, who never lets you down. She is very real and very touchable.

I doubt I will ever be a practising Catholic again. I don't like rules and I don't like ideas being set in stone. To me, learning is about staying curious as you meet beautiful new ideas you hadn't considered yet. And I think that's just how Jesus would have felt to those around him.

A font of beautiful new ideas that hadn't been considered yet.

I hope this brought you some value - from my heart to yours.