ep. 4: strength | befriending our lion parts

Because life, healing and our existence is non-linear, as will my exploration of the tarot. in today's episode, we jump to card number 8 - strength. Strength, one of my favorite cards, is such an immensely powerful card when it comes to trauma healing because it invites us to confront the scariest parts of ourselves. Join me as we explore the energy of strength and how we can use it's energy to support us in our healing journey. 

Notes: 

• Tarot Decks mentioned: Ostara Tarot, The Gentle Tarot 
• Biddy Tarot, Labyrinthos Tarot
• Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
• Red Tarot by Christopher Marmalejo 
• Treating Complex Stress Disorders in Children and Adolescents | Ch. 4 Betrayal Trauma Chapter
• St. Vil, N. M., Carter, T., & Johnson, S. (2021). Betrayal trauma and barriers to forming new intimate relationships among survivors of intimate partner violence. Journal of interpersonal violence, 36(7-8), NP3495-NP3509.
• My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem
• VIMBASI Practice 
• Who Said It Was Simple by Audre Lorde
• Aggression by Meena Kandasamy

Transcript

a 0:03

Hey y'all, welcome to Tender Tarot, a podcast that explores trauma healing through the lens of the tarot. I'm your host, Akshi. I'm a trauma therapist, social worker, and of course, tarot reader. In this podcast, we will explore various topics related to trauma, trauma healing, and how we can find medicine, inspiration, support, and expansive pathways toward healing using the tarot. Although I'm a practicing therapist and we may discuss many topics related to mental health and therapy in this podcast, it is not a replacement for psychotherapy with a licensed practitioner. This podcast is for you if you're someone who is interested in understanding trauma and how it impacts you, your community, and the world around us through the lens of the Tarot. Hope you enjoy. If you're someone who's familiar with the tarot, you'll probably be able to listen to these episodes in any order that you want. But if you're someone that's brand new to it, I would recommend starting with episode one and two, as they will set a solid foundation for you to understand what might come next. Me being me and loving the non-linearity of things, I am not going to be making episodes about the cards in a sequential way. So we're gonna now start jumping around. Today's episode is not going to be about the magician, which is card number one, but it's gonna be about strength, which is card number eight. If you're someone who has your own deck, you're invited to relate these episodes using the imagery of the decks that you have or deck that you have. But if you aren't someone who has a deck, you can always look up the specific cards that I'm referencing, or check out Biddy Tarot, Labyrinthos Tarot, or just look up the traditional Rider Waite Smith Tarot online to check out the imagery, as that might be a helpful reference to have while we're chatting about tarot and its connections to trauma. What I'm going to be doing in each episode here on out is sharing descriptions of the card, my interpretations of them, and weaving in connections to mental health, trauma, art, lived experiences, and more. If you ever have any questions, you can always click on link in the show notes to ask them directly to me. And perhaps in the future, when I have enough questions, I can make a QA episode. With that, let's get started with today. Today we're going to be talking about one of my favorite cards. And that card is, as I mentioned earlier, card number eight or strength. When you look at the image of the traditional strength card, you can see that there is this woman. She is wearing a beautiful white dress covered in flowers. There's flowers growing out from her hair. She has an infinity symbol above her head, and she is showing what looks like comfort to a lion. When you think about what it feels like to confront the darkest parts of yourself, the parts of you that you're scared of, the parts born out of the necessity for survival. What does it feel like to confront these parts of yourself with love, compassion, and understanding? That's who strength is in the tarot. It is card number eight of the major arcana, and it's ruled by the energy of fire. It's our passion, it's our instinct, it's our drive, it's kind of what fuels us in this world. It's our life force energy. And that kind of connects to like what eight symbolizes in numerology, which is personal power, self-confidence, inner strength, abundance, kind of so like eight also looks like infinity, life force. I wanted to describe to y'all what strength looked like in the first ever tarot deck that I had, because even though I don't have that deck anymore, like the imagery from that deck, and I think just the experiences that I've had with it that have been emotionally charged. It's like the imagery has stayed with me. And I think that the strength card was one of my favorite in there because it's beautiful. So it's basically like a wounded warrior, they have an eye patch. She holds her heart in one hand and the other hand lays on top of her sleeping dragon companion. You can tell from her expression that she has been through it, but she's still willing to be vulnerable while balancing that with offering care and compassion to her protector. Even in describing it, I can kind of like see it. And it's from the Austero Tarot, so if you want to look it up, you can. But it just evokes like this very strong resonance in me. I think is the best way that I can describe it. In the traditional tarot, the way that it's illustrated is that there is this woman who looks very nurturing, very caring, very gentle, and she is comforting this lion. So you can see the connection between like the dragon and the lion. And I mean, I love to see different strength cards in different tarot decks because I'm always so curious as to what a particular artist's interpretation of it will be. And in the gentle tarot, it is also one of my most favorite cards. So in the gentle tarot, and just a note that I link all the card decks and all of the resources in the show notes. So if you're curious, you can check it out. I highly recommend the Gentle Tarot. It's one of my favorite, favorite, favorite decks. So in it, we have this interpretation of strength, which is a humpback whale that's turning towards a surface of water. So the bottom is dark and the top is lighter, which I think serves to represent like these different layers of the ocean, which we could also see as different layers of our subconscious. So there is like sunlight zone, twilight zone, midnight zone, and gotta check it. Wow. Okay, so it's sunlit zone, twilight zone, midnight zone, the abyss, and then the trenches. And that's kind of like the deeper that you go. There are more scientific names for it, but those are sort of the colloquial ones. And like I love seeing the ocean as just a such a resonant metaphor of our subconscious and its layers and how it's kind of scary to swim down deep. And you know, in the first episode, we were talking about the fool card in the gentle tarot, which is the little fish that's swimming into the darker sections of the water. In this one, it's like the whale is coming out from underneath, meaning that it's already been spending some time down there, you know, but also I do think about it's a humpback whale specifically. Whenever I see animals like whales, elephants, giraffes, I think those are gentle giants, you know, and they are so enormously huge, yet such big creatures that like deserve so much reverence. It's actually the males of the humpbacks that sing complex songs that could last between four to 33 minutes. And in Hawaii, there's actually been recorded humpback whale vocalizing for as long as seven hours and also one time up to 22 hours. And it's kind of like the language through which they communicate with one another and speak to one another. So symbolizes communication, the power also of music, the power of song, the importance of expressing ourselves clearly and openly, which at the end of the day is vulnerability. And the long journeys that these whales go on, I think that symbolizes healing, that they, you know, they go, can go down to certain depths, and then they come back out to the sunlit area with whatever wisdom they gained from their journey and exploration. Another thing about whales is that they exist in groups, usually small ones, but sometimes, but sometimes larger groups as well. So they have strengthen numbers and they have strengthened community, and they do, you know, feed together at times. And they also have this way. So basically, in the Gentle Tarot, it's this image of this whale that's like coming up to the surface of the water, but is still underneath, and it's surrounded by this cloud of rainbow stuff, you know, maybe seems a little bit like a bubble. And I learned that these are called bubble clouds that they actually create together, sometimes to play, sometimes to like court a mate, sometimes to show aggression, but also to hide from predators. What when I see that, I'm like, the way that we can protect ourselves, especially because it's a rainbow, I see it as how can we create this bubble of protection around us that is imbued with the strength that we gain from facing the scariest parts of ourselves, you know? Like if we love ourselves, you know, we treat other people the way we truly feel about ourselves. And I think that by exploring our roots and our depths and where our behaviors, thoughts, beliefs about ourselves and others come from, like we sort of free ourselves from them. I don't know. I feel like I'm having a hard time expressing myself, but that that's just so funny because I'm talking about like the power of being able to express yourself with complexity and sort of like we ourselves, along with support from our kin and our community, can create these like bubbles of protection around us with our individuality, with our uniqueness. So I think another thing about Wales is the way that their society is structured is with matriarchy. I have this wonderful book called Red Tarot: A Decolonial Guide to Diminatory Literacy by Christopher Marmolleho. And the chapter on strength honestly spoke to me so much. And so I'm gonna be quoting it now, and I'm gonna be quoting it through the rest of the episode. But I felt like that resonance that I felt with that card that I described right in the beginning was how I felt when I read this chapter as well. So they talk about how a feminist reading of strength is seeing strength as a way to defy patriarchal norms and structures. So I understand the choice of a whale on this image. They talk about how strength undoes the adherence to patriarchal systems of dominating power across sexuality, gender, class, etc. And we see this also in the way that whales are nurturing. They are a society in which it's led by the females and it centers the children, which, you know, matriarchal societies center the vulnerable, which includes children and any oppressed person, whereas patriarchy favors individualism and power over. I think we talked about this in the last episode as well, the power over versus power with. And matriarchal societies, I think, really see the benefit of the power of sharing power and of caring for one another. Strength is such an important card when it comes to thinking about trauma. And so I was thinking about it and I was like, what are ways, what are things within like trauma work and trauma healing that I feel like hold the energy of strength? And I thought about shadow work. So I don't know if people are familiar with shadow work. It's usually a term that's more so used in terms, it's more so a term that's used in like communities where people are talking about a spiritual growth, but is also connected to Jungian psychology. But basically, what shadow work is is looking at the meaning behind unconscious emotions, responses, and actions that we take in certain situations. So it's like, what is the root of my emotions, my behaviors, my actions? What are the roots of my impulses? You know? What are the roots of like the shame and anger and the emotions I feel ashamed to feel but are still there because I'm but I'm just repressing them. Like doing shadow work can allow us to meet ourselves on a much deeper level, revealing unconscious behaviors and also core beliefs that inform who we are today. And that might come from what you learn within your family system or your community. But also in a globalized world, it's like a way social media is something that shapes people too, you know? And like you can be influenced by we're kind of like existing at this point of time where culture has sort of surpassed physical limitations because of the internet and how connected we are. But, anyways, I want to give an example of shadow work for those who might be like, I kind of get that, but still don't, and I've never heard of it before. So if you're someone who gets very defensive when you perceive a threat, even in situations where no threat is present, doing shadow work is like exploring what lies at the root of that, and how can you better understand this response so as to accept it, understand it, and shift it and bring yourself back into the present moment. Another example would be you cross your own boundaries, push past your capacities to support those in your life, even when they don't ask you to. And then you're resentful to people when they don't do the same for you, even though you don't ask for help. These are learned behaviors, behaviors that at one point was very, very functional and helped us to survive. There's this little book that I have that's called The Little Book of Shadow Work by Camille Marie. And I love it. It has it's basically just a book full of journal prompts that help you do exactly this, which is confront your shadow, um, confront the parts of yourself that you have a hard time accepting, a hard time loving, you know? And I love seeing the connections of ways in which people um tie strength into this, because in when I was reading Red Tarot, it spoke of strength as it being a love that humanizes mercy, acceptance, and revival from suffering, from the suffering endeared emerges a compassionate witness with strength. And that doesn't even have to be someone else, it could just be you witnessing your past self, seeing that source of the pain and seeing it as an opportunity to show ourselves care and love. There is this beautiful quote in the Red Tarot in the section on strength from Sister Outsider by Audrey Lord. For those that don't know, Audrey Lorde was a black, lesbian, feminist writer and poet. Her writing really focuses on confronting injustice and oppression. There's a beautiful quote in this chapter about strength. To search for power within myself means I must be willing to move through, being afraid to whatever lies beyond. If I look at my most vulnerable places and acknowledge the pain I have felt, I can remove the source of that pain from my enemies' arsenals. My history cannot be used to feather my enemies' arrows, then. And that lessens their power over me. Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your meanness as I discover you in myself. When I read that, I was like, wow, that's so powerful and so true. When we accept all parts of ourselves, there is nothing that anybody can use against us. When we are able to hold the parts of ourselves that we're ashamed of, the parts of ourselves that we're scared of, the parts of ourselves that we love to hide and pretend don't exist. When we accept and integrate those parts as part of our being, they can never be used against us. And that I feel like is so, so, so powerful. And I feel like is a good segue into talking about what I wanted to talk about next, which is vulnerability. She talks about if I look at my most vulnerable places and acknowledge the pain I have felt, I can remove the source of that pain from my enemies' arsenals. So, what is being vulnerable? It's a willingness to be open, honest, and transparent. And it is also when we are in a position where we risk being harmed, we risk being rejected, we risk being hurt, which often happens when we put ourselves in a position where we are being open, honest, and transparent about ourselves, right? It's scary to share ourselves with others, especially if we've done it in the past and we've experienced rejection, harm, trauma. This can make us so very, very cautious when it comes to sharing ourselves with others. And so avoiding vulnerability is a way that we learn to protect ourselves. But it also at the same time keeps us from making meaningful connections with both ourselves and others when we avoid vulnerability. So this is something that I think a lot of trauma survivors struggle with, especially those who have experienced interpersonal violence. So, what this kind of reminded me of was betrayal trauma, which is when a Survivor experiences violence or abuse from someone whom they are very close to. And in order to survive these situations, they might develop something known as betrayal blindness, where they have to remain blind to the betrayal in order to survive. Because often this happens in families of origin. There's a chapter in this book, Treating Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders in Children and Adolescents. And the chapter is on betrayal trauma, written by Laura Kayler, Rebecca Babcock, Anne De Prince, and Jennifer Freid. Jennifer Freud is an American psychologist and researcher who is actually known for creating betrayal trauma theory and has done. She's an extensively published researcher regarding theories of betrayal trauma and institutional betrayal and domestic and intimate partner violence. Within this chapter, what they state is that ordinarily it would be advantageous to detect betrayal in order to prevent a future violation. However, if detecting that betrayal could damage the security of attachment to an essential caregiver, it may be psychologically necessary to remain unaware of the betrayal. Awareness of the betrayal may lead to withdrawal from the caregiver. And by doing so, the child may risk further harm if the parent no longer continues to protect or meet the child's needs. Therefore, in order to preserve a sense of security and ensure survival, the survivor may remain unaware of the betrayal. Betrayal trauma theory suggests that trauma that is high in betrayal can damage our trust mechanisms, either resulting in insufficient or excessive trust. So this betrayal blindness piece falls into the excessive trust, you know? And that makes it more likely that the person who's experienced the betrayal trauma will experience betrayals again in the future because they might have trouble detecting risk in social situations. There's research that has actually found that trauma survivors who've experienced betrayal trauma have lower levels of trust, but also a decreased awareness of betrayals and are more likely to stay in relationships after a betrayal has occurred. So they continue to experience this pattern of betrayal blindness even when they're not in the originating situation anymore. Betrayal blindness is a form of dissociation. And research by DuPrince and Frey has linked high levels of dissociation to more trauma history and more experiences of betrayal trauma. And it's linked to a decreased capacity to actually feel fear and anxiety that accompanies dangerous situations. And these are things that we need to be able to feel in order to protect ourselves. But when we experience something as complex as betrayal trauma, in which someone who is supposed to love us and who is supposed to care for us, who we are reliant on for our survival betrays us, what happens in this situation is that our body is like, how can we survive? And realizes that I actually need to be okay with this situation in order to survive because I rely on this person for my shelter, I rely on this person for food. And this, of course, is the case when the trauma is being experienced from a caregiver, but it can also be the case when it is another family member. It could be the case if this is a person that is your intimate partner who you are financially dependent on, which many, many women were in history and even are today. There are many, many very good reasons that people become blind to the betrayal that they are experiencing within their close relationships. And there are very, very good reasons why people end up staying in relationships that are harmful towards them. Research has found that those who have been abused by family members have higher symptoms of post-traumatic stress than those abused by those who weren't in their family. Another paper that I read was Betrayal Trauma and Barriers to Forming New Intimate Relationships Among Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence. And this was a qualitative research study. They identified five themes that emerged as barriers to establishing intimate relationships after experiencing intimate partner violence. The themes were vulnerability and fear, relationship expectations, shame and low self-esteem, and communication issues. This paper really talks about how these individuals hold on to survival behaviors that were adapted and created in old relationships, and that they often protect themselves emotionally because. How it connects to strength is looking at our lion parts, looking at our dragon parts, and with compassion and trying to reach a place of understanding about where these parts even originated from, and having gratitude for the fact that these parts of yourself, these protective parts of yourself, helped you survive unimaginable situations. You know, we have these parts inside of us for a reason to help us survive. And I think metabolizing and befriending our difficult emotions or difficult parts, such as anger, rage, shame, and grief. There can be a lot of different ways in which we do that. We can do that within a safe container with community and friends. We can do that with a therapist. We can do that with other kinds of healers. We can do that, do that using ritual. We can use journaling and art making. And you know, it might sound really simple, but we can also just sit with our difficult emotions. I think in the first episode, I talked about Rejma Menikam. So in his book, My Grandmother's Hands, he talks about the five anchors to befriending hard feelings. And these are strategies for staying present in your body and being able to move through difficult emotions when they come up. First anchor, soothe yourself to quiet your mind, calm your heart, and settle your body. Anchor number two, simply notice the sensations, vibrations, and emotions in your body instead of reacting to them. One way in which you can explore what is going on in your body and your somatic system and make space for the emotional experience that you're having so that it can metabolize is a practice developed also by Rajma Menakam called Vimbasi. V is vibration. What is the vibration of what you're currently feeling and experiencing? I is images. What are the images associated with what you're experiencing? What are the colors associated with what you're experiencing? M is meaning making. What meaning are you making out of what it is that you're experiencing right now? B is behaviors. What kind of behaviors do you feel the impulse to engage in? What kind of behaviors does this feeling evoke inside of you? A is affect and emotion. What kind of affect is present in your expression? What kind of emotions are you sensing into? What emotions would you label are present in your body right now? As the sensations, and I is imagination. And I think imagination, you can imagine it to be many, many different things for yourself. But I kind of think of it as like if you could imagine what this feeling could transform and transmute into, what would that look like? If you could imagine, and it could also just be like as you're tapping into all of these different layers of what you're experiencing, what are you imagining right now? And is what you're imagining something that occurred in the past, something that's occurring in the present, or something that you wish to occur in the future, or something that is completely timeless. This is a framework that really can be used at any time, but can especially be used at times of heightened levels of stress, anxiety, or when these difficult feelings and emotions are coming up and you're having a difficult time staying with them. Going back to the five anchors, anchor number three is accepting the discomfort and noticing when it changes instead of trying to flee from it. I think the way that we are all socialized is to suppress our negative emotions and flee from our negative emotions when that doesn't actually make them go away. It's a short-term solution. But accepting that those emotions are there, just like in the imagery of strength, sitting with the lion, sitting with the dragon, soothing the lion, soothing the dragon, offering comfort to the discomfort, and noticing how it just changes on its own when you just do nothing but sit with it. Anchor number four is staying present and in your body as you move through this unfolding experience with all its ambiguity and uncertainty, and aim to respond from the best parts of yourself. The last anchor is safely discharge any energy that remains. So that could be using breathing techniques, it could be shaking, it could be jumping, it could be crying, it could be screaming, it could be dancing. There are so many, so many different ways in which we can safely discharge the energy that remains. And once we build a practice of doing that, it becomes much more natural for us to be able to do it. And we build a practice of sitting with our emotions and allowing them to metabolize rather than suppressing them and rather than fleeing from them and letting them pile up. So I hope that that is a helpful tool. In the Red Tarot, they talk about how that which frightens deserves respect and examination. These animals, lions, dragons, any sort of predators, they deserve respect and they deserve examination. And the ways in which they show up inside of our psyche and our body also deserve respect and examination. It's important for us as survivors to look at and face our wounding and face our scars. And also know that it takes time and patience, and that we need support in that healing journey. These scars won't go away if we just ignore them. The healing is going to happen either way. You can either have a choice in it or you'll be forced into it, is what my experience has been with how the universe works. Healing is a spiral because we get opportunities over and over again to heal our core wounding. So strength is an antidote to fear. Strength is the balance between risking vulnerability while knowing that we have protective parts inside of us that will take care of us if needed. And that vulnerability does not need to mean self-abandonment. Strength teaches us that our wounds are portals to expansive growth. And I think that that's just so beautiful. And being a survivor myself and being a trauma therapist, let me just tell you that I have had the privilege of witnessing these portals of expansive growth, both within myself and within those that I've worked with. There is so much power, like Audrey Lorde said, in accepting the parts of yourself that are the sources of your pain. As she says, nothing I accept about myself can be used to diminish me. Oh, I just I it's such a powerful quote. I wanted to take a moment just to also talk about how like anger is this emotion that is so misunderstood in our global culture, and it is viewed as something negative that we should not feel. But actually, where the problem comes from is the expression of that anger. And when we ask ourselves who in our society is allowed to or given permission to feel anger, usually it's men, usually it's white men, usually it's cis white men, and who is not given that permission, and who is labeled as quote unquote, an angry black woman, and who's punished for having this very valid reaction to systemic violence and systemic inequality. So I wanted to share a couple of poems. One by Audrey Lorde, who said it was simple. Sitting in Neddix, the women rally before they march, discussing the problematic girls they hire to make them free. An almost white counterman passes, a waiting brother to serve them first, and the ladies neither notice nor reject the slighter pleasures of their slavery. But I who am bound by my mirror as well as my bed, see causes in color as well as sex, and sit here wondering which me will survive all these liberations. Just gonna sit with that for a moment. And then I want to share a poem by one of my favorite authors and poets. Her name is Meena Kandasami. She is a poet, a writer, an activist, and she is a Dalit woman. And a lot of her poetry revolves around issues of caste, sexuality, violence, and gender oppression. So one of her poems, she's written many, many poems that are under these themes, but one of her poems is called aggression. Ours is a silence that waits, endlessly waits. And then, unable to bear it any further, it breaks into wails. But not all suppressed reactions end in our bemoaning the tragedy. Sometimes the outward signals of inward struggles take colossal forms, and the revolution happens because our dreams explode. Most of the time, aggression is the best kind of troubleshooting. Such an inspiring poem and really speaks to how powerful anger and rage can be when it's transmuted into action. And in the last episode, I talked about the book Let This Radicalize You. And I think that's a great resource to tap into to figure out ways in which you can metabolize your rage and your anger. I know that I've been experiencing so much rage over the past few years with what's been going on in the world. And what helps the most is to move that rage out of me in a productive way, to lean on my community, to talk to others about what we can do, to provide support for those that are around me. And also, you know, to move, to move my body, to go to a rage room, to dance, to let that energy out, because that's what anger wants to do. It wants to come out. And there are beautifully expressive and productive and generative ways for that anger to be transmuted that are not rooted in violence, that are especially not rooted in violence towards those that are our kin. And I think a lot of the issues that I see within social justice communities and like the infighting that happens, like I see that as like unmetabolized anger. Where is the easiest place that that anger can go? It's to people that are close to us. When in actuality, we should be directing it towards the systems that are harming us all. Anyways, I want to just give some examples of what strength energy can look like practically. Allowing yourself to be witnessed in your experience of grief or sadness, whether that's in therapy, with friends, or in a group, asking someone for help when you typically tend towards taking care of yourself always, making space for your anger and meeting it with non-judgment and compassion rather than shame. Sitting with your emotions and letting them metabolize through your body, having the courage to tell someone that they hurt you, and also having the courage to tell someone that you love them, risking connection after experiencing trauma and betrayal, meeting the parts of yourself that survived, that you're scared of. Meeting those parts with non-judgment and compassion. Asking yourself, is there a different role that I can give this part of myself? It's like the whole um sort of point, I guess, around IFS. I'm not an IFS trained therapist, but a lot of it is about like identifying our protective parts and seeing whether there's a different role that we can give them if the role that they are engaging in right now is no longer functional. So just like I have in previous episodes, I'm gonna end this episode by pulling a couple of cards. And the two questions that I had in mind were what makes me scared to embody the energy of strength? And how can I begin to practice stepping into vulnerability? So I'm going to be pulling from the gentle tarot just because I feel like it's so very connected to trauma healing. So first question will be what makes us, this collective that's listening right now and me scared to embody the energy of strength? And how can we begin to practice stepping into vulnerability? Okay. So what we got for what makes us scared to embody the energy of strength is the Seven of Wands. And I'll describe you what the card looks like. It is this woman who is standing within a blazing fire. She has a crow sitting under her shoulders, there's a rainbow above her head, and she's holding on to this stick, and she looks powerful, and she looks strong, and she doesn't look scared of the fire. And I'm sort of reading the answer to this question, as what makes us scared to embody the energy of strength? We fear our own power. We fear how powerful we can be if we accept the parts of ourself we're scared of. I think a lot of times trauma survivors, especially those who are unaware of the fact that a lot of their quote unquote personality traits or behaviors, or a lot of the parts of themselves as they see as their identity are rooted in trauma, are scared to face those parts of themselves because they don't want them to disappear. They don't want them to go away. They don't know how to embody a different identity when they've spent their life relying on these specific behaviors and these specific survival mechanisms. There is a power underneath that. There is a power in accepting those parts of ourselves and not telling them to go away. And I think it can be scary to acknowledge that we have this power within us, that we have this fire within us to create change, both within our lives and in the world around us. And then the second card is how can I begin or how can we begin to practice stepping into vulnerability? And we got the nine of stones, which is a beautiful, beautiful card. So a person leaning against a tree, really feeling grounded. There's a bird flying towards her, she has a smile on her face, and there's a stream nearby, and the tree is just blooming. And the nine of stones, I think, is very much a card about enjoying the simple pleasures of life. How can we begin to step into vulnerability? It doesn't have to be through being vulnerable, it doesn't have to mean sharing all of our biggest, scariest traumas with others, or even us facing the biggest and scariest traumas that have happened to us. We can begin practicing stepping into vulnerability by allowing ourselves to experience rest, by allowing ourselves to experience joy, by going out into nature and sitting with the trees and watching the birds and just tuning into our body in a way that is pleasureful, allowing ourselves to experience pleasure, give ourselves permission to experience pleasure. We can start to be more embodied by first teaching ourselves the capacity to enjoy feeling good. And from that resourced place, we can start to explore the darker parts, the harder parts, the scarier parts. So it like lies sort of right in the middle of these two. I just want to end by sharing a last quote from Red Tarot. Love is often a force of sensitivity so strong it frightens us, makes us unsure of our capacity to handle such gentle tenderness. Strength is facing the sphere of being loved, of being really seen. We pull strength to know the freedom of love's fearlessness. Strength champions a less cruel world by refusing to repeat its cruelty upon ourselves. So recognize the full force of the impact goodness has on the structure and meaning of your life, and you will know strength. This was such a cool episode for me to do. I love exploring one of my favorite cards in the tarot in this way. And I learned a lot while doing my research for this episode. So I hope that you did as well. And as always, please take care of yourselves. And I will speak to you all in the next one. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to Tender Tarot. This is a labor of love, and it brings my heart warmth that you have listened all the way to the end of this episode. Stay tuned for ways to support and ways to stay connected. For now, give us a subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And if you enjoyed what you heard, please share it with your friends. With love and in solidarity. The music that you heard on this podcast came from Childhood Memories by Clavier Clavier from Pixabay. It was written, recorded, edited, and produced by me, Akshi. You can find us on Instagram at Tender Tarot Podcast, or you can email me at Tender Tarot Pod at Proton Mail. Catch you in the next one.