Tarot Tales
I’ve had CPTSD from CSA and Narcissistic Smothering since early childhood. The memories got suppressed so I could handle basic living and survival. Things really changed for me as far as understanding the full mind-fuck of growing up in a “happy family.” I always knew my FOO (family of origin) was dysfunctional, but didn’t really want to actually deal with any of it because it was just too hard and I wanted to enjoy my life.
When I began having my repressed memories come back to me and couldn’t hide with drugs (high school and college) and alcohol (late 20’s-early 30’s), I tried so many different ways to prevent them from enveloping me instead of just embracing the knowledge, working through the difficulty, and resolving the hurts with true and authentic healing. Trust me when I say, over the long run, it’s easier to just confront the issues than to hide from them. Your inner Eight will just keep getting louder and louder until you have no other choice but to listen to her and correct the damage that was done. And, sometimes what needs to be done is honestly just tell your Eight that it’s not okay what happened, that her feelings are valid, and that you will listen to her and love her. Having my first kid really just woke me the fuck up, really. And two more kids just made me understand the full complexities of my trauma and life overall. I couldn’t hide anymore because I just needed to be the best version of myself for someone else as well as keep toxic people away from my babies.
I feel like I’ve always been a witch but didn’t really call myself one or tell anyone about it. I have been reading tarot cards since my teens. It wasn’t until recently that I felt the desire to create my own tarot cards, which is not a new idea but something that’s been happening since tarot began. I wanted to take the journey a step deeper, to travel the realm of each suit separately, with Eight as the sole character. In each of the Minor Arcana suits I aim to:
resolve my inner conflicts of the mind (Swords),
open myself up to others and to love as well as attempt to heal relational trauma and tune into my intuition and emotions (Cups),
steady my ups and downs with my inner fire and confidence and become the person I know I can be (Wands),
and, finally, find my self-worth, overcome my fear of lack, embrace my abundance, and achieve security in the home (Pentacles).
After these mini-quests of self, The Major Arcana epic odyssey charts the course that delves deeply into all the main archetypes of the psyche. Eight will see herself become each personality type and through this envisionment, she will ultimately metamorphose into her wholeness, thus through her healing path, my own healing path will become complete. Every trigger, every piece of the puzzle aims to help each of us work through our pain to get to the highest possible self-awareness. Through this self-awareness we are then able to find ultimate eudaimonia.
The Spells tell the trauma lens element of my art cards in verse because I feel that’s my natural and best form of communication besides artwork. The descriptions of the general tarot card keywords and meanings/clarification are underneath the artwork. These are based on the original Rider-Waite deck as well as my own interpretations of Pamela Coleman Smith’s art as well as any tarot deck I’ve worked with closely, forming my own interpretations of the Tarot. There is also a pull-quote from each spell that I feel represents the tarot card in just a few lines, a small incantation. Eight’s Insight adds some dysfunctional family depth or relational trauma information, almost like a reversal but more of a shadow secret to each card. See the Resources for my favorite tarot decks.
I hope these pieces resonate with you on your own inner quest. Feel free to head to the forums to post your own tarot art.
Eight’s Spells of Swords
These are Eight’s challenges,
her conflicts, and matters of the mind.
The Swords’ bluntness answers
the most difficult questions
your soul will ever find.
These spells cut to the truth and the hurt
and reveal much-needed information,
albeit oftentimes curt.
Swords swing through the element of Air,
bringing clarity that may not have previously been there.
Join Eight through the journey of Swords
and slice through the clouds of your life if you dare…
Give your whole world a much-needed scare.
Eight’s Spells of Cups
Emotions, relationships, and the soul,
linger here in the Cups, begging to unfold.
Eight’s tale will show you
what your intuition and heart already know to be true.
Now, you just need a self-love breakthrough.
Through love’s beginnings, a heart open and free,
to heartbreak and betrayal, the cups speak.
Will Eight have a fairytale ending?
Will you? Or will you forever be a sad soul mending?
Water moves over, throughout, and within
ebbing and flowing,
flowing and ebbing, never-ending,
from the end and back to when and where it all begins.
Eight’s Spells of Wands
Coming soon…
Eight’s Spells of Pentacles
Coming soon…
Eight’s Spells of Spirit (Major Arcana)
Coming soon…
Art Therapy: Stream-of-Consciousness Art
Eight’s Faces (Trauma Frankenstein)
These pieces are artwork that I don’t ever edit or change because I’m capturing a memory or a mood that I don’t want to be altered. Think of Jack Kerouac and his stream-of-consciousness style of writing…These pictures were the start of my journey, although I realize now that I’ve been drawing Eight for most of my life.
Symbolism and Imagery:
Depending on the way in which they appear, the recurring symbols in my various artwork can mean the following: (but feel free to decipher them any way you wish)
8: the age 8 when CSA started happening, infinity,
As far as I can tell from what I’ve re-remembered, my childhood sexual abuse began around this age. The number 8 appears frequently and represents Eight as well as the actual age, and sometimes it’s depicted negatively and at others sweetly because Eight doesn’t want me to remember her so sadly sometimes. Also, I think of Eight and 8 every single day even if I don’t want to, but she’s the child that just needed someone to listen to her so I always do. Forever. For infinity.
axes and other weapons: violence, abuse, death, pain, fear, nightmares, control
When my mother would try to control my actions, she would often describe things that could happen to me with incredibly violent and vivid descriptions that would cause me such fear and nightmares. For example, if I wanted to ride my bike and she wanted me to stay safe and careful, she would say something along the lines of, “Sure, go ahead! You’ll jump the curb, crash on the concrete, and bash your brains out of your broken skull. The blood will pour out all over the place and you’ll have to get stitches. Have fun!” Sometimes when Eight is wielding a weapon it’s her self-defense and she’s trying to protect herself from someone.
balloons, disco balls, and roller skates: happiness, emotions, freedom, celebration, times when the abuse wasn’t forefront.
I loved balloons as a kid but my mom hated them so much. When I received one, it was super special and it made me feel that way as well. I loved releasing them with a wish. They usually remind me of happy times unless they’re a black balloon then it can mean I’m carrying something around that I probably need to let go. We had a skating rink in our basement with a disco ball spinning and when I would skate around and around in a circle, I would just forget all the bad stuff and just spin and have fun. The disco ball would make little rainbows in the room and everything just seemed so nice and happy for a little while.
black and white stripes: my innocence (white) and loss of it (black), black and white thinking that happens in a dysfunctional family where things are extremes like all good or all bad and nothing in between, prison uniform, suppression.
My little girl often feels as if the world is all bad or all good because of her surroundings growing up, especially being around a (undiagnosed) BPD and NPD mother as well as a (undiagnosed) sociopath father. The bars of the stripes remind me of an old-school prisoner’s outfit and that’s how I felt sometimes being trapped in such a terribly abusive family. The stripes also represent my suppression of the secretive abuse and the lies in my family.
bombs: a secret, knowledge that could harm self or others, time, bottled-up emotions.
I often felt like I held in my emotions all the time and frequently exploded outwardly from this suppression. Also, holding on to my secret abuse felt like I was attempting to carry a live, lit bomb inside my body that could kill me and others any second without warning.
bowling balls: security, heaviness, weight, nostalgia.
My paternal grandfather loved bowling and so do I. When he passed away and we were able to choose something from his home to remember him, I chose his black bowling ball. It represents how I felt around him: safe, secure, past memories. It also can represent the heaviness/mental weight of something.
evil eye: criticism, protection, narcissism, curiosity, video cameras.
Eyes see and this one sees it all, usually. It can be protection or just watching. It can be a natural curiosity or even the dark narcissism of my mother, who hovered closely watching all the unimportant things, missing the most important stuff, and still not ever really seeing me truly, ever. Sometimes it represents the mother I wish I actually had: one who showed me how to love, to be kind, and to be honest. Videotaping of my CSA occurred and the eye can make me think of something always recording me, another way to be used without permission.
ghosts: past memories, hauntings, triggers, my story, Eight (and Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three).
My signature is sometimes a ghost and sometimes the pieces have some ghosts in them as well. They are past memories, good and bad and all between that are either visiting again or haunting me. Triggers are just unmet childhood issues that need to be healed so I sometimes see these as little ghosts that need some love to get better and move on to the next realm. Eight is one of my ghosts and she is the main narrator of my story. You might wonder why in some of my art Eight doesn’t look eight years old but looks either younger or older. She’s her own person and holds the memories from that part of myself. She never died. She just lived my life differently.
Mermaids: sirens; pining for love, stranded; if they’re together, then they’re a force to be reckoned with for sure.
In the pool we had growing up my dad painted a mermaid on the side of the pool. I can still see her face. She looked sad and lonely and lost, much like I felt growing up in a home without true love. In some pieces of art, you’ll see mermaids hanging together and even though they might still feel lost, together, they’re less alone.
Mushrooms:hidden growth, messages, magick, power, nourishment, death, decay
I feel like mushrooms are always just pretty special. As a child I was obsessed with Alice in Wonderland and I loved how she would eat the mushroom and get more powerful, sometimes getting so large that she seemed unstoppable. I could sure have used some magick mushrooms when I was a little lady.
Nooses: suicidal ideation, sadness, hopelessness, fear
My mom would often threaten to leave and/or kill herself when things became difficult dealing with parenting. She would make that threat over the most mundane things. It was absolutely horrifying to think of my life without a mother, even a mean one. However, as I aged, suicide became a fantasy I would return to again and again, going so far even to write letters and plan it out often. I did this starting as early as age six. It was one of my biggest red flags telling me that my life was not normal, not the life a kid should have.
old phones: trauma, repressed memories, fear, panic
I think of my trauma sometimes like an old phone with that ring that you could hear so clearly and vividly, waking you up from slumber. It doesn’t even matter if you answer the phone or not…just the panic you feel when that black phone of fear is ringing is enough to cause you a panic attack.
red ribbons: beauty, innocence taken, blood, power, childhood, “don’t forget me”.
I had two braids in my hair frequently as a child, especially around the time my innocence was stolen from me. These represent my beauty and power and to not forget my story so that I may help others find theirs. More darkly, it can stand for the act of the abuse, the blood that occurred, and wounds as well as my dysfunctional childhood overall. A long time ago, people used to tie a red ribbon or a ribbon around their ring finger in an attempt to not forget something important. Eight has a red ribbon to never forget the blood spilled during her CSA and for me to never forget the trauma I endured.
trophies: self-worth, confidence, value.
As a CSA survivor, you often struggle with your value and self-worth. Eight deserves so many trophies for all the things she’s overcome. Sometimes the trophies in my pictures are fake because I was “showered” with pride and honored for my accomplishments instead of given love freely without strings attached, without a price, without conditions.
umbrellas: safety, protection, depression
I loved jumping in puddles and playing in the rain as a very young kid and was “allowed” to whenever it wasn’t lightning because my mother also loved the rain. As I got older, I would sit in a lawn chair in the rain like others do to sunbathe. I felt so clean and joyful as the drops washed over me. I loved the smell, the taste, the feeling of being wet. Later, as a teen I often thought as my depression or CPTSD as an umbrella that protected me, but not necessarily in a positive way. I used it as an excuse or a way to avoid living life because it was easier to choose sadness than do the work to make myself happy..
vampires: abuse cycle, dysfunctional family, violence, control
Sometimes I feel like I’m going to continue the dysfunctional family cycle because I was part of one and my mother and father attempted to make me into a vampire, sucking the life force out of me and instilling triggers to try to control my behavior, like a crazy vampire robot. I break my mom’s narcissistic cycle every single day by choosing love, kindness, and honesty. I protect my children from CSA by not putting them into any unsafe environments or company.
Outcome
Did art therapy work better for me than other types of therapy? Have I been able to process my story better and more fully than ever before? It’s helped me figure out more about what happened to me than any other thing I have ever done. It hasn’t been easy and is definitely triggering sometimes, but those unhealed wounds are finally getting the love and care they need. Visiting with my inner child so intimately and with such detail and care has given me such closure with issues that years of other therapy couldn’t even attempt to resolve. With talk therapy you’re constantly rehashing the things that happened but not moving forward that much, in my experience. The only thing in the world that Eight ever needed, that I ever needed, was for one person, anyone, to just BELIEVE her. That what happened to her was REAL, and TRUE. LISTENING to her and giving her my whole attention so she can tell me her story has healed deeply such wounds I would never think would get healed. This is Eight, my project, is an Ode to Eight, my sweet girl, my ghost girl, that I’ll never, ever forget but will always hug and hold safely, with unconditional love…because nobody ever did.