Quirky Questions: Reunited Family
By: Ste McCabe / The Tarot Cat
Dear TarotCat,
My husband left me last year and took my daughter with him, giving me the ultimatum that he would stay away 6 months and come back only if I stopped drinking and got a job. I did just that, and he came back before Christmas. It was all I wanted, but now he is being critical and unhelpful. Nothing I do ever seems right for him, even though I am working full-time as a nurse and am looking after our daughter full time. I have no break and it feels like everything is closing in on me. Can the cards help me?
Hi there,
Firstly, well done to you for the amount of hard work you’ve put in to turn this situation around! It sounds like you’ve been to hell and back to me, and I can only imagine what it must have been like to have both your husband and daughter moving away from you for all of that time. It sounds to me as if you’ve come a long way towards getting yourself together, and not only are you back in the full-time mother role, but you’ve gone beyond just getting an average job and are working as a nurse (which by all account is a high-stress and high-commitment job). You must be both physically and emotionally exhausted.
To offer some advice for moving forward, I drew one card at random from the Tarot de Bosch deck and got the 8 of Cups. It’s not a surprise that you got a cups card here – cups are the suit of deep emotions and relationships, representing the element of water and all of the flow and change that goes along with our emotional lives. The number eight in the tarot is a very strong number, and is all about power, control and authority. When we put this number with the suit of cups, we get a situation where someone is very much in control of their emotional lives, and knows exactly who they are, what they are capable of – and most importantly in your case, what your limits are. I feel this number is a nod to you to say stop paying penance for the past, and reclaim your power.
The Tarot de Bosch is a very unusual tarot deck with a lot of detail, none of which is traditional tarot imagery. It felt right to use this deck for you, as your path has taken you outside of the realm of the traditional family at times. In the card, we can see eight large tower cup structures arranged in a field: these are statue-like structures that the characters within the card have taken and arranged for their own use, with each of these three characters representing someone in your family. At the back, we see a figure representing your husband, who has set up some kind of stall, waiting expectantly for someone to visit. There’s a dragon-like figure representing yourself, who has turned a cup over and seems to be frantically searching for drops of water, yet finding nothing in there. At the front of the card, we can see your daughter sitting on her own, looking away from the parents behind her, and pretty much getting on with her own thing – she seems by far the most content of the three figures in the image! The main thing that strikes me in this image is the separateness of everyone and everything.
It’s as if this image is supposed to be a kind of kingdom where everyone is sharing in some togetherness, and yet everyone has taken a structure and created their own space away from the others. Is this what it’s like at home at the moment? Is it a case of three people with different needs, avoiding each other and creating their own entertainment in separate rooms whenever it’s possible? Are you hungry just for some basic recognition of everything you’ve been through to get here? It seems that your husband is perhaps still fixated on everything you did that was ‘wrong’ in the past, rather than taking a look at how far you’ve come and giving you the encouragement that you really need right now. Well, I’m giving it to you anyway – you’ve done an amazing job! However, I really do get the sense that you know this, and I think that you’re a lot stronger and more in control emotionally than your message suggests. Reaching out for support is not a sign of weakness, in fact this is all part of the number ‘8’ side of the card: you’re more strong and resilient emotionally than perhaps you might realise right now: you know that this can’t go on.
The communication needs to alter here, that is the main thing I get from these separate people in this image. They’re trying to make a community work without letting each other know exactly why things aren’t working for them. I get the sense that you’ve tried to bring this up with your partner already, but from the total chaos in this card, I’d say this has a new urgency. If you don’t feel that your partner is able to listen, or if you have problems opening up without getting upset, it may be time for a third party to get involved such as a relationship counsellor, or another professional. It seems that you have hit the peak with this experience. All I can say from looking at this card, feeling the thirst in the dragon, and reading your email is this: you’ve paid your dues for the past already. This is a clean slate, and you need to find a way to make the partnership work in such a way where you feel respected and understood, or take a look at if this is really working out for you. Either direction is possible, but both will take a lot of uncomfortable honesty and a lot of work, so it’s over to you: what’s your gut feeling? We are all worth so much more than our past mistakes, and that includes you!
I do hope that this reading has been helpful to you, and I wish you all the best for the future. You sound like an amazingly strong and hard-working person and I take my hat off to you.
Best Wishes,
Ste (The Tarot Cat)
Do you have a problem you’d like help with? Every month, Uncle Ste asks his cards a question from our readers, giving a unique insight into the root of your issue. Ste is a tarot reader, fully qualified counsellor, and also runs a LGBT helpline. All of these things inform how he works with the cards – his tarot readings are creative, fun, empowering and inclusive. He is a considerate and experienced person-centred reader who uses tarot as a kind of esoteric therapy, rather than as a future predictor.
Would love to hear your view of this situation in the comments, and if you’d like to contact him directly, visit him at the Tarot Cat website.
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Originally published on TABI
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