Empty Pockets

This is the traditional depiction of The Hangman

This is the tarot deck that was used during this journal spiral.

A block, Gift, Solution Tarot Spread Journaling Prompt

The Block – Five of Cups

For so long I lived in this lack mindset, where I felt like the figure in the tarot card 5 of cups, just empty handed with nothing to give. Last night, I was chatting with ChatGPT about my genie wishes, what I would want if I could have anything I want, I said that I would like to play for a living and to never move faster than I was comfortable again. I then explored limiting beliefs in the way.

 I wrote, no darling, money comes from owning your time and from cultivating your energy and soul, money comes from becoming a soulflower, its true that you put something out, but it’s a natural by product of you being you, who you are and playing.  Apples trees give apples, pear trees give pears, why would you not have fruit of some kind? Zoe Fruit. Why do you think you are so not special, that you, only you, have nothing to give?

I have always been the hangman I saw the world in creative and unique ways, and sometimes – a lot of the times, it left me feeling  like people didn’t understand me and I internalized this to mean I have nothing to give.

I am a nonlinear thinker. I am a deep processer which makes me highly sensitive to emotions, to other people, to even my physical surroundings. I feel like an odd ball even inside my own family and through other people’s perception and perhaps also through my own interpretation of their feedback I built my self-image around that feedback.  Empty Pockets

The Gift- The Hang Man

I have been flipped upside down because of multiple sudden losses. I was already feeling like 5 cups, three cups in front of me spilled over, crumbled up in a corner feeling destitute and poor in spirit. I then got knocked over by tidal wave after tidal wave of loss, the loss of my brother Noah in 2017, loss of my mother in August 2019,  loss of my dog Louie in November 2019, the lost of my Grandma ( my mom’s mom) in October 2020, her house and my sanctuary, and the last loss my uncle Donnie( my mom’s brother) in August 2023.

I learned unstainable coping methods from feeling like I was lacking talents and gifts—over functioning, codependency, people pleasing, perfectionism to the point of paralysis and panicking over every little detail.

I got knocked over and flipped upside down from it all being too much.

The hang man represents pause, stagnation, to me stagnation just means a period in life where if feels like no matter what you are doing you can’t seem to move forward or nothing new comes through. The hang man can also represent a new or different perspective. I personally have come to see it as a trickster energy, a court jester, a Willy Wonka type, where nothing is quite what it seems.

I quit my job and did the work to take care of the girl with empty pockets and the girl who felt like the odd man out. I purposely sat still and quiet for a year and a half reflecting , resting and sifting through internal clutter. I, once again going against the grain of society and what you are supposed to do but this time on purpose to save my own life. I had too. I had too. It was a floor moment when I quit everything and walked away – feeling completely spent.

I was flipped upside down, suspended in the air- I was surprised to hear a trickle of coins falling out my now inverted  multicolored pockets, coins fell out, a flower, a butterfly sticker, a rainbow bounce ball, glow in the dark stars , friends, paints brushes, and pen and notebook,  dreams of all sorts of lost and forgotten and even new things.

I had been rich all along—pockets full of treasures and a face beaming with glee, pink rose quartz, citrine quartz and angelite crystals.

All my life I have been talking to people who only could see value in things that other people valued, and approved of, diamonds, coins, marketable and trendy cool talents and they over looked my odd assortment as nothing and so too did I but it was really treasure all along.

The Solution – King of Pentacles

A floor moment is when you have really really reached bottom. Sometimes there are false bottoms and you really can fall further but a floor moment is when something slams you to the floor or makes you fall to your knees—it’s surrender -omg- it’s surrender.

Surrendering all the old ways that are not, underlined, working. When you are ready for honest truth, naked truth. Honest truth isn’t what you think, I always thought it would be finding out all my flaws and shortcomings but its really just the end of denial and a time when you are ready to actually settle the score, instead of making excuses to put it off or to try harder- my personal method of denial.

You have floor moments , surrender moments when you are presented with a choice, to do what you have been doing that lead you here and feels like you have a 100x billion ton Elephant on top of you, I am exaggerating to acknowledge its really heavy motheringfreaking heavy, you ain’t moving anymore, son, kid, dude, duette, and the other options is to do something new. 

The doing something new option, requires a hangman stage. You got to look at the whole picture of what brought you to this pivotal moment and now that you are no longer playing by the rulebook handed to you at birth.

It’s a deep exhale, of all the old ways that weren’t working, of grief and disappointments, and letting your soul catch up with your body because you have been chasing something that wasn’t working and every time it didn’t work you would just chase harder.  In my quiet stillness I was meeting with the girl with empty pockets, but she really had was an assortment of random and special odds and ends.

It feels like the end of a Pixar movie where I hold an insignificant piece of something, an Eiffel Tower key chain—it represents my wishes, dreams, hopes and interests, that are, important, to me—to motherfreaking me and I was just surrounded by unimaginative scaredy cat assholes who couldn’t see magic if it bite them in the arse.

My solution is to show people how common joy, magic and treasure is.