Self Healers Summer Week Three: Okay Fine Let's Talk About America
What the Strength Card Teaches us About our Anger
Welcome to week three of Self Healers Summer. For the next five weeks, we’ll be going on a self-reflective journey using tarot as a way to get around blocks from our conscious mind and get to the inner wisdom of the subconscious.
If you’re new here, read the introduction post and see how I break down my way of reading and using tarot which I’ve affectionately named, Tarot for Reclamation, because you know I love a good brand symmetry moment. We started strong by introducing the first three cards of the Major Arcana, The Fool, The Magician and the High Priestess. Then last week we jumped ahead in the fool’s journey to The Hanged Man to give us a fresh perspective.
Today, in honor of my home country’s celebration of Independence Day, I thought we’d celebrate what feels like the season finale of America with the card of 2024: Strength.
(Every year a new card of the year is chosen based off the numerology of the year so 2024 = 2+0+2+4 = 8. The 8th card of the Major Arcana is the Strength Card. I, personally am not super into numerology but I do appreciate everyone from so many different backgrounds and styles all looking at one card together and seeing how it makes sense to them all related to the same thing.)
Here’s an image showing the entire Major Arcana. The 22 trump (not that kind I promise!) cards take us along what is known as “The Fool’s Journey”. These archetypal and narrative themes reflect on our internal growth journeys whereas the cards of the Minor Arcana (the suited ones) focus on the tangible world around us at any given time.
In the greater narrative of a growth journey, starting as “the fool” being naive and passionate and going through a rollercoaster of learning to end up wiser having added this wisdom to your arsenal and starting again as a fool in a new area of life, STRENGTH comes into play just a little before halfway through. It comes just before we reach a milestone of learning patience and prudence, understanding that sometimes we are up and sometimes we are down, and then having to go through the hard lessons of shadow work.
Strength, a Response to a Perceived Threat:
Seems fitting for all of us here in America, on the 4th of July, as we attempt to have gratitude for our freedom but now being far enough into the journey that we realize we aren’t as free as we maybe thought back when we were “the fool”.
We were just recently face to face with our upcoming options for President. Our social media and news channels are flooded with political opinions and rants. I am by no means an authority on politics, but I am an authority on humans, feelings, and nervous systems. And I can say with confidence that an overwhelming majority of people are feeling frustrated, in a lose-lose situation, and ANGRY.
This essay isn’t about my work as a mimetic coach and healer but I’ll give you a quick breakdown just in case you are curious (If you don’t care, just skip down till you see the artwork of the Strength cards, that’s where the Tarot talk picks back up).
Nervous System 101 -
The nervous system (run by unconscious) only has one language to get messages to you that will get you to take an action to benefit your survival or the survival of your offspring: feelings and sensations. That’s its only job, and its only mode of communication. So anytime you are feeling an uncomfortable feeling, your unconscious mind is trying to get you to do something.
These feelings (as messages) only activate when there’s a perceived threat. Every uncomfortable feeling you feel can be traced back to a perceived threat. So yes, I’m saying, everything you don’t like to feel has it’s roots in unconscious fear. Fear is a response to a perceived threat by nervous system. When that happens, our sympathetic nervous system engages. You experience this as increased energy. Fight or flight. You are being mobilized to survive something.
With flight, the mobilization is for SPEED: faster breathing, faster heart rate, digestion is slowed, creativity and reason are decreased, blood is sent to the legs so they can sprint. It’s common to feel these sensations in our body as butterflies in our stomach, tingly or restless legs, heavy legs, an ancy-ness to tap our feet or move our legs, upset or uneasy stomach, and a sort of tunnel vision where you can’t think about anything else but getting out of this situation.
So that’s baseline response. Got it? After that, everything builds as needed to protect you in more extreme or creative ways.
Next up, ANGER.
Anger = fight response. Think of animals when threatened. What happens in the body? Power isn’t being sent to legs anymore. We don’t need speed for this. We have to stay here. We need power to fight. Vision narrows. Eyes sometimes even quint. There’s intense focus on the threat. Blood and energy is sent to the face and to the jaw to bite. Think of the last time you saw an animal or person about to defend their life or their young: teeth bared, jaw locked and set, maybe even jutting out, eyes laser focused, shoulders tight. All the energy is up in the top half of our bodies. And if there’s no one to bite what happens? Exactly. We can rarely solve our threats by biting someone. But our bodies are still being mobilized in that way. This translates into tension headaches, tense facial muscles, tense jaw muscles, grinding your teeth, holding tension in your jaw, neck, and shoulders. Even know, check your jaw… is it clenched? Are your shoulders relaxed or are you holding them stiffly up toward your ears? If yes, take a deep belly breath. You’re safe here I’m not going to attack you.
But you may be dealing with anger.
Most humans socialized as women, or people in relationships or households or communities where healthy anger is not allowed to be seen, will feel these feelings of increased energy and not know why they feel this way. Why is my jaw tight? Why does my head hurt? Why is my neck tight? And those questions begin to make them worry that something is wrong with them. And that’s when those sensations get labeled as anxiety. You aren’t really anxious… you’re super fucking angry.
And for a lot of us living in America right now, we feel that deeply.
So what do we do with this? How do we keep growing through it?
What can we find here in this unconscious archetypal lesson that unites us and shows us something about our collective human wisdom?
(PS… if that segment above resonated with you, and you are struggling with anxiety, anger, fear, guilt, shame… etc. and you’d like to work me with to clear those sensations, reach out about booking a 1:1 session here.)
Let’s take a look together at Strength:
Before I go any farther, I want you to pause for a moment, grab your journal, and write down your first impressions. If you had no other information to go on other than the imagery here, what would this card reflect to you?
Okay let’s challenge your senses. I’m going to pull some images from different decks of the Strength card so you can see various artistic representations. All of these following the traditional Rider Waite symbolism.
This first one is from The Muse Tarot which has really beautiful modern eclectic and collage style to it’s imagery -
How does this one feel to you? What sense to you get about strength from it?
This next one isn’t from a deck, it’s a piece of art depicting the Strength card by Rachel K Jennings of Dizaisy on esty.
What about this interpretation? What does this one make you feel? What does it communicate to you of your own strength?
The Strength card, while the art may vary, communicates to us a sense of balancing the masculine and feminine. The cards usually depict a woman riding or placed next to a lion. Usually her hands are on the lions face. But look at their interaction… she is not attempting to hurt the lion in any depictions, rather, she is trying to prevent them from causing destruction. Strength does not want to stop the anger reaction, it simply wants to channel it and keep it from being injurious. Isn’t that beautiful?!
The lion archetypally is a symbol of self interest. Strength is the experience of having to control urges without repressing them. That’s what the fool is learning at this stage of the journey.
Because the urges aren’t going to cease. Our nervous system will not stop warning us and mobilizing us to take on threats (real or perceived). It’s what we do with that energy that shows our strength.
So today especially as we here in America gather with friends and loved ones and attempt to find gratitude for freedoms our nervous systems are currently telling us we need to fight to protect, let’s allow the Strength card to inspire us to look at that energy with love, not trying to ignore it, bury it, or quash it, but rather preventing it from doing damage that isn’t needed.
We may not be able to choose other candidates, or to control the giant machine of politics that seems to be careening ahead faster than anyone can keep in check, we can’t fight these invisible forces. So let’s not fight other things that might get caught in the cross fire. And let’s not turn our anger on ourselves either.
Because true strength is recognizing that the lion in us is there for a reason, and when we come alongside it, and work with it, we can harness the energy for what it’s meant for: helping us to survive and helping our families to survive.
Sending love and strength to you today and everyday. xo, B
Journaling prompt #1:
How have I been confronting the energy that rises up within me when I feel angry? How can I cultivate strength in a new way with it?
Journaling prompt #2:
What area of my life requires me to show Strength right now? How have I already been doing a good job? What is one more thing I could do this upcoming week?
Journaling prompt #3:
In what ways has an imbalance between these forces within me caused me distress recently? What is one small thing I could do for myself to shift more towards balance?
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Becka Robinson’s (she/her) degree is in Psychology. She is a Certified Consulting Hypnotist and is trained in mimetic modalities as a way to facilitate healing from traumas both big and small. She grew up in pentecostal evangelical christianity and even served on staff in ministry before leaving at the age of 22 and has been deconstructing and sharing about it ever since. She is a neurodivergent, late blooming queer, artistpreneur and healer living in Central Florida with her husband and two kids pioneering utilizing RRT for people healing from religious trauma and reclaiming their power and agency. You can read more about her work via her website: www.beckarobinson.com. Now booking private sessions through July!
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