I turn 42 today, on eclipse day, and it has been a strange year leading to this moment. Some practitioners who work with Tarot use a numerological procedure to identify the Major Arcana card that represents the core themes and lessons of the year. This year has been, for me, the Wheel of Fortune, which one of my teachers described as a time of “really high highs and really low lows.” Coming into this year with this perspective offered me great solace and grounding. Instead of clinging to one or the other, I settled into the acceptance of both, that pain would follow joy and eventually return to joy.
That is simply the way of things, whether one works hard or not, whether one is intentional and present or sleepwalks through life, there is no escaping cycles and no escaping pain and joy. And when that feels true, it is okay. Many of us have parts that do everything in their power to avoid pain or fix happiness in place. Many of us have parts that fear to relax and enjoy life out of concern that bad things will come if we let down our guard. Those parts are so loving, and work so hard, and it’s so tender because life is filled with hard things and lovely things no matter what.
The Wheel
In this past year, I had some lovely soaring personal achievements in completing a book for a larger publisher than I’ve worked with previously and success in my martial arts practice, which remains a surprising part of my life that I would never have imagined I could be any good at in the past. And in the past three months, we’ve had a lot of lows. We’ve had some sad and sudden losses at home. I had some new body changes that required medical intervention that set me back further than I’d expected.
Some associate the occult and astrological significance of the planet Jupiter with the Wheel of Fortune. Jupiter tends to make things a lot bigger and gives us a certain amount of swagger and bravado that can veer into overconfidence. What I also appreciate about Jupiter is there’s a certain amount of redemption whenever this planet is involved—even setbacks and suffering may have a quality of luck about them. Because I was laid out by surgery at the beginning of the year, I decided to return to my exercise routine really slowly and gradually, starting with light weights or bodyweight exercises.
As I did this, my awareness of my form in weightlifting deepened, along with the feedback in my body that told me when I was doing things badly. I’ve had this knee pain that has been growing over the past year and really began to demand attention last fall, but then the other stuff took precedence, and now I am back to the knee pain and discovering that all this time I’ve been compromising my squat and deadlift form and not letting my glutes and hamstrings do the work of stabilizing. Humbled, returning to basics, I am amazed both at how better form seems to be making great strides in resolving the knee issue, and I’m noticing greater stability that makes martial arts more enjoyable and life a lot easier.
Slowing Down
For the past three months, that phrase has been everywhere—in trainings I’m taking, in classes, and in the work of my book Slow Magic which does not yet have a release date but has a beautiful cover. As an Aries, slowing down is something I hate and desperately need. Often I conceal impatience by avoiding things that would bring it out, which leads to situations like progressive knee pain because instead of being with the discomfort of the weakness in my form, I just plow ahead and keep adding more weight. I want to get to the good stuff, but hurrying has problems.
- When we’re hurrying, we might cut corners that don’t seem to matter and then learn they actually mattered a lot and now you have to go back and undo a lot of work to redo it correctly.
- We might make decisions without talking to important stakeholders who will then oppose what we’re doing if only because they don’t know what the hell is going on and they’re impacted.
- Even if we do communicate, we might rush through in a way that doesn’t really let the other person process what we’re saying and talk through their needs and concerns, which—you guessed it—causes problems down the line.
In trauma therapy, we say that to go fast we need to go slow. That is true of much in life. When learning a new skill, when healing, when doing important work, slowing down lets us be more thorough and not overwhelm our systems with information and feedback. It is funny, of course, to have written an entire book about slowing down only to find myself learning even more about the importance of it. I can imagine some antagonist saying how I could write a book about something I’m still trying to do?
I often say that I suspect Mary J. Blige does not sing all those songs about loving yourself and setting aside the drama because she’s naturally good at those things. Buddhists don’t have meditation practices because their minds are already spacious and calm. All of us are dealing with our uniquely messy closets and learning, and relearning, and reminding ourselves of what helps us and who we want to be. When things come too easily to a person, they don’t really have a lot to offer to someone who is struggling. It’s only those who are struggling beside us, or have struggled longer than us, who can really relate to and help us understand our struggles.
This year I am turning toward Justice, a season I imagine will involve a lot of adapting the structures of my life and my relationships to accommodate all the changes of fortune the wheel has brought to my life. I am so grateful for those who share my life with me, and for the clients who entrust me with the responsibility of their care, and I am so grateful for all of my teachers.
