​Deer Sweet One,
Times are hard right now.  I am happy to have survived the weekend, & though I am in bed early  every night & up early every day, something is missing.  My dreams don’t feel like nightmares anymore, but I don’t wake up feeling peaceful or happy.  Even as I write this, I’m like Can I even expect that?  That’s probably too much to ask.
 
Everyday magic can totally get swallowed up in everyday survival, & after the blows last week brought, I am still reeling, still grieving, still taking my days one breath at a time.  & when I sat down to do pull the cards for this reading & the Six of Keys card came up, I was like, Hard won victory?  You don’t say.  I feel very flat about it.  Victory feels so far away, the idea of victory feels so far away.  Why does it always feel so far away?
 
Unexpressed grief has a way of making sure we take notice, but so many of us who come from families & communities with historical unresolved grief & intergenerational trauma confuse our trauma ridden lives with The Way Things Are.  We learned that shit from our caregivers, our families, the ones we trusted & loved, whether it was through direct words or simply their actions & reactions to us, our pain, our joy, our existence.  It came from somewhere, it was not inherent because we were meant for more.
 
I can connect the dots within my own family between the violence & poverty & how they learned to ignore their emotional & spiritual bodies as a way to survive the blows that never stopped coming.  I can understand how vulnerability was often a prediction for getting fucked over & how magic became suspect.  I know how someone can work hard every day & not have enough to provide for a family, & when a little one dares to ask for more, it feels like an insult.  There was so much shit happening.  I imagine that they just wanted to stay the fuck alive.  & maybe this trend of surviving at any cost took more than they realized.  They didn’t intend for generations to still be paying with their lives & livelihood, but we are. 
 
Whenever I broke down & asked for important things in my family, usually of my parents, their responses were one of shame (“You need to be more responsible!”) or minimization (“What do you have to be depressed about?  My feelings are more important!”), & so I learned to stop asking in order to survive.  & I applied this internalized shit while in school, in my friendships, when falling in love—not asking for anything shaped my world.
 
My personal remedy for this shit is to allow myself to take up space & ask for what I want.  I always tell myself that I can at least ask, & I can trust others to choose whether or not to offer their energies.  Fuck, this is something like intimacy, & it often feels like peeling back my skin & showing up with my already bleached bones bare.  I hope one day this process feels softer & no longer requires such a lengthy pep talk.  To address these issues at the root take so much work, so much unlearning & tenderness, something like the unconditional love that the Artist of Bones brings right before the Hard Won Victory of Six of Keys (as presented in the following reading).  This is how I'm shifting from that intense survival that's The Way Things Are into A Life I Can't Live Without.
 
Today the only victory I have at my fingertips are the little gems of staying alive: cooking food for Panda, myself, & my roommate; writing these posts; calling my sister; having femme time with a femme friend where we laughed more than anything; sending a few emails at the end of a day fraught with anxiety; doing my dishes; telling myself I am still doing everything right.
 
I had such a hard time trying to figure out what the fuck this hard won victory was about, & then it came to me while I was walking home from the bus stop the other day, sun high & bright, wind cold & the sky so clear: name the victory for yourself.  & as I walked to my house with grocery bags in my hands, I thought, Fine.  You want a victory?  This is my victory:  I want to go on a date that feels like magic.  I want to have sex before 2017.  I want my heart to be healed, & I want to fall in love with someone(s) who really fucking deserves my love.  I want to create a sanctuary that reflects all my magic & intention that I can call home.  I want a femme community that fosters things I don’t even know about right now.  I want Panda to be happy here, to finally understand why we moved over 2,000 miles away.  I want money in my bank account, even after my bills are paid.  I want new weather appropriate clothes for myself & Panda.  I want a new phone.  I want some fucking stability.  I want to build my cliental.  I want to know that I belong here & none of this is a mistake.  I want to find a sweat lodge & mentor who can help me with things I cannot approach on my own.  I want to feel connected with Panda.  I want therapy every week.  I want to know what to do about my parents.  I want conformation from my grandmothers.  I want to go to LA & visit my fam there.  I want to visit fam in NY, too.  I want to visit the ocean.  I want new shoes & new boots.  I want friends for Panda.  I want more answers than questions for the coming year, & fresh nails.

 & so it is.
 
I totally understand that all of this might not happen before the next full moon, but I am putting it out into the femmeiverse anyways because some it totally will, & the rest will come when Divine Time says so.  

I'm inviting you to do the same, brave heart—name it, claim it, create your own victories!  Perhaps this moon will be about partaking of each of your victories!  After all, what you pay attention grows, so why not the victories, too?  I like that.  I want more victories.  We deserve more of them, we've worked so hard.  I’ll let you know how it goes, & you feel free to do the same.
 
xo
Lettie

​Artist of Bones in the position of Past is here to let you know that this past cycle from Full Moon in Cancer to Full Moon in Leo was to bring out that gleam in your eyes & smile.  Artist of Bones doesn’t give a fuck that this might have been one of your most disheveled moments I know it has been for me, but this sweet femme creature is asking you to connect to your divine core.  After the dam broke you were finally able to bring all your pieces together at the same time in a way that facilitated new healing & clarity—that’s the gleam we see in this sweet femme’s eye. 
 
Artist of Bones asks that you nourish yourself with not only food, but Ancestral wisdom—that’s what that skull is doing in the fruit bowl.  This femme creature encourages you to not just allow all your pieces to be in the same place at the same time, but to adorn all of you, highlight all of you, actively love all of you, right here, right now, no matter your condition.  If you need help, ask to see yourself as your Ancestors see you, they will never lead you astray. 

This card is all about the present being a hard won victory, especially considering the dam that broke at the last full moon, this retrograde with all the Tower super powers, & the Artist of Bones asking us to connect to our divine core in the midst of so much upheaval & change.  The image on this card is of someone covered with mud from head to toe to convey the way it feels, messy in that survive at any cost kinda way, & your people who have witnessed the slew of losses that brought you here are cheering right along with you!  You all know how hard it has been, which only makes this win all the sweeter!  Deer one, keep fighting, keep surviving, keep reaching, keep loving, keep opening.  There is a finish line on your horizon, & you will cross it.  None of this has been easy, but Spirit is bringing the card to tell you it will be worth it.  You get to win!

This next stretch of full moon to full moon you will get to practice boundaries.  The feathers suit is all about communication, & the number four about establishing stability.  Four of Feathers ask that you investigate your beliefs about boundaries, & that you travel back in time to investigate the root of these beliefs, aka going home.  The kind of home & family you grew up in can tell you a lot.
 
Were you taught that you boundaries were valid?  Were you taught that only certain individuals were allowed to have boundaries?  Were they something that you had to do away with because it hurt too much to have them disrespected?  & are how these beliefs showing up in your present life when it comes to your boundaries?  With this new victory under your belt, now is the time to go back in time & correct some of the bullshit that was presented as truth to you about boundaries.  Boundaries are important for a life that loves you back, they are ways that love can really grow & root deeply in your relationships.  You deserve this gift.  

​at the beginning of this week i knew i had to write about the Tower card in relation to the current Mercury Retrograde, but i didn’t have it in me just yet.  this morning i woke up from a night full of dreams about my Ancestors & my Mother & Myself, & i knew it was time.
 
i don’t know about you, but this Mercury Retrograde is making sure i take care of certain threads of unfinished business.  & more than anything else, i am being asked to practice what i preach about being gentle with myself, meeting myself where i’m at, curling up with my own empathy & compassion when all i wanna do is berate myself in submission to keep trudging along.  but i know better.  trudging along is not the same as moving forward.
 
as i set up my first proper altar over the weekend, i was awash in thoughts of my own healing, feeling grateful that i am still here, that i am in a new city making some kind of life, & trusting that the life that loves me back is steady femmeifesting.  & then the image of the Tower card flashed through my mind, “trust the lightning.”  interesting.  i thought about writing it then, but had to make sense of all clothes & papers & makeup on my bedroom floor before dinner, so i decided it could wait.  & then all the things happened. 
 
monday morning started with a fight with Panda that escalated to “i want to live with my dad!” & “leave the room before i start yelling!” & i felt like shit all day.  i wanted to reach out to friends, but my phone is out of business.  so i sat in my insecure feels all day, wondering if my decision to move us thousands of miles from Panda’s only reference of Home was selfish, & completely wrong.  i revisited the events leading up to our departure, the betrayals, the trauma, & how my trajectory was only set to repeat more of the same if i stayed there.  & the rest of my week has been consumed by setting up reliable transportation for Panda to & from school, navigating this new city in new ways, dreaming about my Mother & trying not to cry, preparing & eating food, going to work & caring for babies, all the while not being able to check in with friends & loved ones through text because my phone is out.  it feels like all my energy was spent before the day even had a chance to begin. 
 
& yesterday, i felt it so strong while trying to dip a tentative toe into the ocean of grief that’s always in spitting distance, right before i fell in & spent the rest of my day wresting & surrendering to the waves.  i gave up & told my sister, asked her to buy us a pizza because i knew we had to eat & i would not be able to cook or anything.  thankfully, she did.  i did all the things i know to ground & anchor myself here.  i cried & prayed & smudged & burned candles & watched shows & drank tea & took medicine for my headache & made sure Panda knew i was safe & that we ate & named my feelings as best as i could.  i opened my bedroom window because i wanted to crawl out of my skin so i could breathe.  i kept reminding myself, even this.  we live through anything, even this.  even when we want out.  & then i slept.

​the Tower is something you built yourself, however long ago, & you did so with a purpose.  it’s creation required your blood, sweat, & tears, & each brick is made up of you, your dreams, your hopes, your life blood--the Tower is made up of you.  for a time the Tower served their purpose, whether it was for shelter or esteem or proof that you could rebuild & make it on your own.  it gave you a place in the world to claim as your own, big enough to house the hopes & dreams & life that pulsed within it’s very walls.  & then, for whatever reason, you began to outgrow it.  you began to explore beyond the walls of the Tower, outside in the sun in every direction.  soon, you found that you were only able to travel so far from the Tower before you hit some kind of invisible barrier that extended into an invisible circumference around the Tower itself.  the tower is your everything, & you are only allowed to stray so far from your everything before you hit a wall.
 
you began to spend more time at this Invisible Wall, longingly looking off into the unknown, imagining what it would be like to go there.  you began to spend more time there than you did within the walls of the Tower, & the Tower noticed.  at night when you would come back to the walls made up of your life blood, the Tower would come to you in your dreams & tell you it was time for it to come down, but no matter how logical or passionate their arguments, when you awoke, you refused.  you tried to come up with a plan of dismantling the Tower, but it was always so overwhelming that you pushed it further into the back of your mind.  instead, you hoped that your time at the Invisible Wall could adequately comfort you.
 
over time, you began to resent the Tower & all that it represented, but this was only to project the resentment you felt for yourself.  you found yourself frustrated that you could not have both the comfort of the Tower & the freedom to go beyond the Invisible Wall.  when the Tower wanted to check in about the possibility of coming down, you rushed off to busy yourself with that & that & said you would talk about it later.  when sleep was no longer a place to find peace because of the frequent visits from the Tower, you began to work yourself into exhaustion to avoid dreaming.  meanwhile, the Tower knew what all was going on.  while you were concerning yourself with the Invisible Wall & wondering what else was out there & avoiding the Tower, the Tower began to formulate a plan to heal itself through it’s own destruction.
 
wounds know how to heal.  wounds mean no harm, though they can be painful.  your wounds have been wanting to heal since their creation.  wounds are openings that allow energy to move through you.  wounds can orchestrate their own healing, & sometimes your only role is to get out of the way.  through this process of denial & resentment the Tower became a wound, & just like all your other wounds, it knew what it needed to heal, & it began to call into being exactly what it needed to. 
 
enter lightning.
 
lightning occurs when a cloud collects more than enough negative charge & needs to find the quickest path to the ground, which is positively charged.  any tall structure that is grounded can act as a conductor for such a current.  trees or buildings, & in the case, a Tower, will be more than adequate to conduit the negative & postive charges.  to prepare to ground, the negative charge sends out feelers while the positive charge also reaches out, & once the two charges meet a channel opens up.  this is when the lightning becomes visible. 
 
what i want you to hold is that lightning is not random, & that it is an agreement between opposite charges.  lightning, my love, is a femme science, a science of healing. 
 
when your Tower understood that you were not able or willing to dismantle it yourself, it did what every wound does, it femmeifested it’s own healing.  the Tower began to call out to a nearby cloud, orchestrating conditions that caused friction & negative charge to collect in said cloud, & beckoned it to come to it’s aid.  maybe you did & maybe you didn’t notice that thick cloud on your horizon getting closer every day.  maybe you did & maybe you didn’t notice how it danced with lightning in your dreams when the Tower came & wanted your input on The Plan.  maybe you did & maybe you didn’t feel some kind of relief as the rain came & washed over you while you sat vigil at the Invisible Wall.  but i’m willing to bet you did notice once the Tower cried out as the cloud holding the negative charge exhaled through to the positive charge, & lightning lit up your whole life.  i’m willing to bet you felt the snap of thunder as the Inviisble Wall crumbled along with the Tower, & that your tears drowned out the rain.
 
the Tower loved you.  how could it not?  it was assembled with determination & dream, constituted of your life blood, your hopes & dreams, your everything.  & in an instant it was gone.  now, love, is your time to sift through the rubble & ashes.  take time to bury what needs to be buried, & then take all the time you need when choosing what hopes & dreams & life blood you want to take on your next great journey.  & then leave the rest.  you do not need to take the whole Tower with you.  take only what remains glowing & warm, take them as testaments of the love the Tower has for you, as proof of your love for you.  this is all you, Sweet One.  all your magic, your fury, your healing, your devastation, your stories, your survival, your truth, your cleansing.   
 
trust your yearning when you find yourself spending more time at the Invisible Wall.  trust your dreams when the Tower visits to foretell the dismantle.  trust the lightning when it comes.  trust that you will take with you exactly what you need to, & then leave.
 
all my love,
lettie

Deer Sweet Ones,
My anxiety has been high lately, along with my sads.  I had a fuck up that peaked on Monday which resulted in a cryfest at the credit union, the kind where I hoped nobody noticed because I didn't want to get kicked out into the freezing cold windy evening, but also didn't care that everyone saw the mess that was my face.  

It was a special culmination, Monday.  It was part being poor all the time stress, part late rent, & part that the credit union was swathed in Christmas decor.  (My mom, that I am not talking to, loves Christmas.)  So, the fact that I couldn't access my money even though I made as many miracles happen as I could, I hit a dead end.  Then the Christmas villages & trees & velvet bows all hit me at once, & I realized that I kept the holiday cheer as far away from me this year because it allreminded me of my mother, & I cried & cried & cried.

I cried because I was shoulding all over myself.  I cried because I didn't want to miss my mom but I did.  I cried because I didn't want to let people I care about down.  I cried because I am tired of being poor.  I cried because I had been trying so hard to move mountains & take breaths & use my best customer persona to smooth things along.  I cried because my history of houselessness is fucking real & ever present.  I cried & cried & cried.  In that moment, there was nothing left to do but surrender, keep breathing, & keep asking for help.  It sucked.

In the end-end, I was able to swing one more fucking miracle, & rent was paid.  & then I braved the store whose line wrapped in & out of almost every aisle, got a coconut water & some flowers for myself, & took the trolley home.  It was a fucking day, & I was exhausted.  In the span of one day I went through whole life chapters of my shit, & guess what?  I not only survived, for the rest of the week I took every day as it came.  & it was marvelous.

One night coming home from work it occurred to me that I live in a new city, like, actually live here.  I thought of how I know where to get groceries & have a job & Panda goes to school.  This week I was feeling all kinds of flying high because I was able to buy new bedding (I didn't bring a single blanket from Salt Lake), & grateful that I had the skills & hustle to make it happen.  I got to walk through center city & take a full body selfie in a giant mirror, & then someone threw a handful of birdseed on the sidewalk & a bunch of bird friends swirled around to partake, & I felt the flutter inside.  My backordered lip colors came in (all the blue lip stains), & so did my new business cards I'm too shy to show anyone.  & this morning when I told my roommate, "I think this is me, happy," she agreed.  

I don't think this would've been possible if I wasn't hellbent on trying to curl up with my own empathy & acceptance.  I might still be stuck at the credit union, bemoaning my own existence, convinced I was undeserving of sweet & miraculous things.  I've spent most of my life doing this very dance, but I'm trying so hard to create new habits & ways of being.    

No matter where you are, no matter what you did or didn't do, you deserve sweet & miraculous things, too.  & maybe you've got people in your life to tell you so, but maybe you don't.  I'm gonna say it here: You deserve to lay down that shame & guilt to make room for sweet & miraculous things, love.  It's true.  I hope you keep fighting for yourself, your peace of mind, your open heart, your brightest dream.  I promise if you promise.

xoxo,
Lettie