Surrender

Today I had no idea what I would write about in this blog.  And then one of my children asked me to help them decipher a Tarot card layout they had made for themselves.  It was in essence a reading. And my child needed my assistance.

On helping them understand the nature of the layout—three cards from left to right and representing past, present and future, I was drawn back into a world that I had not visited in a quite a while.

 
I entered graduate school to study psychology in the early stages of pregnancy with this particular child who had asked for my assistance. I took my first class in Jungian psychology as this child gestated inside me—embarked upon my dream—that of learning about and coming to understand the inner workings of the human mind. 

After their birth and for the next four years I moved through my graduate program—a wife and mother of two studying what was at that time my passion. During this time I entered into my own process of healing, that of allowing myself to go back and explore areas of the human psyche and soul—mine—that I had always relished the idea of exploring.

In addition to studying dreams and images, I began to work with the Tarot as one of my attempts to heal while ascertaining the skills to  become a psychotherapist--one who would assist others in their desire to heal. Carl Jung utilized astrology and Tarot with his clients. And so one summer, when this child was little more than three years old, I ventured on an experience of learning to swim—a major feat for someone who lost his or her only sibling to drowning. Once learning to swim I swam every day. After showering and drying I would then return home, and there each afternoon following my hour in the pool I gave myself a Tarot reading. This is how I came to understand Tarot.

All that I had learned and discovered during that summer and the years that followed, came flooding back when my child—that child who had been only three and who now stands taller than me—laid before me the three cards their fingers had pulled from the Tarot deck, and asked for my assistance in helping them decipher what the cards meant in the scheme of their life. 

It has been over ten years since that summer when I swam each day and gave myself readings.  Over ensuing years I began process painting, an experience that for many years followed an hour after again swimming.  Swimming, exerting my body safely through the water, something my deceased brother never learned to do, and engaging in the breathing that swimming requires, has always, and still remains a very healing experience for me. Incidentally, while my father was an experienced swimmer, my mother remained terrified of the water throughout her life.

My learning to swim was a major part of my individuation process toward becoming the person I was destined to be, my experience of connecting with the person inside me that I had hidden for over three decades. That my child felt the freedom and the safety to ask me to assist them in their attempt to come to know who they are, uncover their identity—that child who is now a teenager—touched me immensely.

Upon sharing my knowledge with them—what I knew of the meanings each card held and symbolized, we then together referred to the book that accompanied this set of Tarot cards.  And so the learning began again. But this time with a knowledge and wisdom I did not possess a decade and a half ago.

 While examining the cards, and then the two of us reading the meanings the accompanying text attached to each card, I began to see my child in a whole new light—not one that shattered or threatening our past, rather a here-and-now experience adding substance and stature, and grounding our relationship, as my child moves into young adulthood.

It was a creative moment. One in which I, having surrendered to a child’s request, came to not only see that child in greater depth and emotional texture, but also wherein my own past and present came into clearer view.

For that I am thankful. And also for the fodder of real life experience that gave me a subject and focus for writing this blog.

The artist, while committed to her or his mission of creating, must never remain so focused on their work that she or he forgets the existence of those closest to them. We must never lose the ability to surrender to the needs of those living with with us and in our care--individuals whose very lives attach purpose and meaning to our life and work as artists whose work mirrors life, hopes and dreams.

For in these persons—our friends and family—lay the greatest of ideas and the inspiration for what we will create.