A Tarot-read

D: I’m sorry to wake you up so early Sarah. Would you mind chat with me for a while.

S: Yeah, sure Dory. How can I help you?

D: I’d been having this really bad headache and throat pain for a while, lately it’s been getting worse, I’d been having trouble eating or drinking. I felt this might be some sort of pattern that I have some trouble to see through and break free. Would you mind doing a tarot reading for me?

S: No problem. Give me two numbers between 1 to 20.

D: 3 and 11.

S: Let me see… seems like we are using the Native American Medicine Card deck and “Whispers of Love” Oracle cards.

S: (start shuffling deck of cards) I’ll be shuffling the deck. Take a deep breath and tell me when.

D: When.

S: Okay, the first card is called Forgiveness: “Nothing is gained by holding on to past disappointments.” Second card: Otter Spirit; Third: Black Panther spirit. Seems like that you’d been having trouble forgive either yourself, or some very close friend, who might have had stepped over your boundaries in the past.

D: can you be more specific.

S: yes. I’ll be throwing some tarot charms to make it more clear. Now we have two dices over the card of “Forgiveness”. The sword dice is right on top of the candle over this girl’s head, meaning that there’s some sort of foggy feelings over the crown chakra, that needs to be cleansed, some past trauma needs to be severed and released, this shall be done within days. The other dice is herb of healing. It is just beneath her throat. It means the healing shall be initiated from the throat chakra, maybe some past feelings and emotions need to be let out in some ways, and this shall be done in seven days. If I am correct, you’d been weighing down and bothered by this cross boundaries patterns for a long time. You have trouble ushering out your feelings, don’t be afraid of letting your feelings be heard, once the throat chakra opening up, the heart will start healing as well. Black Panther is telling you to be brave to accept the unknown mythical aspect of yourself. Grant yourself the time and space to heal, honor the most vulnerable aspect of the self. And the message from Otter Spirit is that, right now is time for you to embrace your feminine aspect, seeking supports from feminine healing energy. Does all those make any sense to you.

D: Yes, they are all right on point. You know I’d been struggling with the concept of monogamy or polyamory. Few years ago, I accidentally knocked over my best friend Aurora’s Journal, and oversaw a page that she confessed her hidden feelings towards my ex-husband. I felt a bit perplexed.

S: Were you upset towards her?

D: Not really. She was going through a lot of relationship struggles, during the breakup with her boyfriend Matt. I couldn’t bear watching her suffering, a lot of tormenting mental pains. The breakup was forced upon her from the boy’s family. Matt was the boy who she’d been baby-sitting and tutoring for over 6 years, ever since he was 13 years old. Now it’s time for him to go to college, and the family is quite determined in breaking them apart. She felt like the whole society around her has been… sort of… demonizing her and forcing her to break up with him. I just felt really bad for her.

S: So you decided to offer her staying in your place to help her getting healed, I assumed.

D: Yeah, I took on a role of helping her growing out of her pains. She also had been suffering tremendous physical difficulties after the break-up. I talked with my ex-husband Ben. I told him what I read in her journal that she’d been having certain feelings for him. Ben thought that Aurora’s issue was that she had trouble voicing out her feelings. And then next thing I knew is that… one night I fell asleep on the living room couch, when I woke up and walked over to the bedroom, I saw them lying next to each in bed… That was 7 years ago. And later on after my divorce, I moved to California, Aurora recently visited me again, and during her visit, she made out with my new boyfriend Kirt. I felt quite perplexed about the whole situation now. Even though she offered apologies and willingness to help me walk out of my confusions… I just kept on having this deep constricted upsetting feelings constantly boiling underneath my throat… I just don’t know what it is, or how to make a peace with myself again… I mean we had a lot of conversations in regards to polyamory or monogamy in the past. Sometimes, I feel that I could be polyamory, yet, next moment I feel like… no no, I am monogamy.. Why relationship is so confusing… I am very confused.

S: Honey, don’t be so hard on yourself… How about just let go the needs to be defined by the society, or any other person’s preferences or determination for you?

D: I don’t know. I just constantly having this deep debates within my heart. Why couldn’t we all just be friends… I mean, all my ex-s, boyfriends or husband… I mean I see them are all so equally beautiful and unique, and I really enjoy the time with each of them in the past, but the same time, I feel once I got sucked into the debates of whether I should stay polyamory as Aurora; or staying as monogamy, as the society’s standard moral conduct, and then.. I would be start feeling my head is splitting. I felt like each one of my past boyfriend would be all fighting against each other to gain over my attentions… but that’s really not what I want… All I want is for them to be at peace and enjoy their own lives, whether I am in the picture or not… And that is when I feel that maybe it is better to stay as monogamy. Yet, the second when I set up my mind to be monogamy, that’s when my best friend Aurora came visiting me, and making out with my partner, just like few years ago…. And then I questioned myself, should I forgive her, or become polyamory as her, but this deep boiling emotional struggles, I don’t really know what it is called… If I call it jealousy, then I would be start feeling resentful, ashamed, even denying that I have such lowly traits as jealousy feelings… I don’t know… I feel so lost now.

S: It is okay to feel that way. It’s not easy for a person to take on a polyamory relationship. When two people are bounded to each other on a deep intimate level, and then if either one needs to feel being forced apart, it would be like the pain of severing bones from flesh. That’s why in modern society, it’s not widely accepted as polyamorous. However, when someone lost loved ones or going through hard breakups, this pain can be so visceral and real, it could be immensely unbearable. That’s why in Native American tradition, a widow’s best female friend, would offer her husband to the widow as a new lover, to help this newly widowed lady waning through the pains of emotional loss, as well as helping her in transitioning the creative force of energy.

D: Really?

S: Yes. Here, let me read this Otter spirit card’s reading for you: “This joyful little creature is adventuresome and assumes that all other creatures are friendly—until proven otherwise. These character traits are the beauty of a balanced female side, the side of ourselves that creates a space for others to enter our lives without preconceptions or suspicions. Otter teaches us that balanced female energy is not jealous or catty. This is sisterhood, content to enjoy and share the good fortune of others. Anchored in the understanding that all accomplishments are worthwhile for the whole tribe. Long ago, in tribal law, if a woman were widowed, her sister would offer her own husband to the widow as a lover to keep her from drying up and not using her creative urges. This is Otter medicine, too. Envy, or the fear of being replaced, has no space in Otter’s balanced understanding of sharing goodness. Woman energy without games or control is a beautiful experience. It is the freeness of love without jealousy. It is the joy of loving other people’s children and their accomplishments as much a you love your own.”

D: Wow… incredible..

S: You see… there’s really no need to define monogamy or polyamory. What matters most to you is that, your heart is at peace with sharing and offering love to your sisterhood, because taking care of each other, taking care of the tribe as a whole is, indeed, in return of taking care the self as well. Our modern society doesn’t really focus on this feminine aspect of caring the community as a whole, many of us are not fully aware that by taking care of a single lonely suffering soul, we each are all in return taking care that aspect of the self as well.

D: I wish I was raised in a caring tribe-like family like that… I still have deep painful memory of my bad breakups with each of my previous relationship before my ex-marriage. The first one… it was forced upon by my parents when I was in middle school… One day I was trying to share my life’s stories and telling my Mom how excited that I was… finally able to connect with this boy who was so amazing, in so many ways… And then suddenly Mom interrupted me and said: “cut it off, you are not allowed to have any relationship before college…” And so the very next day I cut this boy out of my life… I never got the chance to explain to him how conflicted and painful it felt within me when I decided not to talk with him anymore..

S: Parents could be very rigid and brutal, when forcing their own belief and agenda upon their children’s lives. They probably never realized what a vicious cycle they were creating, by telling their children to ignore their unadulterated feelings. When we neglect our own inner tender wounds, together we would bury deeply the very source of our own inner child’s livelihood, the tenderness of the inner-wonder, the very loving connections with the world as well as with the self.

D: And then when I got to college, I went to a different city. One time, one of my roommate told my parents over the phone that I was dating a black boy from Africa. My parents were furious after they heard about the news… And that was during the same time, that my boyfriend’s family also strongly disagreed with him dating me as well… I was under so much pressure those days… I felt that nobody cared about my feelings… And then later that summer break, I found out that I was pregnant… I went to a blackmarket drug store, bought some illegal abortion drugs… the kind that one would take every day for a week… the last day is the day when the bleeding and flushing out would occur.

S: It must be quite painful to bear the secret all by yourself, not to mention the physical pain that you were going through..

D: Yes… That day I was on a camping trip with my Aunt, the morning as soon as I took that last illegal pill, I felt the whole world was spinning. I felt that I could not stand up on my own two feet, not even to mention about a long hiking trip… I begged my aunt to let me stay inside the hotel instead. She rejected my request… So I obeyed her order… It was a big mistake.. I bleed and bleed… for every 300 feet I would need take a bathroom break, go hiding behind some bushes, wiping out the overflow of blood… blood everywhere… and I would faint over for few seconds or minutes, then woke up, picking up wherever I left behind… and then finally a red fleshy pink ball flushed out…. I held it for a good minute… it was my baby… I didn’t know what to do with it… My body was shaking,. feeling very emotional, as well as out of physical weakness… I wrapped some white tissue paper very carefully around it… and then buried it among some bushes… within my heart, I was praying for her or him: ’be free my little one… please forgive me for abandoning you in this way, and for not being able to afford your pre-matured birth on earth… please be strong, be your own beautiful and adventurous self, accompanied by all the beautiful nature plant spirits among this green mountain, please don’t be bounded down on earthly structure and burdens like me, in your next life’s reincarnation.

S: I’m really sorry that you have to go through all those…

D: It’s okay… that was my first abortion… My second one was even worse… And this time was with my ex-husband. I was a new immigrant to the States. Not knowing anything about the country, I was taken to Ben’s parents’ house in Upstate New York. We were living under the parents-in-law’ roof for over a year and half before we both got admitted into a medical school in New York City and then moved out. But during the stay in the parent-in-laws’ house, I was undergoing immense emotional struggles… One day, Ben’s parents called us to go downstairs and have a talk with them. His father seemed very upset for he spotted a period pad I left loose by our bed side in our bedroom… I told him that we were suspecting that I might be pregnant. July, Ben’s mom suddenly yelled: ‘No, you can not be pregnant, we can not afford it.’ Jon, Ben’s Dad said: ‘Do you have any clue how much it will cost to deliver a baby?? At least twenty thousand dollars. You are not allow to get pregnant. We will not let that happen in this house. You’ll become a huge financial burden to us.’ Jon suddenly seemed very shaken, sat down and signed: ’when I had my first daughter, I was only 16… 16 years old… In order to raise her, I had to quit high school, and eventually started dealing drugs, so that I could have enough money to raise her. I still remembered that one trip in New York City for a job interview, when I got done with my interview, I needed to get onto the train, so that I can catch a ride back home… I realized that I didn’t have enough money for a train ticket, I needed just 50 cents more to pay for my ticket. I begged everyone passing by, nobody stopped… The only seemingly kind dude who offered to help me, turned out to be a pervert, he raped me… Just for a mere 50 cents….. My daughter’s mom couldn’t stand the poverty and hardship in those days, she decided to enrolled into the airfare, and left the kid all by myself….’ Jon took another long pause and then continued: ‘No, you can not get pregnant. You are not allowed to be pregnant in this household, you are not gonna make me re-live my nightmare again. If you don’t get an abortion, we will kick you out of this country.’

S: what did you do next?

D: For at least a month or two, I spent the days doing nothing but treadling the sewing machine… Everyday from early morning until late night, with barefeet… I pretended that I was sewing and making cloth and bags… I ran the sewing machine like a mad woman, with my barefeet, on and on, till late night… It is deep winter in upstate, the temperature is about 5 degree, there was no heat in that sewing machine corner… I could see deep deep snow right outside the window of my little sewing corner. I used the monotonous momentum of running the machine to numb my nerves.. the nerves in my head, the nerves in my feet, the nerve all the way through my whole spine and lower belly… I told myself… bleed, make it bleed, abort, you have to abort it… I treadled on and on, until all my toes on both feet are covered with frostbites, until I finally bleed both on my toes and internally…

S: How did the parents in law react after you abort yourself in such a cruel way?

D: They disbelieved me. They said ‘you and Ben must go to the hospital to get you checked..’ So we went to the hospital, for at least four times, the doctors still could not determine whether I was still pregnant or not… We ended up with this huge medical bill, that took us a year to finally paid off, with Ben’s disability SSI monthly pay.

S: I’m so sorry that you have to go through this…

D: It was so hard… the most difficult part is that Ben seemed completely detached and cut off from the reality. He seemed like he didn’t want to have anything to do with my miserable experience or feelings. He would rather get drunk, or stoned on pot or cigarets. One night, he got drunk again, started peeling on our mattress, and my birth certificate was right by the side of the bed… I was screaming at him: ’what are you doing, please stop, please stop..” but he just won’t wake up, he was so stubbornly drunk than ever, just won’t stop peeing on my birth certificate papers… Next day, I told his parents about what Ben was doing previous night, they seemed like the only thing they were concerned about was that Ben’s pee may leak through the ceiling, and ended up dropping onto their own bedroom downstairs while they were sleeping during night downstairs… I was screaming silently and helplessly inside my heart: ‘does anyone even care that my only copy of birth certificate was ruined by his reckless behavior? My only copy to prove my very existence on earth?’

D (signed… took a long break…): So that was why when I ran into my later best friend Aurora, I instantly took a like in her… She was the only one who cared to listen to my stories and feelings… She was the only light of my life in those dark depressing days… And that was why, even though I saw her expressing her interests in my husband Ben, I tried not to show up my jealousy feelings… because she was the only support and hope to help me surviving those years of darkness…

S: But there’s a difference between avoidance of jealousy, and the feeling of willingly sharing the abundance of love, in order to maintain the harmony within a tribe.

D: I know. I don’t know whether I even feel any bit of love those days… Lack of respect and appreciation from neither Ben nor his parents, just made me felt so depressed…. On the other hand, while I was taking care of Auraro, I just felt so much joy, gratitude and unconditional love… Sometime, I wished I could have stayed there with her forever, just kept on immersing in the unconditional sweetness, compassion and love she had for me… My gesture of allowing her to take my husband was more like, pleading her to take me out of my own destitute and pitiful marriage situation, and willingly dumping my troublesome husband away, not just to her, but to anyone, who’s ready to take him away from me… I don’t know why I was so resentful and bitter, It is not my nature, so not like me…

S: Was that marriage so bad?

D: The second day of our marriage, when his mom was showing me a toad that she just caught. I was holding it by the second floor balcony, the toad was struggling really hard, and jumped out of my hand. When Ben asked me where was the toad, I told him it ran out of the window, probably among the bushes somewhere down below. He suddenly pushed me all the way against the wall, pressing both of his hands in chokehold over my neck… That moment I felt that I was going to die… My breath stopped, I was so frightened, I lost my voice and my breath… speechless, and shocked… for what kind of marriage arrangement I was getting myself into..

S: I’m so sorry for what you have gone through… at least you are in a much better situation now…

D: Yeah… I agree… But I ended up with this bad headaches, eating disorder and tightness in my throat… Sometime, even drinking water can be very difficult and torturous, like swallowing thousands of needles mixed with blood and bleeding raw flesh down my throat, I can even taste the flavor of blood when I tried to drink or eat, the pain is so tormenting, from the right side of my head, along the right side of inner ear, the gums, the nerve of teeth, along esophagus, throat, all the way deep into my chest and heart, I felt like that wounded female elephant that was recently murdered in India. Have you heard about the story of that poor elephant?

S: No, what’s that about?

D: So there’s a 15-year-old pregnant wild elephant from India died after it ate a pineapple laced with explosives. I assumed that she was very hungry and begging for food in the nearby village where she lived. After the explosion, she was in so much pain, she ran out of the village to get into a river. Even when on the way out, she didn’t break any village houses or hurt or bothered anyone. She died standing in a river after suffering immense pain due to the crackers that burst inside her mouth.

S: That’s so sad, how could someone do such thing to that poor elephant.

D: I know, I was so sad for her too… I felt that those days while I was undergoing all the pains inside my head, my gums, teeth, throat, down my esophagus all the way into my chest. Anything can trigger my pain, eating, drinking, thinking, sometime, even breathing could suddenly trigger the pain… I felt that I was going through similar pains like that poor elephant mama… She was so trusting towards human-beings… Maybe when a woman got pregnant, we all become equally vulnerable, and craving for more love and tender-care, that’s why we trust people more… I wish humans can eventually learn how to treat the weaker ones among the tribe with more respect and tender love.

S: I know it is so sad to see how some humans could be so cruel not only towards nature, but even towards one another, towards themselves as well. Please spend some time taking care of yourself… Please keeping on reminding yourself these words in the next two weeks: I am love, loving and beloved… I am love, loving and beloved.

D: I will… Thank you so much for helping me walking through my pains and stories…

S: You are very welcome. Any time. I am always here for you whenever you need me.

D: Same here as well. Love you Sarah.

S: Love you too Dory. Please take care.

D: You as well.