Finding My Power

in a way I never expected

I have always been good at seeking external validation. One of the ways I started getting good at this was through my Christianity. I sought comfort, guidance, reassurance from God. As I gained experiences, I also learned to seek guidance and reassurance from my parents and my friends. Sometimes from my teachers. The ultimate message I didn’t realize I was absorbing was: I cannot trust my own wisdom or guidance, therefore I must seek it elsewhere.

I left The Church a long time ago; too many Christians told me I was going to hell for my queerness (and I knew that the God I was raised to know would never cast me aside for who I was) and I couldn’t see past the glaring hypocrisy. However, the need for external validation did not dissipate with my faith, it just sought other outlets to meet this need. I spent a long time deconstructing from the way I was raised. I still struggle with not appearing as “The Good Little Church Girl,” which comes out as people pleasing.

Eventually, with enough time and experience and finding chosen family, I felt distant enough from this part of my identity, and began exploring other means of personal growth. This is when I found tarot.

If you had told me even two years ago that tarot would become my new special interest, I would’ve laughed in disbelief. I was very anti-tarot for a long time; a “skeptic” as my mentor calls it. From the limited information I knew of tarot, it was witchy and I firmly believed that fortune telling was a bunch of bullshit. This was until I stumbled across a tarot reader on Instagram.

This person shared that she did not use tarot as a source of divination, but rather a tool for introspection. She shared that reading wasn’t based in any psychic powers, but rather in your intuition, something I felt proudly tuned into. I could always rely on my intuition, it had never steered me wrong.

It’s also important to note that I am the biggest nerd for introspection and personal growth. I have a heightened sense of self-awareness and really enjoy self-help books and therapy. I suppose you could say I am a life-long learner of myself, and I really enjoy getting to know myself better. So its safe to say that my interest in tarot was piqued. I did something daring…I bought myself a tarot deck.

Over the past year and change I’ve explored tarot and found it to be a helpful tool in my personal growth toolkit. I’ve explored different decks and spreads and found so much joy in reading for myself and reading for my friends. I was getting feedback as soon as I started reading for friends that the readings resonated, and their words of validation and appreciation fanned the flame of this growing special interest.

For much of this year I have felt this pull deep within me (what I imagine a “calling” to feel like) to take it a step further and find a mentor who could teach and guide me further into this tarot journey. I had been following the creator of one of my favorite decks—the Be With Your Body Tarot deck—and really resonated with what she shared on Instagram. I particularly loved her phrase, “Tarot is not magic, you are magic. Tarot is a mirror.” Other than the readings I did for myself, I started to exclusively seek readings from her, and each time I did I had profound experiences of revelation and deep Inner Knowing. Recently I knew it was time to take the leap and sign up for her mentorship program. Now, whenever I do a reading for myself, I feel this sense of validation that I made the right decision.

Okay so what does this have to do with finding my power? Well, recently I was talking to a friend about Christianity and tarot, and I shared that Christianity was a way for me to seek external validation (in God/Jesus/the Bible/the Church), and tarot was teaching me to seek internal validation instead. Then I had a realization that took it a step further…

I do think that until recently, tarot became another way for me to seek validation externally. If I had a big decision to make, or felt uneasy about something, I turned to my deck for answers. What I didn’t realize is that what my mentor is always saying is profoundly true: tarot is a mirror. While I sought answers from my deck, the cards I pulled flipped the question back onto myself. Because in looking at each card, my mind made meaning out of them through my own experiences and perspectives. I’ve heard my mentor say a tarot deck contains 78 pieces of the human experience. Anyone who pulls from this deck will see and interpret the cards through the lens of their own life and experiences.

As I keep learning in mentorship, reading tarot is all about trusting yourself. When I do a spread, ultimately I am answering my own questions, the cards just give me a container to find the answers I seek within myself. At the end of a reading, by trusting my interpretations—my inner wisdom—I am the one who created the power behind the cards. I create my own power. I just didn’t fully understand it until now.

I cannot wait to continue exploring my own Inner Knowing through tarot. I feel this recent surge of empowerment upon having this epiphany, and it feels like the beginning of something so much bigger. The last few years have felt like I have been slowly emerging from a cocoon of sorts; figuring out my sexuality, finding my community, receiving new diagnoses around my health and neurodivergence to better understand my mind and body, finding my voice, discovering the healing power of self-compassion. And now, in this last month of my twenties, I am finally understanding the power that’s been within me all along. I can’t wait to see what lies ahead.