Chariot and Hanged Man-- Comfort. Domesticity. A person who has sowed all the wild oats they are going to sow. Settling down.

When I arrived in Nelson last April, I was hoping to meet spiritual people I could receive some guidance from. I was blown away by the beauty of the surrounding landscape and there were so many pretty boys and girls about. But that’s nothing compared to life out here in the Valley. I sometimes close my eyes and walk on for minutes, listening to the birds and scurrying of innumerable little claws, paws and I can’t describe the sense of peace it brings to my heart. And can’t believe the journey it took to get me to this place.

Things were just falling left, right and into place last spring, strange events were afoot. It took all the willpower I had within to wrench myself away from Calgary. I had my child and my cat, a truckload of furniture and an infinite amount of hope. I was going to grab the bull by the horns and somehow make shit happen. A lot of the ‘shit’ actually happened by itself, the rest through sheer physicality. 

My faith in the idea that I was being protected and guided to the right place by some force beyond my own was strong. I’ve always had an immense amount of faith, despite my family’s attempt to discredit it since it was not in the god I was forced to worship. I was also always being told who to be and what my role was, as a girl, a woman. I sat through constant drillings on what I could or could not do and how my actions were to adhere to the word of ‘GOD’, how I was to act in order to honor my family. New Age ideals were a breath of fresh air that seemed to incorporate a lot of my actual belief and through it I was able to access information about unexplainable events that had been occurring in my life since I was a child. I believed I’d finally found people who understood the way I thought. 

As a little girl, one of the first thing I caught onto was that people rarely spoke the truth. Everyone stuck to a script of socially acceptable neutral subjects. I got to observe many interactions between adults, my parents would constantly hold dinner parties and I got to weave my way in and out of conversations. That’s where I got my fascination for spending time with people older than I.

 Try observing the strange dissonance between some people's body language and the words that come from their mouth. Become aware of the dissonance between the ideologies people claim to adopt and the actual personal values that are revealed through their actions, especially during conflict.  

It used to confuse me and make me shrink from myself, the fact that over and over I'm expected to smile and be at ease around that.