Transformation is on the horizon, but what does that actually mean?
When the cards keep telling you what isn't happening.
I am in my Death Year, and the idea of transformation and change have been heavy on my mind. We are obviously seeing the death of democracy in real time, not to mention the death of every public service out there. Ok, as a country, we are in a major moment of change.
I am also in a moment of change, of transformation, but here’s the thing… I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I am going. I have no idea what is at the end of the tunnel because right now I’m trapped in the middle where there is no light in front of me and only the smallest bit shining from behind me. I know I can’t go back, but I don’t know where forward actually is. While I say tunnel, I don’t necessarily mean straight.
Maybe this has happened to you: you pull cards, and the messages for months are about change, transition, deep transformation, and yet, you just feel like you. You can’t feel anything happening. That’s where I am right now. Truly. I have been pulling cards about change for so long, and it’s not that I am not trying to change, not trying to transform, not actively making changes, but nothing is happening.
I am feeling stagnant. I am uninspired to write. I am uninspired to collage. I am uninspired to pull cards more days (though I do). I haven’t journaled in months and months and months. I am just uninspired. I am stagnant.
So what changes are coming? What changes am I experiencing? What changes can I feel? Are my sights set too high? Are my expectations unreasonable? Am I comparing my life to those who have had grand revelations, and that’s just not who I am?
It’s entirely possible! I said earlier this year that memoirs are the most important form of writing (at least for me), and I still stand by that. I am wondering though if maybe they have become a hinderance because I am now comparing my experiences to people who were destined for greatness, and I am destined for greatness on a significantly smaller scale.
I have read Amanda Garcia Yates, Sue Monk Kidd, Caroline Myss, and many others who talk of these huge aha! moments. These huge moments of chaos turned to revelation and transformation, of rebirth and initiation. I have lived through hard times. I have lived through health scares and crises. I have lived through literal squalor and abuse. I have changed. I have grown. I have evolved. I have never felt it as keenly or as intensely as others do. Is it because my 12th house is empty? 😅 Comparison is the thief of joy. I know, and I truly am not trying to compare. I am genuinely curious. Am I doing something wrong? Or are many of these people writing very neurotypical, and does that inform how they experience spiritual growth?
This topic has been weighing on me so much that I have literally started keeping both mental and written lists about what has changed, what can change, what changes I am trying to make, and how any of it could turn into transformation.
Starting therapy: using the lens of AuDHD rather than NT to do the work. Working with someone who is very in tune spiritually and is queer!
Starting PT next week. Starting another type of PT in September.
Branching out in my tutoring offerings for K-8 students. Hey parents, have a kid receiving special education services (or isn’t and desperately needs academic help) who needs a tutor? Hit me up! I am a licensed teacher. I offer a sliding scale. I am knowledgable about IEPs, helpful accommodations, and your rights as parents.
Walking nightly.
This isn’t a good change, but it is a change. I have lost my cleaning routine and am now floundering about unable to get myself to do anything aside from the bare minimum.
This also isn’t a good change: not leaving the house independently. Struggling really hard with transitions.
Being unemployed for this long!!! Very different for me.
Painting! I’ve taken up painting with my mom. We paint about once per week together. I am trying to paint daily even if it’s just brush strokes and nonsense.
Again, where is the transformation my cards keep alluding to? I feel like I am on the brink of something big, but I have been feeling that for over two years, and it’s not there. It’s like working hard for the sneeze and never getting the satisfaction of the release, but years of this.
Sometimes I slow down enough to wonder: is the change they’re talking about actually perimenopause? Yes, I’m only 36, almost 37, but the symptoms are there. I can feel it, and I can feel it most intensely in my ability to be compassionate. Empathy and compassion have always been my supposed gift, according to the people in my life. (Y’all what kind of gift is empathy? Truly… a least let me be good at something that will allow me to have a roof over my head! Anyone else feel me on that?)
Again, the cards, many cards every month tell of transformation, of a new life, of a new me, of big, Big, BIG changes. And yet, here I am, the same me. Maybe a little crankier, definitely a lot poorer, and a little fatter. But I feel like me at my core. Does transformation happen in slow enough increments to where you don’t know it’s happening? Am I actually the frog in the pot boiling myself to death?
Maybe change and transformation mean something completely different. My Scorpio stellium and Aquarius rising would love that. Change, but not typical? Going against the grain? Sign my Aquarius rising ass uppppp! We hate being on trend round these parts. (It’s a problem. I know. I’m aware.)
I am not sure that there are any answers in here, but if you are going through the same patch of stagnancy, of questioning, of confusion, maybe the questions here will give you something to reflect upon.
What does change mean to you? Is it different from transformation? What transformations have you experienced in your life? Did it feel different to changes that you’ve experienced? I am genuinely curious about people’s working definitions of these words so let me know below!
One last matter of business. The Full Moon in Aquarius is on Friday/Saturday. You can get a 3-card reading here.
Wishing you well this week! May your life offer what you need in this moment.
With love,
Aventurine ✨
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It’s the story we tell ourselves about how our life should look that fu*ks us up the most. Or
In my case, the story others told me…
Since I was a kid I’ve had a life full of magick folk. Which I feel very lucky about. But they’ve all told me the same thing, for 40 years…. And I’m still searching/waiting for this gift they all say I have.
Sometimes I think I’d be a lot more content had they not shared that with me.
I am feeling this. I haven't pulled cards in a while, I had surgery about 3 weeks ago and I am finally feeling a bit more like myself. But yeah, I have been in a holding pattern as I figured out how to stop fighting my body's need for rest and sleep, and while I figured out how to ask for things I need, things that I can't yet do for myself, and accepting the help. I need a chaperone to leave the house because I feel weak from staying in bed so much. I have chronic illnesses but I (stubbornly) push through those. This has been a lesson in listening to my body and in acceptance.
It's been hard to be away from work. As a trainer and as a union steward in a workplace that's mired in change for stakeholder optics and massive uncertainty, my inner parentified child who has an inflated sense of responsibility is freaking out about what we might be returning to.
But in the meantime, I am trying to stay in the present, to rest, and to wait for the path to unfold.