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Exploring the 78 cards of tarot through the lens of life experiences, plus the perspectives and opinions of a professional tarot reader and witch.

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Family Reconnections and the World Reversed

Healing a family rift is a tricky thing, especially when it’s something that you didn’t know you wanted at the time you should be wanting it. It’s a matter of acknowledging a missing piece of yourself when you thought you were whole in the first place.

I thought I was whole and ready to marry my fiancé. I thought a lot of things. And I thought I could do it without my father and stepfamily in my life. And I was wrong.

Backstory: I hadn’t spoken to my father in 15 years prior to 2 days before my sister’s wedding last year. I knew he would be there. I knew I would have to face him. Knowing I would have to didn’t make things any easier... it was something I would have to face head-on.



There was a lot of lead-up to the moment I saw and spoke to my father again. The bridal party consisted of me as maid of honor, and my stepsister as a bridesmaid. The last thing my stepsister said to me, 15 years before, was “I hate you.” At the time, she was a pre-teen and I was eighteen years old. I’m sure she never thought those words would ring in my ears as much as they did. I’m sure I didn’t, either. But they did. And now I had to plan all of the events leading up to my sister’s wedding with her?

Surprisingly, seeing her again made things better and not worse. Planning things together (the bridal shower, the bachelorette party) made me more sane, not less. And knowing that I wasn’t alone was the most important thing of all. That she missed me. That I missed her. These things that we took for granted all the years before meant more now than they ever did before. She said I wouldn’t have to be alone in facing my father. That she would be there right with me, if I asked. If I needed her. She said that though he’d never admit it outright, my father missed me. More than anything, he wanted to be a part of my life again and to get to know the man I was going to marry.

So I stood in the doorway of the church during the rehearsal, waiting for my stepsister to get there. Instead of seeing her figure in the doorway, the first person I saw was my father. As he walked in, he asked me, “What’s going on, ____?” using the nickname only he used for me, a nickname I hadn’t heard in years and that he’d called me since I was eight years old. He said I looked great and I led him over to my sister the bride. My sister watched me like a hawk (as much as she could while also walking through her upcoming marriage ceremony). I introduced my father to my fiancé.

It took my sister’s wedding to heal the rift that I didn’t acknowledge existed in the first place.

What does this story have to do with the World card and tarot? I’m so glad you asked (albeit silently and from your computer). For me, the World card was reversed in reference to my family life. I couldn’t complete the circle and move on to the next phase in my life, because I was not acknowledging the incompleteness of my life up to that point. I thought I could do without my father. Perhaps at the time I was a teenager and a young adult in my twenties, I couldn’t handle a relationship with him, and he couldn’t handle a relationship with me. Me as a teenager... I probably wasn’t the easiest person to get along with, let alone parent. My mother realized that once she brought me up to her level, as an equal, she could never go backward... she couldn’t just go back to, “What I say goes.” My dad went the other route with me... he was very strict: no makeup, no boyfriends, and his way of intelligence. Math and science smarts as opposed to what I was actually good at: English, languages, and Social Studies. I digress.

As I look at the World card, I notice how the wreath around the floating figure in the Rider-Waite depiction of the card is bound together at the top and the bottom, making the two semi-circles into a complete circle. It is a rift we chose to heal rather than remain an open wound. And now that my family life is more or less a complete unit again, I can move forward into the next phase of my life: starting a family of my own, with my future husband. The World card has been righted.


Blessings,
Hilary
www.tarotbyhilary.com

Image courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

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Tagged in: family tarot The World
Owner and content-provider of Tarot by Hilary, professional tarot reader with over fourteen years of experience slinging the cards, posts weekly on the Tarot by Hilary blog, and all around woman-about-town. My clients are awesome, and you should be one of them.

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