Category: Shadow Work

Shadow Work — Day 18

What do I need to release to bring my shadow forward?

Tarot of the Sidhe
@Emily Carding

Warrior Two tells me that it is time for me to make a choice about what I really want in life and the last few weeks have helped me to make that choice.  I’d always though that I was a white picket fence kind of woman and that the white picket fence needed to include a husband, but I’m realizing that I’m perfectly content all by myself.  I do not need someone to make me whole and complete and that actually having someone in my life 24/7 is overwhelming.  As I write this, I realize that John probably always recognized at some level that I did not need him and he worked to make me need him.  This card is also about awakening and claiming my power and realizing how strong I truly am.

Dancer Princess tells me it is time to believe in magick and to open my heart and soul to love and joy.  It is time to let go of my cynicism and believe in unicorns and love.  Opening my heart to love means that I might be hurt, but it could also bring me great joy.

Dreamer Princess tells me it is time to clearly communicate my wishes to the universe.  Dreamer Princess tells me it is time to tell the universe what I want and to be prepared to go after it.  By clearly communicating what I do and do not want, I let go of the whispers and the fear.  Claiming what I want seems a little intimidating, but I’m ready to move forward with my life and to get out of limbo.

Shadow Work–Day 17

What is the main cause of my negative traits in relationships?

Dreamer Queen is back to tell me that one of the causes of my negative traits in relationships is that I live in my head and that I prefer books to people.  Oddly enough I lead with my heart at work because I love what I do, in my personal life I very much lead with my head because my head is what keeps me safe.  My heart made the bad decision to marry John so I have to pay for the rest of my life by living in my head.  However, I have a choice and I can choose to take a more balanced approach and listen to both my heart and my head.

Warrior Five tells me that I put obstacles in my own way by continually coming up with excuses to not find love and to not let people in.  I can always find something else to occupy my time or something else to do versus letting people in and spending time with people.

Oh the cards are talkative tonight.  The last card I pulled is the Hermit and that is so true because I would rather stay in my comfort zone than get out and meet people.  Oddly enough, this card rankles me sometimes because my ex used to say I was a hermit and it made me angry because he said it in such a derogatory manner.  When we divorced, I embraced being a hermit because it meant that I could control who came into my life and I didn’t have to play by his rules anymore.  However, I may have gone too far and built the walls too high.

Shadow Work–Day 16

What negative aspects of my shadow do I project?

As much as I love the Dancer Two card in its aspect of soulmate, the message it gives me about this question is that I often turn my back to people I love.  If things get too emotionally intense, I will back away and be standoffish rather than be emotionally available and open to another person.  I also tend to pull away when conversations get too personal.  I don’t like to let people in because of my fear of being hurt so I walk away and show my back.

The flip side of this is Dreamer Ten which tells me that if I get comfortable with someone I can bleed my emotional pain all over someone else.  Up until recently, I’ve taken emotional hostages and expected them to be my emotional support human and take whatever pain and ick I’ve dredged up.  If they pulled back or had their own issues, I got angry because they weren’t there for me in the the way I needed them to be there for me.

Dreamer Queen sitting on her pile of books tells me that when I am in uncomfortable situations, I approach them from a place of the mind and not the heart.  This reminds me of my original list of qualifications for a partner.  Because my ex was basically a deadbeat, my first criteria for being with someone was that they made as much or more than I do.  A lot of people pointed out to me that I was ruling out a lot of potential partners on something arbitrary.  They made the argument that a lot of guys were not like my ex and were self supporting and would not have their ego’s bruised by someone making more money than they did.  To a certain extent, I see their point, but my fear has kept me from removing that criteria.

As always with the Tarot of the Sidhe, I’m getting a lot of good reads that are truly speaking truths I need to hear.

Shadow Work–Day 14

What part of my shadow stifles relationships?


Dreamer Four tells me that I value my me time over relationships and it is true because a lot of times if the decision comes down to chilling at home and going out to meet people, I will choose to stay home and chill.  I don’t necessarily think that that is a bad thing because I am very much an introvert and need my recharging time, but I can’t sit and bitch and moan about not having a lot of friends if I am going to consciously choose alone time over meeting people.  There is also a possibility that I choose alone time over meeting people because I am afraid of interacting and being hurt.

Strength is another card that makes a lot of sense in this reading as I am a very strong and fierce individual and I don’t need a lot of help navigating life.  Additionally, because I am afraid of meeting people, I often choose to be strong and just get things done versus asking for help.  I can never be disappointed and have people say no if I never ask.

One of the things that I am realizing as I mature and heal is that I sometimes have problems differentiating between illusion and intuition when it is something I have strong feelings about.  The Moon is telling me that because I am terrified of being hurt either intentionally or unintentionally, I an convince myself that my intuition is telling me I should not do something when in reality it is my fear.

These cards were really spot on and they are forcing me to look at how my fear is manifesting itself in my life and how I’m using a lot of excuses to prevent myself from meeting people.

Shadow Work–Day 13

How does my shadow influence how I see other people?

Not sure why the cards told me to draw four cards for this question

Warrior Three tells me I like to be distant from other people.  I either like to be the center of attention or I like to be on the sidelines.  I don’t like to let people in.  I also like it when we are focused on an activity or something and not on each other.  This pretty much sums up who I am.  Everyone things I’m a very gregarious extrovert because I do well in work situations where we are interacting with a goal in mind.  We are working as a team to accomplish something and I do great in those situations.  It is interacting with people in more casual and relaxed settings that I struggle with.

Dancer Princess tells me that I see other people as being better able to relax and play than I am.  I see myself as consigned to a life of drudgery while everyone else gets to have fun.  That may just be a reflection of where I’m at right now as I’m sitting here working at 10 pm and my cohorts have all logged off.  I’m feeling a little resentful about that right now.

The High Priestess is another card that tells me I like to view people from a distance and set myself apart.  Sometimes I see them through a veil as if they aren’t really existing on the same plane of existence that I’m on.

The Moon is the card that leaped out of the deck last and it reiterates the message above that I see people from a distance and almost as if through a veil.  The Moon tells me that I see their reflections and don’t truly see them.  It is almost as if I don’t see them as fully formed, but see them as existing only in relation to me.

These messages are really profound, but it is going to take me some time to reflect on them as they are incredibly deep.

Shadow Work–Day 9

How does the shadow of past relationships influence current relationships?

The Star tells me that every person I meet will be measured against X and they most likely will come up short.  The problem is that my relationship with X while deep and emotionally intense, was not a full time in your face kind of relationship.  We never lived together, had kids together, fought over bills, etc.  We got to go out and have fun and be on our best behavior.  Ironically, one of the things I always get pissy about when John talks about how wonderful his girlfriends are is that he never was married to them, was poor with them, etc.  I guess I’m being kind of hypocritical because I’m measuring everyone I meet against the same kind of standard.  The other thing the star tells me is that because deep within my soul there is a little part of me that still wants to have a relationship with X, that hope stands in my way of future relationships.
The Magician, in this instance, is a charlatan and someone who is all smoke and mirrors and not who he appears to be.  John was definitely a charlatan.  When I met him he was in program and I truly thought that he believed in the 12 steps and was truly walking the walk.  However, once we moved in together, I realized that he was paying the steps lip service and that he really just wanted to be a party boy.  He also told me that he wanted someone who would walk beside him and be his partner.  He said he didn’t want someone who walked in the shadows.  However, when we were together that changed and he was constantly trying to take me down a peg.  I’m afraid of getting involved with someone else only to find out that they are also a fraud.
Dreamer Ten reminds me of drowning in my own blood and not being able to see straight because of the pain that is just pouring off of me.  I am afraid of meeting and getting into a relationship with someone else because I am afraid that I would not be able to stand having my heart broken again.  It hurt so bad and I literally felt like I was crying blood because of my heart ache.  I keep people at arm’s length because I am terrified of being hurt again.
These are intensely powerful cards and I can feel the heaviness rolling off of them.  There is a part of me that says how will I ever trust someone enough to get into a relationship with all of this baggage hanging over my head.

Shadow Work–Day 8

How does my shadow react when I am untrusting?



The fool jumps off a cliff when I am untrusting as if pushing me to trust, trust, trust.  I also find that when I am untrusting, I am put in situations where I have no choice but to trust.  That is pretty true for me as I took a new job last year doing organizational change management, but while we are selling OCM, I have to be billable so I have been doing project management work for the last year and that has been incredibly hard for me because I do not have the skills to do all the work myself and I have had to trust my team to do the work for me.  Although there have been a few bumps along the way, ultimately the team delivered.

Dancer Four tells me that when I am untrusting, I start to spend too much time looking inward and examining my own soul without liking what I find.  When I am untrusting, I start to see everyone else as other instead of seeing our similarities.  Dreamer Four also tells me that when I an untrusting, I don’t see the help that is all around me and I reject people. 

When I am untrusting of the world at large, I will often find one or two people that I do trust and become obsessive with them.  Dancer Prince speaks of this obsession as he peers fearfully from behind the tree and watches the world as if it is a dark and scary place.  Being untrusting means that I am coming from a place of fear and I divide the world into “Us and Them.” 

All in all, my shadow starts indulging in bad and fearful behavior as a reminder that I need to open my heart once again.  I have to be honest and say that I am so flipping sick of hearing that I need to open my heart.  It seems that the cards tell me that constantly to the point I just don’t want to hear it anymore.

Shadow Work–Day 6

How does a lover’s shadow influence my shadow?

Pan tells me that my lover’s shadow is in part about indulgence and drunken lust and that is very true.  My ex was all about indulgence and having a good time.  He was someone who didn’t want to be responsible, but always wanted to have a good time and he always wanted me to be at his side.  It was as if he did not understand that I had responsibilities and when I had to be up early, I did not want to be out until 3 am partying.  When we were first together, I’d let him lead me down that garden path, but then I grew up and became…

The Elder who tells me that I realized I had responsibilities in life and that if I wanted to be successful, I had to fulfill those responsibilities and could not do that if I was out partying.  The Elder is also about tradition and ritual and studying and doing the work.  The Elder is about doing the work required for initiation and not just stepping up and getting it handed to us.  Oddly this card resonates with me for another reason as well as my ex always accused me of getting my degree handed to me and not working for it.  While it is true that my parents paid for my degree, it is also true that I worked hard for everything I had and I continue to work hard for my success.

Warrior Six tells me that my ex was all about the adulation and the accolades and not about doing the work and that’s true.  I always wrote for the sheer joy of writing, but his focus on writing was selling and I didn’t like to write just to sell.  I’ve realized that I write as a form of catharsis.  It is about putting my story down on paper.  Sometimes I’d turn my stories into fiction because it was less painful for fictional characters to deal with my pain than it was to acknowledge the pain as mine.  My ex is all about the victory lap and he’s also all about using people to share their glory.  He was horrible to our kids, but he loved to brag about them.

Shadow Work–Day 1

This work is part of the Shadow Work series from the International Tarot Foundation’s Shadow Work Series.

What parts of my shadow manifest in my relationships?



Dreamer Ten tells me that I bring my depression and spilling my guts.  When I’m in a relationship I have a tendency to emotionally bleed all over the other person and spill my guts.  That’s really true for me and it is something I’ve been working on as I’ve learned that being open and honest with another person doesn’t mean holding them hostage and doesn’t give me the right to spill everything and bring them down.  It is okay to gain support from others, but i can’t drown them in my emotional ick.

Dancer Three tells me that I bring a sense of joy and happiness to relationships.  It isn’t all drowning
in my emotional soup, I also bring a sense of friendship.  This card tells me more than anything that I do want my significant other to be a friend as well as a lover.  Although on the surface, this sounds very positive, there is some emotional baggage here as when I was married I believed wholeheartedly that my spouse should be my best friend, but my ex didn’t feel that way and it hurt.  To a certain extent, that leaves me afraid to open my heart up and be vulnerable.

Maker Queen tells me I have the ability to heal my shadow side.  I need to trust in my nurturing instinct and my ability to heal myself as well as others.

Overall, these were incredibly accurate and powerful cards.