Swedish Death Cleansing has been in the news a lot lately and it has piqued my interest because of childhood memories of cleaning out houses and apartments after elderly relatives have died. It is really not fun to go through someone else’s stuff that they cherished and decide who gets it, whether it is worthy of being donated, or whether it should go in the dumpster. It’s not fair to leave boxes and boxes of stuff for someone else to clean out so I’ve decided to work on cleaning out my own stuff. Deciding to pare down on books has been easy, the kitchenware and Christmas stuff will be split up when my kids move out so I’m not worried about that, but what to do with my tarot journals has been a challenge especially when I realized that I’d be generating at least 12 sketch pads and 4 larger journals each year. That’s a lot of paper.
Tarot and Swedish Death Cleansing
Around the time I was contemplating Swedish Death Cleansing, I came across some stories online about the worst/saddest/most disturbing thing people had learned about family members and invariably some of these horrible things were learned when I people read someone’s journal after they had died. I made the decision then and there that I did not want my kids reading my raw and unadulterated journals after I died, not because I had big secrets to hide, but because I didn’t want them to read something nasty I’d written about them and be devastated. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids dearly, but like everyone else on the planet, they sometimes do really annoying things ad sometimes I write about it.
Deciding I didn’t want my kids to read my raw journals after I died and actually doing something about it were two different things because I have no idea when I’m going to die and I can’t exactly control what people do after I’m gone. I also don’t want to stop journaling for fear of possibly offending someone.
I had originally decided against posting my daily draws on Tarot of Change because they were personal guidance given to me and weren’t really for public consumption. However, I decided to go back to the original definition of what a Blog was: a Web Log. Blogs were originally online journals or diaries where people shared their thoughts. However, the more I thought of it I realized that maybe there was a way to have the best of both worlds: I could continue journaling offline, but transcribe my journals online on a regular basis. This would allow me to clean up and remove anything hurtful, but would still let me keep the essence of my journal intact.
The other decision I made was that even though I’m posting a sanitized version of my daily draws online, they are still mine and are written to record my journey. If someone else happens to stumble across my blog and learn from it, that’s awesome, but that’s not the intent. As I said in an earlier post, I’m not a role model and I’m done trying to be one. I’m willing to help people and guide them, but I’m living my life for me and me alone.
Cairn by Cairn 