How I Started Reading Tarot for Myself
Tired of my career, burned out, and searching for a different path
I messaged my singing teacher because I wouldn’t be able to attend our online class. It was almost 8 PM, and my workload was insane due to the pandemic. Such a shame to miss it! I was home, in front of the computer. Not only home, but stuck in the apartment.
The client had requested an emergent meeting that day, and I had to skip my online (!) singing classes, which really grounded me in reality. After the scariest panic attack I’d ever had, reality was serious shit.
But what could I do?
My job had become a toxic roommate, and I couldn’t leave the apartment. Life had turned into a workaholic rollercoaster—some days up, working normally; other days a speedy downhill into my bed, opening Women Who Run with the Wolves at random, searching for a sign to blow everything up: quit this job and follow the white rabbit down an uncertain path.
It felt like I was always at work and the book never said anything. Instead of flipping the table, I bought a tarot deck. The traditional version, with Pamela Colman Smith drawings. Major arcana only. I devoured videos, websites, podcasts, and books about the cards. In a month or so, I was already reading the cards for myself and close friends.
I was begging for a massive shift in my life, but it took me years to quit that job, and the next, and the next. Tarot never told me what to do, but showed me what was already dead, rotten. It became that friend who raises an eyebrow whenever you’re sabotaging yourself. When I refused to accept the truth, or just couldn’t understand, it kept mirroring it until I got it.
Spread by spread, the arcana became a language for my intuition and a powerful tool that takes my journaling to the next level. Tarot spreads and journaling prompts are absolutely interchangeable.
We have to be mindful about the readings, but when all hell breaks loose, I get desperate for answers, too. I’ve been there trying to force questions that aren’t available yet or asking the same question over and over. When it happens, tarot spots my anxiety and tells me to pause and breathe. I’ve seen the High Priestess come repeatedly in these cases, or the Tower hanging up the phone on me. I think it’s synchronicity. Or maybe my molecules develop a quantum relationship with the cards. Maybe it’s a spirit, my ancestors, a Goddess. It doesn’t matter.
Years passed; I quit not only that job but also changed careers and rewrote my default settings. Tarot now has a permanent place in my self-knowledge toolkit, and what started as a guilty curiosity has become a serious hobby. Along with journaling, the cards naturally draw me to create—and, above all, to write
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Love this. I have two decks. One I started with where I used to just pick and read what the guide book said. That also was very informative but recently I have been going free hand with the Motherpeace deck. Look forward to joining and learning new intuitive ways to grow self trust ✨🪻