Embrace Your Rituals: How Tarot and Poetry Helped Me Heal My Grief
Allow me to get personal, community.
If you know me through Instagram or The Poetry Lab, you know I’m a spiritualist. I have been a witchy soul since childhood, when I first started channeling the dead and consulting oracles. I have mumbled incantations over my morning coffee for actual decades. My bra and pockets are laden with crystals when I leave the house.
Tarot + Writing as Ritual Work
I often incorporate spiritual tools and practices into my writing. Typically, I use tarot as a tool for reflection in both poetry and nonfiction (see my previous TPL article for more ↗). The cards lend clarity when I’m processing my emotions or challenge me to reframe my perspective.
I also love drawing inspiration from the major arcana for characters when I write fiction. I’ll even do full readings to map out a plot when I feel stagnant.
Just as my spiritual practices inform my writing, so too does my writing inform my spiritual and emotional well-being. I have always written my way through my experiences and my feelings: it’s a process that is both cathartic and clarifying.
Consider shadow work, for example. Shadow work is the process of exploring our unconscious fears, desires, etc., and healing/integrating those aspects with our conscious self. A great deal of shadow work comes in the form of journal prompts, where we are asked to reflect on our triggers, beliefs, and such. This type of journaling directly impacts our spiritual and emotional health! (Stay tuned for how shadow work and creative writing can work together in an upcoming article I’m working on!)
Tarot and the Grieving Heart
(Trigger warning: Death)
Now let’s get really personal, dear reader. I invite you to walk with me for a while on my grieving journey.
In March of 2023, I lost my mother and brother a week apart. Both deaths were unexpected and—without delving into the details—tragic beyond words. About two weeks later, my husband and I moved with our young child halfway across the country to a state I’d never even visited.
At that point, I was just a few days shy of my thirty-seventh birthday. In my almost four decades, I’ve experienced great upheavals and life-altering changes—some for the good, some for the bad, some planned, some unavoidable.
Yet nothing I’d lived through thus far prepared me for the unfathomable depths of grief I found myself drowning in day and night—none of my traumas nor my years of therapy.
When my mother and brother died, I turned to my tarot cards to try to reach them, but not with a proper reading, not with neatly arranged cards or any sense of purpose.
Instead I flung out questions wildly and pulled cards at random. I asked the same endless questions of my pendulum when I needed just a quick yes or no, in a moment of panic or despair—Are they okay? Can they hear me? Can they see me? Why did they both have to die? Are you there, Mom?
Some days I received clarity. Most days, my deck gave me only nonsense, my pendulum spun senselessly.
Yet even on the days where my deck seemed to help me, I lingered on the surface with my questions. I didn’t try to scry the inner landscape of my grief. Despite the fact that I had at that point long used tarot as a way to seek clarity in my writing and as a way to reflect on my emotions, I had never used it to process something as heavy as the grief that was consuming me last year. Something I had done so many times—whether from a place of calm or while in an anxious headspace—seemed somehow trivial in the face of such tragedy.
I needed to take my grief more seriously than that, I told myself; I needed to sort through my emotions unaided, without tools or tricks; I needed to bleed poetry straight from my veins.
Poetry and Prose as Grief Work
As April 2023 gave way to May—my mother’s favorite month—I turned to writing.
I vomited my emotions onto the page. Some days, the words flowed freely; other days, they caught like jagged glass in my throat.
Writing helped me process what I was feeling at that time, allowing me to go deeper into my emotions than my tarot cards had. Some poems emerged fully formed, raw and powerful; so, too, did a couple of essays and the start of a novella. But most of what I wrote during that initial period was little more than chaos and noise, a riot of color and confusion.
But eventually, I burned out. My tarot deck did not give me my mother’s number in the afterlife. My poetry started to become repetitive. My nonfiction grew disjointed, my fiction stalled out. And my grief kept growing.
Embracing the Ritual of Grief
Towards the end of summer 2023, a friend asked me to do a reading for them. I had not done a proper reading in months, not for myself or for anyone else—and by “proper,” I mean a reading where I set out each card with intention to answer a specific question, either as part of a traditional tarot spread or as part of a spread of my own creation. At that point, I was still just flinging random cards in desperation, into the chasm inside of my heart.
But my friend’s situation was urgent enough that I felt called to help, and so I read for her.
The reading was no great triumph or revelation, yet my friend took such comfort in the cards, gained such confidence in her understanding of herself. She set a course forward based on that small moment of reflection.
That night, I did a reading for myself—a real reading, with an intentional flow and proper reflection, not just a barrage of disjointed questions with no true answers. I designed a grief spread and dove headfirst into that dark water.
Did I emerge whole and healed? Fuck no. Did I find clarity? Not exactly. But the reading was cathartic. I had sat often with my grief before that night; I had held my mother’s ashes and literally howled at the moon more than once. I’d let myself feel everything, from despair to rage and back again. But despite all of the conversations with loved ones and all of the books and articles I had read, I had somehow never been able to get outside of my grief and look at it from different angles—until I did that reading.
You may recall that I consider myself a lifelong spiritualist. Yet despite this decades-long affinity for the spiritual, I did not give myself permission to lean into my rituals in the face of my grief. For reasons that still elude me, I felt I had to brave it naked and alone, stripped down to the barest version of myself.
But after that night, my perspective shifted drastically. I reconnected with my witchiest self. I bought new crystals to address the pain of loss. I lit my best candles to petition gods old and new for peace. I channeled my mother and brother.
Slowly but surely, I turned my spiritual lens to my writing once more. Specifically, I worked with my tarot deck to refine the raw material I had created in the early stages of my grief and to inspire new material.
Tarot Prompts for Processing Emotions and Writing Poetry
Tarot can be used in an infinite number of creative ways, but typically I use one of two methods:
🔸 Single-Card Reflection: Reflection involves choosing one card (either at random or on purpose) and meditating on its meaning.
What questions does the card bring to mind? What emotions does it conjure? Does the card trigger you in any way? How can you connect the card’s meaning(s) to what you are personally experiencing?
The answers you gain from reflection on a card can help you to process your emotions—and they can also serve as the seeds for your writing as you delve deeper into your experience.
🔸 Tarot Spread: A tarot spread is simply a way of giving shape and direction to a tarot reading. Rather than pulling a single card in response to an individual question, you can choose a spread that has predefined positions for each card you pull. This allows you to approach one overarching question from multiple angles.
As a very basic example, let’s say you want to ask why you’re struggling creatively. This would be your overarching question. You might then choose a three-card spread where the first card represents the root of the problem, the second card represents the solution, and the third card represents the possible outcome.
There are countless spreads you can use for reading tarot. I’m a big fan of traditional spreads, but I also encourage creating unique spreads that are tailored to your specific situation or query.
Today, I’d like to share two cards that I have reflected on during my grief journey as well as a simple spread for processing emotions.
Reflection #1: Death
This might seem like an obvious choice, but the Death card isn’t really about death in the way you might be thinking (although, yes, it can signify actual death). In the upright position, the Death card represents change, transformation, endings, and release. In the reverse, it can signify fear of/resistance to change, negative patterns, stagnation, or internal change.
When you reflect on these meanings, which one most resonates with you, for the good or the bad? What memories, emotions, or experiences come to mind? Do any of the meanings make you uncomfortable? If so, why?
Some additional questions you might ask yourself:
What transitions am I currently going through?
How has this experience (loss, change, etc.) changed me personally?
What am I most afraid of during this transformation?
What do I need to change in my current situation?
How is resisting change blocking me?
Reflection # 2: Ten of Cups
This is one of my favorite tarot cards. In the upright, the Ten of Cups signifies reunion, harmony, positive relationships, stability, fulfillment, and alignment. In the reverse, it can represent disharmony, isolation, and disconnection.
Questions to reflect on:
What would bring the most harmony to my life right now?
How am I currently not aligned with my values or higher self?
Where do I find fulfillment?
How can I cultivate a sense of connection or community?
And some questions specific to loss or grief:
If I could reunite with my loved one, what would I most want to tell them? What would I want to hear?
How can I feel connected to my loved one?
What can I do to fill the space left in my heart?
Tarot Spread for Difficult Emotions
Please note that while I used this particular spread for grief, you can apply it to any emotions you’re struggling to process.
Suggested query: How can I move through what I am currently feeling?
Card #1: What is the root cause of the emotion?
With some situations, this might seem like a question you already know the answer to. I’m sad because my mom and brother died, right? Well, yes—and yet, death is a natural part of life, something that comes for us all. What is the deeper root of my grief? (My grief has many roots, as it turns out—your emotions might, too.)
Card #2: What can I learn from what I’m feeling?
Not every situation teaches us a lesson. There isn’t a “silver lining” to everything we go through. But often, we can discover new perspectives by sitting with a difficult emotion, ones that help us in the present moment and in the future. Sometimes we unearth startling revelations when we stare down our emotions—revelations that end up changing our whole trajectory.
Card #3: What do I need to release?
Some emotions only serve us for a brief time. Grief is a great example of this, in my experience. Grieving is a necessary part of loss, one that can be staggering in its intensity. But that bone-shattering, world-ending grief that first hits you after a loss cannot continue forever—not if you’re going to survive.
Over time, life grows around the grief, making it feel smaller and more manageable. And perhaps we never release the grief itself—mine is always with me, to be sure. But what about the other emotions that come along with grief? The confusion, the anger, the fear? If those emotions no longer serve you, it’s time to let them go.
Through reflections and tarot spreads, I have discovered a deeper, more nuanced understanding of my grief. I have come to see the ways that my losses have forever changed me, in ways both expected and strange. I have come to accept certain truths that I previously shied away from.
By holding up to the light every emotion—no matter how fleeting or how persistent—I have found myself better able to articulate my experience. This, in turn, has allowed me to find the true poetry in the tumult of raw emotion, to isolate my unique experience from the truisms of loss. I’ve found my voice again. I’ve found the throughline to guide me forward.
Find Your Rituals—and Embrace Them
Tarot may or may not be a tool that helps you when it comes to writing or processing your emotions and experiences. I would encourage you to explore your rituals, whether they’re ones you take for granted, ones you cultivate with great intention, or ones you have yet to discover. And when the hard times hit—when your emotions run high, when despair pulls you under, when the unexpected lands on your doorstep without invitation—lean into those rituals. Write through what you’re feeling—but don’t expect pure genius to emerge in your first (or fiftieth) draft every time.
Let the emotions crash over you in waves—but don’t think it makes you a braver or better person to stand alone before that terrifying onslaught.
Embrace your rituals. Don’t forsake the things that help you just because they pale next to the current moment. And if you discover new rituals along the way? Please, share them with me—I am still learning, too.
This article was published on July 4, 2024. Written by:
