Fire: A Reading to
Light the Way
Of the elements in this book, fire is the only one that is outside of us, except for cases of spontaneous combustion. We hold earth in our bones, water in our blood, air in our lungs, and spirit in our soul. That fire, though, is tricky. It flickers and dances around us. Is it the spark of life? Is it an external flame that draws us close? I’ve connected it with body in this book because to me, fire is the thing that makes us dance. Think of all the expressions: We light up. She’s got fire in her eyes. Someone is all fired up and ready to go. And oooooh, they are hot.
Fire
Body
Remember that fire can create as well as destroy. It is transformative, turning wood into ash and darkness into light. It is the only element that we create ourselves. It warms our food and our bodies and can cause excitement or terror. From the smallest spark of hope to a raging inferno, fire is best when it’s in our control. When we tame it and give it specific boundaries, fire can enhance and brighten our lives. When we lose control is when it either goes out or consumes us.
This lines up with our bodies as well. When we are focused and care for them, we can be strong and lithe. We can sleep soundly and feel good most of the time. We can meet the challenges that face us without worrying about losing our breath or our strength. It’s when that control slips that we run into problems.
Let’s call the day-to-day a brightly burning fireplace fire. It has a place to grow, has food to feed it, and gives us heat and light without making us afraid. Fire represents our energy source and the expression of that energy. Physically, either you’re able to walk for as long as you’d like, bend over comfortably, and rely on your body to get you where you need to go, or you might have a disability and employ the use of a wheelchair or other supportive tech to help you get around—if you can physically do what you want to do during the day, this applies to you.
When we start to run down, the flames can die down to embers. Once you’re an ember, it’s hard to build back up to a flame. When we think about the body, this would be represented in someone who has been unwell or has been unwilling or unable to move their body in the way they want. The day starts with an assessment of wellness and ability. It usually starts with a to-do list: I need to go shopping, mail some things, clean the house, and do laundry. As you assess your physical, just-woke-up self, things start dropping off that list. I’ve heard this called the “spoon theory” when applied to emotional well-being. I like to think of my physical reserve of energy as a gas tank.
Keep a journal of your percentages of how you’re feeling each day. Wake up and assess: if you’re at 20 percent, you don’t do the things that will take up all your strength. If the next day you’re at 60 percent, take a stab at some of the more difficult tasks. After a while, you’ll have a chart of the things you can do during your high-percentage days. This way, you won’t wear yourself out on 20-percent days and you won’t beat yourself up for those things you just don’t have energy for.
Rekindling your physical energy can be difficult, but if you properly assess your abilities, you’ll find that your expectations will easily match your abilities after a while. The key is to accept where you are—right now—and move on from there, without blaming yourself or over- or underestimating yourself.
In a spiritual journey, it’s easy sometimes to forget that you’re dragging a meat suit along with you. You want to do all the things your spirit calls for you to do, but your back hurts and it’s easier to hang out on the couch and binge Broad City. Fire is the element that pulls you to action. I’ve found in the readings that I give that a lot of people have an imbalance in mind, body, and spirit. They’re either super stimulated intellectually and have a robust spiritual life but no way to exercise their bodies, or they’re firing on all cylinders intellectually and physically but have no spiritual activity.
I didn’t grow up exercising. I mean, we rode bikes and ran around the neighborhood, but I had asthma and didn’t like high school sports. Or other sports. My idea of exercising was carrying the hardcover copy of Stephen King’s It to and from school so I could read it during lunch. It has been a challenge to bring that energy into my life. Having that balance, though, is so helpful.
I’m talking a lot about myself and my own personal experiences in this book, which makes it a little vulnerable. It also makes it really True—like, capital T True—and really honest. This chapter is about having broken parts and then figuring out how to help them (and you) heal. If you are content with the skin you’re in, excellent. Skip this section and move on to water.
I became a mom in 2004. I’ve always been a healthy gal with good breeding hips, and I didn’t have many physical ailments. I’m clumsy as hell, so I’d broken bones and every single toe at least twice, but overall, no worries. When I became pregnant, I was so tired. All the research I did said that tired was normal, so I thought nothing of it when I would come home from work, sleep until 8 p.m., wake up, eat, and sleep until 7 a.m. Almost every day in the first three months. Tired was normal, right?
What I didn’t know was that I had diabetes insipidus. My body wasn’t getting rid of water like it was supposed to. I kept getting bigger, I was drinking water like crazy, and I was about to suffer multisystem organ failure while delivering my daughter.
Oh, and I was dying. They couldn’t treat me aggressively or they’d risk hurting my baby, so they were trying to figure out how to get me to carry her to term. She was almost two months early. That’s when her heart stopped.
I’ve never seen people move that quickly before. Within minutes, I was in an operating room being prepped for a C-section. By this time, my lucid moments were few and far between. One minute I was begging for ice chips or water and teasing my doctor about his hair, and then I started blacking out. I’d overheard two people talking about “extracting the baby,” which they don’t do when the mom is alive, so I knew I was probably going to die. I didn’t know if I was going to get to see my daughter first, though, and that really bothered me. I held on as best as I could until I saw her sweet, scrunched up, pissed off little face, and then I went away.
It’s a very strange thing to go away like that. I felt like I would either wake up later or wake up somewhere else, and I was really fine with either. I got to see my Monkey. I knew her dad and our families would take care of her, and it was okay.
I did wake up, thank goodness, to the news that in addition to the baby, they had drained seven gallons of fluid from my body, using the medicine they couldn’t while she was still in there. The baby was perfectly healthy, if tiny, and I would eventually be healthy, too.
Becoming healthy was a struggle because I was so tired. I wasn’t allowed to carry the baby around, so I spent a lot of time on the floor with her. It wasn’t bad, but it was different. I couldn’t clean my house. I wasn’t able to spend time with my friends. I just couldn’t. Someone else had to clean my house. God, the humility that hit me was palpable. My then mother-in-law cleaned for me, and I pretended to nap with the baby while crying my eyes out, embarrassed that I couldn’t do it myself.
Now, thirteen years later, I’m revisiting this hot-faced shame with a critical eye. I nearly died. A few times, actually, and had just had a painful C-section. OF COURSE I COULDN’T CLEAN THE HOUSE. No kidding. But do you think I believed that then? Nope. I felt like I was lazy and ungrateful and demanding. I was raised that you clean your own messes and you just handle things. Now I can look back and I wonder how I didn’t lose my mind in addition to my physical strength.
I got a little better, day by day, and was able to go back to work after two months or so, but it was hard. I was still so tired all the time, and when I came back from work, I wanted to spend time with my new little family. Then there was laundry. There was always laundry. It was so overwhelming.
Then, because who doesn’t love a plot twist, I got pregnant when my daughter was ten months old. I had just gotten back to feeling like myself, and my son—this determined little soul—clearly heard me and his dad talking about vasectomies and snuck in right under the wire, in spite of two forms of birth control being in use. My son is not a miracle baby. He’s a goddamned ninja.
We decided to keep the baby, and my doctor said, “The odds of contracting diabetes insipidus again are slim to none.” That was accurate. I did not get diabetes insipidus again.
I got kidney failure, kidney stones, liver failure, pregnancy-
related tachycardia, and sepsis. I also had a nursing toddler at home with me part time and was trying to clean and upkeep my house, too. While I was dying of sepsis and working forty hours a week. They couldn’t lock the kidney infection and sepsis down entirely because the antibiotics needed would have hurt the baby. Sepsis has a 60 percent fatality rate. I had it at least six times. I literally lost count. I’m not sure of the math on this, but it seems like I had at least a 360 percent chance of dying, and I was worried about the laundry. I also couldn’t nurse anymore because of the medication I had to take to get rid of the sepsis, and, of course, felt like a failure here as well.
I eventually recovered from this early birth, too. My son is awesome. He is a happy teenager now and worth every percentage of almost dying and then some. I was left, though, with not just another amazing kid, but with kidney stones every three months or so. For ten years. This caused my back muscles to scrunch up so much that I had chronic back pain and my hips to become misaligned. The pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure from my first pregnancy contributed to my developing a pretty nasty case of asthma. Other than that, though, I’m golden.
All this physical trauma and the thing that I keep coming back to is that I was embarrassed I couldn’t clean my house. I was embarrassed that laundry wasn’t finished or that dishes weren’t done. I felt like my disability (I didn’t even call it that) was keeping me from doing my Job. My Job, you guys, was to not die. To raise my kids. To heal. I couldn’t see that, though, because of whatever nonsense I’d absorbed over the years about what a wife and mother should be doing. My day-to-day responsibilities completely overshadowed how sick I really was.
What I needed to do, and what I need you to do, is meet yourself where you are. Right now. I kept holding myself to the expectations set by the physical performance of yester-me. I could rollerblade in the past (shut up, it was the ’90s). I could go up the stairs without losing my breath. I could even run. I could stand at the sink and wash dishes without my incision pulling and my back screaming in agony. I could—in the past—do those things. I couldn’t right after the babies. I still can’t stand for very long because of my back and, you guessed it, I’m still embarrassed when I have to ask for a chair.
I am, however, less embarrassed than I used to be. I’ve gotten to a pretty good place with who I am now and how my body moves, but it was not always that way. The weight that I couldn’t get rid of was no small part of this. Two babies in seventeen months and about three years of really, really slow physical movements left me overweight. The asthma makes it hard to exercise. Even if I eat a piece of lettuce every day, I’m going to be heavy until my body heals more and I’m able to move it more often. This me, right here? This is perfect. I can now see myself as perfect, just as I am. I will continue to try to become healthier, but I’m sure as hell not going to waste my life holding out for “when I’m thinner, I will …” That day might never come. The day that I’m strong enough, skinny enough, whatever enough might not come at all, and I will have wasted all that potential happiness by beating myself up because it’s not here yet.
I tell you this. I might not be society’s physical ideal of woman, but I am here. And I am strong. And I am enough.
We need to get you to the place where you feel like enough, too.
There are a lot of body-related issues that I’ve dealt with in the fire reading. I’ve talked with people about disability, unhappiness with their weight at either end of the spectrum, body strength, gender transitions, or just a general “meh” unhappiness about the size of their belly. This reading is not about what other people think of your body. This is about you and what you think about your body. If we can get to the place where you feel solidly in your skin—where you feel present and engaged and in control—whatever your challenge is, you will have a sturdy place from which to face it.
I want you to get to a place where you can look in the mirror and say, “Okay. This is me. I am here. The alternative to being here sucks, so let’s do this.”
Fire Reading
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Card 1: What gets in your way? Cards 2 and 3: What can you hold on to? Cards 4, 5, and 6: What pulls you forward? |
Fire Reading Example #1: Amy
Amy is in her forties and has a degenerative chronic illness. She is still mobile and is handling changes in her abilities like a champ. She’s figuring out how to exist in her current body. She has a full-time job as well as a family, so the expectations on her are high. She’s anxious about falling. Anxious about the illness speeding up and taking her mobility. Pretty much anxious in general.
Card 1: Five of Cups
What gets in your way?
Remember to give your old heartaches respect and grieve them properly. Honor that time, and then move forward without them. It’s okay to grieve, really. You can miss what you had and mourn what could have been. You can feel sorry for yourself, but you can’t live there. You are seeing the world through lenses of pain and will interpret it incorrectly. If you find yourself here, make only small decisions. Drink some tea. Take a nap. Wait for the pain-shaped hole in you to heal. Let it get to a place where you can breathe without pulling strands of the past into your lungs. Don’t stay in the in-betweens for too long.
Amy’s main problem is fear that she’ll injure herself. She’s been going to physical therapy, but the idea of overdoing it keeps her from doing anything outside of the PT at all. Her main challenge is that she knows she needs to move and is pretty sure she’s able to, but she’s afraid of going backward. This problem started when she fell down the steps and hurt herself pretty badly. She’s recovered just fine, but the fear backs up on her. Instead of working out safely, she decides to watch The Craft for the nine thousandth time. (It is a really good movie, you guys.) Regardless of the anxieties, if Amy wants to maintain her mobility, she has got to get stronger.
Card 2: Seven of Wands
What can you hold on to?
Tenacious. Literally, this exchange, “Are you done being sassy?” “No.” This is the honey badger card of the tarot. Not backing down. Not asking permission. Not going away or sitting down.
Amy’s latent “come at me, bro!” attitude is a major asset. Good luck telling her what to do. If she decides that it’s time to do something, then by God, it’s going to be done. For some reason, she hasn’t yet applied this to her physical self. At all. Ever. As we were doing the reading, it was the first time she’d ever considered it. As we were sitting there, doing this reading, this was literally the first time she’d even considered it. A friend once said that even when she’s down, she comes back up grinning—with blood staining her teeth. Why the hell hasn’t she taken this tenacity with her to maintain her strength?
Card 3: Nine of Pentacles
What can you hold on to?
Appreciation of what you have and fulfillment of your wishes. A time to give thanks and swim around in your happiness for a while. Part of being comfortable in the skin you’re in is moving away from a mindset of scarcity to one of enough. What you have now? Be grateful for it. If you seek more, be grateful for the ability to find it. You have worked hard and you deserve good things. There is no shame or blame in being comfortable. Just remember to help those still on the path.
This is telling Amy that she has the means to hire a trainer to teach her how to work out without hurting herself. Not, like, an everyday trainer (she’s not Oprah rich), but she has enough to have someone show her the best way to get strong and not thrust herself backward into the near-bedridden state she was in. She can also ask her physical therapist for exercises she can do that won’t aggravate her illness.
Card 4: Knight of Cups
What pulls you forward?
Romantic but fickle. Use your heart but keep your head on your shoulders. This knight is sweet and emotional. He can be shy and introverted but is also a flirt. When you get this card, remember that you can keep things light in love. You don’t have to get married after the first date. Have fun and relax.
Amy should continue treating herself with love and respect. She’s accepted the shape that she’s in—mostly. She’s accepting that her mobility will stay about the same as long as she cares for herself. She knows that life is a blessing. And not in the cheesy #blessing #mochalatte sense. It’s a true blessing. Every day that she gets to be here, surrounded by love and her family and friends—my God, she is so blessed. She’s going to continue to honor who she is where she stands. Right here and now. This person is tenacious and bold and strong. She is enough.
She has always been enough. She will always be enough.
Card 5: Ace of Pentacles Reversed
What pulls you forward?
It’s not going to happen. The raise, the new house, the business plan. It’s not going to come to fruition right now. It could be that it’s not time or that you planned poorly. It could be because someone is actively working against you. Whatever it is, you need to walk away from the project and try again another time. Banging yourself against the gate that’s closed against you will only leave you bruised.
She doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t have the knowledge that she needs to take great care of herself, so she needs to go get it. She also doesn’t have to do everything. She can drop the ball sometimes. She needs to be realistic and erase this idea of perfection from her brain. It is absolutely not attainable. She just has to do enough so that she knows she’s working toward her goal. She can be slow about it. She can make space for exercise in her life and let that space grow as she’s able.
Card 6: Six of Wands
What pulls you forward?
Celebration! You did the thing! Well done. Go have a nice dinner. Be gracious, but still accept praise. Don’t slap it away. Just say thank you. Remember to sit still in this moment and actually feel it. Don’t speed into the next goal or spend time regretting what didn’t work out. Just enjoy the thing and don’t let other people cast a shadow on your sunshine, Sunshine. Shine, shine, shine.
And then she triumphs! Legit, this gave her so much hope for the process. The Six of Wands is a card for celebration, and if she can embrace this as her future, she will be able to embrace the possibility of looking and feeling on the outside like she does on the inside. In her head, she’s already the image of perfection. Just gotta get in gear in real life to keep this vessel strong. She has a lot to do.
Summary
Amy has this in the bag. She just needs to apply this hard-earned work ethic to herself instead of just her work, family, and home.
Fire Reading Example #2: Renee
Renee is fifty years old and looks thirty. She takes excellent care of herself and is looking for advice regarding keeping her health foremost in her mind (and also how to quit jogging because she hates it). She is recovering from surgery and always has that in the back of her head.
Card 1: The Tower
What gets in your way?
Everything is going to fall down. It needs to. This doesn’t mean you have to be buried under it. Sometimes things need to fall so new things can grow. Batten down the hatches, and collar those new emotions that come with change and inspect them. Make sure they’re yours and you’re not borrowing stress. Sometimes you need to set the past on fire and let it light the way to the future. It’s not comfortable, but it’s a lot more comfortable than cuddling up with decay. Get in right relations with the things that serve you so you can move forward with alacrity.
Renee is in great shape but had some health problems and surgeries that slowed her down. She has to realize that the person she is now is not the same person who went into those surgeries. The person who came out can’t run like she used to without causing more damage than benefits. She has to plan a workout that allows her to stay in shape without the impact that her old training caused. Pilates came to mind. The Tower says that we have to rebuild, so let’s do it right.
Card 2: The Magician
What can you hold on to?
Have confidence. You have all the tools you need to get ahead. Make it happen. You put in the time. You are experienced. You are talented. You’ve got secrets up your sleeves, and in your pockets, and behind your back. Now is the time to act like the expert you are and stop hiding behind false modesty. There is a difference between confidence and arrogance. Find it.
Renee has friends who teach Pilates! She’s got the drive and the motivation to change up her exercise regime but hasn’t considered it. Remember that the way you have done things in the past isn’t necessarily the way you should do them now.
Card 3: Ace of Wands
What can you hold on to?
Move. The universe is giving you a window for action. Take it. It only takes one match to light a fire. Whether that’s a controlled burn or a wildfire is up to you. This is the universe’s hand on the small of your back, urging you forward. Sometimes it shoves you. Move forward with confidence. Know that you’re where you are for a reason. If you grow roots at the starting gate, the finish line will never come closer.
Renee can be lazy. There, I said it. She’s used to not having to earn her healthy body. It was just there. Functional and beautiful and exactly what she wanted. As she gets older and has had surgery, she can’t bounce back like she used to. Her option is to move, move, move.
Card 4: Ace of Swords
What pulls you forward?
Follow your great idea. You’re being given inspiration. The aces are the heart of their suit. The Ace of Swords is the brain of the tarot. Allow yourself to be inspired and enlightened. Be open to influences and your muse and be sure to follow this fantastic head start to its (already lucky) conclusion.
Renee is a smart woman and knows intellectually what she needs to do. She might be worrying a little more than necessary when the tools are right in front of her. She would benefit from writing out a training program that incorporates several types of exercise that won’t bore her to tears.
Card 5: Nine of Swords
What pulls you forward?
Anxiety lives here. Remember that stupid thing that you did in 2001? Well, so does your brain, and it’s going to mess with you every now and again to remind you of it. The fix for this is remember how much further along you’ve come since then. If I am in an anxious place, the anxieties that rush in mostly have nothing to do with reality. It’s hard to discern what is real and what is just your brain poking at you. Luckily, you can rationalize your way out of this and stab your brain with Q-tips if necessary.
Similar to Amy, Renee is worried about reinjuring herself. She’s hesitant to move forward with exercises she’s unfamiliar with. This is where her trainer friends come in. Fear is a really powerful obstacle. She needs to allow people who have studied the body to advise her on hers.
Card 6: The Wheel of Fortune
What pulls you forward?
Either you’ll ride the top of the wheel or go to the shadow side for a while. Remember that you’re in charge of how you behave regardless of where the wheel takes you. There is power in knowing where you stand. There is value in all these positions. The only constant is change, so if you’re being smushed into puddin’ by life right now, wait till you feel the weight to start to lift and scramble to get back on top.
In order to maintain her good health and her peace of mind, Renee needs to combine several workout plans throughout her days, including meditation and some group activities—maybe a hiking club? Getting in a rut is counterintuitive for her as a person and would slow down her progress.
Summary
Renee has recovered from her surgery but needs to believe that she’s okay. She needs to stir up the routine that she’s been in since her thirties and adapt it to something more interesting and accessible to the amazing fifty-year-old she’s become. There is no reason her health should move backward, and the only obstacles she needs to be aware of are boredom and anxiety. She’s got this.
Exercise
Light a candle for ambiance, babies. This is going to be fun.
Lie down on the floor and stretch your body. Each arm, each leg. Sloooowly stretch. Don’t hurt yourself; do what you can. I want you to really pay attention to your body. Stretch your feet and each toe. Stretch your hands and fingers. Your neck and back. When you’re ready, slooooowly sit up. Sit as close to crisscross-applesauce as you can comfortably. Place your hands on your knees and tilt your chin to the sky. Stretch your spine and neck. Rotate your head gently.
To help pay attention, name the parts of your body as you stretch them. When you’re ready, stand up and reach your hands as high in the air as you can. Slowly, with intent. After you’re all stretched out, go for a walk (blow out the candle first) for as long as you’re comfortable. If you aren’t able to walk, go sit outside.
On your walk, I want you to think about your body. I want you to remember every decade you’ve spent in it. All the surgeries, stretch marks, and scars. Really see how far you’ve come since childhood. Acknowledge and offer gratitude for being able to walk as far as you can. I can walk for about twenty minutes before Auntie Asthma comes to knock me over, but that’s twenty minutes longer than I could last year. I want you to do an assessment of this amazing body you have. Then, when you’re ready, come back home and work on your homework. Now that you’ve met your body again, you can begin a new relationship with it.
Homework
Write a letter to ten-year-old you. How strong you were! You could run and jump and fall spectacularly and get back up again. Write a letter to twenty-year-old you—all the misuses and abuses you put yourself through and still made it. Thirty-year-old you—so tired and still so strong. Forty-year-old you—new lines from laughing with old friends. Fifty-year-old you—aches and pains and beauty that comes from knowing better than pretty much anyone else. Include the surgeries, the scars, the hurts, and accidents. Include those things that you wish hadn’t happened.
Write letters to all of the yester-yous. Thank them for getting through the hard times. Compliment them on getting through the scrapes and bangs. Tell them that everything turned out okay. Tell them that you forgive them their trespasses and that everything turned out beautifully in the end.
When you’ve finished, I want you to burn these letters. One by one, the oldest you to the youngest you. Say thank you. Tell yourself that you’re going to take good care of yourself because you deserve it. Believe it when you say it. Release everything you were told about yourself that was not true. Release all the shame and guilt that weighs on you. Let it burn and let the ashes blow away. You don’t need any of it.
Accepting who you are is hard. We hold ourselves up against the person we used to be or against other people. Don’t do this. Allow yourself to have a starting point. We can’t all look or feel as amazing as P!nk, but we can figure out where our baseline is. Compare yourself to yourself. Allow yourself to acknowledge the hardships you’ve been through and how far you’ve come. Set realistic, achievable goals, and when you’ve reached those, set some more. You’ve done amazing things and come through on the other side. You can do this, too.
After all, you’re still here, right? This tells me that you’re already a success.
Resources
Move Your Body
Dr. Andrew Weil recommends walking for twenty minutes a day. That’s it. If you want or need to challenge yourself further, go for it, but if not, see if you can do twenty minutes a day. Walk in your neighborhood or your local park, or drive to a national park and walk there. Grab a buddy if you need one (even a furry one with paws). Just move your body. Feel your feet on the ground. Allow yourself the time to take care of yourself. Put “walk” on your digital calendar every day at the same two times. When the notification comes through, do not delete it.
Don’t Eat Garbage
I am not great at this. I generally eat well, but then I’ll wake up hungry, get caught up in taking the kids to school, and forget to eat. Then when I’m on the way home to work, I’ll pass McDonald’s and remember they have bacon. I pull in, get “food,” and feel sick for the rest of the day. Awesome. If I would have prepared myself for the morning by making a shake or making eggs when I got home, I wouldn’t have this problem at all. Remember that cutting corners in your diet only makes you unhappy, and that fresh food is the best food.
Stretch
When is the last time you really stretched? I mean arms-wide, bending-over, feeling-your-back-pop stretched? Get up and do it now, just like when you were in gym class. Stretch your arms, hands, and fingers. Flex your feet and your legs. Do this whenever you’ve been sitting down for an hour or when you have finished a task. Do this stretching as often as you can, because it seriously reinvigorates you and keeps you from sitting on your butt so long.
Have Good Sex
With yourself or with a partner, have healthy, fun, consensual sex. Be sure that it’s legal and all, but definitely have good sex. The endorphins alone are great for your complexion. You’ll relax, you’ll feel more in touch with your body, and you’ll feel more confident. It doesn’t get much better than that.