Reading The Empress: Abundance, Creation, and Self-Trust

The Empress doesn’t whisper about abundance—she shows it in color, texture, and movement. We sit with this card and follow its symbols from the High Priestess’s still water to a river that finally moves, tracing how inner wisdom becomes outer creation. Twelve stars and nine pearls turn into a language of cycles, patience, and wholeness as we unpack how confidence grows when we trust what we know and allow ourselves to receive.

The conversation goes deep into scarcity vs abundance, why self-trust is so hard after betrayal, and how trauma can make intuition feel out of reach. We share a raw, honest birth story—grief for a “golden hour” that never came, scar tissue that needed touch to heal, and the strange, true coexistence of gratitude and loss. This is embodiment work: learning to feel safe in a body that carries both beauty and bruises, and letting the river flow again so creativity, care, and joy can move through us.

We also talk about therapy culture, ethical self-disclosure, and showing up human as clinicians—because coherence is magnetic and people can feel when you’re living what you know. The Empress becomes a practical guide: receiving rest without abandoning yourself, releasing the “shoulds,” and nurturing ideas as if they’re living things that need time and protection to grow. If you’re craving a grounded approach to tarot, healing, and creative life, this conversation offers symbols you can live by and prompts you can use today.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Hi, welcome back to Heart on the Table. And today we are going to be talking about card number three in the Major Arcana, which is the Empress. I'm really excited to talk about this one today.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

So let's get to it. Thank you so much for listening and for engaging with the podcast over the past what two, three weeks now. We appreciate your support so much. If you are enjoying the podcast, make sure to leave it a review. Share it with a friend. If you feel like any of these topics resonate with you, we're working so hard to just grow this community. So the more that you share, the more that you review, the more that you spread the word, it's so helpful. Thank you.

First Impressions of The Empress

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Okay, let's get to it. The Empress. When I look at this card, the first thing I notice is the yellow background and the yellow foreground. There's a yellow sky in the back, and also there's yellow grain at the bottom in front of where she's seated. I love picking out just the minute details. The next thing that comes to mind is the number of the stars on her crown or like the number of the pearls around her neck. My brain just goes straight to what is the tiniest detail and what is its significance. Like it's obviously included for a reason, and I'm curious about what that is. I know we kind of already took a look at this before we hit record, sounds good.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Taylor Swift mood right now, trying to identify all the little details of all the little things. That's how I'm feeling when you're talking about like what's the meaning of the numbers of pearls and the numbers of stars. Okay. So what I'm noticing when I am looking at this card, I noticed that she is wearing this beautiful like gown dress that kind of pulls from the last card a little bit. Like the pomegranates are on her dress. Initially, I was like, oh, is she wearing the tapestry from the high priestess? That's not the case. But she is kind of like there is some connectedness there, I would say, between what we saw in the High Priestess and what we see on the Empress's clothes. I see the Venus symbol primarily because I have that tattooed on my wrist. And I notice that the Venus symbol is like has this cute little heart around it. She's sitting on like a beautiful chair. She looks comfortable. There's like trees behind her, the wheat fields, like you said, and she's holding what it looks like. It's like a golden, is it a staff? I don't know. It's honestly giving microphone because we're recording this podcast right now. But she's holding something like golden. There's a river that's flowing behind her. She looks like she has a lipstick on. Like her lips are red and plump. And yeah, that's what I'm noticing here.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

That's wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

So when I'm just looking at the Empress from the High Priestess, too, like what I'm noticing in this card is that there's just a lot more color. There's a lot more happening here. And kind of what I have learned about this card, there's a big element of this is creation and putting out into the world after we have kind of done the hard work of like trusting our inner wisdom and our intuition and what we're hearing. Like now we show up after we've maintained or reclaimed that connection and look at the beauty that comes from that.

Symbolism: Stars, Pearls, Wheat, Water

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Yeah, it's not necessarily outward beauty so much as it's all of the inner work that's been done showing up on the outside. Okay, so let's dive into some of what we saw. Yeah. The 12 stars in her crown represent the 12 zodiac signs and the empress's connection to the cosmic cycles of time and nature. 12 is also the number that echoes completion and wholeness and suggests that the Empress embodies the totality of feminine wisdom. It also signifies her role as a universal mother governing life, birth, and death, and also rebirth. So again, that life-death rebirth cycle. I knew it had some significance.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

I love that it does. I read about it last night. Okay. I knew that it did have significance too. I just couldn't remember what it meant.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Okay. The pearl necklace. There are nine pearls. Nine symbolizes the nine months of pregnancy, gestation, creation, and patience.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Oh, I love that. I didn't make that connection last night.

unknown 5:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

The pearls themselves represent wisdom gained through experience. Beauty born from irritation, transformation through emotional depth.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Oh, did you say beauty born through irritation?

SPEAKER_01 5:56

I like that. This necklace reminds us of the sacred process of becoming how nurturing, creativity, or healing all require time to ripen. The wheat at her feet is a harvest symbol of abundance and fertility, nourishment, the fruits of labor. It ties the Empress to Demeter, the Greek goddess of grain and motherhood. The placement of it being at her feet grounds her in the earthly and the tangible. This isn't abstract, it's lived and embodied.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

I like that.

From Inner Wisdom to Creation

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Oh, it connecting her back to the high priestess whose card also features water. But while her water is still in hidden, so the high priestess's water is still in hidden, which is reflective of like the inner world. The Empress's river is flowing openly, which is talking more about like outer manifestation. So the pomegranates being on the dress, so also kind of connecting that back from like the pomegranates being present on the high priestess card. Pomegranates are ancient symbols of fertility, life, and death, sacred two goddesses like Persephone and Isis. The pattern on her gown represents creative potential and again that cyclical wisdom. She births, nourishes, and lets go in rhythm with nature. Letting go. I love that. Like births. It reminds me of one of our latter episodes about, I think it was about the fool talking about mothering. And like a part of mothering is learning to let go. Whoever they become is who they become. And we only have we have such a big part in that, but also such a small one. Do you know what I mean? And also coming back to the gown, a nod to the sacred feminine as life giver and initiator into the mysteries of creation and transformation. The Empress card is also about expression and creation after you've gone inward, which I think is I think it's so important. Like even you talking in the last episode about how this podcast was created, right? Like this podcast for you sounds like it is also the what's the word I'm looking for? The like fruit of like some of your own inner work, some of that card reading, which was about like going inward, right? And then like putting this creation out into the world. I like on this card that we see and we notice all of the abundance too, because I think scarcity mindset is something that I have done, I have had to do a lot of work on in my life and continue to have to do. And I'm just connecting back to the high priestess and how when we can trust and sit with our inner wisdom, maybe we can move more into an abundance mindset and then look at all that grows from that, right? Like I think when I'm you were kind of talking about creating your private practice. And I think for me, it's funny when you were talking about creating your practice and how you were in school knowing this is where you wanted to be. And I was in school thinking that I would never be here. Like I was like, that won't be me, right? And I think that was me disconnected from my own internal knowing. I said in a prior episode, I don't give myself enough credit. I think that me not being able to give myself enough credit for my knowledge and what I do know and my own wisdom is the result of learning to not trust that. So I'm thinking of like a memory that I have in school. I remember being in school and I was in a, I think it was, oh my gosh, it's like all coming back to me now, this class specifically. I think it was like a US, like an American geography kind of like, or maybe like a history of the US, something along those lines, right? Which I've always had interest in, but I think this was more of a geography class, which I don't have as much interest in as much as like history. I remember in that class, I would know the answer and I would raise my hand and like to get everybody laughing with me, I would say the wrong answer. But I was like playing dumb. There are so many instances in my life where I've done that, where I've been like, no, like I can't be this smart girl. I can't know what I'm talking about. I can't know the right answer. Like, I have to like play dumb and silly. But like just connecting back to like, no, I do know. I do, I have worked hard for the knowledge that I have. And when I can actually trust that inner wisdom, the beauty, like the beauty that can come from that. I was talking about my private practice. There's been many times where I've been in this so far, where I've had a scarcity mindset. And I've been like, but where is my next client gonna come from? This is so amazing, like sitting in my office, what I've grown. This is definitely gonna end. That's where my brain goes. But when I can maintain the connection to like, no, I deserve this. I worked hard for this. Like, there's been some trials and tribulations to getting here. This was a scary leap to get here, and I deserve it. You do, right? Like, and I think as women, we're taught to not say that. We're never taught to be like, no, I just I earned this, I deserve this. I worked hard for this. My God, as a woman, like we are not supposed to say any of that, right? And I think that it just moving away from like this scarcity mindset can put us in this like abundance that the Empress sits with, right? Like she clearly knows, like she's sitting very confidently where she's at with her crown, with her pearls, with her beautiful gown, with the red chair and the red pillow with the tassel beneath her, red being like richness, right? She's sitting in all of this abundance with confidence versus I reached this abundance and I don't think this was supposed to happen to me, and I don't deserve this. She's just like, no. And we know cyclical, right? Maybe there will be times where it doesn't feel so abundant, but I don't know. The wheat's gonna grow again, the trees are gonna grow again, especially connecting back from like I'm thinking of the ocean that was behind, or the stillness of the water behind the high priestess, and that being connected somehow to this river that's flowing through the Empress. It is all cyclical, and all of this that we see on this card is too, and most importantly, it will all grow back, even if it sometimes maybe it is scarce, but the importance is recognizing the cycle, like we were talking about last time, and that this will grow back.

Scarcity vs Abundance Mindset

SPEAKER_01 12:48

I love that, and I know that you've shared with me that before the discrediting yourself or the scarcity mindset. And I also want to just give a moment to recognize that when you have given yourself credit, there have been a couple of conversations that we've had where you're like, no, I'm good at this. And I'm like, Yes, you are, like you are so good at this, and look what has come from that. Yeah, and there are a couple like sayings floating around in my head, but a couple of them are like, you know, you should always do what you love because then you'll love what you do. And I think that there is something to that, like things will come from your intention, and if your intention is aligned, right, then something will come of that just naturally.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

It doesn't have to measure up in one way or another according to what society should say is success, right? Like when something and it's always it's like attractive, right? Like this empress is exuding or she just gives off this confidence and it comes naturally. I guess my my relation to this card is she looks like she feels very comfortable in her knowing and in her ability. And as someone on the outside looking at this card, I trust that she knows what she's doing. Whether or not she feels that way, that is what she gets off. Probably because she does trust herself.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

But there are people like that in life where you just feel like drawn to them in some way, shape, or form. And that's because, again, I think we've talked about this, they give off something that we are looking for ourselves, or their energy is attractive for one reason or another, because we want that ourselves, or because we feel the same way. You find your people that way, yeah. And going to say with like, where's your next client coming from? I mean, people who, for example, listen to this podcast, maybe, right? They hear you say something and they're like, Yeah, I want, I want to talk to her, I want to go see her, I want to have a relationship, trusting your voice, trusting that you have value, trusting that you know, you have something worthwhile to share.

Self-Trust, Doubt, and Confidence

SPEAKER_00 15:19

And on my best days, when I'm most connected to my own like inner wisdom, there is a confidence that comes from that. But like every day can't be our best day. No, like we can absolutely acknowledge that, right? Like, I'm not moving around this world with like this. Sometimes I think I think of my therapist that way, right? Like, she's so amazing, she knows all the things, she's so smart. Okay, she also has bad days. Yes, right. So we have to like, I think just to humanize that for clients who may listen to this podcast, clients who want to work with us, like we're also human, right? And like not every day is my best day either, but on my best days, when I can connect to my own inner wisdom, my own inner knowing, when I can recognize that I am enough, right? Speaking back to that scarcity mindset, like when I can sit with, no, I am enough. I know enough, I know plenty to be able to do this professionally. That is when my day probably looks more like it's like more of an abundance mindset intention kind of vibe. Does that make sense? Yes. So I think another thing I want to talk about with the whole abundance mindset too is like if the abundance in this card comes from our own inner knowing and inner connectedness and inner wisdom, we also have to speak that sometimes our inner knowing or our inner wisdom can get a little foggy or difficult to trust or difficult to listen to when we have survived trauma. I particularly think of betrayal because I have worked with a lot of clients who've suffered betrayal in some form or another, right? I mean, it in some sense, I think all relational trauma can sort of be like a bit of a betrayal, right? But when we've been betrayed, we don't trust ourselves, right? Because especially when I'm thinking about relationship betrayal, which I, you know, some of my clients that that's been why they've come to therapy. But when we've experienced relationship betrayal, we abandon our inner knowing because our inner knowing, maybe we maybe it was there in the experience of betrayal, right? Like we kind of had an idea or we, you know, we had an inkling of a feeling. And that was consistently met with being gaslit or crazy making, like on our part, like that being aimed back at us. It is very difficult to trust our own inner wisdom and then like feel like go out into the world with that. So I just say that because I think it's important to recognize if you listened to our high priestess episode, like sometimes reclaiming that inner wisdom and that voice and that trust of our own inner voice is hard. Yes. So that's just to say, right? Like, all of I think it just speaks back to the cyclical nature of it all. But like what is waiting for us once we begin to trust our own inner voice and our own inner wisdom is this card, right? Like she is there waiting to sit there with confidence, to sit there with abundance, to sit there with her own confidence, and just recognizing as we've kind of spoken, like it's not linear. Like maybe maybe we get in our healing journey to the high priestess where it's like, okay, now we're reconnecting with ourselves and we're back at the fool. And we're back at the magician, and then we're at the high priestess again, and then we're back at the fool. Or maybe we go somewhere else in the major arcana. But like, what is waiting on our best days, and when we can reclaim a little bit of that inner trust and inner knowing is the empress.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

I love that you said like the Empress is waiting, is just waiting for us. She's not going anywhere. It just takes us being able to get to a place where we feel reconnected and re-established and trusting of ourselves again. And the Empress isn't going to exact any sort of punishment or anything like that. She's simply just there. And she's waiting. And she will be waiting. She'll meet you when you show up, and when you have times when you encounter the fool again, it doesn't mean that she's gone anywhere. She's still waiting.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

It's just a matter of where we're at on our journey. And that being we we say all the time in the therapy room, like meeting clients where they are. And maybe that's just where we are. And that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

And the Empress isn't sitting there waiting to tell you, like, you should have gotten here sooner. Right? Like she's there simply, she's just there.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

There's no timeline at which point you have to like achieve any of these things. Right. And they're a constant like cycle too. Like you go again, like from fool to magician to empress back to fool. Like there are just some things that are easier to fall back into than others, and it just takes some time rebuilding that trust with ourselves, with our own knowing, our own intuition, and that doesn't mean that we're never going to not trust ourselves again, you know, under any given circumstance. There can always be a time when we question ourselves or our intuition, and it's just about building and maintaining maybe that relationship with it. And we give our intuition enough space to allow it to grow instead of devaluing it or dismissing it.

Trauma, Betrayal, and Foggy Intuition

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Dismissing it. I think that comes up a lot in my office, like the quick move to dismissing our own inner knowing. I mean, in my office, in my therapist's office, in my sessions, too. Something that I'm also thinking about here is I'm just kind of looking at the just our little like bullet points on our episode that we kind of want to hit on that we create. One of those is reclaiming the body and is just talking about like the Empress is re-inviting us to have safe embodiment. And when I'm looking at this card, like fertility is all over it. That's what the pomegranates symbolize. I have read is like fertility and womanhood. And the Venus symbol tying into that, I'm thinking of like femininity. There's kind of some discourse on this card, like whether or not this is a pregnant woman. And I think that if I'm thinking about safe embodiment and that being like what she first represents, I'm also just thinking about like how do we get to this card and what this card represents after our bodies have betrayed us. For and I'm thinking of like the many people that I know and myself personally who have experienced like birth trauma or just struggles with fertility in general. I think that's something that's so delicate is that this card, we're like, yes, this exemplifies like at its core, like femininity, which equals like motherhood, right? And what if we can't get pregnant? Right. Like what if we struggle? I'm just thinking of one of my friends and I'm feeling emotional, just thinking about her and like her struggles that she's had to get pregnant. And then I'm thinking of like my own birth story from April and how I don't want to dismiss it and say, like, I'm pretty resilient, so I'm doing fine. Like it still makes me very emotional to talk about it. I have a really great support system during the time I was seeing my therapist and she was really great, right? So like I've processed some of it. But when I'm thinking again about safe embodiment, it's just like so difficult when we feel a little bit betrayed by our bodies. And in thinking about my birth experience in April, something that I'm just connecting back to, like I had the inner wisdom. I knew something was wrong. I knew something was wrong. And I kept telling my provider, like in the appointment that I had leading up to giving birth, I was like, something is off here. I have a pre-eclampsia history. I had pre-eclampsia with Charlie. And in my second pregnancy, I said from the second I found out I was pregnant, I was like, I'm not gonna get it this time. Like, I'm gonna work really hard. I'm gonna try and do all the things. You can't really prevent pre-eclampsia. There's really not a lot you can do. It's pretty outside of your control. You could do all the right things, and it doesn't really matter. So I'm just thinking about like, I was telling my provider, like something feels off. I have gained a lot of weight really rapidly. My blood pressure is higher. It's not in the critical range, but it is higher. And she was like, Well, I mean, you are pregnant, and you know, they were testing my urine and all of that, and they didn't find anything, there was no protein in my urine. So, in some sense, she's right. There was nothing clinical, but I think this comes back to the importance of like, and I knew. I knew. And I mean, from that, I was able to catch it when it became critical. Like my blood pressure was very, very high the day that I was like, something is off here. And it's funny, I ordered a new blood pressure monitor because I was like, this one's broken. It was not broken, it was right. My blood pressure was just that high. I'm just thinking about like from my birth experience in April, like, boy, did I feel betrayed by my body, truly. Like, I am healthy, I work out, I eat pretty healthy. Like, I was at Dell Taco and Taco Time getting my treats while I was pregnant too. But like, for the most part, I would say I'm pretty, pretty healthy. And not only did I get pretty clampsy again, I had it so much worse. So much worse. Like, I'm just I was in the hospital for let's say I got I was admitted Tuesday night, and we were in the hospital until the following Wednesday. So I was in the hospital for about eight days. And like I'm just thinking about this card and how like it represents all these beautiful parts of womanhood and motherhood, and simultaneously holding on to like, and sometimes it can go really wrong. And how do we embody our bodies safely after that? Right. Like, how do I learn to trust my body again? How do I learn that my body's not gonna betray me? And man, I'm like sitting even in motherhood after that, like with my new baby, and feeling the impact of all that has just happened. Like, you're not sitting in abundance and beauty, and you're sitting with like a whole lot of grief at like what just happened. And one thing that will always impact me and I think make me emotional is the fact and the grief that I didn't get like the golden hour with my son. Like it breaks my heart, and I feel it all the time. Like I when I snuggle him now and I look at him now, and there's so many, there's just so many moments where I'm like, you didn't get that, and it breaks my heart. That's just something I'll forever grieve. And simultaneously, I feel fortunate that like I have this baby because I know women who would love to have that and they have struggled. It's hard, yeah. Like it's hard to arrive at this card that's like, and pregnancy is so beautiful. And we don't, I don't think society allows for women to speak about, and it can go really wrong, and that can have an impact on us mentally, and we have to heal from that. It's not just like so many times people will be like, oh well, but you should be so grateful. You should be so grateful. Like he's healthy, and he was in the NICU, right? Like, and I'm sitting in the hospital staring at the ceiling, wondering how I'm gonna get down to see him because I my body is fucking raging with high blood pressure, and I can't get out of the bed. Sure, we can be like, yeah, and he's here alive. And thankfully that was due to my inner knowing. And some of that is like, okay, that was my inner knowing, and the beauty is that he's here, he's safe, he's here safe, I'm safe now. And there's still that grief. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

There was, I just want to take a minute to just acknowledge how big that was, how impactful that was, and to share that today. Thank you. Yeah. One of the things that I caught on to was when you were saying you th think about all of the things that your son didn't get a chance for, and you said you didn't get that. And I I bel I assume you were talking as if you were talking to your son, right? You didn't get that. Yeah. And part of me heard that as you talking to you, but you didn't get that.

Safe Embodiment and Fertility Nuance

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Yeah, that's making me really emotional. Yeah. Yeah. It sucks so much because like Charlie had it, she had it too, and like we got a little bit of the golden hour, but I was still fucked up on medication. Like, but we did get it. Yeah. But yeah, with him, I was hoping it would be so different, and it was so much worse. I can laugh about it. Like, I can laugh about it, and be that's because I have a good support system, and you're right, like I didn't get it. I didn't get to end that part of my life on like the note that I had hoped to end it on. And I think in a later episode, I would love to talk more in detail about what happened and all of the nitty-gritty details of just like that birth trauma. You know, we've talked about having guests. I really want my nurse that I have befriended, of course. I want her to come on and like, I want to hear her perspective on everything that was happening and just like how she I don't even know. I just want to know how she became to be the like angel saint that she was during my experience there. Because my God, I think about her and that experience, and it just wouldn't have been what it was. Which when I say it wouldn't have been what it was, I mean it, I would not be able to look back on that experience with some of the like gentleness and grace and like optimism that I do had she not been there, truly. Like she was, I'm not even religious. That woman was my angel. Like, truly. I think when I look at this card, I again am reminded of things are cyclical, right? And like that experience, there is so much grief there. And there is me open to the duality of like, and I say this because I have done my own work and I am ready to acknowledge like. And I have acknowledged it was the worst thing ever. And I do have the ability myself because of the work that I've done to like extend the like, and I am grateful. And I have also said, like, as much as I hate that all had to happen, like it has given me just some like understanding of like my clients and some of the like birth stuff that they've been through, or when we're doing like trauma work, like and they're talking about their traumatic birth. That of course they don't have memory of that, but like the body when we're doing work around that, like I'm like, oh yeah, I know what that was like now in my brain. I'm able to recognize, like, coming back to the card, the richness, the wheat, the growth, the river, and that that all is still there through that experience. But I'm only, and I just keep saying this, but I'm only able and willing to recognize that because I've been able to process and grow with my grief. Like, I think it takes time and some work, and obviously, like, there's still a lot for me to process to arrive at okay, and there's abundance here too, right? Like, it's hard.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

I love that you know, you draw a comparison to just the capacity for you to have a relationship with your grief and how that has allowed you to be able to show up for other people. And I'm sure that there's going to be someone who listens to this episode who has a traumatic birth or a traumatic experience that they feel seen and heard just by listening to your experience. Going back to what you said about your nurse who was an angel to you that day. And for her, it was just another day at work. But now it made all the difference in the world for you to be able to have a relationship to this experience and not allow it to like be stuck. Yeah. For you to be able to almost like I'm thinking of it as like a scar tissue, right? This traumatic thing happened, and if we don't allow it to shape us in some way, like the scar tissue will get hard and will calcify and will remain stuck. And for you, because of the support system that you were surrounded by, you were able to allow yourself to be shaped by it, to move through it, and to I mean, again, I'm sure there's more processing to be done, but of course having processed it as far as you have, like to allow that to move through you.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Yeah. And like, such as grief, right? Like it always has to be processed. Like, I think grief is an ongoing process. And I'm thinking about you identifying it as scar tissue. It reminds me of like with my scar tissue from that birth. But like the importance of acknowledging the scar tissue and truly like me having to touch it. That was hard at first. Like me even touching and like me even looking at my C-section scar. Like I didn't want to touch it. I didn't want to acknowledge it. I didn't even, I didn't want anything to do with it. One, I really hate like body stuff. I've said so many times, like I should have just been a nurse. No, no, no. There's no way I could ever do that. I hate blood, I hate body. No, no. So that was part of it, but also part of it was also the trauma and the grief. Like I didn't want to touch it. I didn't want to see it. I didn't want to acknowledge that it was there. But if I didn't, it would get hard and numb and would just continue to like solidify. There's so much importance, like through my physical therapy, in like, no, you have to touch it. You have to acknowledge it. You have to take your hand and you have to massage it and you have to feel that it's there, or else, yes, it's gonna solidify and it's gonna cause you issues and it's gonna cause you pain. So there is, I like that you brought that up because I'm like, yeah, I can very much resonate with like, no, like we're not just gonna ignore that that's there. We have to learn to grow with that. And the more that we're moving it and acknowledging it, the more that it's like moving with my body and I'm able to coexist with like that scar now.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Which I think there's something valuable in the fact that for this experience in particular, you have a physical representation of the trauma. Yeah. And I think a lot of people, like when it comes down to the emotional trauma, like we don't see emotional trauma on the body like we can see a bruise or a cut or a broken bone, even. Like you can't see that as easily as you can something that's, you know, available to the naked eye. But the fact that something as significant as this trauma also comes with a physical mark as well, and the two simultaneously like being able to work through that, both of them at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting to me as we're like continuing to go through the cards and like we're only on card three with the Empress, but I think that we want our podcast to be like, we're obviously using the cards as like our foundation to like bring up our conversation. And just because I love Tarot, you have an interest too, right? Like, but more than anything, like we're using them to like bring up human experience. And I think that it only makes sense as we continue to go through the journey of the major arcana that our own emotional experiences get activated here, and we look at, oh my gosh, like there was a time. I think it's so important for the raw emotion and experience and the raw connection that we have to the cards at different points in our life to come up.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Because that's why I'm drawn to them, and that's why I like using them with clients, because I'm like, and in some sense, right, like looking at the cards themselves and asking ourselves, what do you see? What do you notice? How do you connect to this card? Is us connecting back to the high priestess is connecting to our inner wisdom, right? Like through everything, through every like card, which if we're saying the major arcana is like the journey through healing, the journey through life, the cyclical experience of life, like we're always like there's always some that we might just kind of gravitate back to. And I think like high priestess looking at the cards, asking ourselves, practicing that like inquiry is us connecting to her. Yes.

Birth Trauma Story and Grief

SPEAKER_01 37:49

I mean, we're human. Yes. And we are not going to pretend to be anything other than that, right? And I think that's a big part of this podcast is just creating a space where other people can feel like they can show up human too. Yeah. And I'm not a therapist with all the answers. And I think that's an important part about what we're doing. When we go through school, right, there are all sorts of ethics or rules about sharing. Yeah. Uh-huh. Personal experiences, disclosures with clients. And you go through school and it's it's a huge taboo thing. Like, don't do it. Like, don't show up human, which I think does a huge disservice to our clients. Totally. Like when we show up as we have all the answers, or we're indifferent, or we're like void of any emotion, that doesn't do them any good.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

People aren't looking for like a hierarchical structure when they come to therapy.

unknown 38:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

So we're looking to be seen.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

Yeah. And yeah. Incredibly valuable. To not pull from our own experiences or share our own, you know, kernels of wisdom would be doing a disservice to anybody listening.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

You know?

SPEAKER_00 39:11

There's a lot of like online stuff that I'm seeing, a lot of online conversation that people are starting to have about because a lot of therapists are now like moving on to TikTok. And there's a lot of like discourse in the comments often about like, you shouldn't be sharing that. You're a therapist. I wouldn't want my therapist on TikTok being funny. There's a lot of therapists who, I mean, this is a heavily debated thing in our field about like, should therapists have podcasts? Should they show up on TikTok and be funny? But me, I just feel like of course we should. Yeah. We're bringing our professional selves into this space as well. You know, with our licenses and all that, right? Like we're bringing that into this podcast. And we are human. We get to come on here and share like our stories. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

And I'd be a little bit more curious about the judgments that come. Yeah. For the person who says that they the therapist shouldn't do that or they shouldn't do this. Like, that's a lot of shoulds and should nots. And there's judgment behind that. And I try to keep this at the forefront of my mind when I I mean back to like the fool episode, right? Like judging a innocent and emotional experience that like a mother is having with her child, for example. Like being a fool. Like, where is that judgment coming from and why? That judgment is our own. It's our shadow. And it's something that we've internalized, we don't want to recognize we have within ourselves, you know, that we're being judgmental because we've internalized that. Like people were judgmental to us, so we'd internalized that we should then be judgmental or concerned about what other people think about us. And that's really just not how I want to live my life. Me neither. So I mean, people are entitled to their thoughts and their feelings, and yeah. That's not mine. Mine neither. So I'm not going to take ownership of that. I'll continue to show up, you know, as a human. And I know it will resonate with people it's meant to resonate with. And for those that it doesn't, I'm sure they have their own work to do.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

But that's not mine. Is there anything else that you wanted to say about the Empress? That went by way faster than I thought. It did. Look, a whole hour. I know.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

We recorded these episodes of the High Priestess and the Empress on the same day. And I think the fact that they showed up in a pair together, like that we got to do both of them in one day, just made for an extra special day.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

I'm glad that it happened. When I told you, I was like, we're doing the High Priestess and the Empress. I was like, she's gonna love that. Because they very much go hand in hand.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:00

And I'm like, I feel like that's just so that's just cool. And I feel like it was synchronicity. Yep. I'm gonna see if I have a good Empress closing here for butters. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

How do you allow yourself to receive love, rest, abundance, and beauty?

SPEAKER_00 42:19

I like that. Do you receive those things? Do you allow yourself to receive love, rest, abundance, and beauty? How can you give care without abandoning your own needs? Because the Empress is all about, you know, like she's about like lushness too, and like creativity and growth and like putting that into the world. But if we're connecting that back to like me sharing a little bit of my experience today, too, like how do we do that? How do we show up that way while also acknowledging that it might be difficult to do so? I love that. Right. Without abandoning ourselves and our own needs. Okay. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast episode today on The Empress. If you enjoyed it, share it with a friend. If you want to give us a review on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, we are also now on YouTube podcasts. You can give us, I think you can give us reviews there. I'm just asking for reviews. We've put so much work into this. We want to build community. And the more that you share, the more that you share with your friends, the more that you give us a review. One, we're so grateful. It helps us build this community.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Thank you so much. One thing I was gonna say, and it's to make it into the buttons our baby. Yeah. And back to like the Empress card. I know we didn't touch on it, but like pregnant doesn't necessarily have to mean like pregnant with a baby.

SPEAKER_00 43:45

I love that. That is a very good idea with an idea. Like, what are you carrying inside of you?

SPEAKER_01 43:51

Yeah, and how can you give that to the world?

SPEAKER_00 43:53

No, I really like that. I think that's an important acknowledgement. Like, pregnant does not have to be does not mean pregnant with a baby. You could be pregnant with an idea. Thanks so much for listening. Have a good rest of your week. Bye.

unknown 44:06

Bye.