My Pride Wish For Your Brave Heart

"Learning to read tarot cards was a transformative experience that fell into my lap when I was struggling with my sexual identity, recovering from sexual assault, and living with a roommate whose manipulations I hadn’t even begun to comprehend. Tarot provided an outside eye, fresh insight, and a look into the future I was headed towards." 

This is what I wrote for The Column on September 2nd of 2014 as I lept, like the tarot's Fool into my Queering the Tarot journey. On March 31st, 2015, Little Red Tarot picked up this ongoing series. From there my humble little posts about reading tarot for queer seekers blossomed into things I never imagined. It has been an outlet, an escape, a processing tool, an education, and a way to connect with world wide community.

It has also been picked up by Weiser/Red Wheel to be published as a book next year. That fact is a miracle that is as much a testament to manifesting and prayer as it is to anything else. Very quickly into the Queering the Tarot article series I remembered how important writing used to be to me, and in spite of the fact that I have a theatre company & tarot career I'm never giving up on I became determined to succeed as a writer too. I started doing some arts journalism at The Column. I started this blog. I started storytelling. In so many ways, I came alive again. Most notably, I got a short, shocking e-mail from my now-editor at Weiser. "Do you have any interest into turning your Queer tarot series into a book?" she asked simply.  

I cried that night, and I wasn't sure why. I shook with fear that this was fake, some kind of set up by a scammer. Once I was sure this was real, I was sure that they would get my manuscript and drop the project. I was so worried something would happen. Hell, we still have half a year to go and I'm still worried something bad will happen. But then I remember that sitting on the shore of Lake Superior during one of our seasonal getaways, I looked at my queerplatonic partner one night in late 2015 and said "I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy. I really feel like this queer tarot series is going to change my life though." They vehemently agreed. Empowered by their faith in me, I made a wish under the Duluth stars for my secret book dreams to come true. 

I am telling you this story on the Monday of Pride week, because I fully believe that my dream is coming true because I sat on a lake and wished upon stars for it. (I also worked my ass off, making sure each post was better than the last and promoting the pieces like hell. Dreams alone get us nowhere, but that's a different post for a different day.) It's easy to lose hope in an ugly, ugly world like ours. It's easy to hate and to become callous and hard. So my wish this Pride week for you and your loved ones is that you take a moment to be in a place you love, with a person you love, and make a wish.

Then, I hope like hell you can wish it into being over time. If you let me know your wish, I'll light a candle and make that wish too, to honor my queerplatonic partner who sat beside me and helped me wish my dream into being. 

MY wish for YOU this Pride is the ability and the gift of wishing itself. You deserve that much, at least. Especially now.

June 2016--Halfway Through Another Rollercoaster Year

My Northeast Night Market setup. (Ignore the rope--we had to tie the tent down!)

For someone who strives for balance and serenity, the past few years have had me all over the place in terms of the earthly events and external energies I was working with. This June was particularly tumultuous, and I am ready for a break! My queerplatonic partner lost their job through no fault of their own, all while we're house hunting to no avail (which is stressful in it's own right), and my rheumatologist put me back on two of my most loathed arthritis drugs at the same time. Certainly tumultuousness does not imply all negative things though, and for that I am grateful. I have three really exciting things to report soon, but in the meantime, here are some of my other June highlights.

• Theatre Life: Gadfly Theatre Productions, my heart and soul, put up a really wonderful geeky one-act festival on the theme "Heroes and Villains." Everything we do is through a queer and feminist lens, and I was particularly proud of how envelope pushing this year's was. If you missed it and want to relive it, here's some reviews I have mixed feels about but give you a sense of what both Set A and Set B where like. And check out these super cute photos from Set B rehearsals and outtakes.

Alyssa Perau & Cayla Marie Wolpers backstage of Set B/Armando Ronconi rehearsing on stage.

• Tarot Teamwork! Northern Lights Witch and I worked two events together this month to drum up new clients and get her name out there as a reader and reconnect with some "event" clients of mine. One we worked with another reader I adore, and unfortunately the event itself kind of flopped. Northeast Night Market however was a blast--and NLW and I had a hilarious beer-fueled night attempting to hand make signs for it even though we are NOT artists. Laughter + connection are so key when doing spiritual or social justice work though, so even if our signs didn't last the night was definitely necessary. I was also thrilled to work with two soloprenuer friends of mine for a fundraiser at one of my favorite bars. Finally, in case you missed my post, I rounded out the month by organizing a Metaphysical Pride booth with many of my favorite LGBTQ+ metaphysical practicioners reading with us or selling goods. I normally only do one to two events a month, often private ones I wouldn't blog about, but this month I really felt inspired to connect with other readers and new clients, so I got my butt moving and did so! I forgot how exhausting event life is, so I'm happy to retreat back now that the June event frenzy is past, but I have no regrets about putting so much of time and energy there this month.
• Taught my Queering the Tarot workshop at Eye of Horus--I had a small but good crowd, and fall more in love with sharing my material with others every time.
• Things I Wrote: Nothing substantial to report beyond my Queering the Tarot and it's reprints, but I was pretty fond of this spotlight on a local improv group I love too, especially since I got to see them live right before I sat down and wrote it.
• Other Things I Loved:
  • My friend anniversary with some dear friends took me to Northern Spark, an all nights art festival of lights that always has a bunch of really cool movement work.
  • Lake weather! Lake shores are where I basically live, weather and mosquito infestations pending, and it took Minnesota awhile to get there, but finally I can have my water, earth and strange critter assortment all at once whenever I have a free hour or seven.
  • The Lesbian Sex Haiku Book (With Cats) was my favorite thing I read this month. I can take reading really seriously but this one let me goof off and just enjoy an hour of my day. On the flip side, Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner's Our Cancer Year broke my heart in all the best ways.
  • Arts and crafts night afternoon with a dear friend and her teen daughters, lazy days with my cats, Pssy Ctrl, and my temporary giant king bed all made my month even better.

One of my favorite pieces at Northern Spark.

In addition to all of this hectic but amazing (and the aforementioned less amazing, uber stressful stuff) I am also dealing with a ton of emotional stuff. It's mostly good--growth, change, blah blah blah, but it's been a wild 30 days. However, it's been a really great time to test myself, whether I intended it to be that or not, so I am excited to see where we head next. Hopefully I'll be reporting a wonderful new duplex and some major growth in several of my careers, and I know I'll have some grand or silly adventures to report on. In the mean time, feel free to snag some email readings or schedule and in person session, and until then,

Blessed be, my loves!