Letting things be out in the world.
The “Gentle Reminders” Oracle deck is officially out! You can order the deck here or order it through your local booksellers and wherever you get oracle cards.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can have so many iterations of ourselves and how we can toss those at any moment to form another based on what we’ve learned or how we’ve been living. I don’t know if that’s a typical brain surgery aftermath thought, the thoughts after my Saturn return, the feelings I am having in regard to something of mine being published, or what. I just received my final copies of the “Gentle Reminders” oracle deck last week, which I am so excited to have out in the world. I opened the box of the deck to reveal the card pictured at the top that reads, “Not everyone will grow at the same pace as you.” This rings true to where I am at right now, in terms of just tying up loose ends of recovering from my brain surgeries in the Fall of last year and releasing this oracle deck. It’s my first officially published thing that isn’t just a self-published endeavor. I have all the feelings about this series of 40 works.
It can be scary when we have something new out in the world that we spent so much energy on. We release control the moment something of ours is really out there. Grasping onto control, though, isn’t an act of love, and so I do my best to release that desire, to let what I offer speak for itself. Whenever I release something new, there usually comes a wave of anxiety through self-doubt or insecurity. For me, I use reminders to help me ground in moments of uncertainty.
While so many of the reminders in this deck are personal to me, I’ve found others connecting to what they end up pulling from the deck in ways I wasn’t anticipating. A few months after initially creating the deck, I received a printing proof of what the cards and the box would look like. It allowed me to shift design choices, and it also helped me to start testing the waters of reading the deck with others. I used the test deck a lot during my stay in the Hospital last year and had to laugh at how on-point the cards were in relation to what I was navigating.
After one of the first brain procedures, I had a small tube in my head connecting to a bag that was next to my hospital bed in the ICU. The tube was there to help any excess fluid that was building up around my brain be released. I called it a “brain drain.” My partner brought over the printing proof deck. The card I pulled said, “Little moments of decompression can help cultivate expansion!” with an illustration of an abstracted character who has a hole in their head with little characters flowing out of the head of the abstract figure, as well as this yellow stream shooting out of the head. It made me laugh, considering how I was literally purging fluid out of my head at that exact moment.
The stories that were shared based on the cards I pulled with people inspired me to create a podcast that showed how this deck works and how we live with reminders in our lives. I’m currently in the process of producing this podcast now. Reminders can hold space for tough times. The act of pulling cards can either be one where we carve out time for ourselves or we read cards with others.
I have many hopes for these cards. I hope it can help connect you with your inner knowing and with others by sharing reminders that have carried you through rough times. I hope this helps ground you and your loved ones. I hope it brings you and others around you joy. The deck is here as a tool for you if you wish to use it. I really appreciate everyone’s continuous support of my work and this deck.