You know when your foot falls asleep… then you move it and you feel “pins and needles”? That’s the feeling of blood returning, of feeling returning. It’s uncomfortable at first.

This card for me is about awakening – awakening from a comfortable slumber. That’s been going on in my life on multiple fronts for the past year. I keep thinking of the Kafka quote: “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us”. I feel my own frozen sea within is breaking up, not from a book, but from life itself.

It’s like… I didn’t even know how much frozen sea I had inside, I only know now because my inner ice is cracking and melting… and it’s emotional and disorienting and fascinating and sad and it makes me angry and compassionate and happy all at the same time. Most of all it’s tiring! But I am grateful for it, however much it hurts, because that’s what real awareness and aliveness feels like. Awakening is not all bliss. It’s also facing uncomfortable truths about ourselves and others… and becoming more accountable and responsible. It makes you want to pay your debts, to fulfill your promises, to become a person you can admire, a person who lives up to your own deepest inner values.

This judgement card is from the Radiant Rider Waite.