In 2018, my spiritual awakening began and it was not pretty. I had already began to meditate, something I learned to do during my yoga teacher training, something else I accomplished well in grad school. The more I meditated and connected to my intuition, the more I felt called to learn about my ancestors. I knew that my maternal great grandmother Rosa used to read la barraja, a particular form of Tarot. My grandmother told me she was psychic and made many predictions. When I heard these stories there always seemed to be a little bit of shame tied to them, like my grandmother felt the need to apologize for her mother’s brujeria. My family is devout Catholic as was my bruja great grandmother, but I don’t see these as mutually exclusive. I received channeled messages from my great grandmother, and then bought my first tarot deck.
Later that year, I fell into a deep episode of anxiety and depression. It lasted for weeks, I had to be real vulnerable with my family, some of who never knew the extent of my mental health issues. It was bad!! I felt like a prisoner in my own body, and I really wasn’t sure if it would ever end. I went to a psychiatrist to possibly get a prescription for meds. During the appointment, they started to list off the possible side affects of the medication, saying your symptoms can get worse before they get better. All I could think was, how much worse can this get! I realized in that moment that whatever course I took, it would require a commitment, it would require me to put in some work. I pursued every holistic method I had access to. Acupuncture, therapy, meditation, yoga, etc. I went to see a medium after my symptoms began to dissipate. I cried so much in that session, releasing so much I had held onto. I went home and re-committed myself to my own spiritual practice.
It was also during this time at the beginning of my tarot journey that I started a podcast with my amiga and colleague Dr. Cristina Rose. The success of the podcast, and our community’s response to it has allowed us, and me to explore career options outside of the university. To use the skills I learned in academia to be a bridge of information and empowerment to my communities. I stand strong in my voice, in my thoughts and opinions, in my critical views of the world.
In addition, Tarot has truly been my saving grace in times of such uncertainty. It validates what I’m feeling, it highlights what areas in my life need work, it reminds me of the cycles of life, and it brings me comfort in time of unrest. It’s been a gift. And it’s brought me back to writing. The ancestors have spoken, writing is my divine assignment, and so it is.
Brining my worlds together, that of academia and ancestral spirituality is the foundation for all of my work from here forward. I bring my magic into my classroom, both in person and virtually. I bring my academic knowledge into all spaces. The magic I create weather on social media, in classrooms, in my writing create methods of healing. I was brought to my own magic in order to heal my own wounds, wounds born from the tragic aspects of this life. My lived experience validated by my academic knowledge reminds me that these wounds are the biproduct of white supremacist, cisheteronormative patriarchy. My passion in life has always been to bring change to the world, to see those oppressed be liberated.
The lessons of 2020 taught me to stop thinking of liberation as some utopic future, but rather to live into liberation in the here and now. I will not wait for structure to crumble, although they are crumbling all around us. I will create spaces within this world to be liberated to imagine and enact liberating possibility.
Healing, liberation and celebration are the values I bring to my tarot readings, my writings, my classroom, and all the work I do in the world.