Tarot with Jessica Joy

As an empath, when a person gets too close to me, they do not realize what they are doing. To be clear, I am not talking about abuse. If you are being abused in any way, shape or form, stop reading this and go get help right now. Not later. Right now. For everyone else, I am talking about when someone invades your personal space, they do not realize that there is a transference of energy that happens. Over time, if one is willing to learn how, it is possible to protect yourself from this transference, so long as you are aware that the person is approaching you. But to master a thing, you must understand it first. Allow me to explain.

First of all, some people do not even realize that they are empaths. They believe that they are just introverts with a low social battery. It does not compute to them that the discomfort that fills them up is a gift. They just have been misled throughout their lives to believe that there is something wrong or awkward about them and that they are overly sensitive, but this could not be further from the truth. Still, if they would rather stay at home than to feel that way around others, then this is their bodies involuntary way of protecting them. There is nothing wrong with that or them. 

That being said, I reiterate my scenario. When someone uninvited touches an empath, even in an appropriate manner for the situation, it is as if their energetic tendrils are feeling your skin and seeping into you. Very creepy. Though the encounter may be brief you feel violated and spend the rest of your night rationalizing your desire to have an emotional response, even though you cannot complain as there was no harm intended or done. As an empath, they do not even have to touch you, and they have energetically weaved themselves throughout your body, and you feel tangled, like a puppet, though your strings are on the inside. 

Days pass and you are not sure why it is so hard to get out of bed. Why the thought of showering is a chore though you love the feeling of being clean. Your body feels heavier. You want to cancel all of your social engagements and maybe even call out of work today. What you don't know is that you are carrying the weight of someone else's energy within you because you have not addressed how that moment made you feel. Technically nothing happened, but a wound has now been revealed like a seething sore.  

You must find a way to cleanse it. Each metaphorical tendril that has latched on to you is feeding off your insecurities. You must recognize them for what they are. It is not the tendril that must be released but the insecurity itself.

For example: "I'm not good-looking enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not thin enough. I don't make enough money. I don't have enough friends. I don't have enough power. I don't have enough status. I look old. I'm too scrawny. I'm not sophisticated enough. I'm not sexually skilled. I don't have the right wardrobe. I don't live up to my father's ideals. I'm afraid to be lonely. I'm not athletic enough. I'm not naturally nurturing so I'm not a good mother. I'm going to lose my partner. I don't have the latest gadgets. I don't have the perfect life." 

These are the true killers. The true manipulators. If you can master the infection at its source, then you cannot be manipulated. You can have someone in your personal space and let them latch right on energetically and know that whatever they bring out in you is something you can heal. Something you are meant to heal.

Take that time to go within if you are called to. If you feel tired or sore and you're not sure why, go within. If you feel triggered or used, go within. You think that they have taken your power, but they have gifted you the opportunity to grow because if you can utilize what they make you feel as a way to harness and transmute their energy then you can actually strengthen your core and become more powerful. 

At some point throughout your life, you stopped believing in yourself, so this is a simplified, if not crude guide to what you must now learn. (Please note that any of the following examples may help, but only you can identify what your insecurities are.)

Try saying instead, "I am a rare beauty. I have an inner knowing. I have curves for days. I have what I need, and I give freely so I do not need much. I only need the friends that have my back. I can create my own power. Status is an illusion. I have earned every wrinkle with my laughter. I am small but I'm a scrapper. I'd rather be with people that allow me to be myself then to try to fit in. With a partner that makes me feel safe, I will learn all I need to know. I may not match the latest trends, but I know how to make my own. I am going to be the man that my father wasn't. I love my own company and it's okay to pamper myself. No child comes with an instruction manual. The bond I have will guide me if I stop listening to everyone else. If they are so quick to leave, then someone else out there will love me right. I am resourceful and I can make joy at no cost and without fancy things and most of all, LIFE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE PERFECT!!! It is the snafus and the mishaps that make the greatest memories and are the marrow to our existence.

If you are a victim of anything, it is your inability to process that you are meant to be different. Different and authentic and unique and magical. Once you know this... Once you heal this... no one can take your power. 

That is your message, should you choose to accept it and the irony of it all is that you have had it within you all along.

As a child I would sit in my room, eyes closed and imagine that I was on a small island of white sand. Nothing but ocean for as far as the eye could see in every direction. 

I would concentrate so hard that I could feel the grit of the sand between my toes and the scrape of it against my skin. 

I would wince even as the ebb and flow of the ocean would conceal my fear. I would hear the deafening sound of the gentle spray through my isolation. 

I would smell that thick air as if I could breathe through the very pours of my skin. Goose bumps would form as if a power was building that just might lighten my heart from the great weight that I carried.

I would stare off into nothingness, just praying that someone would save me from my desolation. I would sway my body in a small oblong repetitive pattern as if the subtle movement was powering the illusion. 

In a low, resonant voice I would sing softly, a Don Williams song.

If I needed you
Would you come to me?
Would you come to me?
And ease my pain?

I would send this plea out like a message in a bottle and try to manifest the man that would find it one day, as if I knew already, that as a child, no one was coming to save me. So, I sent that message in a bottle of longing as if to say, “I’m here. Can’t you feel me? I will survive for you.”

Sometimes when life gets too hard, I find myself back on that beach. It does not look the same as it once did. There I have built a great shelter from any storm. There I make fires to cook my gutted fish with the tools that I whittled from broken rock and bare hands. There the trees are plentiful, and I spend my days climbing for and cracking coconuts. 

I have survived all these years, on my darkest days, in that temporary refuge, knowing I could not stay within its siren’s call. I often wrote stories there and cast them out for all to see in the real world and used the power of my mind to build my strength in this way. My writing floats now, like waxed paper. No bottle required, and their message is not the same. 

Now, instead of yearning and desperation, I send out messages of hope. You see, I realized a long time ago that you did not receive my message. I realized a long time ago that you may never find me. I realized a long time ago that I would have to save myself, but perhaps, if given the chance, my message, or the thousands that I have sent since then, might save you. They say over and over, each in a different way...

If you needed me
I would come to you
I would swim the seas
For to ease your pain

A man on the street hands you a pamphlet. Inside it has a picture of the perfect home. The happy family. A gated community that offers sanctuary and protection. He says all you must do is be one of us. Behave as we do. Hold true to our guidelines and all of this can be yours. A dream has been sold, but at what cost?

Years later, you realize that the dream is hollow. It is wrapped around you and constricting. You reach out, but your hand is pushed back gently as if to say, “shh… you asked for this.”

When you realize that you have nowhere to go, your mind becomes your only escape, and it creates a world within where you can have the freedom of expansion that no one can take from you. You become lost in it as if it is the only place on earth that you can be who you are meant to be. But even your mind will trap you into believing that you cannot have the life that you seek.

Most people live in there. Like a rat in a cage. They are satisfied with trudging through their everyday routine just to have a nice car, a comfortable couch and a scrapbook of 100 photos of events and places that they didn’t even want to go to… not really. They never travel. They never share their hopes or their dreams. 

If this message has found you, then you are not “most people.” Perhaps you bought the dream, and you are finally waking up from it, or you turned your back on the man, but either way, there is something inside of you that makes you inexplicably different. You are starting to realize that you are running out of time and life is not waiting around for you. You know, deep down, that you are meant for more.

This is a critical moment in your life when you get to choose to hit the snooze button and nuzzle back into your cocoon or to break free of everything that you have been taught about yourself. Process that the person that you have been is a mold created by the physical world and outside influences and ask yourself why you never felt at home in your own skin. 

Wake up to the idea that no one knows you because you do not even know who you really are. You were born to this world to live your life like you are free to feel, create and experience every moment as the unique individual that you are. Embrace who you are meant to be, not who you have been, and as each new day pans for the true you, so too, will you learn to be free.

Abundance is not monetary. It is an act of kindness that comes with a flurry in your heart. It is the feeling of living in the moment and not in your head. It is gratitude for what you have and not a feeling of lack of what you are missing. It is as contagious as a smile and as fleeting as a summer romance. 

It is true. It will not last forever. Like the leaves that change color, so too does abundance wilt if not carefully tended. Know that it has its own season. It may wither away, but like the flower that sprouts new life, so too will abundance reveal itself again. You have seen enough sunny and cloudy days to know that the sun will shine upon you once more. As you weather your storms, imagine the warmth of the sun on your face each day, and you will call it to you. 

Life will bring as many dark days as light, but do not hold to your umbrella so tightly that you do not notice the rain has stopped. Dance in the puddles. Do not give in to the fears that you build within your mind. You will love again. You will play again. You will feel more deeply and with less restraint if you give freely with no ulterior motives.

Do not feel guilty when life caresses your cheek either. When abundance shines her light, it is merely your turn. Do not boast and brag. Find grace in these moments and share your abundance with others because your gift of gentle humanity may be the one thing that they need to keep them from shutting themselves away from the light completely. 

Be a caretaker of life, not a dictator. The harder you fight for control; the less abundance will flow.

When I was a child, I was afraid of water. Truth be told, I was afraid of everything. Today, as I floated upon the surface of it, I felt no fear. As the water muffled the chaotic sounds around me, so too, did my worries fall away. So too, did I wash away the old version of me.

In this weightlessness, I reflected on how much I have changed.

Too many times, we cast ripples out, that create waves of emotions that can, quite literally, drown the people around us. That being said, the sheer act of forcing through the crashing waves of other people’s emotions, can be both exhausting and treacherous as well.

I have learned that you cannot save anyone else if you are drowning. Sometimes, you have no choice but to swim away from them, just to find a sense of calm. Focus on your own movements, your own muscles, and your own breathing. Only in that restful strength, with renewed confidence, can you help them at all.

Do not fight the unknown. Do not resist the change that life smashes down upon you. Flow with it. Hold your breath and push through towards the light. Be 100 percent in the present moment and maybe… just maybe, you can find your way back to shore.

As I pulled myself out of the water today, the weight of all that external pressure returned. As my clothes clung to my body, they revealed my true form. I should have felt heavy, but instead, I felt reborn. 

In this, my first breath, I choose to see the world with my own eyes. With no labels or expectations. I choose to see with more color. With no prejudices or judgements. I choose to see life as it is, with the perspective of my own mind, body and soul. In this, my first breath, I choose peace. 

If this, too, was your first breath, would you choose to begin anew, or would you live the life the way society has programmed you to do, just struggling to keep your head above water?

You are suffering from an empathy overload. You are having trouble separating your feelings from the people around you.

You have blessings in your life that you cannot experience to their full potential because you are allowing external energies to interfere with what is meant only for you. 

Take a deep breath. Find your center and push out any emotion that makes you feel like you cannot have this thing that matters most, because those emotions do not belong to you. 

You have absorbed these feelings of a metaphorical “survivor’s guilt” from the people in your life that judge you based off the old version of you, before you were able to grow and develop as a person. 

You have done the work. Your commitment to self-mastery is being rewarded. Let go of who you used to be and forgive yourself for how you once behaved. Allow yourself this gift.

You do deserve it. You are worthy of it. That is why it is yours.