Cornhole and Tarot Cards

cornhole + tarot cards + Carie

My middle-aged lady friend and I joined a cornhole league. During Covid, she and I spent a lot of time hanging in her beautiful back yard. But we were both feeling the call to leave our comfort zones and try something new and be amongst the people. 

Given my midwestern sensibilities, love of beer, and general lack of athleticism, cornhole was our best option. 

Despite our name of #OldLadyShit, a brave stranger named Ben or Brandon or something joined our team. Post-game, we sat around and shot the shit. One thing you should know about me is that Covid completely destroyed my ability to small talk, and he was content to dig right in to Real Talk about the world and its misgivings. When my friend went to grab a few more beers, he looked at me and said, “So how many tarot decks do you own?”

It was said with humor. I detected no judgment. But my first instinct was to think, 

OMG RUDE.

I own enough tarot cards, Ben-Brandon. Enough. 

When I got divorced in 2018, another middle-aged lady friend and I had a physic reading.

When the woman concluded my reading, she handed me her tarot deck. Spirit had guided her to give it to me. 

Now. I grew up on a farm in the midwest. Playing cards is in my blood. I wasn’t sure about tarot. But seeing it felt like rebellion to my Catholic inner child, it felt right to accept. 

And, I do love to shuffle. 

So, I shuffled. I learned. I learned some more. 

And yes, Ben-Brandon, I may have acquired a few more card decks over the years. 

His question kept popping into my head this week.

Like, do I look like someone who reads tarot cards? What does someone who reads tarot cards look like? Certainly, most likely, not like me, right? Do people meet me and think, my God, she’s so WooWoo? And what’s wrong with that, even if they do? 

Which left me with the question: why am I so triggered by his good-humored inquisition? 

Last night, an oracle card reminded me: my intuitive gifts are an aspect of me I have yet to own. 

As women of a certain age, we face a lot of judgment.

Many of us in Generation X grew up reading YM and Seventeen magazines. I was 11 years old when ‘Teen convinced me I wasn’t blonde enough. By age 13, I’d read enough of my mom’s Glamour magazines to know I wasn’t skinny enough. My skin wasn’t clear enough and my clothes weren’t cool enough. 

I was a farm kid growing up during the farm crisis of the 1980s. My parents didn’t have the time, energy, inclination, or resources to indulge me. The glossy magazines I’d come to worship gave me the answer to my every problem. Surely, if my 13-year-old self had the newest Guess jeans, I could finally feel good about myself. 

So I got to work. I baby sat. I walked soybean fields with a hook to cut through the volunteer corn stalks and sunflowers that would clog combines. At 14, I went through the rural American right of passage of detasseling seed corn. By 16, I had a job in town. 

I spent the money, on All the Things. And the world kept creating new, better things. Things that made my old things look dumb and stupid and out of fashion. So I bought more of the things. 

I drank the Slimfast and ate the fat-free Snackwells. When they didn’t make me skinny, I learned various unhealthy ways of releasing them. I bought more things. The Cindy Crawford workout tape. BUNS OF STEEL! 

In high school, I heard the message that I couldn’t have All the Things without the shiny college degree. My minimum wage after-school job at Pamida wasn’t enough to buy the degree. No worries. The powers that be would just loan it to me. And, once I got to school, I was offered a free t-shirt that said University of Northern Iowa–my new school and identity! 

I just needed to sign up for this Discover card. 

Hurray! More things!

I played the game. I got the papers. I was free.

Right?

Except, to pay for the papers, I was invited into a new game. My so-called corporate life. Where I learned to be anything but myself, because Real Me was not what anyone was looking for. So I put on a new suit, called Corporate Me. 

God DAMN was that uncomfortable. My brain cells died, one monotonous tick of the office clock by tick of the office clock. 

I was so unhappy. So, I turned to what I love most: writing. And as a writer, I wanted to see my byline in print, in those same publications that pushed me down a path of disconnecting with the truth of my own unique beauty. 

Thankfully, life soon began to challenge me. And I woke up from the nightmare of Who I Am Not.

Last night after my daughter went to bed, I meditated.

I embarked on a ritual that connects me to my inner knowing. Yes, it involved oracle and tarot cards and other things I was once told to judge as “woo” and suggested to view as “outside of God” and things only “crazy” women used. 

Yeah. Eff that shit. 

The truth is, many of us women of a certain age were sold a lie that disconnects us from the most beautiful part of being a woman: our intuition. The more I disconnect from the lies I bought from media about my beauty and my worth, the more I connect to my most authentic self. By using tools like oracle cards, written by women who connect to the universal spirit and nature and our ancestors and the divine feminine (and yes, divine masculine energies!), I connect to my true power. 

The more I disconnect from the noise, the more I hear my own internal guidance system. The more I know: there was never anything wrong with me. The toxicity I pushed into the world was never who I was. It was a version of me created and influenced by a toxic world. 

I am so ready to own my truth. I am so ready to stand next to my middle-aged lady peers who are doing the work to heal from a world that rewards impossible standards disguised as beauty and change how shit gets done around here.  

So, Ben-Brandon, thank you for triggering me. And seeing me and my corgi hair tie and not-so-well disguised Woo. You reminded me that it’s time to own who I truly am. See you next week at Cornhole. #OldLadyShit