I'm lighting the match.
There are some moments in life where you just have to burn it down. When I got divorced, no one but me could light the match.
Hi. I’m Katie. This newsletter is a place for the woo curious to explore spirituality, culture, and humanity in an intersectional way. Here’s what I’m thinking about this week…
When my ex husband and I got married, like many couples, we decided to do a nontraditional guestbook. We recruited my father, who is a masterful woodworker, to create a large framed image of a bare-branched tree with our wedding date at the bottom. The leaves were made up of tiny wooden hearts, which my mother helped arrange artfully. Two blush pink birds were nestled in the heart of the tree, representing me and my husband.
On the day of our wedding, each guest signed a heart, scrawling their names along with well wishes and marital advice. When we eventually hung it above the fireplace in our first home, all we had to do was look at the framed tree to remind us of everyone who was cheering for us and our marriage.
In the months leading up to my divorce, I would often lie awake at night and think about those hearts. Their permanence. What they represented. As I passed under it, the tree seemed to stare at me, its leaves like a many-faceted eye of a fly, tracking my every move and reminding me of what I had promised to care for.
Eventually, it became difficult to look at the tree. I began to wonder what would happen to it when everything fell apart.
I got engaged on President’s Day on a nearly-empty scenic overlook right as the sun set. Almost exactly seven years later, I was standing in the middle of an empty apartment, listening to the heeled boots of the landlord tapping against the hardwood floor as she led me from vacant room to vacant room. Pale winter sunlight streamed through the charming stained glass windows, creating fiery rainbows that danced on the walls. I felt strange. Like I was supposed to be here. And that I wasn’t.
But here I was. About to disappoint every single person who had signed a heart on our wedding tree by signing a lease that said, with certainty, that I was getting a divorce. I hadn’t packed a thing. I hadn’t told anyone. I could barely tell myself.
As the landlord left me to look through the pages of the lease, I thought that perhaps I should begin to imagine the decorations I’d hang on the walls, the way I’d turn my bed or the plants I’d line across the windowsills. But all I could see were the blurred lines of the paper in front of me. All I could feel was the impossibly heavy pen in my hand, waiting for me to use it. When I finally scrawled my signature on the first of many lines, it felt like lighting a match.
There was no going back now. With a few pen strokes, I had toppled what I had spent years growing and leveled the land it stood on. The tree was ripped up, its roots flailing in the open air like the slowly-peddling legs of a dying bug. I struck the match, threw it on top, and I watched each of the leaves twist into ash. I felt scared, unsure…and powerful. I had decided what no one else could decide for me. But I had spent a long, long time waiting for the universe to do it for me.
When I was a kid, I loved to watch the Price is Right. My favorite games were the ones that involved the Big Doors. You know them: the ones that open dramatically to reveal the prizes hidden within. The ones that hold either life-changing contents or crushing disappointment. I held my breath along with the contestants as they clutched Bob Barker’s hand in anticipation, and I sighed with relief when they chose correctly. Because there was always an obvious best choice in these kinds of games. You might end up with the wrong thing if you weren’t careful.
Deciding to get divorced felt like this. I was standing, center stage, with the lights beating down on my back. Bob Barker’s skinny microphone had turned into a giant match, ready to be lit. But I had to decide which door I would open. Everything else would have to be burned.
I solicited help from the audience, casting my eyes to the tarot readers who drew the Tower and shrugged their shoulders. I pleaded with close friends to tell me what to do. And I looked at each of the wooden hearts and re-read their advice, wondering if there would be something there that would tell me which door was the right one.
It was clear: this was something only I could decide.
I closed my eyes and drew the match across the stage. It burned brightly as I touched it to the base of the tree of my marriage. Moments later, it was engulfed in flames.
Months after I had moved out, my ex husband came by my new apartment. The house had been sold. He was leaving the country. He had a few final items to give me. A bag of spices. A steam mop. A few random socks I had left behind. He stood on my porch, and I leaned on the screen door to hold it open as we talked about his next chapter.
As he turned to leave, I asked him a question I had been wondering for awhile. I asked about the wedding tree and all of its little hearts. What had he done with it after I had left in those months he had stayed in the house alone?
He looked at me for a long time before answering.
“I burned it,” he said simply. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I put it in the fireplace and lit a match.”
Two years later, the Big Doors loom in front of me once again. Behind one is the life I have built here, alone, in St. Louis. My teaching job, my friends, the places I spend my time–they are all here, behind this door. Behind the other is the hazy outline of a life beside the ocean, the silhouette of my partner the only thing I can see for sure.
I know that no one will choose for me. But I am less concerned now about getting it right. Because there is no right door, no one wrong choice that will ensure that the rest of my life is less beautiful than it could have been if I had just chosen differently. I understand that there will be more of these moments, ones where I have to burn down the deeply-rooted tree that I have planted and nurtured in order to make space for an entire forest to take shape.
I twirl a match between my fingers. I take a deep breath. And I light it.
What metaphorical matches have you had to light in your life? I’d love to hear all about them.
✨Cards for Humanity: The Tower✨
Whether you’re into tarot or not, here’s a few things to consider about this weird thing called life.
Perhaps the most infamous card in the deck, the 16th card in the major arcana is one that you only need to look at to understand its troubled reputation. The inky darkness behind it. The forked tongue of lightning. The flames that engulf the top of a tall structure. The falling people that careen to an unpictured ground.
The Tower is a card that is difficult to pull for yourself or others. It’s hard to put a positive spin on such a dismal scene of death and destruction, and rightfully so: tarot isn’t meant to be all rainbows and butterflies because, well, life just isn’t like that.
In the tarot, towers and other man-made structures connect with the ego, or the self that we have created through our jobs, our life paths, our relationships and the ways we show up in the world. Towers are not inherently bad, but they are susceptible to unforeseen acts of God that can topple them at any moment. Life works like this too: we face trials and sudden upheavals that come out of nowhere and that often leave us in a free-fall back to the scorched earth that remains.
There’s no way around it: Tower moments are usually painful. The Universe shows up and speaks in a direct, destructive way, represented by the lightning that strikes the top of the Tower and causes the crown to fall and the kingdom to crumble. Though this lightning destroys, it also illuminates what needed to go. Even as we find ourselves in that terrifying plunge back to Earth, we are able to understand that what’s being cleared away is making room for a more permanent structure to be built.
Something to understand about the Tower links to those two figures who have chosen to abandon it and risk the jump. The Tower pictured on the card is not yet in ruins. Yes, it is aflame and will soon fall, but these people have chosen to leave before the complete destruction. At times, life will ask us to burn down what we have built before we feel ready. Before we feel like it’s time for the Tower to fall. It is in these moments where we understand that, though the Universe has brought us here to this dramatic moment of reckoning, it is only us who can decide when it’s time to take the leap into the unknown.
What waits for us at the bottom is yet to be discovered. But when we decide to jump is precisely when we discover the personal power that emerges in times of difficulty.
✨Prompts | The Tower✨
Meditate. Journal. Pull some cards.
☀️ What sudden shifts am I experiencing, and how am I responding to them?
☀️ What familiar lessons is the Universe teaching me through destruction?
☀️ What parts of my ego are blocking me from understanding my true purpose?
☀️ What has been illuminated in the midst of difficult times in my life?
A photo to represent the Tower.
✨Weekly Mantra✨
Write it down. Say it out loud. Share it with a friend.
I have the courage to rebuild.
I won’t wish a Tower moment on you, but if life gives you one, may you have the courage to face it with an open spirit. And if I have another one? Well, I’ll be back here next week, writing about it. Until then…
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I absolutely LOVE this post!!!! I can totally relate and have been holding onto my own match, waiting to strike!