The Trial of The High Priestess

In which we take a drive to a house in the woods, and navigate a small collision.

Hi everyone!

Thanks for joining! This week is inspired by The High Priestess. In tarot, she represents self-knowledge and willingness to listen when a message arrives.

Let’s begin.

Part One: Taking a Drive

When I was a child, my family lived in the middle of Vermont, in a small city that felt large to my limited experience. Our tiny bubble of civilization was an island of development within a much larger area of farmland. Acres of pasture fields undulated across the state, ribboned with swathes of suburban sprawl.

Sometimes, on a restless day, my mother would insist we “take a drive” so we could look at those pastures. Once the urge to take a drive arrived within my mother, it was immediately time to get in the car. There was no opting out allowed for the rest of the family. We were in it together.

Drives were of indeterminate length, with strict instructions to keep looking out the window any time my little self claimed boredom. We lived in a beautiful area, I was told, a place that people paid good money to come see during the yearly autumn leaf-peeping season. It would be ungrateful not to take in the view, or so it was made clear to me.

The roads we traveled were a patchwork of dirt, weathered-white asphalt, and oily blacktop as we drove through towns with varying income levels. I noticed that in some places, the houses were large and well-maintained. Mostly though, I saw dilapidated farms. I smelled them. So many farms. Farms with cows, farms with horses, farms with stinking silos filled with fermenting hay. It was hard to find value in the stark beauty of those places as a little kid.

My ability to appreciate the solemn landscape came later in life than those car rides. I wanted to slow everything down back then. I couldn’t see the trees at that driving speed. I wanted to witness their stillness, feel their bark meet the fine roughness of my own fingerprints.

These days, I spend a lot of time looking at tree roots. They’re audacious, growing around, over, and through anything in their way. Slowing down enough to witness this tenacious forward motion through the world made my own life more comfortable. I let go of desire for one set outcome, and looked instead for creative ways around and beyond the obstacles in my path. 

I grew slowly toward a more nourishing place. I looked for water and found it.

Interlude: Red & Blue

We ended up leaving that small city in the middle of Vermont because a gang was gaining traction. I was too young to be fully aware of what was going on, but I knew my parents didn’t like the way the environment was changing. 

We started seeing dirty needles in the gutters. Being a curious kid, I wondered about the glittering litter. The adults around me were too open about other serious topics, but I couldn’t get a clear explanation of this one.

I never understood why wearing red and blue together was dangerous. All I knew is that we were moving somewhere new and that I should be happy about it.

Part Two: Pinch

I’ve never dabbled in needle drugs recreationally, but that’s only because they weren’t around when I was in active addiction. I’m confident I would have explored opioids before I got sober. I know this, because I’ve peeked into the Pandora’s box of hospital-grade pain relief over the years in my struggle to manage my migraines. 

One time, a headache came on so suddenly and painfully that I feared I was having a stroke. My loving, terrified partner brought me to the closest emergency department. The fluorescent lights of the waiting room pressed my eyes into my skull as we waited for what felt like many years, but eventually a nurse brought me back for examination.

The hospital gown they gave me was soft, but impersonal. The paper on the gurney crinkled gently under my pounding head.

I felt a pinch in my inner elbow. A soothing spiderweb snaked away from that pinch and through my veins. The second I felt the Dilaudid flood me, my childhood traumas disappeared. I felt happiness untainted by fear for the first time in my life. I felt taken care of.

When the bright colors of that feeling began to turn gray, I searched my body for a reason to ask the nurse for more. I know I would have become a statistic if I had been around that type of drug at the street level. I’m thankful that the Universe set that limit for me, and I’m more thankful that I don’t feel so drawn to escape my life these days.

Part Three: Screen Door

Going to visit family always meant a long drive, at least half an hour on back roads of varying condition. The entertainment available to me was the car radio or a library book. The iPod, which would have been lifechanging for an undiagnosed ADHD kid like me, would be invented about ten years later in 2001. Smartphones were a dream of the future.

Sitting still in a jostling car for an amount of time I couldn’t understand left me dysregulated by the time we arrived at my aunt and uncle’s house. After a tense car ride punctuated by motion sickness from trying to read, I was hardly in a place to relax and connect with infrequently-seen family members. The arrival felt loud and rushed. My young eyes glazed over and drifted to the trees.

There were gorgeous pine forests surrounding the property, and the house itself was log-cabin inspired on the outside, and spacious inside with a mezzanine level like I had never seen in other houses. It seemed so luxurious and communal. It also seemed like it offered fewer places to hide.

There was a screen door that led into their kitchen. The screens in the doors where I grew up were black plastic mesh that softened slightly in the heat. The screen in the door at their house was silvery aluminum. The first time I went to their house, I walked right into that aluminum screen because I didn’t see that it was there. 

I was a laughingstock for running into that door, but it turns out that I had a good reason. Cheap black plastic is easier to see than fine aluminum mesh when you’re little and no one knows you need glasses.

That door taught me that sometimes my struggle is not about my own internal deficit as much as it is about my lack of resources to meet my needs. It doesn’t lessen the struggle, but it makes it easier to cope with the feelings that come up around it. These days, when I don’t have what I need to get a good result, I feel frustration, but no shame.

My aunt, who lived in that beautiful house with the invisible door, was working toward a psychology degree. For reasons that belong to a conversation I wasn’t part of, she practiced giving a Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) test on me during one of our visits. 

This test has a variety of uses, but one thing it can show is whether someone may have autism and/or ADHD. I had a hard time with this test in ways that indicated I have what’s called a “spiky profile.” This means that I have gifts in certain cognitive areas and disabilities in others, and unfortunately they don’t average out into a normal ability at life. I’m just really good at some stuff and so very bad at other things. Composing a song? Easy. Making a dentist appointment? I’ll let you know when I finally get that down. I fought it for a long time, but I’m just owning it now.

I had no idea what the WISC was all about, but it was a way to stay busy and avoid the rest of my family, so I dug in. The test started easy, but by the end it was beyond me. I tried not to get frustrated, but I wasn’t used to being confronted with tasks that taxed my brain in that way. The schoolwork I was doing at that time was much easier than the exercises my aunt placed before me.

She was kind to me during the test, and she had a long talk with my parents afterward. 

After the WISC, things changed. My aunt became someone to criticize. She became someone whose mental health was in question. I was informed that she was completely unreasonable. We didn’t spend quality time at their house anymore. That only became an option again once my aunt and uncle got divorced and my aunt moved away to start a new life. 

She might be a therapist now, helping people like me. I hope so. 

All I ever knew is that I couldn’t make the blocks match the picture. No one ever talked to me about what the results meant, or gave me any occupational therapy. As far as I could tell as a child, my failure to perform well on the WISC broke my family and revealed my own brokenness as well. My adult mind, however, understands that I was never broken, and that the dysfunction in my family was well-rooted long before I came along.

It took me many years to stop seeing assistance as a threat. It’s slow work, but I’m trending toward trust. The lesson here is what The High Priestess would tell us:

You know yourself.

May you always know yourself.

Your feelings are there inside you.

You understand what to do, even if you don’t yet know how.

May you always have room to grow.

Your wealth will seem mysterious to others.

Even if your wealth doesn’t show up on the test, I bet it’s there.

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All my best,

Lizzy Co