Tarot Wisdom About Mothers

Mothers And Daughters

I've come across stories of mother-daughter love-hate relationships. At this point, I want to qualify that I don't hate my Mum. I love her with all my being just because she's my Mum and she spent much of her life sacrificing a career and her sanity to look after a loony daughter like me. When I was very young, Mum was about to walk down the stairs carrying me and missed a step. As she took a tumble down the stairs, she held on tightly to me to prevent me from getting hurt. She protected me as a mother would. Even till today, when I am sick, no medicines in the world could cure me faster than Mum's lovingly prepared food for convalescence.

Like most mothers and daughters, we have a very strong bond but from time to time, that bond is peppered by little misunderstandings, miscommunication or what my "13 year old" self would call " Mum's battiness." In the same vein, Mum probably thought my "loopiness" was what caused all these incidences of miscommunication and misunderstandings. After all, like my husband said, "you both are like two peas in a pod."

Advice From The Tarot

As Mum and I have a less than perfect relationship, over the years, I harbored some residual resentment and I never quite healed properly from that resentment. When the wound is raw and red, Mum sometimes reopen it unceremoniously with a fight with me over some insignificant thing. That wound goes through a vicious cycle of opening and closing over the years. I think I owe it to my clients, my family and myself to permanently close it forever, particularly during this Christmas. As a wise cousin J said in a Facebook post, "Christmas is about the gift of forgiveness as God had forgiven our sins through the gift of His only son."

So I shuffled my Tarot cards last night with the intention of getting some much-needed advice and insight into my relationship with mum. I had been looking at our relationship from MY perspective. So I wanted the cards to show me the relationship from Mum's perspective. Here's what I picked:

Knight Of Swords

The Knight of Swords is a manifestation of Mum's perceptions of me. Mum sees me as someone highly intelligent, young, full of energy and a great communicator. She admires my strong spirit of going all out to get what I want. However, she sometimes feel that that spirit and ambition, blinds me from everything else as I trample clumsily and sometimes unwittingly on people around me in my bid to reach my goals. While she admires my communication skills, she abhors my sharp tongue and thinks that sometimes, the way I convey a message, could sometimes be misconstrued as cutting, rude and obnoxious. Mum feels that while deep down I always have had good intentions, I am headstrong and will walk into a battlefield without sizing up the enemy and anticipating the consequences prior. All my life, I governed my thoughts and feelings with willfulness. I had often gotten burnt just because I want to beat up the bigger boy in a fight without realizing that the fight was caused by the smaller boy's bullying.

When Mum says something that I don't agree with, I would be fighting back with something else that may sometimes hurt. When Mum was going through some depression due to Dad needing additional care as he couldn't walk without help, I reacted with anger instead because I felt she wasn't being honest and opened with me about what she needed. When Mum and I fought during a vacation trip recently, she was upset with me for "barking" at her when all I wanted to do was to help her. My Knight of Swords self reacted as I jumped in to offer an advice in a dogmatic fashion which she regarded as being rude. However, my Knight of Swords self reacted even more badly when she started shouting at me in front of her friends. Amongst a lot of things I haven't quite forgiven her for, I never forgave her for that.


Emperor

Wow! This is an apt card to represent Mum. Her birthday is governed by the number 4 which also corresponds with the Emperor's card in Tarot. The Emperor is a manifestation of Mum's perception of herself. She sees herself as the head of the family who demands respect. She insists on being in control and sees herself as the authority on everything from A-Z.

In fact, Mum thinks the universe revolves around her and if she sneezes, all of us will probably catch the flu. Once, in response to my request for her to do something, she snapped," I am very busy you know, having to look after your dad and all. I have to multi-task." I thought at that moment, "You must think I am very free, sitting around on my arse, waiting for money to drop on my lap to financially take care of 6 people in the family, work a full time job and run a business at the same time." Of course in that moment of piety, I said nothing.

Mum's life is structured around strict, old fashioned Confucius concepts of piety and familial loyalty. In our family, these traditions are held very strongly. Mum doesn't apologise for anything and demands that the younger generation accord her with due respect. This explained why when I raised my voice in exasperation at her, she got into a fit. She is so proud she wouldn't ask for help even if she needed it desperately. That explained her depression when Dad needed additional care and I felt she wasn't open and honest with me about needing help.

6 Of Swords Reversed

The 6 of Swords reversed is a reflection of the state of our current relationship. We spent years manoeuvring an uneasy relationship tainted by past hurts. Years ago when Mum assumed her professional Pope role and refused to accept my divorce, she cut me off for years. The anger and bitterness I had borne within me for years, never quite abated.

Although over the years, we tried to heal and put the past behind us, I forgave but never quite forgot how she went against the grain of familial loyalty by not standing by me in my moment of marital distress. Worse, I hadn't quite forgotten how my grand dad was old and frail but I wasn't accepted into the home to visit him. On one of grand dad's birthdays, I drove up boldly to the house and wished my grand dad happy birthday before taking my leave. I will never forget the horrified faces of the family who were stunned into silence and did not talk to me, out of respect for mum. Grand dad died a few years after and my heart is still filled with sorrow for those missing years. If I had a wish this Christmas, it's just to spend one more day with grand dad to tell him how much I love him.

The 6 of swords reversed was an apt card to pick. Mum and I never quite left the hurt behind us. Actually, it's more me. I need to be reminded from time to time that grand dad's gone but Mum's still here.

10 of Wands

10 of Wands is the exhaustion we feel today, having struggled through years of strained relationship whilst clinging to the past. It's like there is never going to be an end to this huge burden of a past that we are carrying on our shoulders. We walk on egg shells when we talk to each other, hoping the wounds wouldn't reopen again because one of us said something stupid.

Strength

Finally, Strength is the wise advice of my Tarot cards asking me to approach the relationship with inner strength, patience and perseverance. Love of mothers and daughters is the greatest kind of love that's why the worst pain that comes to one, is the pain caused by any hurts and disappointments between mothers and daughters.

Mum and I share a past that we could never undo. However we share a future that is also very short and could never be undone.

Joel

I love my Mum and my gift as well as my cross are really that I am exactly like her. I hope to God that Joel and I will not go through a relationship that's tenuous and filled with hurt. I told him this morning that I would appreciate his honesty if I crossed the line as a mother and I hope he would appreciate mine too if he did the same. Taking lessons from the mistake of my past, I always told Joel as well as my Tarot clients, " Stop looking down at every step you take as you walk along the beach or else you will miss the kisses from the sun."

My Mum is that sunshine.

About The Writer:
The writer of this blog post is a marketeer by trade, and a tarot card reader by accident. She obtained a Certified Professional Tarot Reader qualification from the Tarot Certification Board of America (TCBA) and is also certified numerologist.  She currently runs a Tarot consultancy called Sun Goddess Tarot based in Singapore. A member of the American Tarot Association (ATA) and the Tarot Association of the British Isles (TABI), she is also a reader for the Free Tarot Network and is a mentor for the ATA. She can be contacted at www.facebook.com/SunGoddessTarot or www.sungoddesstarot.com