The Ace of Cups and starting on the right foot
By Addie Broyles — July 29, 2022
It’s a hot end to a long month, and it feels like death is all around.
At the end of June, I was preparing to start my birthday month by making a tincture with mullein and hyssop, two plants I learned about in my herbalism course earlier this year. One I planted, one that grew natively.
A month later, those plants are dead or dying.
And yet, new life is afoot.
I know three people I know who are pregnant right now, and they are all due the second week of December.
I am at the beginning of planning a wedding celebration with Frank.
And this week, I became a landlady.
Halfway through the month, I pulled the Ace of Cups as the first card in my birthday reading, so I was on heightened alert for this new relationship energy.
I didn’t have to look far.
All month, I was up to my elbows in paint, putty and IKEA cabinets getting my house ready to rent to what I hoped might be a sweet family who would enjoy living in my home.
Parting from the house caused its own grief, a sentiment not often talked about with the Ace of Cups, but in order to start something new, we usually have to walk away from something that we love in search of a relationship (or a friendship, a project, a community) that is even better suited for us.
Have you ever heard the phrase: How you get into a relationship is how you get out of it?
That’s the energy here.
With that in mind, I showed the house to a few prospective tenants and landed on a couple with three kids and one on the way. (Talk about a new beginning.)
When we met, it felt like I’d known them a long time — I was one a new mom with a baby on the way looking for a place to rent — but the dynamic of this was very different.
Now I was the one with the house (and the risk).
Could I open my heart to being transformed by this experience, no matter what the outcome?
Could I use what I’ve learned about being in healthy relationship (clear communication, detachment, boundaries, watching my own over-functioning) with this family who wanted to live in my house?
Could I uphold my end of the deal — to provide them a safe, stable, steady place to land, while also taking care of my own needs of feeling stable, steady and safe?
I tried to slow myself down and think about the situation from my God-centered self, that high eye/low eye thing Matthew McConaughey talks about.
“Love is a choice,” echo’d in my ear. It’s an oft-repeated quote from a dear friend that I don’t always agree with, but on this idea, I do.
I felt a “yes” in my body and decided this was the relationship for me. For now.
The measure of a relationship’s success is not its longevity.
They were so grateful, and to be honest, so was I.
“You’re a dream come true,” she told me.
“You’re a dream come true,” I told her. And I meant it.
I don’t have any assumptions about perfection, on my part or theirs. I know I’ll make mistakes. I know I’ll miscommunicate. I know we’ll have conflict, and I’m OK with that.
What if I enter this relationship thinking of it as a precious opportunity to create more possibilities and exercise interdependence and participate in transformative justice and all these other aspects of Emergent Strategy that guide my life?
I can do that, Ace of Cups. I can do that.
After we signed the lease and I finished cleaning out the garage, I went to H-E-B to buy them a few housewarming gifts. An orchid. Fancy Coca-Colas. A box of Goldfish.
The next day, she texted me this photo, emoji tears on the screen transforming into actual tears in my eyes.
She got the gift and she got the message.
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