The Heart is Home

Happy birthday to Outside Women! It’s publication day and I’ve spent the last few days taking a break from the emails and to-do lists that seem to pursue me everywhere. In her poem, “The Art of Disappearing,” Naomi Shihab Nye said “You’re trying to remember something / too important to forget.” In the midst of so much noise, this is what I’m trying to keep close: my heart is my home. Over the past few weeks, I’ve pulled a particular tarot card, the ten of cups, over and over again as if to make sure I remember what is too important to forget.

I’m relatively new to tarot. For most of my life, tarot seemed like an interesting practice that I didn’t think about very much. But then, a few years ago, I came across the Wild Unknown, a deck by artist Kim Krans, and was instantly drawn to its interpretations of the tarot journey. During the early pandemic, I began drawing a card a day as part of a journaling routine. And I started reading the incomparable Rachel Pollack’s Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom to add to my practice.

I don’t have an explanation for why tarot cards feel resonant. Generally, I like evidence and data. But starting a regular tarot practice — especially alongside journaling and meditation — has helped me clarify my emotions and brought startling insights to the fore so many times. I just know this practice helps, and that’s been enough for me.

I usually only pull cards for myself. But at a writers’ residency a couple of years ago, I brought my deck to our post-dinner gathering on our group’s last night together. Memoirist Putsata Reang, one of the other residents, expressed her tangled feelings about home in our conversation, eventually asking the question: “how will I find my way home?” We pulled cards for her. One of them was the ten of cups — the same card I’d pulled for myself earlier that day.

As the culmination of the watery cups suit, this card represents an abundance of heart, a reminder of joy and connection and home. In the Wild Unknown’s minimalist depiction, ten cups pour streams of color back and forth in a rainbow network. The folks at Little Red Tarot, one of my favorite tarot sites, interpret it as: “Our heart come home. We know who we are, where we are, why we are here (or we are joyfully surrendered to the mystery)… Home is arriving at a place where we feel happy, where we accept ourselves, where we give and receive love. For some this may be easy to find and manifest, we may even be born into this feeling of security. Others may search long and hard to find a ‘family’ or a place of peace and acceptance.”

Putsata was so inspired by the ideas presented by this card that she went back to her cottage and started scribbling a new essay that same night. We emailed about the card later as well, after we’d all left the residency. She told me the card and the reflections around it had brought her to the question: “How do we come back to center when we've become directionless?” For so many of us, home has always been elusive. We are trying to remember that an emotional home is always within reach, though the world makes it so easy to forget.

At some point in my own tarot exploration, I joined Typewriter Tarot — a community focused on the intersection between tarot and the arts, especially writing. I love founder Cecily Sailer’s wise, earthy approach to tarot and the creative life. A couple of weeks ago, she sent me one of her “mystic messages.” She’d randomly pulled a tarot card for me and mailed it to me along with a typed poem about that card. Natch, it was 10 of cups, the card I’ve been pulling repeatedly this past month.

I don’t think I’m the only one lodged in a forgetful place these days, my mind skipping through lists and scrolling bad news. Words and tasks fall out of my brain without warning. But hold on to this, the 10 of cups reminds me. Book reviews, hardship, connection, disconnection, even silence and despair are ever-present, but so is something else. Throw the shutters open and accept that home can be right here, in the midst of imperfection.

Outside Women updates

Book events start this week! Hope to see you there and please share with friends who might be in these places.

March 27 @ 7:00PM PT — Long Beach, CA - Bel Canto Books (hosted at Kubo LB) — SIGN UP HERE

March 27-30. AWP 2025 Conference — Los Angeles, CA

April 2 @ 8:00PM ET — VIRTUAL. Poets & Writers Get the Word Out Cohort Reading —SIGN UP HERE

April 9 @ 6:00PM ET — Washington, DC. Busboys and Poets (14th & V) —SIGN UP HERE

April 16 @ 6:30PM ET — Brooklyn NY. Lofty Pigeon Bookstore —SIGN UP HERE

April 26 @ 6PM ET — Brooklyn NY. Pyaari Azaadi's Xenana. Book launch celebration with Mona Eltahawy and Yashica Dutt. Sponsored by the Asian American Writers' Workshop. Details coming soon.

May 10 — Ithaca NY. Spring Writes Festival. Details coming soon.