“Can love travel back in time to heal a broken heart?” Alice Hoffman asks in her novel Practical Magic. Sitting with The Ace of Cups beside my laptop I say yes, you can.
Can you heal your own heart and simultaneously heal the wounds carried within your family for generations? Yes, you can.
I’ve been my family’s historian ever since I was old enough to care about the wild tales my grandmother told me. Like any family, there is a veritable “House of Spirits” from which I descend. A house full of extraordinary wealth, massive financial ruin, suicides, genius artistry, depression, incest, wonderful and horrible characters. Thanks to books and manuscripts my family has left behind, I’m well aware of issues that run deep from before the turn of the century.
I’d a terrible quarrel with my mother this past Christmas. Weeks later, looking up from a troubling email, I appealed to my husband, “What do I do?”
“You have to forgive her,” he said gently.
“Forgive her?? I’m the one that was wronged!!!” I nipped back angrily.
My husband suggested I forgive her the whole enchilada, for everything I’ve ever been angry about.
But how do we forgive our parents when we expect the world from them? How do you forgive someone and really, really mean it? How do we say the words, “I forgive you” and feel it in your heart and soul?
I turned, as always, to my deck of cards and my Tarot teacher Ruth Ann Amberstone. She told me the secret to forgiveness rests in the Ace of Cups.
I studied the openness of The Ace of Cups.
True forgiveness is a spiritual path, not just a phrase uttered from your lips. The same way one works on gratitude affirmations or positive visualizations is the way to your path of forgiveness.
You can close your eyes and imagine what your “Path of Forgiveness” looks like. Mine was lush like a Pentacles card. You can take a walk down your path, in your minds eye, as often as you like.
You can dedicate your yoga or exercise practice to forgiveness.
You can mentally forgive a person every morning and every night.
You may realize you have others to forgive. You can forgive people whether they are dead or alive. You can forgive someone even if you don’t have a relationship with him or her. You can forgive people who have committed unspeakable acts. This is because forgiveness does not depend on others.
Forgiveness rests inside you.
A stunning, unexpected thing is happening as a result of all this forgiveness. My relationship with my six-year-old daughter is totally changing. I always thought we’d been good together, but somehow, through forgiveness of my mother, my love for my own daughter is amplified, multiplied and intensified.
Something deep and irrevocable is changing within me. I believe you can heal your own wounds and the wounds of your “House of Spirits” though a journey of forgiveness.
I’ve only just started down this path but I am convinced that this is the strongest sort of magic any of us can weave.
Forgiveness opens up new and unexpected emotional pathways. It is exactly what The Ace of Cups Tarot card is all about. Because regardless of what your legacy is, you are living it this very moment. And you have the power to change it.
Pull out the Ace of Cups and think about if there is anyone you might want to forgive . . .