Throwing off the Caution Tape

3 of Swords & Andrea Gibson

I didn’t post yesterday—my first day not posting in 64 days, y’all—because I have a terrible cold and was glued to my bed, sleeping and sleeping with my 3 sweet kitties piled around me. They love a sick day.

By late evening, I was well enough to venture out to the living room and be horizontal on a different surface—the sofa—and watch something on tv. I decided that since I was already feeling pretty raw and vulnerable from my illness, I might as well watch ‘Come See Me in the Good Light’, the documentary on Andrea Gibson.

I’ve been wanting to watch it since it debuted a couple months ago, but I’ve also been avoiding it. Andrea died about 6 weeks after my mother passed away, also from cancer. Like many of you, I’d been a real fan of Andrea’s work—especially watching the astonishing way that intimacy with their own mortality was cracking them open to wonder and realness and love such that they must have glowed, phosphorescent, in the dark. And I didn’t know if I could bear to see that up close, because my mother was very much not that way, in her journey with cancer, and in her dying. She withdrew into her fear and denial, and I resented it. Andrea was the shining counterpoint, and I knew that it would bring up a lot of feelings for me, to watch someone so courageous and tender doing what my mother could not, what my own blood could not.

So, yes, I waited til I was physically flattened to flatten myself emotionally. Why not? I was already down there.

Photo by Auri Whitaker on Unsplash

It’s a beautiful film. Please watch it, if you haven’t already. And pull cards while you do. There is so much richness. I had a lot of beautiful pulls, but the one I wanted to share was this, for a line from the poem ‘Acceptance Speech After Setting the World Record in Goosebumps’:

[I] tore the caution tape off
my life and let everything touch it

I drew 3 of Swords for that. And ugh, I love it. I’ve been beating this drum for years: that 3 of Swords is opening, opening, opening the heart. It can still be grief and heartbreak and suffering…..but the heart doesn’t collapse in on itself. It breaks wide. It’s a 3, so we can look at it under the umbrella of the Empress, archetype of love, but also of welcome. In all 3s, we are welcoming the world in to our experience. We want to be touched.

I’m not someone who insists on reframing every ‘hard card’ right away. I don’t want to traffic in spiritual bypassing. It is true that 3 of Swords is painful. If we are willing to let everything touch us, then we know that pain is in the mix. It’s unavoidable. And it’s been said a million times, but it’s always worth repeating: if we close ourselves off to pain, we close ourselves off to joy. That is the reality of 3 of Swords: the caution tape is off. Sorrow can touch us. Awe can touch us. We are open to it all.

Here’s a little spread for you:

I’m afraid to let this into my experience

So I set up this roadblock to keep it away

How can I begin to dismantle it?

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Here’s a collection of quotes that I’ve also drawn 3 of Swords for, to help expand your understanding of this card:

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