Kitchen Table Tarot

6 of Cups, 9 of Swords, 2 of Cups

Hello friend, and welcome to my kitchen table. I hope that wherever and whenever you are, you are feeling connected to your heart and soul, doing whatever you can to create peace and joy for yourself. It is a time of the year when we often feel blue—the holidays of the solstice period can exacerbate emotions of loneliness and anxiety, especially when it comes to family and relationships. There is nothing wrong with feeling this way. I encourage you to take care of yourself if you are feeling down; watch a favorite movie, treat yourself to a food you like, take a nice warm shower before bed, things like that. They may sound simple, and they certainly won’t solve everything, but you deserve kindness in whatever way you can give it to yourself. If this resonates for you, however difficult it might be to hear, know that I describe this interpretation with love and care. If it doesn’t vibe with you, you shouldn’t force it to fit, but I’m glad you are here, too. Let’s get to these cards.

The overall vibe of this spread is regret tinged with hope. The 6 of Cups is a card of happy memories and nostalgia; in this artwork (Chris-Anne’s The Lightseer Tarot), the vibration is playful and sweet. The foreground figure sees the progression through time of literal and figurative growth, but it’s abbreviated—a lot can happen between the sweet memories and the present moment, and it’s easy to gloss over the difficulties when considering the journey, especially if you are looking back during a time of painful struggle. This isn’t to discount the genuine goodness of times past, but it’s important not to place the positive reminiscences on a pedestal so you can be as realistic as you can be about the memories. The 9 of Swords suggests that your nostalgia is haunted by great sorrow, causing anxiety and sleepless nights. Perhaps you are dwelling on things that have gone wrong and the subsequent sacrifice of something wonderful. The 2 of Cups indicates to me that these memories and regrets have something to do with a lost relationship, whether platonic friendship or a great love, but I feel most here that it was a complicated mixture of the two. It feels as though you may have pushed someone away from fear of hurting them with your own unresolved pain, or them hurting or using you, but now all you can think about is how effortless the connection felt, how easily understanding and communication seemed to come. It was a compatibility the world or people around you didn’t understand, so when conflict arose, it may have been more convenient to disconnect from it rather than do the work to keep it in balance, and now you are afraid that it is lost forever—especially if a lot of time has passed.

Worry not, dear one. Love is not a finite resource, and if it was there in such strength, it still exists, though its light may be temporarily dimmed. The worry and sleepless nights of the 9 of Swords indicates that an apology is necessary to move forward, but you might be afraid of what will happen. It is not guaranteed that it will be easy to restore what has been disrupted, and if you have indeed hurt someone who was important to you in the past, there will be some work ahead of you. But the great joy you brought each other—and the devoted compatibility reflected in this 2 of Cups—can still be rescued if you approach the situation with sensitivity, an open heart, and humble truth. Sometimes when we don’t believe in ourselves or our own abilities, we need someone to shore up our courage, and I am here to tell you that I believe that you are capable of moving past your fear. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual, and if you have experienced deep hurt in other relationships, it may have scared you away from something genuine because it was hard to see past those unresolved issues. Listen to your heart. If your connection was strong and magnetic—perhaps you might think of it as magical—then there exists a chance to reclaim it. Life is full of second chances.

If this is for you, I hope you are able to put your grief and regret aside to get some rest. It’s easier said than done, of course; I myself have had many dark, sleepless, tear-filled nights dwelling on regretful actions of the past. In order to heal and move past those actions, we must first forgive ourselves, and it’s not a prance through the park. But you deserve to take care of yourself the way you care for others. In the event that making an apology or attempting to reconnect with an important person from your past doesn’t work out the way you’d like, it’s important that you be able to love yourself through it. We may not get what we want, sometimes, but there exists in us a well of strength. Don’t let anyone convince you of your “weakness”—it encourages you to feel sorry for yourself rather than hold on to self-belief. There are great things ahead of you; anyone that would hold you back does not know your heart.

Thank you for being here, and thank you for being. I hope that this may have given you something to think about it if you needed it, and the clarity to go with it. Sleep with peace and remember that you are not the sum of your mistakes. You are loved, believed in, and always, always welcome at my kitchen table. -KTT 🌻💛