The Weekly One, 7/8/24: Rest doesn’t *just happen* once (or at all.)
Take a fucking break already.
When was the last time you stopped to really let yourself recharge? Is rest something that you feel you need to earn before you can deserve to take it? Your relationship with rest, and a request to pause, are in focus with this week’s card.
Welcome to The Weekly One! Each week, I pull a Tarot card to help you focus your intuitive energy in real life, and take action with intention inside your business.
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In The Card: Rest.
Aah, the IV of Swords - respite from the swirl of overthinking and too much to process. But only if you lay down your sword and take it, hello.
Nobody is looking out for you in quite the way you need to look out for you, and rest won’t take itself. But this card presents us with the request for us to take a fucking break already while creating the energy that may finally feel like the permission slip we were looking for (even though you don’t actually need one from anybody.)
The number IV is stable, structured energy, creating a feeling of safety while we put up our feet. The world is outside, and will still be there when we get back. For now, our job is to stay in our safe bubble of self-care and self-sovereignty and take a fucking break already.
While the imagery on this specific IV of Swords brings a smile to my face, I have to make a disclaimer for us all: self-care isn’t about getting facials and massages once in a while. True self-care is a continuous practice in meeting one’s own needs. If you’ve back-burnered your own needs and mental health in favor of other people’s instead, here’s the reminder you need to take a fucking break already (and take a fucking break again.)
In Between: Understanding your needs so you can fulfill them.
The suit of Swords is concerned with our cerebral experience of life: thoughts, communication, our worries and our words. A lot of times, what’s happening inside our brains is spurring us into specific action without our even knowing why.
Do I actually want to be doing this thing, in this way, at this time? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I’m just caught up in the unrelenting pace of modern life and a set of systems all designed to tell me I’m only as worthy as what I can produce. Maybe I’m just acting on a knee-jerk reaction to an intangible and not-all-the-way-real fear.
Maybe I’m acting on a knee-jerk reaction to a totally reasonable fear, but I’m still allowed to take a break, even then. Yeah, I know! Even then!
Knowing why we’re doing something allows us to have more of that self-sovereignty brought to us by the number IV. We may not be able to instantly buck the systems of oppression and harm that keep us working, working and working some more. But knowing why we’re acting the way we are allows us to act differently when the why isn’t good enough to keep draining ourselves.
Venus is doing a few different things this week, and being the planet of beauty, love, the things we value and how, there’s a bunch of energy being created in support of you and your desires.
The thing you need in your rest may be very different from the thing that I need in my rest.
Where does Venus live in your birth chart, and what does that say about your desires and the way you show love? Not just to others, but to yourself?
If you don’t know the answer to that, is there something that’s been pushing on you from inside, something that has been practically begging you not to forget that it exists somewhere in the most joyful part of your heart? Try turning towards it instead of telling it “Not now, I’m busy.”
And if you’re not even sure where to start finding rest that truly refills your cup, try simply finding some time to hang around and do absolutely nothing. Literally block off time to let your mind wander - away from your work, away from your obligations. Grab a snack that you love, have a seat, sit, eat, stare, tune out.
In Your Business: Take a fucking break already.
When was the last time you actually did? When’s the next time you will? How long is it going to take for you to remember that you’re a human being that needs and deserves rest on a regular basis instead of allowing late-stage capitalism and other people’s expectations to grind you into a fine powder to be scattered to the four winds?
If you can’t do it this week, put that break on the calendar.
Remember: it doesn’t have to be a two-week first-class vacation to the Maldives (it can be, BUT,) it just has to be something doable for you, and dedicated to you: A weekend, a day, an hour, 15 minutes.
Do what you can with what you’ve got, but do it. Like I said: rest doesn’t take itself, and humans are much more than cogs in a wheel.
Until next week,
Zoha
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About The Author:
Zoha Abbas is a Writer, Editor, Intuitive Tarot Reader and Business Coach who aims to explore the small business conversations around self-trust, critical thinking, reality checks and forging your (not so straight) path to success in the grey-area of real life. Find out more at zohaabbas.com
For inquiries, please email: info@zohaabbas.com