February Week 1: 8 of Swords

For February's month ahead, I opted to use Spirit Keeper's Tarot created by Benebell Wen. In January I pulled the year ahead wheel, and have decided to use the cards from the wheel as the theme card in the month ahead spread each month.
So for example, the card for February from the wheel was The Empress. Before pulling the four cards that would mark each week of the month, I searched through the deck and pulled out The Empress and laid her down, like a significator. Then I shuffled and drew the remaining 4 cards.
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So onto the 8 of Swords for this first week. You'll notice the cards have a spirit resident, and so for the 8 of Swords it is The Captor. This was so true during this first week of February where I found myself feeling stagnant and still, unable to move forward, not knowing how to take up space on IG, as a musician, as a Tarot Card reader, in a relationship, and also being in a rift with my parents (long story, I'll spare you).....but, you get the idea. In reflection, there has been a lot of self-talk that goes like, "I can't..", "You shouldn't...", "Who are you to..." rinse, repeat. By saying these things I just haven't been able to see clearly. In essence, I am my own captor and such is the 8 of Swords, right?

Part of how I like to operate with the month ahead is to take each card of the week first by itself, and then take a look at it alongside the theme card. As I close out this week, I started to look at The Empress and see her as my guidepost for the month. So I asked her, "How do I get out of this?" and she said, "You are going to create your way out of this. I am here to help and nurture this."

Then an idea came. In Mary K. Greer's book "Tarot Reversals" she writes about enantiodrama, a term borrowed by Jung from Heraclitus. Greer further quotes Jeremy Taylor on his definition of enantiodrama which is ".....this predictable tendency of seemingly polar opposites to flip over, and turn into one another at precisely the moment when they seem to be most in opposition."
Although this was used in the context of learning tarot reversals, why not apply it to this Captor situation? Worth a shot. 

I started saying all of the "You can'ts" and "You shouldn'ts" and "That won't works" with exaggeration to the point where things flipped over. I heard myself and my self sounded utterly ridiculous. Then it became, "I will." Then, I did a tarot reading for a fellow IG kindred spirit that went well. I picked up the phone and called my Mom (Mom/Empress....see how that works?). I posted this here. The other things will get sorted, but in the end perhaps this was a creative way to untie the ropes and take off the blindfold.