The story of my comfort cards
Last year, I knew I was going to have chemo, and I was lost in myself a bit for that. I was so scared. Over the years I had heard so many horror stories, and now I was going to get it. How would I ever cope?
As I so often do, I let my creativity out to play.
I eyed my watercolours and the water colour paper, tore one sheet of it into eight pieces and then started to throw colours at the paper. When I was done, I added something to every page, something I knew I could lean on.
Here are the cards I doodled:
And these are the terms I added, with a little bit of an explanation:
- Creativity - I knew from experience that my creativity is something that always gives back tenfold. I knew that if I created at the depth of my healing process, I would bring myself back to joy. (I was right)
- Emotions - I knew that I would get emotional. This card reminded me that it's okay to cry. Okay to feel angry or to express any other emotion I was feeling.
- Joy - Focusing on what brings me joy is such a great healer and such a great motivator too. I am convinced my constant focus on what brings me joy is one of the things that helped me the most during chemo.
- Let go - I knew I would feel better when I let go of expectations, of things I felt I should do, of sadness. I knew I just had to bring myself back to my centre.
- Love - Letting myself be loved was something I struggled with for such a long time. Also, loving myself. I knew though that letting people love me, and letting them help me, and also asking for help out of love for myself would be a great healer and motivator.
- Optimism - I knew that I probably would feel like crap but I also knew that I'm not one who complains easily. I knew that my boundless optimism would be something that would help me through. (It was)
- Spirituality - I felt that focusing on reading texts that mattered to me, would bring me into a headspace of gratitude. I call this spirituality, but I could have also written Stoicism, because that is what I read so much of. I have pulled so much strength from those texts.
- Strength - I discovered a deep strength within, a will that was stronger than I ever felt. It's what kept me upright when my body started to fail me. A deep conviction that I would be fine.
And there it is, the set of eight cards that truly helped me find comfort. I didn't use them as oracle cards, I just looked through them and put one of the cards on display when I had a bad day, as a reminder of the comfort within.
I could have added more, but these were all that came that day.
And now the cards have a name, it came up in me when I worked on the cards today. The name is Repose. I like it.
I may make more cards, and maybe draw them again, on better paper, using the same colours.
You can download the whole set of comfort cards plus the descriptions, here, just scroll down to comfort cards and click the link.