Regarding Self-Confidence (& the unexpected guest, tenderness)
Welcome to Tarot Talk Tuesdays with Four Queens co-founder, Selah Saterstrom
To listen to this week’s message, click below.
She’s making the rounds this week—to say the very least. She's showing up in every divination, waving her lovely hands like, "Hey, remember me?" She’s not just on the meeting agenda—she is the agenda. And she’s also what’s for dinner. It’s none other than the IX of Wands, a.k.a. The Bird Lady, with her fierce mantra: "I will not abandon myself." And in my divination practice for the past several weeks she has been talking to a lot of folks about, of all things, self-confidence.
In this week’s newsletter, I wanted to share some thoughts emanating from her extended visit in these parts (where she is always welcome). And I’d like to say that somehow this is also a meditation on tenderness.
IX of Pentacles—Thoughts & Observations on the Subject of Self-Confidence
I once thought that self-confidence was a thing that some people got to have. Often these were the very same people who I reckoned had their shit together. These were people who, I supposed, were in the right place at the right time. While being relaxed. And stylish, too. These people had it sorted. These people were good at things. Mainly: life. They were good at life. These people were deserving and I, somehow, wasn’t quite there yet. Self-confidence was an experience reserved for people who had stable (but amazing) identities and conventional (but ideal) bodies.
Can anyone else relate?
Here is a hard question, but a good one: What, for you, feels like the opposite of self-confidence?
For me, I’d have to say shame.
And as we know there are lots of reasons—good, real, and compelling ones—regarding why we lose or lack confidence. There is a lot of pain underwriting many of those reasons. Being human is rarely for the faint of heart.
What I notice through my divination practice is that when people do the challenging work of reclaiming their agency and restoring their inherent authority, lives change and worlds shift. If we can reclaim self-confidence from the tyranny of the self-improvement project, we have an opportunity to re/member that self-confidence has a place in this liberation movement. When we reclaim our agency and restore our inherent authority, we are doing something radical and important.
What the fuck even is Self Confidence?
The etymology reveals that self-confidence is to have trust with one’s self. Not faith; not patience, but, of all things, trust.
What is trust? The etymology suggests that to trust is also “to believe.” Belief is important to trust.
What is it that we are believing when we practice this sort of trust-building?
I’d like to suggest:
ourselves. We believe ourselves.
When we believe in the truth of our experience, including our body’s experience, and when we believe that our body is a legitimate, citational source then ___________________ (I’ll let you fill in the blank for yourself here, but it feels good doesn’t it?)
The IX of Pentacles also reminds us that self-confidence can be a habit.
In this scenario let’s say that a habit is a thought that is well-practiced and embodied.
We could say: Self-confidence is the habit of continually returning to ourselves, a gesture which can be rooted in liberation.
Several years ago, one of my mentors said that being confident simply meant being more of who you already are. It isn’t about acquisition or even transformation. It is, she said neatly, a capacity issue.
This means we don’t have to magically turn into someone else. We get to be ourselves and we get to be real. We get to inhabit more of ourselves. And when we do our capacity to feel the rich, nuanced, texture of being alive increases.
Anyway, 😂 . . . here’s a glimpse of what she’s been hinting at in recent divination sessions. And through it all, yes, I do believe we’ve been talking about tenderness.
Have a great week ahead.
— xo Selah
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