ND Friendly Life Tarot Part III
ORIGIN STORY
When Amy and I met each other, we were both recovering from massive, life-altering burnouts. We knew we needed to find a new way to work that would support us without destroying us. Unsurprisingly, the more we explored the idea the more special-interested we became. Ultimately we built a business with our well-being and that of other neurodivergent people in its DNA. . . from the mission statement, to the structure, to the content of the work that we do. This is the fertile soil from which ND Friendly Life Tarot began to grow.
Needs and Limits
We knew that getting real about our needs and limits would be essential to creating systems that could work for us long term. But after a lifetime of masking, people-pleasing, and imagining ourselves to be needless and wantless, how were we going to figure out what our real needs and limits were? What were our authentic boundaries and how would we uphold them? I found that when I tried to go it alone, I fell back into old patterns, sacrificing myself and pushing through exhaustion. After having lost so much in my last burnout, I knew I couldn’t afford to go back to that way of life.
Collaboration
I asked Amy to be my “Business Bestie” and keep me honest. If I was going to be able to do the work I wanted to do, I had to honor my capacity by limiting not just the number of hours I worked, but also the number of people I worked with. As an Autist, the connections with my clients are profound and do not stop at the end of the hour. When I am working with someone, they become a part of my psyche and I think of them throughout the week, connecting the dots in their experience while I’m reading, walking, dreaming.
For this reason, I couldn’t expend my extremely limited energy and brain power working with people outside of my special interest. I niched down, and then I micro-niched. My passion is the tiny intersection on the Venn diagram of trauma, neurodivergence, and thriving. When I am working with AuDHDers moving past their trauma and into a life worth living, I’m energized by the work and I’m happy to spend my resources there.
Being of Use in A Big Way
But one of my values is usefulness, and one of my desires is to be massively useful. I have learned so much over the years about how to move from that place where nothing feels possible to the place where options start to appear. There are things about how to talk to a neurodivergent nervous system that I want the whole world to know. . . or at least all the ND’s out there! And so as I wrestled with my limited capacity for one-on-one work, and my need to pursue my passion, an option showed up for me.
Why not put what I had found into a resource that could be accessible to more people? Why not make it super fun and engaging, and light up people’s creativity and joy? Why not make a neurodivergent-affirming Tarot deck? And without even blinking Amy said, “you should do it, and let’s have our business pay for an artist to bring your sketches to life.” And she introduced me to Em Hanna, a neurodivergent artist who made colors sing and could make spoons actually look like spoons. . . and so it began.
