My Tarot Card Reader Made Me Write This

What tarot helped me understand about my inner saboteur. Plus, some updates for our community, and some back-to-school inspiration.

Let me preface this week’s newsletter by stating that I am not a tarot card person. At least I didn’t think I was. It takes a little backstory to explain why, at the beginning of the summer, I found myself nervously at my desk, waiting for a virtual tarot card reading.

I first learned of Mark Horn through

Elise Loehnen

’s fantastic Substack, Pulling the Thread. Mark is a well-known tarot reader in NYC, where he has performed readings for decades, and was featured in the NY Times during the anxious heyday of the global pandemic.

Loehnen’s own feature on Mark arrived in my inbox last spring at an auspicious moment. I was in the midst an intensely stressful decision-making period — figuring out whether we should escape the city and uproot our lives with a move to New England, or stay restlessly put and continue to ride the rollercoaster of Trump 2.0 (spoiler: we ended up in nearby Virginia, somewhere in the middle of this spectrum of options).

Deciding to leave Capitol Hill was painful. And a cold-footed decision in which we pulled back from a real estate contract in New England was equally painful and expensive. Never in my adult life had I been at such an ugly intersection of my own uncertain decision-making. It triggered some critical excavation — the unearthing of my people-pleasing tendencies, the lingering effects of trauma and loss of confidence after brain injury, and a lot of self-berating. I was so damn mad at how I handled the whole thing.

So, when I booked my appointment with Mark months out, I figured I’d treat it as a placeholder. If I felt better about life by June, I’d cancel it. If I was still floundering, I’d give it a shot. You can guess which way it went.

It’s always lovely to receive High Priestess affirmation.

By the day of my reading, I had gathered just enough perspective on the situation to understand that what I was facing was bigger than just a decision about where to live. It was me, meeting myself in middle age, and asking, “WHY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AM I STILL IN MY OWN WAY?”

The question carried the reverberations of my only other experience with tarot, a mini-reading I once received at a Halloween party. That one took place in late 2018, a few months before my memoir was to be released in the world. And while I forget which card was pulled, I distinctly remember the tarot reader’s advice not to “shoot myself in my own foot” when it came to occupying a bigger stage in life.

It was one of the most solid pieces of advice I didn’t take.

One day, I’ll share more about the psychological rollercoaster of putting a book into the world and the nauseating experience of becoming your own ruthless salesperson. But for now, I’ll just say that it requires a level of audacity I’m still working to muster.

It was all part of a pattern that Mark sniffed out quickly.

The moment he used the term inner saboteur, a lightbulb went off. That, I thought to myself, is precisely the entity with whom I’ve been battling. Not real estate. Not where to send my kids to school. Not even Trump (though, indeed, he’s hellbent on destroying my beloved city). It’s me, constantly creating stories that keep me running in place instead of leapfrogging toward my dreams. It’s me and that well-worn narrative of “not good enough,” despite all evidence to the contrary.

I can’t begin to summarize the full extent of my reading, or its profound impact. I shared a lot, cried a few tears, and left feeling abundantly grateful for Mark’s extraordinary listening and guidance.

Tarot is not therapy, nor are its objectives the same, but it’s fair to say I walked away from my first real tarot experience with deeper self-awareness, a renewed commitment to breaking old patterns, and a permission slip:

Beware your inner saboteur. Take up all the space you deserve.

Changes Ahead

It’s a message I want to underscore in my weekly writing to you and our Beyond the Classroom community.

You may notice a little more rhythm around here in the weeks ahead. I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of writing that feels most urgent and alive for me right now, and how it can be most useful for you.

Here’s what you can expect:

• Weekly (or biweekly) notes from me—sometimes short pep talks, sometimes deeper dives.

• A mix of themes around creativity, perfectionism, and learning how to get out of our own way.

• The occasional interview with people who embody the spirit of lifelong learning —authors, educators, business leaders, and more.

In other words: the same voice you’ve always found here, but with a bit more consistency and clarity. I’m excited to keep building this space with you.

How have you parents of high schoolers been holding it together all these years?! Launching my kiddo into freshman year, I am so full of pride, joy, fear, and sentimentality, I could crack.

The right to occupy a bigger stage is a reminder I’m also working hard to convey to my children as they find their way in new school buildings this fall. When my daughter came home after the first day and reported they’d skipped lunch because they were too shy to tell the cafeteria lady they didn’t know their student ID number, my heart ached.

“Speak up!” I advised, full well recognizing my own complacency in similar situations.

When my son benched himself halfway through soccer tryouts because that persistent Not Good Enough ghost came to sit on his shoulders, I had to actively stop myself from running on the field to remind him, “You belong in every room you’re in!”

It’s an idea that runs contrary to generations of messaging in my family (more on that another time), and the fact that even my own children are working to overcome the instinct to stay small and not inconvenience others is evidence that it runs deep.

We all walk around with inner saboteurs. Their voice might sound a bit like our father, our grandmother, or a teacher who shut us down in front of a room of our peers. We carry these voices with us across decades of our lives, learning to live under the weight of their false messaging.

But there’s not a single one of us who doesn’t deserve the opportunity to speak up, occupy the room, or chase our dreams. Too often the biggest obstacle to claiming what’s ours is not an external factor or circumstance — it’s us, giving way to our inner saboteurs.

You can learn more about Mark or book an appointment on his website.

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No, I don’t have backpacks or trendy school supplies to recommend. Although, OK, if pressed, these are my all-time favorite pens and I struggle to write with anything else.

But how about a little inspiration to help us walk into the next room we enter with our heads held high?

I was so inspired by this recent conversation between Mel Robbins and director/producer Will Packer that I listened to it twice. Plus, Will has a new memoir on the subject that I recently bought for my teenage son. We all need the “show-up” energy he talks about here.

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Whether you’re an educator, a parent to a kiddo heading back to the classroom, or are simply claiming your own lifelong student status, wishing you a Gavin Newsom-sized dose of confidence and self-belief as this next chapter begins.