Recently, I booked my first psychic reading with a woman named Judy Friend. I don’t know if that’s her real name or not, but Judy is perfect. Sassy, frank, a little terrifying. Judy pulls tarot cards and tells me I’m going to write a novel next. She shakes her head: honey, this book is gonna be dark. She leans in, squints at me: really dark.
During our session, Judy tells me a lot of things that seem fantastical. Two good men are about to enter my life. My forthcoming poetry collection will be a success. One day, I’ll write a terrifically dark novel. Soon, I’ll fall in love.
It feels a bit like therapy, but it’s not. I don’t have to put in effort. I just have to believe, really accept, that these good things could be for me. I guess that’s the hard part. To believe I’m a woman who is capable of winning success, dark novels, oceanic love.
Getting read by Judy makes my chest ache. She’s the first person in a long time who has asserted something certain, and the only thing I miss about my evangelical upbringing is certainty. I just want one holy text. One truth to sink my teeth into. It feels like medicine. Give me one straight line, Judy, to keep or to cross.
I have a healthy amount of cynicism, but I can’t stop thinking about creativity and magic. Belief and action. How every day since Judy pulled that Knight of Cups, I’ve eyed the world around me with suspicious optimism.
Recently, a friend told me she used a medium to speak to the baby that she lost during childbirth. It helped, she said. When my poetry mentor, Bobbi, entered hospice, I tripped on mushrooms and had a vision she became this tree outside my window. Bobbi recently died, and now I like to stand under her tree, hands on her bark and you know what? It helps.
Maybe it’s manifestation, maybe it’s positive psychology, maybe it’s chaos magic. But if we believe glorious things are ahead, we act differently. If we think we’re about to meet the love of our life, we smile at the beautiful stranger in a tweed coat on the subway. If we believe we’re destined to write a book, we’re more inclined to pick up the pen. And if we believe we can talk to our dead, we say the prayer that needs prayed.
What if we believed our future was beautiful and we ran for it? Really, what would happen? Psychics, prophecies or happenstance, what if we scooped hope by the scruff and wore her like a lucky lionhead talisman against our heart?
I don’t know if magic is real. But I know if I believe it isn’t, it won’t be. So at this point in my life, I’ve decided to trust Judy. And, I’m starting that novel.
What little piece of hope are you squeezing today? I’d love to hear it in the comments.
P.S. In my forthcoming book, Instructions for Traveling West, I write a lot about the intersection of luck and leaping. Recently,
, read an early copy and said:"What a thrilling voice! Joy Sullivan's poetry is vast and yet familiar—and more remarkably, full of images and recollections that might have been mine, or yours. Her poems offer respite for both weary travelers and those of us who still feel fresh and bright-eyed, making this slight book a wonderful comfort."--Elise Loehnen, New York Times bestselling author of On Our Best Behavior
Want to preorder Instructions for Traveling West? You can snag it here. Preordering is the absolute best way to support me (and help make Judy’s prediction about the book come true). Thanks for considering.❤️
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." Roald Dahl
First off, YES! for believing in the magic and going forth wildly, boldly… Your creativity is a gorgeous gift in this world, and I’m glad this recent experience encouraged you to throw yourself more fully into it.
But I will admit that I have extraordinarily mixed feelings about this desire for a sense of certainty. Though I understand the power of religiosity, I also know the danger. While there are gorgeous things we will want to believe in, and might be inspiring drivers at times (such as your psychic cheerleader), in lower times, the need for certainty may drive belief in things that are not so healthy or expansive. (How many people return to their religion after trying a more ‘spiritual’ path simply because they long for the stability of its seeming certainty? Or how many fall into conspirational thinking simply as a replacement, just another religion, so to speak?)
I wonder if we might become wilder and wiser if we can court a relationship with (and acceptance of) the mystery? It’s a less comfortable path, and calls for a deep cultivation of trust (hmm, is that another kind of faith?), but it sure does throw open the richness of possibility. And I feel for myself it helps me keep my heart so much more open…