Small Experiments in Trust

Certainty, Intuition, and This Week’s Collective Card Reading.

I spent most of last week washing produce. Not as a hobby, but in an attempt to avoid the parasite outbreak that’s currently sweeping through the U.S.

At the family barbeque to celebrate my parents’ 45th wedding anniversary, I was helping my mother make her potato salad when I held up a large plastic bag of green onions and asked if she knew they were on the list of produce that requires extra washing.

“They have been sanitized,” she replied, and I marveled at the instant relief that floods through my body at her certainty. A warm blanket of you are safe and I am sure.

I have stopped eating berries in the morning and switched to apples, oranges, and red grapes. Nice thick skins and smooth surfaces to scrub. I am not eating my favorite takeout salad or the strawberry acai bowls I treat myself to during heat waves.

Oh how I crave certainty in the face of helplessness.

I keep thinking about a poem by the beloved late poet Andrea Gibson, where they write about learning that people scream because it actually lessens pain. I was curious and looked it up. Screaming triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, while also helping release tension and regulate our nervous systems.

So it turns out suffering in silence isn’t helping anyone. We need to release the tension somehow—through our actions, words, or yelling into the void.

I was discussing the Hanged Man with a client the last week. How the card brings us the image of a man hanging upside down from his toe. But I always imagine the Hanged Man more as being pinned to the wall. There is nowhere else to go. Surrender to what is, or surrender to self. It’s that liminal space of being conscious of our inability to escape, or gain comfort through certainty.

One of the ways I’ve learned to surrender is through small experiments in trust.

This morning, my phone treated me to a slideshow from our honeymoon four years ago. We stopped in Edinburgh for a few days, where I met an owl named Fluffy.

That morning, Rachel bravely ordered haggis and a Scotch egg. I stuck with yogurt.

As we ate, I said, “I have a feeling I’m going to see an owl today.”

At that point, I’d only ever seen an owl once before, at a local museum that was rehabilitating injured birds. We left the café, headed toward Edinburgh Castle, and walked right past Fluffy—a domesticated owl that tourists stand in line to hold. There was no line, and I couldn’t resist.

Fluffy the Owl

I’ve found that asking for a small glimpse of the day ahead has been one of the most affirming ways to develop my intuition. Sometimes I’ll ask, “What’s something you can show me about today?” Then I simply pay attention to what comes to mind. With this practice, the stakes are low. There’s no pressure to get it “right.” It’s just a chance to trust and see what happens.

Moments like that remind me that even when life feels uncertain, we still have choices. When I can’t change what’s happening around me, I can still choose what I practice within myself. When I’m going through something difficult, I notice my thoughts often take the form of questions. Why is this happening? What does this mean? What else could go wrong?

Instead of letting those questions continue on a loop, I can answer them.

We don’t know why this is happening, but it might be okay.

Maybe this will all make sense once everything settles.

There are lots of things that could go wrong, and just as many that won’t.

Have you considered what could go right?

Maybe that’s the question worth sitting with this week. Let’s see what the cards have to say.

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Here is our collective card reading:

(Scroll slowly if you don’t want to see the cards revealed before you choose.)

Wild Unknown Animal Spirit Deck

How this works: I invite you to take a slow, grounding breath and let your attention settle. When you’re ready, look at the three cards and notice which one, two, or three, you feel most drawn to. Trust your intuition. Then scroll below the photo to read the message connected to your card(s) and let it support you over the days and weeks ahead. As always, please take what resonates and leave the rest.

If you chose 1:

Hummingbird from The Wild Unknown Animal Spirit Deck

Hummingbird

The hummingbird moves fast. Heart racing, wings that never fully stop, a blur of motion and shimmer. It’s easy to read that as stress, and it can be. But when you see one in the wild it doesn’t feel stressful. It feels catching a glimpse of magic. That high vibration isn’t a problem to solve. It’s an invitation to meet the moment with the same quickness and wonder.

This energy needs somewhere to go. If we stay open and curious, we become fully present. With that presence is the sense that life is unfolding for you. But the same energy, forced or gripped too tightly, can turn into the frantic feeling of trying to control what can’t be controlled. That feeling that things are happening to you.

Hummingbird energy asks us to consider: Can you stay open to possibility without needing to steer every outcome? Can you leave room for magic, faith, and the divine to meet you where certainty cannot?

If you chose 2:

Lizard from The Wild Unknown Tarot

Lizard

Immediately I think: lizard brain. Instinct, reflex, the primal part of you that knows before you think. Lizards shed their skin when it no longer fits, and they’re deeply attuned to their surroundings, sensing shifts in temperature and danger long before they become visible. There’s real magic in that kind of sensitivity. In the ability to feel a room, a person, or energy, before any words are spoken.

That sensitivity has a cost. If you’re highly attuned, it’s easy to become a chameleon, shifting your shape to match whatever’s around you. You could absorb every mood and expectation until you’ve adapted so completely that you lose sight of your own color.

That kind of constant adjusting can be draining. The lizard reminds us that sensitivity is only part of the gift. The other part is returning, again and again, to your own skin. Spending time in stillness, in spirit, and with what is truly yours beneath all that reading of the room is what keeps your instincts clear instead of depleted.

If you chose 3:

Spider from The Wild Unknown

Spider

The spider builds without apology. She is intricate and deliberate. There’s something deeply artistic about that. I think of the quiet magic of Charlotte’s Web, where a web becomes a form of communication, even salvation. The spider doesn’t ask what her work is for. She spins because spinning is what she does, and the web is beautiful whether or not anything ever gets caught in it.

Spider Energy asks: Are you creating because you love the process, or are you waiting for your work to prove itself? To catch something, produce something, or be validated by a result before it’s allowed to matter?

This is a reminder that your work, your art, your love of the process doesn’t need an outcome to justify itself. Sometimes the most important thing you create is the thing you were called to make, regardless of what it catches.

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With love,

Sheryl

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