Working With the Ten of Swords

Sometimes you just have to lay face down on the bathroom floor and cry. I mean really cry. Big heaving sobs that sound more animal than human, the kind of crying hardly anyone ever does in the movies. It's not cinematic weeping: there are no single teardrops sliding gracefully down your perfectly made-up cheek — no composure, and definitely no delicacy. 

Oh no – we're talking a serious deep weep: a real red-faced, snotty-nosed ugly bawl, curled up in fetal position, clutching the bath mat and a roll of toilet paper for dear life. I mean completely out of control banshee wailing, sobbing so hard you can't breathe, so hard you think you might throw up, or burst a blood vessel in your eye (I have actually done this before, a few times.) 

This is the kind of crying where a part of you wonders if your neighbors might get concerned and call the police, where you're hoarse all the next day from screaming out your pain. That's the place the Ten of Swords wants to take you. Sounds pretty terrible, doesn't it? Oh, and it is. 

It's an awful place to be, that lowest point, that nadir – and yet, it's necessary to go there sometimes, and to go there completely, utterly. To completely surrender yourself to your sadness — to relinquish all control, lay it all down on the ground and just give your grief a sound. Who cares if the neighbors hear, if your roommates hear, if anyone hears? 

Every single person on this planet has come to this point, at some point in their lives. If not in their adult lives, then at least when they were babies wailing, or little children throwing tantrums. Hopefully not just as wee ones, though, because letting out all that emotion is not only healthy for us — it's absolutely essential. I know this because I spent years trying to avoid going to this place, years spent expending so much energy holding back tears, holding in my grief. It doesn't work. Eventually, all that pain must find a release, in one way, or another. 

  You see, even though my mother died when I was seven — it took many, many years for me to learn how to mourn her. I don't think I cried at her funeral. I don't even think I allowed myself to cry when I was alone. For years and years, I would restrain myself from crying until it would actually become physically painful: my face would ache, my throat would burn, my stomach would roil — and for what? 

My reasons for doing this were very complex, of course — trying to protect others from my sadness, trying to protect myself from facing it. The embrace of distant relatives who reeked of perfume and pity disgusted and infuriated me — a little awkward bundle of scraped up limbs and tangled hair.

Sometimes I forget how little seven years old actually is — how prone to crying, and how much kids that little really need their moms. But my mom had been moving away from me almost since my birth — into her work, her creative pursuits, her depression, and ultimately the illness (uterine cancer) that took her life. I’d had to be independent and mature from an early age. Far too early.

I was savage in my solitude — a lost little girl, but very determined to always be stoic and strong. I did not want to be pitiable, or pathetic — and rejected the cloying sympathy from people who hardly knew me. I heard the old women in the church kitchens talking about me in hushed voices, and hated being the subject of their faux concerned gossip… “Oh, that poor child — what will she do with no mother to take care of her?” They didn’t know that I’d decided it was my job to take care of my father, who was completely falling apart. Witnessing this was terrifying. One of us had to hold it together here — and maybe if I stayed strong for him, he’d eventually be able to to take care of me…

I wouldn't cry for the therapists and counselors my father took me to — in fact, I wouldn't even really talk to them, except to tell them that I was fine, and shockingly, they believed me. Or maybe they were just completely inept — or both. I still wonder what it would have been like if even one of them had bothered to see through the thin veneer of toughness I wore, to the seething roil of tangled up grief I took such pains to hide…

What would it have been like to have been given permission to release that pressure valve sooner? To be shown that it was safe to grieve together — and to know that it’s never a child’s responsibility to be strong for their parent. But no one told me — and I was working with kid logic, trying to figure it all out on my own.

I thought that if I ever let it all out, that it would consume me, that I would drown in it and be lost forever. Tidal waves would loom over me in recurring dreams — huge moving walls water, of overwhelming emotion that I was always trying to outrun. The idea of letting one crash over me was beyond terrifying. I truly imagined that allowing even a little bit of it out would bring on madness, or a deep depression I might never escape from. 

It took so much work, trying to stuff those feelings down — but they would always just erupt anyway, in one way or another. As a child, I would throw massive fits over some trivial thing. It would begin as an upset about a doll or a cookie, but in the end, I would always end up in that dark place — face down on the floor, crying out for my mom.

I only realized it years later, in my twenties: my boyfriend at the time and I would get into vicious arguments about this or that, terrible fights from which neither of us would ever back down. Not until I was completely hysterical, banging my head on the floor, would it hit me that I was no longer crying about whatever ridiculous thing had begun the row, but again — sobbing for the absence at my core that had begun to define me. 

Facing that pain is like kneeling on the edge of a vast crater, clinging to the lip of a volcano and screaming into the pit. The abyss you face is not filled with magma, but instead is a howling black hole that threatens to suck you into its fathomless depths. You must lay on your belly and shriek out your loss, feeling the echo of your voice whistle through your hair as you hang your head over that precipice. 

You must do that until you have nothing left, until you are spent, and then the real challenge comes: unclenching your fingers from that brink, and slowly, slowly backing away. It might be that you must climb up that mountain on your hands and knees time and time again, to face that well of grief — every time being willing to stare and shout into it, while not allowing yourself to be sucked in, to fall. 

That is the trick, that is the work of true grieving, and it is such hard, hard work. In order to do this work, you must be braver than brave, stronger than strong. It will feel like madness to go there, and everything in you will give you excuses not to. 

In our society, crying is seen as weak — as an uncomfortable and unsightly aberration. Something that only babies do, but that adults should have grown out of. The truth is just the opposite — because it takes major guts to face your pain, and to move through it. It's a deep black sludge, a swamp, a mire — and the only way out is through. There are no shortcuts, no detours that won't end up right back in the same place — facing that dark mountain and the swirling, hungry void within. This journey with the Ten of Swords is like hobbits walking straight into Mordor — it feels totally foolhardy and impossible, and…it’s the only way. Through. To Mount Doom, baby.

Heavy stuff, I know. In the tarot, a ten represents completion, the end of a cycle, and a sense of overwhelm, or too-muchness. That energy is felt most intensely in the realm of Air, which represents the mind, the intellect, ideas and communication. All pain originates in the mind, so it makes sense that many of the swords cards can seem pretty harsh to encounter. 

It can be a little intimidating, to lay this card out for someone in a spread — the image is so bleak: a figure face-down on the ground in a pool of blood, pierced by those ten sharp swords. Are they dead, dying, done for? Actually, no. As hard as the Ten of Swords is to deal with, I actually feel almost a sense of relief when it comes up, because it means that as soon as the hardest part is finally faced, then it can be truly done. 

It's always darkest right before dawn, and this card illustrates that moment perfectly. When you've finally surrendered to the blackness, lain down your arms, and admitted defeat — then, and only then, can you begin to rise. You have to hit absolute rock bottom before you can start moving back up. 

After you've allowed yourself to go there fully, and lain down in a puddle of your own tears and rested awhile, you'll eventually feel your strength returning. You can finally scrape yourself up off the bathroom floor, wipe your nose, and maybe wander forlornly into the kitchen for a glass of water. If you're being really good to yourself, you'll go draw yourself a nice bath. You have to yank those damn swords out of your own back, and pull yourself together enough so that you can start walking towards those purple mountains off on the horizon, where the first glimmers of dawn are beginning to shine. Now that the worst is over, a new day can begin. 

So what does it mean when you pull this card? Well, sometimes the answer is very clear and obvious: when there's been a loss of some kind, an ending, a death, a break-up or divorce, or any kind of trauma. In many instances, the Ten of Swords signifies the end of a job, a project or an endeavor — or just a closing period in your life, the end of an era. 

I’m not totally convinced that real closure if ever really a thing — but if it is? The Ten of Swords is showing up to demand that you at least try to start facing it, and feeling it. 

It's also being at the end of your rope, feeling mentally and emotionally exhausted — in need of a break, a rest. Overachievers and perfectionists will meet their nemesis here — failure, and falling the fuck apart. The waking nightmare of the Nine of Swords not dealt with culminates here in the Ten: Your mind is awhirl with confusing thoughts that nip and niggle at you relentlessly. You're so tired, but your mind won't let you get to sleep. You have so much to deal with in your life, and you don't know how you can even begin to tackle any of it. 

It’s burn out, and total collapse — usually mentally and emotionally, but spiritually and physically, too. It’s a full on SURRENDER DOROTHY moment. Resistance to needing rest, letting yourself collapse, and having a big cleansing cry is generally pretty damn futile. (Ask my Capricorn stellium in the 10th house I how know…)

When this card comes up over and over again, it might be time to look at how you tend to process stress or sadness — what are your coping mechanisms? If you hold things in consistently, even just tension or minor irritations, it can build up in you until you reach a breaking point. Think of a bottle of soda being shaken up: it's only a matter of time until it explodes in someone's face. Bottling up any kind of emotion always demands an eventual release. 

The Ten of Swords tends to indicate an old pain, a deep wound that was never dealt with head on, back when it happened. Scar tissue has accumulated, and stiffened. The blood has dried up and been hidden under the carpet. It feels easier to ignore it, than to acknowledge that it’s keeping us from moving forward with ease.

These can things pop up again and again for us until we can face them, and in doing so, finally have some closure. It may it take a little digging around to find the source — especially if it's something buried in your past, or something you've just lived with for a long time, or assumed was not that big of a deal. In childhood, we often don't know what's "normal" and what's not. When you're a kid, you may not realize that your home life is a total train-wreck, or that even things that you just assumed maybe happened to everyone actually affected you intensely. 

You want so much just to be like everyone else — not scarred, or traumatized or any of that. People often feel very ashamed of their pain, comparing their experience to others, who may have had it so much worse. It's hard to understand that there's a big difference between processing pain and wallowing in self-pity. We're taught not to snivel, not to break down — to keep a stiff upper lip, our chins up, and to carry on, no matter what. 

It can take a long time to break out of that training, to escape the stigma of allowing yourself to feel what you feel. It took about twenty years for me to come around to facing mine, and I still work on climbing that mountain on a regular basis.

Does it get any easier, ever? I do think it does — but only if you are fully willing to give yourself over to the experience of grappling with the fallout from those wounds. It's a messy business, and not for the faint of heart, but I truly believe, that in the end — getting your hands dirty and diving in deep will lead you up and out, wiser and stronger for having faced your sorrows. My friend Brett Caraway explains it here:

“ For me, healing is not so much about eliminating pain as it is about learning to be present with it. Anyone who has experienced trauma and then refused to become intimate with their pain has little chance of genuine healing. Being present with your suffering, understanding the grim reality of it, is a necessary component of healing. It is not enough to wait around for the pain to stop. Time may heal all wounds but time will also fucking kill you. Nor is it enough to be with your pain in only a superficial manner. Unacknowledged pain has severe consequences not only for your own well-being but for those close to you. You have to become intimate with it. 

If you wanted to understand the threat posed by an active volcano you would be unwise to employ a painter or a poet sitting on an adjacent mountainside. From their perspective that warm red glow and billowing smoke might appear romantic or even beautiful. No, you would be wiser to send in a geologist or volcanologist to crawl up that mountain’s ass. That is if you really wanted to understand the red glow. Discipline and methodology are required. It is hard work and (from the ego’s perspective) extremely risky. The process of understanding your pain is itself very painful. And sometimes there may be no immediately apparent reason why one should undertake such an enterprise. It’s a leap of faith right into the middle of the volcano.”

 All this also reminds me of a line from Charles Bukowski's poem How is Your Heart — one I think of often when the Ten of Swords rears its head again:

“what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”

It's easy to feel like life is too busy, too hectic to find a space to provide ourselves an outlet for any serious emotional catharsis. It's hard to schedule in time to grieve, time to process. You may get home from work, and sit down before making dinner, only to find that you're too exhausted to even bring up any deep feelings. It doesn't always work to say, "Okay, here's your designated processing time: 1, 2, 3, go! – GRIEVE!". 

So, how can we climb that black mountain in a healthy way (i.e. not throwing tantrums or getting into fights?) Well, finding a good counselor or therapist who you trust and like, and who has experience in dealing with helping people process whatever it is you're going through is a good start. Just having a safe space where you can talk to an unbiased highly empathetic, and well-trained person can make an enormous difference. There are good ones out there, as well as bad ones. Find one who you feel comfortable with, and be willing to be totally honest with them. It helps if you can find one who’s smarter than you, or will at least call you out on your bullshit.

I’m also here to support you in your journey of healing with this card — maybe you’re reading this because you’ve just pull the Ten of Swords in a reading with me, yourself, or another reader…And you’re trying to figure out what to do with it, and where to go next… The important thing to remember is that you absolutely don’t have to do it all alone! Please reach out if you want to go deeper into this healing work with me, okay?

I find writing to be enormously helpful for processing and being with deep emotions. Maybe try writing out some of your thoughts or memories from the past, or consider writing some letters that you don't actually send. Another thing I like to do when I know I'm holding back tears but can't seem to access them is watch super depressing movies or read books that help open the floodgates.

It sounds kind of awful, but it generally always makes me feel better! For some reason, I find it easier to cry about someone else's messed up life, than over my own problems — and really, anything that gets the waterworks going is fine. Charlotte's Web, Dancer in the Dark, or Terms of Endearment usually do the trick for me.

  The other thing is, once you begin this work, it's often hard to predict what might trigger you. You may find yourself sobbing on the subway, or in traffic, or sitting on a park bench. Crying in public has a way of making you feel very exposed, or embarrassed — but please don't attempt to stuff your feelings down and out of sight!

You're not hurting anyone by being sad. You are allowed to feel what you're feeling. Find a bathroom stall or a quiet place if you need to, but if the tears start coming, just let them fall. Doing this does not make you weak — it makes you very brave! 

Not only that, but we actually release a lot of interesting endorphins when we cry, that cause us to feel better once we've done it. True science. It's taken me years and years to get better at crying, at allowing myself to cry in front of other people — so many walls had to come crashing down before I was willing to let anyone ever see me be that vulnerable. It's very cleansing, once you give yourself permission and get used to it. Many, many of my clients find themselves crying during their reading. 

It's so common that I constantly keep a full box of tissues stocked at all times for my in person sessions — and I go through boxes and boxes of them. People also tend to cry during massages, too — it's all energy work, providing that release. Often, my femme clients are horrified by the idea of messing up their makeup with weeping — they will dab at each teardrop, almost like they're trying to shove the tears back up into their eyes. I tell them, "Let those tears fall, honey! You can always re-do your eyes later, but these moments aren't always so easy to find again. Just let them go." It’s always a privilege to be allowed to witness and hold space for someone in their grief. 

If the Ten of Swords is familiar to you, I bow to your experience with it. It requires such immense courage to surrender to our pain, without letting it consume us completely. We’re taught to not give up, ever — but sometimes, it’s necessary to spend a little time on the floor, before we can pick ourselves back up, and continue on our paths.

We’ve got to feel it to heal it — and when we protect ourselves from pain, we also protect ourselves from joy. The sun will always rise again over those black mountains, love — but you’ve got to get through this dark night of the soul to watch that dawn break, and feel the light shining on your tear-stained face.