I drew the Nine of Thunder (or nine of swords in the traditional Raider-Waite-Smith tarot) from The Gentle Tarot for my card of the month for February. If we look at this card we see a person with a blanket of lighting bolts staring up at the full moon. Since February’s full moon is tonight, I thought I would reflect a bit in this card for me this month.
Nine of Swords is the card of sleepless nights. Certainly a main element of my February thus far. With more illness, and my sister and mom arriving for a visit, our middle child has ensured that I will not sleep even a full few hours for this entire month. Whenever we have visitors we get sick, not surprisingly. This time however, our guests also got sick. So unfortunately, instead of being able to have some help and much needed rest, by the time our visitors left we had a bunch of work to do to get back to baseline. Our middle, who struggles the most right now with change in routine, needed some time to readjust back to normal. He was up for hours crying in the night while we had guests, refusing to sleep as a result of later bedtimes and a reminder to my sister on why remaining childless may be a good idea. He’s at what we can only hope is the height of the terrible two tantrums. He has such specific requests and expectations that if unmet result in up to three hours of screaming and flailing. He also caught whatever it was that was making the rounds – some sort of gastrointestinal virus. Very unfortunate that we only have one bathroom. Thankfully Matt and I never caught it. But it made for a shit tonne of laundry, pun intended.
Another attribute to my sleepless nights has been this sudden and horrific pain in my sciatic. I’m sleeping with the babies so movement at night is limited, which has perhaps brought on or made worse this problem. I was almost debilitated for about two days this week. Major radiating pain from my lower back to the back of my knee. If anyone has any tips for this please let me know. I was told to try a heating pad so I did find a plug in one and set myself up on the chair in the living room. The previous two days I was unable to sit or lay down due to the pain, and was stuck wandering around the living room, agonizing. It was almost as bad as labour! Fortunately the heating pad has helped and I was able to sit down a bit yesterday. I took some naproxen last night to help me sleep as I was exhausted. The pain is much much worse when laying down so nighttime is very challenging. Today we got out walking for about an hour and I, surprisingly, felt completely fine, but once I returned home I could feel a bit of pain still. Hoping to be more pain free and more rest to feel normal again. (Wait, what is normal? I’d take 4 consecutive hours and manageable pain at this point.) I am rolling my eyes at the nine of thunder card, those lighting bolts on the blanket covering the legs of the person on the card. Certainly feels like a depiction of radiating leg pain under the full moon – so essentially a portrait of me these last few nights haha I know lack of sleep during these times with young children is par for the course, and I know (I hope!) the time will come when I’ll sleep again. This sciatic pain has reminded me that things truly can be worse, and not to take for granted feeling generally pain free in my body.
Coming up next month, and my birthday month, is The World. I’m excited for the shake up of energy that accompanies this card. Usually signifying the completion of a cycle (my birthday midway through the month could apply here) I’m also hoping it ushers in a renewed energy and fresh start.
Happy Friday! It’s Matt’s birthday weekend so we are hoping to get out and do something fun, if everyone allows for it. Hope everyone has a tantrum free weekend!