I’ve spent decades making peace with people who don’t deserve it. Or at least, I thought I had.
How much grace do you offer people who have been abusive? In what circumstance? Because I’ve had many different answers, each one being my “finally I’ve made peace with this” moment. But sometimes they stop feeling like peace.
I’m not talking overt abuse — black eyes or broken arms. I’m talking narcissistic abuse: manipulation, guilting, gaslighting. People who claim to love you while making that love entirely conditional upon obedience to their particular delusional system. Emotional abuse.
For years, I took out the sting by reciting their rationalizations — painting the behavior as sincerity, calling blind adherence to a cult “integrity,” slapping a feel-good label on the whole thing and doing a little spiritual bypassing sleight of hand. I’m pretty good at it.
But when the people start resurfacing, moving this from the theoretical backstory category to my actual front door — and of course, pretending nothing ever happened? Well, I’m being reminded exactly how much energy it takes to keep lying to yourself.
I often say I’d rather be happy than right, and I mean it. I consciously choose the most generous interpretation of others’ behavior — not as a favor to them, but as a favor to me. Anger and bitterness are toxic, and if I have a choice, I don’t choke down toxic.
But at some point, denying an ugly reality becomes far more toxic than facing it. Gaslighting yourself is the worst kind of gaslighting there is.
These cards are speaking directly to this.
Coming Up in the Cards
This week, we’ve got the rich, saturated hues of the Star Tarot bringing the message home. Both cards actually arrived in reverse, but I turned them over for photos because this deck needs to be upright to be properly appreciated.
Outlook: Six of Pentacles, Rx
The way we read other people’s motives right now has more to do with our own emotional needs than with any clear perception of reality. The balance is off — we’re either giving too much rope or not enough.
You might constantly make excuses for your mother: she had an abusive background, she’s not emotionally mature, she’s doing the best she can. That’s a lot less painful than acknowledging she simply isn’t capable of the same kind of affection you feel — that she may be fundamentally broken. So you keep explaining her.
Or you might expect your partner to instinctively understand exactly what you’re feeling, and read any lapse as evidence they don’t care. Maybe they don’t — I’m not them. But maybe they just can’t see it, or they’re so buried under their own struggles right now they’re oblivious to yours.
Either way, the scales aren’t balanced. Be conscious of where you’re putting the weight — and ask yourself whose needs it’s actually serving.
Advice: Queen of Cups, Rx
The Queen of Cups reversed says feel your feelings. Don’t hide from them, because the only person you’re fooling is yourself. Pressure that builds over time eventually blows — and then you’ve got a mess to clean up.
So cry your tears. Allow yourself to be vulnerable and irrational and a little crazy, at least with yourself. It’s those feelings that don’t make sense — the overreactions, the out-of-proportion-to-reality waves — that give you the most insight into what’s going on underneath. And what’s going on underneath is exactly what you need to understand.
For me, I’m realizing that going along with the “let’s pretend nothing ever happened” scenario requires me to minimize myself — and to not even ask whether the people who hurt me have any regret about it at all. That’s a steep price for keeping the peace.
When someone tells you to “be the bigger person” — or you tell it to yourself — what it’s really saying is to ignore your own feelings and needs. It’s not just asking you to excuse abuse. It’s asking you to shut up and sign up for more. It’s self-invalidation dressed up as emotional maturity. And it’s not right.
So yes, name it. Feel it. Let yourself be upset about it. Then decide what you want to do with it. That’s not wallowing — that’s how you make sense of it.
Your Turn
Where are you being asked to make peace with something that doesn’t deserve it? Where are you paying a higher price than you’ve admitted to yourself? Sit with it. Feel whatever comes up — irrational, ugly, out of proportion, whatever. Don’t tell yourself you shouldn’t feel it. Just let it be what it is, and see what it’s trying to tell you.
