I had a tarot reading this past weekend and I can’t stop thinking about it. Yes, I am one of those hippy Californians who believe in things like tarot readings and spirit guides and the power of intention.  My great grandmother was a sought-after clairvoyant and miracle healer, in spite of the fact that she barely spoke English,  so I guess you can say it runs in my blood.

This reading was a whim – we had been perusing a fancy mystic bookstore because I like to play the giant singing bowls (seriously, if you’ve never played a singing bowl, you’re missing out) and my eye caught that of a sharp looking British woman behind the counter. And I had one of those moments where your heart beats faster and you don’t know why – it turns out this woman is an Oprah-certified clairvoyant – and I knew I had to get a reading.

I didn’t really have any questions I wanted answered, other than “What the hell am I doing?”, which made the woman laugh when I told her. I hadn’t intended to be sitting in a tiny room with essential oils rubbed into my wrists and incense burning, with a Brit with a stark haircut intoning a prayer to the spirits and angels. But I figured something had brought me there, so I was ready to be open and receive whatever messages came through.

I pulled cards from three separate decks, and she laid them out in a pattern I didn’t recognize, all facing her. She explained that the way the pattern worked was that everything in the middle column was my future, while the left branch was the work I needed to do to get there, and the right were the obstacles I was facing. Now I was pretty jazzed by the middle column – Victory and Success, Intuition, and Abundance and Power were the leading cards. Not too bad. I had missed that the bottom was Heartache and Loss.  But the clincher was the obstacles – I had pulled four straight cards highlighting mental blockages – doubt, confusion and distress, lack of self-confidence – everything I’ve been struggling with this year so far.

The top card of the obstacle column was the tipping point: Authority. At first I was like, ok, I’m getting in my own way of being my own boss, I get it. But she explained that what she was meant to tell me was that, for me, the Authority card meant my masculinity. I wasn’t expressing it well, and it was blocking my progress. I wasn’t getting fully in touch with my divine butch, as it were.  I just sat there with my mouth open, but not incredulously. I was totally there. I got it. And it was/is true.

It’s now or never. I need to fully embrace my butchness, my masculinity, or get out of dodge. I can’t keep walking the fence. I’ve certainly made huge strides over the past year and a half – this blog being the largest, closely followed by my Butch Fatale entry, I’d say. But I can’t keep trying to live in the shadows, pretending that my butchness isn’t out there for all to see, and that my particular brand of butchness may not be the same as your brand of butchness, and that’s ok. Because yes, even though I’m here, and I’m an actor, and I’m “trying to put myself out there” and all of that, I still haven’t truly accepted myself. The spirits gave me a gentle reminder. Do it.