Who’s Driving?
My journal would probably be painfully boring to most people.
It’s rarely a record of my day. More often, it’s a place where I chase questions. I write a thought, turn it over, look at it from another angle, and ask what might be hiding underneath. Somewhere along the way, I stopped journaling to remember my life and started journaling to understand it.
A few days ago, while journaling, I found myself thinking about agency.
How often do I tell myself that life is happening to me?
Someone called off work.
I had to stay late.
I had to step in.
But as I kept writing, another question appeared.
Did I really have to?
Or did I choose to?
And if I chose to…
why?
That simple question led to an even better one.
Who’s Choosing?
I’ve been on a huge Carl Jung kick this year.
To be fair, that’s not entirely new. As an undergraduate, I majored in psychology with minors in philosophy and religion, and had I continued on to finish graduate school, Jung very likely would have been the subject of my doctorate. His ideas have a way of lingering. Every few years I seem to find my way back to them.
This year, though, the pull toward Jung has felt different.
Maybe it’s because I keep finding myself drawn back to his idea of the collective unconscious—the shared psychological inheritance beneath our individual stories. Within it live what he called archetypes: universal patterns that appear in myths, dreams, religion, literature, and in the stories every culture tells. Different names. Different faces. The same human truths.
Lately, those archetypes don’t feel like ideas I’ve been studying. They feel like old friends I’ve been recognizing. I see them everywhere now—not as abstract psychological concepts tucked away in textbooks, but as living patterns quietly shaping the way we experience ourselves and one another.
Jung believed these patterns speak through symbols, giving language to experiences we often feel long before we have words for them.
That’s where tarot enters the conversation for me.
I don’t think of tarot as seventy-eight fortunes waiting to be revealed. I think of it as a symbolic language—a deck of seventy-eight archetypes that gives shape to the hidden patterns moving beneath the surface of our lives.
I’ve spent more than thirty years reading tarot, and like most readers, I learned the meanings of the cards.
The Ten of Swords means endings.
The Page of Cups means emotional openness.
he Eight of Cups means walking away.
I knew what the cards meant.
But I didn’t know the people.
Then one day, thanks to a rogue voice text, Gary showed up.
And once Gary moved into the neighborhood, everyone else eventually followed.
The Cast of Characters
Gary is my Ten of Swords.
Everyone knows someone who’s convinced the world has ended.
That’s Gary.
He’s dramatic. He occasionally lies face down on the kitchen floor. He definitely needs some ice cream, a blanket, and someone to gently remind him that tomorrow is still coming.
But beneath all that theatrical despair, Gary knows something important.
He knows when a chapter has truly ended—even when the rest of us are still trying to rewrite the last page.
That’s Gary’s gift.
His wisdom is knowing that some endings deserve to be honored instead of resisted. They ask us to grieve what was, lay it to rest, and trust that life is already writing the next chapter, even if we can’t read it yet.
But his shadow is believing every ending is the end of the story.
And once I met Gary, the rest of the neighborhood began to appear.
Donna is my Ten of Wands.
She sees someone carrying three bags of groceries and immediately asks for two of them. She’ll cover your shift, bring dinner to your house, organize the fundraiser, and somehow apologize for not doing more. Her healthy expression is service. Her shadow is believing everyone else’s burden is automatically hers.
Maggie is my Eight of Swords.
Maggie has a habit of checking every locked door. Except the one that’s already open. She can talk herself into believing there’s no way forward long before she’s taken the first step. She imagines every obstacle, every possible failure, every reason she can’t move, until the walls around her begin to feel real.
The funny thing is, Maggie is almost never trapped. She just believes she is.
Her healthy expression is caution, reflection, and the wisdom to think before acting.
Her shadow is mistaking fear for reality.
She reminds us that the strongest prisons are often the ones built from old stories, assumptions, and beliefs we’ve never stopped to question.
Hope is my Ten of Cups.
Hope always leaves the porch light on. She believes families can heal, hearts can mend, and joy can return after loss. Her healthy expression is faith in what’s possible. Her shadow is believing love can thrive without honesty, effort, and care.
Jack is my King of Wands.
He carries possibility the way some people carry umbrellas—always prepared for the future before anyone else sees the clouds parting. He has a way of saying, “Let’s go,” that makes fear sound like an invitation instead of a warning. His healthy expression is inspired leadership. His shadow is outrunning the people he’s trying to lead.
Sam is my Page of Cups.
Sam catches fireflies just to remind everyone that little lights still exist. He notices beauty everyone else walks past. His healthy expression is curiosity and wonder. His shadow is becoming so enchanted by possibility that he forgets to come home for dinner.
Grace is my Empress.
Grace never lets anyone leave hungry. She somehow knows exactly what you need before you do. She creates beauty not because anyone asked her to, but because that’s simply who she is. Her healthy expression is abundance, creativity, and nurturing. Her shadow is giving so much of herself that she forgets she deserves that same care.
Reginald—Reggie—is my Tower.
Reggie has absolutely no sense of timing.
He shows up uninvited, usually when you’ve finally convinced yourself everything is fine, carrying an imaginary clipboard that says, “This structure is no longer up to code.”
You tell him you’re busy.
He nods politely.
Then he tears the wall out anyway.
The funny thing about Reggie is that everyone hates him…
until about six months later.
That’s when you realize he wasn’t trying to ruin your life.
He was trying to save you from living inside something that was already collapsing.
His healthy expression is transformation. His shadow is waiting until collapse is the only language we’ll listen to.
Reggie never destroys what’s true.
Only what’s pretending to be.
The Neighborhood Comes Alive
None of my neighbors are simply “good” or “bad.”
Like people, every archetype has both a healthy expression and a shadow expression.
The healthy expression is the archetype living in balance. The shadow appears when that same energy becomes unconscious, excessive, or distorted.
Gary teaches acceptance until he mistakes every ending for permanent defeat.
Donna serves until service becomes self-sacrifice.
Grace nurtures until she forgets to nurture herself.
Reggie transforms until he waits for collapse to do his talking.
The goal isn’t to get rid of the shadows.
It’s to recognize them.
Because once we recognize who’s speaking, something changes.
We have a choice.
Something changed as the neighborhood grew.
I stopped asking:
What does this card mean?
Instead, I began asking:
Who’s here today?
For me, that’s where tarot came alive.
Not as fortune-telling.
Not as memorization.
But as a symbolic language for understanding the many patterns, instincts, and voices moving within us.
Once you know your neighbors, you stop thinking of tarot as seventy-eight cards.
You start thinking of it as seventy-eight ways of being human.
And somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t only getting to know tarot.
I was getting to know myself.
As the neighborhood grew, another figure quietly took her seat.
Judy.
She’s my Justice card.
Of course her name is Judy.
Judge Judy, if we’re being honest.
Judy doesn’t care much for excuses. She isn’t interested in blame, and she’s surprisingly unimpressed by victimhood. She has a way of listening to everyone’s story before leaning forward, lowering her glasses just enough to ask the one question no one wants to answer.
The morning she moved into the neighborhood, I was sitting with my journal writing about agency.
I pulled a card to understand why I was feeling the way I was.
The Ten of Wands.
Donna.
That made sense. Lately I’d been carrying everything.
So I asked why.
Justice.
Judy had entered the conversation.
It didn’t take long to understand why.
How easy it was to tell myself that life was happening to me.
Someone called off work.
I had to stay late.
I had to step in.
I had to carry it.
Donna was doing most of the talking.
When Donna is driving, life sounds like this:
“I have to.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“No one else will do it.”
Judy listened patiently while Donna made her case.
Then it hit me all at once. I imagined Judy leaning forward, looking at me over the top of her thick glasses, and smiling the kind of smile that tells you she’s already heard every excuse you’re about to make.
“Stephanie…”
“You’re answering the wrong question.”
I sighed.
“The question isn’t what you’re choosing.”
(Let’s a little silence do its work…)
“It’s who’s choosing.”
That stopped me.
Because the moment the question changed, everything changed.
Damn it, Donna.
Maybe I was choosing to stay late. Or maybe Donna couldn’t imagine leaving.
Maybe I was choosing to help because I value responsibility. Or maybe I had mistaken worthiness for usefulness.
Maybe I was choosing to carry something because, in that moment, it was the kindest thing to do. Or maybe I had forgotten that not every burden belonged to me.
Those choices weren’t the problem.
The problem was believing I didn’t have one.
From that day on, my journal changed.
I stopped asking, What should I do?
Instead, I asked the question Judy gave me.
Now Who’s Choosing?
The truth is, I don’t want to evict Donna from the neighborhood. The world needs people like Donna. She reminds us that showing up matters, that service matters, that love often looks like carrying something heavy for someone else.
I just don’t want her driving all the time.
If I had to choose who I’d rather see behind the wheel, it would be Grace.
Grace is my Empress.
Grace doesn’t love by sacrificing herself. She loves by creating enough.
When a problem walks through the door, she doesn’t immediately ask, “What can I carry?” She asks, “How can we care for everyone?”
She knows that kindness isn’t measured by how exhausted you are at the end of the day.
She knows that boundaries aren’t walls. They’re gardens. They protect what needs to grow.
Grace trusts that saying no to one thing sometimes allows you to say a wholehearted yes to something even more important.
She isn’t afraid to ask for help. She isn’t afraid to delegate. She isn’t afraid to believe that other people are capable of carrying their share.
When Donna says, “I’ll do it.”
Grace gently replies, “Let’s find a way that works for everyone.”
When Donna says, “I have to.”
Grace smiles and asks, “Do you?”
And when Donna reaches for another burden simply because it’s there, Grace quietly places a hand on her shoulder.
“Just because you can carry it doesn’t mean it’s yours to carry.”
That’s the voice I’m learning to recognize.
Not because Donna is wrong.
But because Grace reminds me that love is at its best when it nourishes everyone at the table—including the one serving the meal.
These neighbors illuminate the patterns that quietly influence the way we love, grieve, lead, hide, hope, and heal.
When those patterns remain unconscious, they can make our choices for us.
But once we recognize them, something becomes possible.
We can pause.
We can listen.
We can choose.
Now, when I journal, I don’t just ask:
What should I do?
I ask:
Who’s choosing?
Is Donna doing it because she can’t imagine putting the burden down?
Is Gary making this decision because everything feels over?
Has Stormy already packed a bag before Claire has spoken the truth?
Is Grace reminding me to create instead of control?
Has Reggie been trying to get my attention for months while I’ve been busy wallpapering over the cracks?
Or has everyone gathered around the table before deciding which road to take?
My journal hasn’t become a place where I find answers.
If anything, it’s become a place where I ask better questions.
The most important one is almost always the same.
Not:
What should I do?
But:
Who’s driving?
Because maybe that’s what agency really is.
Not control.
Not getting everything right.
But recognizing that, even with all these voices inside us, we still have the privilege of choosing who gets the keys.
