9 of Swords — BambiKhan

“I don't paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.”
― Frida Kahlo

The things that go bump in the night, nightmares, anxieties are all traps of our own making. The 9 of swords in the tarot is the card of racing thoughts, insomnia, and unfinished business. The feeling we get when we put a task off for too long and it slowly grows into a garden of dread that keeps us up at night and waking up in panic.

The thing to remember is that the figure in the 9 of swords is home, safe in bed, cuddled up under a cozy blanket stitched together by their own experiences, with patches made from the love of people in their life. They are holding their well-worn heart stuffie for comfort, which begs us ask: is the familiar which you cling to in the darkest parts of night actually healthy? Or are you finding dark comfort in self-flagellation, feeding old wounds, or romanticizing the past.

Swords are tools. Every sword in this deck belongs to us, and wants to see us succeed. We can take the swords off the wall and use them to cut those impossible-feeling tasks into smaller pieces. You have a quilt of loving and supportive people to ask for help.

You are safe.

**Quick read:** What are you avoiding looking at?
Who can you ask for help?

Animals: Ostrich

The process : We have added some florals to this tattoo to frame it and give it some softness. Even in the darkest winter, Holly leaves stay bright and green, it’s berries red and cheerful. In the Victorian era, Lily of the valley it symbolized a return to happiness.

“World of sleep, where our inner knowledge, held in subjugation by the disturbances in our organs, quickens the rhythm of our heart or of our breathing, for the same dosage of alarm, of sadness, of remorse is a hundred times more potent when thus injected into out veins; as soon as, in order to travel along the arteries of the subterranean city, we have embarked on the dark waves of our own blood, as if on the sixfold meanders of some eternal Lethe, tall, solemn forms appear to us, accost us, and then go from us, leaving us in tears.”
― Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah