Learning To Let Go

I have this Osho set of Tarot cards which I pulled out the other day and did a reading on myself. I have no idea if that's allowed in the land of Tarot, but it's kind of fun to do and I usually come away with some kind of interesting insight. I take the cards out whenever there is some issue in my life that keeps me up at night, which lately, well for the last few years really, has been career and money.The "Letting Go" card commentary included this:

To choose this card is a recognition that something is finished, something is completing. Whatever it is – a job, a relationship, a home you have loved, anything that might have helped you to define who you are – it is a time to let go of it, allowing any sadness but not trying to hold on. Something greater is awaiting you, new dimensions are there to be discovered. You are past the point of no return now, and gravity is doing it's work. Go with it – it represents liberation.

Given my question about career and finances, this seemed ominously apt. I'd like to say my widow experience has taught me to eschew material things, since we can't take stuff with us when we die, and for the most part, I do. My daughter will tell you. She laments that I've carried the same purse for over three years. I still drive my beat-up, 7 year old Prius. I could care less. But oh, houses. I do love houses.I think I knew deep down when I bought the house on Vashon Island in 2007, that it wasn't a sound financial decision. But magical widow brain had me do it anyway. I rationalized the purchase with dreams of writing retreats and healing retreats for widowed people, a dream that has largely come true. I have donated the house to a slew of non-profits who have used it to raise thousands of dollars. The house has given me profound pleasure. I have future dreams of family coming home to nest there.I won't lie. Sheepishly, I'll tell you I've done all that New Age "envisioning the life I desire." I've meditated and "asked the universe to provide." I've taken a good hard look at my "abundance blockages."  I've also tried to come to terms with the strange relationship that becoming a widow gave me toward money. I felt so guilty for the way in which I came by it, that I gave a lot of it away. Donated to charities, friends, family. And I bought houses that could heal people. I desired, in an unsustainable way to help others. It seemed a better use of my money to have it stashed in a home that could give people pleasure than in cold, impersonal mutual funds.In fact, just this past weekend, three widows who I met at Camp Widow came to Vashon and we did some healing (aka, drinking too much wine, learning to two-step, talking entire days away, and screaming for the SeaHawks in a bar during the Super Bowl). #widowweekend.I have had a pretty nice run of living the author dream, but alas, there hasn't been a sustainable income in it. It's been wonderful being a CEO of a start-up, one that I hope to continue, albeit very slowly. But there's no income in that either. I have to face the fact that it's time to get back into the money earning world again, whatever that looks like.I fear my widow magical thinking has left me. Anything seemed possible when I wore that cloak. So, I'm going to go wish upon a star for a six figure job to land in my lap, that Vashon will continue to be a realized dream and that I can finally get a sound night's sleep again. But if it doesn't happen that way, I will make peace with that too.Take that universe!