The Cardcast
The Cardcast is a quiet exploration of life, one oracle card at a time. In each episode, we pull a single card and reflect on how its message weaves through the everyday — the moments, questions, and patterns that shape our world. No predictions, no prescriptions — just space to notice, connect, and listen in. Whether you're card-curious or card-devoted, come sit with the symbols.
The Cardcast
The Growth Journey
The Growth card from the Necronomicon Tarot deck reminds us that our journey itself is the point – not just the destination we're rushing toward.
• Growth isn't forced or sudden but a slow, steady process like a tree rising through soil
• The hardest parts of our journey often create the most profound personal growth
• Avoiding difficult emotions and experiences often leads to repeating lessons we haven't truly learned
• The Dalai Lama's wisdom on processing anger: "Have you been angry for long enough?"
• Backtracking, pausing, and feeling stuck are not failures but natural parts of growth
• Mental health challenges teach us endurance, compassion, and perspective
• Practice noticing one small moment of growth each day to recognize progress
• Shifting from "when will this be over" to "what is this teaching me" transforms our experience
For more reflections and a closer look at the cards themselves, you can find me on Instagram @the_cardcast.
For a closer look at the cards, follow me on Instagram @the_cardcast. For more about mental wellness and psychology, sign up for my newsletter at www.natashasheyenne.com.
Thanks for listening!
Hi there and welcome to the Cardcast. I'm Natasha and I'm so glad you're here. Together we explore the art of noticing the symbols, stories and quiet patterns that surround us every day and how they connect to our mental health and well-being. Each card becomes a way to pause, reflect and anchor ourselves more deeply in the present moment. Reflect and anchor ourselves more deeply in the present moment. So take a deep breath, settle in and let's see what today's card has to offer.
Speaker 1:When we speak of journeys, it is tempting to imagine only the destination, the place where we finally arrive, where everything makes sense, where the struggle is behind us. But the truth of growth is that the journey itself is the point. The path does not exist merely to deliver us somewhere else. It exists to shape us, to stretch us and to reveal who we are becoming along the way, and the growth card from the Necronomicon tarot deck today gives us this reminder. So here we see a figure emerging from the very trunk of a great tree. Her face is framed in blossoms, her hand outstretched with a delicate flower. She's not separate from the tree, looks like she was born from it, rooted in its bark. Growth here is not forced and it is not sudden, but it's the slow, steady rising of life through wood and soil, a becoming that cannot be rushed. And yet she holds a flower, as though to say even in the darkest places, beauty blooms.
Speaker 1:When I reflect on my own journeys, I think of how, when I was younger, I always wanted to race past the hard parts, the struggles, the heartbreaks, the tangled roots that caught my feet. I wanted to just leap over them and rush through them and pretend they weren't there, but in doing so, I often found myself circling back and repeating lessons I hadn't allowed myself to truly live. There's a story about an individual who asked the Dalai Lama they were struggling with forgiving someone and moving forward because there was a lot of anger and hurt in their story. And they said you know how do I just forgive this person and move on? And the Dalai Lama said have you been angry for long enough? And I really love that story, because you have to go through the hard parts and you have to go through the process. We can think about this idealized version of what we're supposed to be doing and who we're supposed to be on the other side, and that's great to aim towards that, but we will learn so much more about ourselves, and we will be able to stand so much firmly when we get there if we go through and face all the difficult parts.
Speaker 1:So for me, now I try to move differently when I reach a difficult place on the path. I still want to be through it. Of course I do. I want that part to be over, but I've learned to linger a little longer, to feel the corners of it, to pay attention to what it is that this needs to teach me, because in these hard places the most profound growth has occurred, at least I know. For me, these are the places that they test my resilience, they challenge my mental health, they ask me to sit in discomfort without running, and when I do, when I truly allow myself to be there, those are the places that lead to my deepest breakthroughs.
Speaker 1:Anna Nalick sang in her song 3AM you're just as far in as you'll ever be out, and that line also always stuck with me as a truth of this inner journey Wherever you are, you're in it, you're already in it, so you can't skip ahead, you can't bypass the hard parts. You're here and the only way out is through, and the only way forward is to keep going. The growth card reminds us that backtracking, pausing, even feeling stuck for a while these are not failures. They are part of the journey well-traveled. The tree in this card did not rise overnight. It grew through storms, through seasons of drought, through winters where nothing seemed to move. Growth is not always visible, but it is always happening. The struggles we encounter are not detours. They are the soil from which we grow. Anxiety, depression, grief, burnout. These are not easy companions on the road, but they do teach us endurance, compassion and perspective, so that when joy returns, it has room to root itself more deeply. And so the power of a journey well-traveled is not in arriving quickly, but in experiencing fully, to feel the pain, the frustration, the loneliness, and also the breakthroughs, the relief, the unexpected beauty that shows up in the smallest of flowers along the way.
Speaker 1:Take a moment to imagine your current journey. Where are you right now? Are you in the lush parts where the way feels easy and clear, or are you tangled in roots, feeling stuck, longing to be through the hard stretch? Wherever you are, remember this moment matters. This chapter belongs to the whole of your story. To skip it would be to skip part of yourself, so I'd invite you to reflect on a couple of questions, thinking about what it would look like to honor this part of this journey, even if it's hard. Instead of asking when will this be over, which is so tempting. What if, instead, you asked what is this teaching me, how is this shaping me? And even if you don't have a beautiful narrative of what that could possibly be or who you're becoming, just shifting your mindset a little bit to think what are some of the things that this is giving me in this growth?
Speaker 1:And a simple practice you could do is, this week, just choose one small moment each day to notice your own growth. It could be something tiny, the fact that you reached out for help or you took a walk when your body asked for movement, or that you breathe through a difficult thought instead of drowning in it. Write it down. At the end of the week, read through the list. These are those little blossoms of your journey. They may not always be obvious, but they are there, proof that growth is happening. Even now, even here. The growth card teaches us that the point is not to get through quickly, but to keep going, to trust that every twist, every pause, every thorn along the way is part of becoming more of who you were meant to be. That's it for today's card. For more reflections and a closer look at the cards themselves, you can find me on Instagram at the underscore cardcast. I'll see you in the next episode.
