Intuition is the Best Compass with Caroline Donofrio
Writer Caroline Donofrio discusses the unintentional, yet intuition-driven detours of her life and successful career. After an upsetting experience led her to abandon her voice as a writer and performer, she spent years helping others tell their stories, but constantly felt pulled to tell her own. Over time, she found the courage to do so, which led to deeply personal writing that resonates with a following of devoted readers, particularly through her successful Substack newsletter, Between a Rock and a Card Place.
Show Notes:
Read Caroline’s Substack newsletter, Between a Rock and a Card Place
Check out Naturally Tan by Tan France
Visit the popular lifestyle blog Cup of Jo
Read up on Miss Seventeen, the reality show Caroline appeared on in 2005
Read Rachel Pollack’s book, Tarot Wisdom
Learn about the King of Swords tarot card
See the Pamela Colman Smith Tarot Deck
Visit Jessica Dore’s website
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Nicole: [00:00:03] Welcome to Here For Me, a podcast about the power of choosing yourself. I'm Nicole Christie, and I'm honored to be here with you to share life-altering stories, lessons learned, and advice from leading experts that will help you show up for yourself with the love, honor, compassion and encouragement you give to others. Because just as we say, “I'm here for you” to show we care for someone, saying “I'm here for me” to ourselves is the best form of self-care.
Today, I'm talking with Caroline D'Onofrio. Caroline is a writer based in Brooklyn, whose work has been featured in New York Magazine, Elle, The Washington Post, Refinery 29, and The Zoe Report. She's also the author of Best Babysitters Ever, as well as a collaborator and ghostwriter on memoirs, essay collections and advice books by notable people, including the memoir Naturally Tan with Queer Eye's Tan France. In October 2021, Caroline launched the Substack newsletter Between a Rock and a Card Place, where she shares a provocative essay and in a way only the beautifully original Caroline can do, pulls a tarot card for the week ahead, along with a reflection on the meaning of the card and what questions it might prompt for her readers. I discovered Caroline's work over a decade ago on Cup of Jo, a daily women's lifestyle site founded by Johanna Goddard, known for its large readership that comes together as a community in the comments section of every post. Caroline's personal, reflective and insightful storytelling deeply resonates with readers. So much for me, that I reread several of her pieces when I need inspiration, advice, or wisdom. When I reached out to Caroline to invite her to join me on Here For Me, I told her I'd always imagined if we could meet for drinks, we'd find ourselves still pontificating on life, love, dreams and detours hours later. I'm honored that she agreed to join me in conversation. It is literally a dream to meet and talk with her, and I can't wait to share her radiance and wisdom with all of you. Caroline, thank you so much for joining me on Here For Me.
Caroline: [00:02:17] Thank you so much, Nicole. And thank you so much for having me. I'm so thrilled and honored to be here.
Nicole: [00:02:23] I have been such a fan of your work for such a long time, and it's just a huge honor to meet you and have this conversation. As you know, this season, we're talking about detours on Here For Me, and through your writing, I know some of the detours that you've taken, particularly in your career, but what has been a surprisingly pivotal moment where you veered off course?
Caroline: [00:02:45] So I love this question because, as you say, I mean, I feel like my entire career up until this point has been one long, continuous detour that I am still navigating. I think for the purposes of our conversation today, what I really hinge on is something that I might describe as the first detour. It's a bit of a career detour, but it's not entirely a career detour because it happened before I even had a career. It was my senior year of college, and I appeared on a reality show called Miss Seventeen. And I think the emotional aftermath of that detour is probably more interesting than the story of the show itself. But I'll give you a little bit of background about the show and how it came to be. So it was 2005, which at that point in time we didn't really know what we do now about reality shows. There weren't a ton of them on the air, but we didn't totally get it yet the way we do now, where if you sign on to one of these things, you're signing away your privacy. It's an opportunity, but you're also putting yourself out there to what might be a fair amount of scrutiny. So it just seemed to me, as a newly 21-year-old person, like this thing that was just ripe with possibility. So I was a senior at the time at Barnard College, which, if anyone is not familiar, is a women's college in New York City.
Caroline: [00:04:13] And because of our location, of course, we were near a lot of big magazines and publications and cultural institutions. And so the show was a collaboration between MTV and Seventeen magazine. So Atoosa Rubenstein, she was the Founding Editor of CosmoGirl, the Editor in Chief of Seventeen magazine at the time, she was at Seventeen. And so she came to Barnard, where she also went to school to give a talk. And it really was just this amazing feminist thing about being in media and being a powerful woman in media and being a woman with a voice, and her role at the magazine. And it was attended by a lot of people like myself who didn't necessarily know what they wanted to do with their lives, but found it very interesting, this idea of working in media and using one's voice. And at the end of the talk, she said that she was involved in this new project, which was a collaboration with MTV, and that the open call audition was the very next day. And my motto at that time was something along the lines of “Always Say Yes.” And so the next morning I woke up, put on my little outfit, went to the open call. I loved the audition process. The casting directors were so interesting and creative, and the show had been pitched as this very forward-seeming feminist thing where they were scouring the country for young women who would be good role models for the teens who read Seventeen magazine.
Caroline: [00:05:48] So at no point did it cross my mind that this might be something that wouldn't align with my ideals. Long story short, I got cast in the show and it was nothing like the callbacks. The biggest thing for me is it was a competition show. It was these 17 women living in a house together, and the idea was that we were all in competition to see who would ultimately be the winner, and the winner would receive the grand prizes of a scholarship, an internship at Seventeen magazine, and to appear on the cover. And I think I was just not prepared for that competitive kind of environment. And I think there is enough competition between women in the world at large. So I immediately got a bad feeling, for so many reasons, being there, that if we talk about fight, flight or freeze, I froze. I froze probably upon entering the premises and didn't unfreeze until I had been sent home. So one of the biggest things for me is that you would be taken aside by a producer and asked a series of leading questions and expected to incorporate the question into your answer. So, for example, one thing I was asked is which girl do you hate the most and why? There is no good answer to that question, so I'm not going to answer it. I didn't want to talk.
Caroline: [00:07:17] I didn't want to participate. I didn't want to answer any questions that might hurt someone's feelings. I didn't want to answer any questions that might make me look bad. I deeply regretted the choice to go on this show, and at the end of our first week of filming, 7 of the 17 girls were sent home. And the reason we were given for our dismissal (spoiler alert, I was one of them) is that we had not made a good first impression, which I think I probably made no impression at that point. But it wasn't good to hear. It certainly wasn't what I set out to do all throughout the audition process. One thing I talked about was how concerned I was about the way women were portrayed in the media and how I wanted to do something in some way to changing that, to bettering that, to having an active voice in the way that stories by women and about women are told. So the only words I utter on the show take place at this group dinner where we all had to do an activity (that is my least favorite activity of all time), which is introduce yourself and give us one fun fact about you and everyone else is fun. Facts were fun and my fun fact was my name is Caroline and I'm very concerned with the way women are portrayed in the media, and that is all I say on the show.
Nicole: [00:08:46] So what's interesting about that, you and I talked a little bit before this conversation, is that you actually had a history as a performer. So coming on this show, you are motivated by this opportunity to get into the industry and internship work at Seventeen magazine. Maybe you get a chance to use your voice to have an impact on how women are portrayed in the media through the work that would come from this, but also with a talent that you'd always had, always used, being on stage. So how did you come to terms with that? You obviously are a writer now. You took that direction, but what happened with the performing piece of it?
Caroline: [00:09:24] I would describe the whole experience as more of a personality detour. What I became very attracted to was the idea of people, particularly women, expressing their voices and telling their stories. So that was something that I had sort of pursued through acting, which I always loved, and through singing, which I have not done since. And I don't know, I always thought I would be more of this outward-facing person after the show. That quiet internality that I embodied on air continued to follow me around. But I never stopped being in love with stories. So at the same time as this idea was crystallizing for me that I loved the idea of people using their voices, I became fearful of using my own, and it was a slow progression towards figuring out what form that would take for me. But I do think that that slowly, over time, the writing piece came to mean a lot because it was a way for me to exercise my voice, but in a more controlled environment that I felt comfortable with. So I could sit with the words for longer, I could edit the words, I could shape the words, I could think about them, and then I could release them at a time when it felt safe or safer, at least for me, versus being on camera or being recorded. Even doing something like this, you know, gives me anxiety because I always worry how things will be perceived.
Nicole: [00:11:03] That moment on Miss Seventeen, when those were the only words that you really uttered on the show. I think anyone would feel rejected by that. Like I said, something that really is meaningful to me. You basically went out there with like, this is kind of the mission that I have in my life as a writer, even as a performer, how I use my voice. So I think it's very natural that you would feel isolated, outcast, rejected. And you said, like it wasn't really intentional. Maybe it was more of kind of like a quiet disowning of this, wanting to use your voice in some way. I know your work as an essayist using your voice and telling personal stories, but telling other people's stories has been a big part of your career. You were at a literary agency. You were an acquiring editor at Penguin Random House. You are... will take on collaborations, ghostwriting with Tan France and others. So you really were well-versed in helping other people tell their stories. Was that an intentional choice, or what was it that drew you to that before you started doing more of your own personal, more expository writing?
Caroline: [00:12:15] I think what we will find over the course of this conversation is that none of my choices have been intentional, but I think there was an intentionality behind certain pieces of it for sure, in that I think after the show I wanted to use my voice. I wanted to tell stories, but I turned away from this idea of being seen. And what better way to do that than by being behind the scenes and helping other people tell stories? And so I think being an editor was one way to exercise that. I loved my work as an editor. I loved helping authors shape and refine and tell their stories. I have loved working as a ghostwriter, and I think it was a very safe way, again, to sort of exercise these things that I loved and these talents that I have, but without having to fully put myself out there.
Nicole: [00:13:06] I can relate to this a little bit because my background is in communications, and a lot of the work that I would do is executive communications. So getting into the mind of a senior level executive, and then writing on their behalf a thought leadership piece or a speech. So I can kind of understand that. And sometimes I know that I would feel like I was kind of abandoning myself, like, I love doing this for this person. There's value and they really appreciate what I'm bringing to the table as a writer. But sometimes I'd be like, “Oh, why am I not telling my own stories?” Did you have any moments like that?
Caroline: Yup!
Nicole: And yeah, I want to hear about that and I want to hear about that velocity that built and what that was like when you were like, okay, I love my work as an editor. I love what I'm doing in the collaborations as a ghostwriter. But you're feeling this incredible pull. Tell us about what that felt like and how you got to starting to use your own voice to tell your own stories again.
[00:14:02] Caroline: So there's good velocity and there's bad velocity, but I'll start with the good velocity and I think the good velocity for me it was building a little bit over time, where when I was at the literary agency, I secretly dreamed of being the client. When I was an editor, I secretly dreamed of being the author, and when I was working as a ghostwriter and collaborator, which I still do occasionally, there was sort of this feeling of like, “Oh, this is so wonderful, but why not me?” Or “Why am I not allowing my own self to be on a cover?” “Why am I so afraid of putting my voice out there? “I think a good aha moment for me came a couple of years ago. I was working on a number of collaboration projects at the same time, and I found myself always giving this pep talk to people about how important it was to be vulnerable and how if they were hesitant about telling a story for whatever reason, because it was personal, because it might upset someone in their life, because it might be met with controversy, it was me who would come in and say, I'm a big believer in telling your truth and I'm a big believer in people sharing their reality of letting the cracks show, of letting the edges show, of talking about the things that have scared them and hurt them and challenged them. Because if we don't do that, how are we supposed to learn?
And so I find myself giving these pep talks over and over and over about how someone had to be vulnerable because that was the only way that it could help other people. And then the call would end, and I would sit there and say to myself, “Caroline, you're a hypocrite. You can't do this yourself. If you really believe this, why don't you share your truth also?” And I think a piece of that, too, which I still struggle with, is this “Why me? Why does anyone care about my truth? I'm not a famous person. I'm not a I'm not special. I'm just a me.”
Nicole: [00:16:09] When did you realize or make that connection that I'm maybe not doing that for myself? I'm not speaking my truth because that experience on Miss Seventeen was more formative than I realized.
Caroline: [00:16:22] You know what's interesting? That's a connection I made fairly recently, and I was on that show in 2005. I finally we got to this point where I noticed myself where I'll say things, and I'm not proud of this, but I will ask these questions, you know, after I write something or after I record something where I'll say to myself, did I sound likable? Do I sound friendly? If someone heard that would they wanna be my friend and not ask the question of: Did I say what I wanted to say? Did I make my point? Did I communicate what I wanted to effectively? And I started to ask myself very recently, Where is this coming from? Why do I care so much about being likable? Why do I care so much about making a good first impression? And I realized that it's not that this was one terribly traumatic incident. It was just the first seed that was planted. But the interesting thing about detours is that it doesn't have to be some big turn. For me, it was a tiny, almost imperceptible change in the degree of my trajectory, and that was enough to sort of send me in a different direction where I lost the thread for a while.
Nicole: [00:17:41] And kudos to you for that awareness. But your personal essays that you wrote for Cup of Jo that you sometimes still continue to write as a contributing writer contributing editor. What was the impetus for that turn? Because that's so many of us discovered you on Cup of Jo. What was that turn like where you started really putting your words about yourself and your story out there?
Caroline: [00:18:04] So at first it was a little scary. I won't lie, but I will also say, I mean, the Cup of Jo audience is one of a kind in that they are a large group of, for the most part, extremely supportive people, which is not a thing you can often say about the internet. So of all the forums in which to first dip my toe into using my voice, it was really one of the best by far. So the first piece I ever shared, there was a piece that I had written on my own because I had just gone through a breakup and I was very devastated. And so I wrote this piece about a breakup, and I posted it on my own little blog. And Joanna saw it and said, you know, would you be up for sharing this? And so I did. And a lot of people came to it and reacted to it, and it was very successful. And that is where it began. But since then, I've written for a lot of other places, and the Internet at large is not always the kindest place. I am always very grateful that I had a soft landing place for my initial forays into sharing my voice.
Nicole: [00:19:14] And I think the beautiful thing that you do is just show up so authentically. You are speaking your truth and connecting with other people, and it's what makes your writing so resonant. I'm also now an avid reader of your Substack newsletter Between a Rock and a Card Place and we'll talk about what that means. But I would say it feels like it's the most uniquely you of all your work that I have read. Every week you write an essay and then you pull a tarot card for the collective and you write some commentary about that card. So I want to hear about what was the impetus for Between a Rock and a Card Place and what is the response that you've received to it?
Caroline: [00:19:57] The Substack came about honestly, as the result of a really bad year. It was a pandemic, which affected all of us. It was the year I took on three ghostwriting projects all at the same time. They were not supposed to be all at the same time, but the schedules shifted in such a way where I was suddenly writing three books at once in a one room apartment with my partner. I couldn't go outside. I also had a full-time job, so it was a lot going on and then personally, a lot of other things compounded. Where some people I was very close to receive some difficult diagnoses. You know, I had a friend who had suffered a stroke that year, and so I found myself struggling and I wanted connection. So once the books were wrapped, finally in 2021, I had the time, I had the mental space, I was able to sort of sit down and write for myself in a real way. And so I started this Substack I again, intentionality. I did not go into it in any sort of organized way. I didn't have a plan. I did not expect to make it a paid publication. I frankly wasn't even sure if anyone was going to read the thing, but I knew that I really missed short-form writing. I really miss writing as myself, and I really had never gotten the chance, you know, under the banner of any other company or anyone's anything to just say what I wanted in an unedited way, whether that meant I was using curse words or writing about strange topics that no one else finds interesting. I just was really into this idea of having this total freedom.
Nicole: [00:21:38] So it was a detour. Again, you're saying it's unintentional, but a detour of its own. But I think a thread that I'm hearing throughout is I feel like you listen to your heart and your gut when you go towards something. Would you say that's accurate?
Caroline: [00:21:57] Yes, I think actually that's a very nice way of putting it. I think that is accurate.
Nicole: [00:22:02] I feel like, you know, you’re like it's not intentional.
Caroline: [00:22:04] I barrel to stuff. I don't mean to do it and I do, but I think that is true. I think if, you know, the intuition pings a little bit and I tend to move towards it.
Nicole: [00:22:12] Yeah. I think intuition is a really important thing to allow to guide us in life. I think a lot of people are afraid of it because it doesn't feel practical or it doesn't feel logical. When you sit down to write, do you ever have a plan or are you sitting down and reflecting and going, “What's on my mind this week?”
Caroline: [00:22:31] It's definitely more of the latter. I would love to have a plan. I do think oftentimes it is based on what is on my mind that week, maybe some sort of current event or some sort of pervasive mood that's in the air that I decide to speak to.
Nicole: [00:22:46] I think that's the beauty of Between a Rock and a Card Place, though, is it feels not that it's unplanned, but it feels like you are very in your mind and your heart and in your body when you're writing. So I think that maybe detours work well for you.
Caroline: [00:23:01] I think it's just worth mentioning, as you were talking about detours, I think what I just realized is that the the Substack is a detour, but it is also really my Here For Me moment.
Nicole: [00:23:12] Say more about that.
Caroline: [00:23:13] Because I was coming off of this terrible time and saying, what is it that I need? And I wanted connection. I wanted to do something and I created this, this newsletter. And so I think it is sort of the physical embodiment of my Here For Me moment. Yeah.
Nicole: [00:23:30] The year before that with all the work that you took on, which is just paying my bills, I'm building up my business. We have all the reasons that we take on work, things that were happening in your personal life, people getting difficult diagnoses, the pandemic. You're trapped inside with your partner. Like all of these things probably made it difficult to carve out time for yourself just from a time perspective, from an actual space perspective, mental space perspective. So I think that might be why you shine so brightly through this newsletter. And I'm curious about the tarot aspect as well. And I'm going to borrow your words actually, which is that it's not fortune telling: it's more of a tool for reflection. And I love that you put this out there. I think those of us who find tarot or anything sort of metaphysical intriguing, also sometimes feel almost a little bit of shame or embarrassment. Like, I don't want to talk about this because you're going to think that I'm some crazy lady with a wizard hat on playing with her crystals or something. So that is a vulnerable moment. Also, if you hearken back to the Miss Seventeen of the vulnerability that you felt, this is such an authentic part of yourself, something you're interested in. Talk us through how you came to decide to include a card and what that's like every week. I'm curious about your process of like pulling a card and then writing. It's really a second essay that comes in each newsletter every Sunday.
Caroline: [00:24:57] Thank you for asking about this. It's been a part of my life for such a long time and for such a long time, it's not a thing that I ever shared or spoke about, but I think over the course of the pandemic, it became a bigger part of my life where when I was ten and I first got into the cards, I think it's because I thought it would be some path to popularity or power, and that did not at all work out that way. And in the years that followed, I always loved tarot, but I loved them the way a lot of people loved tarot, which is just as these beautiful objects that I loved for their design, that I loved, for their symbolism or imagery, but I didn't fully understand. What they were or how to use them or what they meant. And it was over the course of the pandemic that I really started to take a much deeper dive. I took a couple of classes, I studied the cards, I read a ton of books about it. And really the big thing for me was that I just started pulling a card every day, which was something one of my teachers had suggested doing and just sitting with the card and letting it look at me, putting it in a place where I would see it often and connecting to it. And I think one of the things I love the most about Tarot is there are a couple of different theories on its origins, but everyone can agree that it's been around for at least 600 years in some form.
Caroline: [00:26:16] So it's a collection of images basically, that are meant to show universal experiences that we will all go through one or more times over the course of our lives and how amazing to be able to pull a card at whatever moment, a dark moment, a light moment, a confused moment, and feel that someone experienced something similar centuries ago.
So that's really the thing that connected me to it. And that's really the thing that I wanted to put in the newsletter, because as you say, it was a thing that I didn't feel comfortable sharing forever because I thought, “Oh my God, my colleagues are going to see this. They're going to think I'm a freak. They're going to think I do spells. They're going to think there's something wrong with me.” And I can't ever get hired in a traditional job ever again. And so what I realized was this is actually a beautiful tool full of beautiful stories. And wouldn't it be wonderful if I could introduce this to people, whether they are enthusiasts already, or whether they're maybe that person who doesn't understand what it is, and if they enjoy art, if they enjoy literature, if they enjoy symbolism, then maybe they'll see that there's something here for them too. And I kind of just threw one in the first issue, and we've been doing it ever since. But the response has been amazing and I love when I get an email from someone that says, I had no idea what this was. I thought this was scary. I thought this was the devil.
Nicole: [00:27:47] Some sort of witchcraft. Yeah.
Caroline: [00:27:49] Yeah. Or, you know, because of this, I look forward to seeing what the card is every week. And that really brings me joy because that that's what it's all about. It's just another form of reflection and connection.
Nicole: [00:28:01] Exactly. And I think what makes your writing so resonant, particularly in the Substack, is that you really do make your experience, your words, universal. That's what beautiful writing does in you’re a master at that. But then tarot, as you're saying, these are universal stories. They're things that have happened to people for hundreds of years. And so you have like your writing, which is very personal, but universal. And then you have tarot, which is actually universal but becomes personal.
Caroline: Yeah.
Nicole: That's what you're doing.
Caroline: [00:28:32] The thing that's so funny is I will choose the card earlier in the week and I'll sort of prop it up somewhere on my desk so that it's around me a lot as I'm working so that I see it a lot throughout the day. And I kind of ruminate on that loosely throughout the week. And then I'll sit down to write the little essay that goes for the card interpretation. But what I always find and I do not plan it, is that the top piece of personal writing and the interpretation of the card always fit together in some way. That is always a wonderful surprise to me. I mean, sometimes it's more obvious than others, but it does feel like this little hint of the supernatural in a way that I definitely welcome.
Nicole: [00:29:10] I can totally see how that would be, if you're reflecting on it (and I didn't know this right) this is why I wanted to know. I wanted to know, do you pull the card at the same time that you're writing the essay? It really is infiltrating your mind and your heart and almost generating ideas for you, which I think is one of the beautiful things about tarot. Like it makes you think about more deeply. When you say it's about reflection. You ponder the images, you look up the meaning in the guidebook. And you know this as a tarot reader and others who read tarot say, you know, read them intuitively.
Caroline: [00:29:42] , Oh, those guidebooks, those guidebooks...we have to stay away.
Nicole: I know! They're upsetting!
Caroline: They're terrible. I mean, it'll just say pain. Sorrow. Regret. And you're like, What am I supposed to do with this? Like, first of all, if you're feeling those things, you already know, you're feeling those things. So that is not going to help anybody. But this always what I tell people who are interested in tarot is use it intuitively. And if you want to, I mean invest in a really great book. I think Rachel Pollack is the best of the best. But there are so many wonderful people out there now that are writing all about tarot. And I say: Just don't use the guidebook. The guidebook will make you sad.
Nicole: [00:30:18] It's like, read it intuitively and you say this in your substack take what resonates and don't worry about the rest. I think you pushed me to invest in a tarot deck having read your Substack. So I'm one of those readers.
Caroline: [00:30:30] Oh, good. I'm so glad to hear that.
Nicole: [00:30:32] Oh, yes. And and it's been so much fun. But one of the things that's interesting is people get very scared of reverse cards. So if you pull tarot and it's reverse, it's not necessarily the opposite. It's not necessarily a bad omen. But even with that, I find if the reverse doesn't resonate with me, but the upright does, I'm like, “No, it fell out of the deck in the wrong direction” or whatever.
Caroline: [00:30:54] But you know what I do? And I'm just like showing my true tarot nerd colors. But I have a couple teachers who say don't read reversals at all. So that is an option. You can just ignore them. What I often do is if I pull a card and it comes up reversed, or especially if it falls out of the deck reversed, then we're like, “Oh, what are you trying to say to me?” I read that as the same thing, but more internal.
Nicole: [00:31:15] Oh wow, what a great method.
Caroline: [00:31:17] So it's not like flipping the meaning, but it's just saying instead of this being a thing as a mood or a thing to work on or a thing to look out for anything that might be happening, I read it as just being internal and something that we can work on ourselves.
Nicole: [00:31:29] That's an incredible way to interpret it and it makes a lot of sense. I had not thought of that.
Nicole: I think what you're so really gifted at doing everything you're saying about. How it is that you approach your Substack, how you went through your career, even after Miss Seventeen when you were like, I kind of shifted away from performing and, and using my voice in a personal way. And then you were an editor and ghostwriting and you got to Cup of Jo and you started using your voice again. To me, everything you're doing, even though you say it's not intentional, is 100% intuitive. And then you also express that through your interest in tarot and let it allow you to dig really deep into intuition, which is, in my personal opinion, exactly what tarot should be used for. You're highly intuitive and gifted person.
So we've talked about several detours along the way, which are very intuitively driven, not just the detour that we talked about at the beginning of the show and how it kind of led you away from using your voice or maybe, you know, feeling vulnerable, but also detours of like the Substack newsletter. What have they taught you about showing up for yourself, where you haven't shown up for yourself, and how you're doing so now, or maybe still need to?
Caroline: [00:32:51] I think the first one is that perhaps there is no such thing as as a true detour. I tend to look at my career, but also just my life as a constellation. So we have all of these little disparate points. And when you're putting one on the map, it might not seem like it's connected to everything else, but it will be inevitably because it's part of your story. And so I try to not judge too harshly anything I'm doing, if I don't have a real sense of direction at that moment. I try to keep in mind this idea that it's just part of the constellation. It will connect to something else and it will be okay. I think the other two big things I've learned, the first one is that going back to this idea of vulnerability, it's that our mistakes, our insecurities, our embarrassments, our cracks. That's the good stuff. That's what endears us to one another. And it's not only okay to be real, it's necessary because that's how we connect. That's how we learn. It's okay to ask questions. It's okay to not get something perfect on the first try or ever. And I think the last one, and this is something I'm absolutely still working on in a very active way, but it's that I used to think fear was a sign not to do something, that it was my body telling me there was danger present or my mind telling me that it wasn't a good idea. And I think I've come to see that fear is not always a sign not to do something. Sometimes it's a very natural reaction because something resonates with us. And the reason we feel that fear or discomfort isn't because we shouldn't do it. It's because we care. And that is something that I'm really now trying to navigate in terms of purposefully doing things where it might make me a little uncomfortable, it might be outside my comfort zone, but I do want to do it because I care. And understanding that fear sometimes can be our friend. We just have to learn how to navigate together.
Nicole: [00:35:12] So one final request as we wrap this conversation. I would love to leave everyone with a little taste of Between a Rock and a Card Place. Would you be willing to pull a tarot card for the here for me listeners and leave them with something to reflect on?
Caroline: [00:35:29] I would love to do that. So just to give everyone a visual, I have this very ancient deck that I found in a thrift shop in upstate New York, and so I always use this deck. It looks like it has seen some things, but this is the one I always pull from when I'm reading for others.
Okay. This is a great card. This is good. So here we have the King of Swords. So swords are the suit that rules thought, intellect, and matters of the mind. And a sword, of course, is a weapon. I prefer to think of it in a tarot context as a tool. And the king is one of the core cards. So it's a very high card. It is a person who is an expert in their domain, who is very knowledgeable about their realm, which in this case, again is thought and intellect. So the king on this card I'm looking at the Pamela Colman Smith deck is sitting very proud on a throne, is holding a sword in an upright position, is surrounded by these sort of beautiful trees. There's a blue sky in the background and birds flying. And you just get the sense that this is a very powerful person. And the sword I once read an interpretation of this card: I think it was Jessica Dore D-O-R-E to not take credit for her ideas. She is a licensed social worker and she writes about the cards through a lens of psychotherapy and tarot. I read something she once wrote about this card that has stuck with me ever since, and I think it's very pertinent to your show and to our conversation and hopefully for listeners as well, which is that the king is a figure who sort of has this power over life and death, but not in the sense of mortality, because again, we're talking about the realm of the mind. The king has control over life or death in the realm of our thoughts. So the idea is that we have the ability to decide what lives and dies, what we give airtime to in our own minds. So what you focus on grows stronger. And what you don't give the time of day cannot have power over you. So if you choose your focus carefully, and if you wield it as carefully as you would a sword. It's a wonderful way to move forward. It is a powerful way to be in the world, and it's also something we can consider a bit more in the days ahead.
Nicole: [00:38:09] That is so fitting to our conversation to how you move through the world. And it's very apparent through your writing and how you show up, Caroline, I mean, just how you show up as a human and certainly to what we talk about on Here For Me. I am so, so grateful.
Caroline: [00:38:26] Thank you so much.
Nicole: [00:38:29] After many years of following Caroline's work, it was an honor to talk with her about the detours she's taken and how she lost and reclaimed her voice as a writer and storyteller. I also love that during the conversation, Caroline recognized that her popular Substack newsletter Between a Rock and a Card Place is her here for me moment that it was the answer to the connection she was craving to others and to herself as a channel for her authentic, poignant voice. When it comes to choosing ourselves, Caroline teaches us the importance of letting your intuition be your guide. In her own words, she barrels to stuff: the things that call her, and as evidenced by her loyal and adoring readers for good reason. And however you feel about tarot, when you open yourself to it, it helps you tap into your intuition, often telling you exactly what you already know about yourself, your life, the things you know in your heart, but might not be ready to admit in your head.
Whether intentional or not, Caroline is a master of letting her intuition steer her to what's meant for her, including using her voice to connect with others and helping her readers connect to themselves. For more information about Caroline and this episode, check out the show notes and transcript at hereformepodcast.com. You can read Between a Rock and a Card Place at https://carolinecala.substack.com.
I wanted to leave you with a little taste of what you'll find in her newsletter. So here's Caroline reading one of the issues entitled Reasons to Keep Going:
Caroline: Reasons to keep going when it feels damn near impossible. Because you are here against all odds on a mostly blue planet, suspended in a vast and unknowable sky. Because one day, you'll get to tell the story of how you made it, how you were brave and resilient despite it all. Because your vision deserves as much respect as anyone else's. Because you care. Feeling heartbroken, enraged. Depleted. Burned out. Simply feeling stems from care. That is a beautiful thing. The most beautiful thing. Don't lose touch with it. Because the fortune cookie said: “life always gets harder near the summit” and maybe it's right. Because your actions can honor those who came before. Those you miss. Those who are unable. Those whose words and hopes and wishes live on in what you bring to the world. Because maybe there is a reason. An order. A why. Because you matter. Likely more than you know. Think of all the people who've made a difference in your life in ways big and small. The early boss who took a chance on you. The teacher or coach or friend's parent who encouraged you. The passing compliment delivered right when you needed it. The person who held the door when you had just about given up on humanity. You've had that effect on someone too. Because puppies and the round puppy tummies and not-yet-grown-into-them paws.
Because life is full of plot twists, and sometimes when you least expect it, you're launched into one that's better than you can imagine. Because the sun shows up every morning and the world keeps spinning. When all else is lost, there is hope in this kind of consistency. Because you've made it this far. Because every October, clouds of monarch butterflies migrate nearly 3000 miles. Their paper-thin wings using air currents to travel distances rivaled by commercial jets. Because this, too, shall pass. Because none of it ever made sense in the first place. Even in the moments when we thought it did. Because throwing your hands up is exactly what they: The naysayers, the demons, the man, the struggle want. But the question is, what do you want? Because if you stop for a moment and get really quiet, there is something that whispers from the deepest part of you. It will move you to tears of love or rage or truth or beauty. And it bids you to keep showing up. Keep trying. Keep fighting. Because if you look closely enough inside every flower, there is a story about the winter that came before it. Because there's a lot more to the story, but it's yet to be written and the wording is up to you.
Nicole: [00:43:28] Here For Me is produced by Lens Group Media in association with Tulla Productions. As is often said, it takes a village to make this podcast, and my deepest gratitude goes out to every person in that village. Our producers, Dave Nelson and Stacy Harris; designer and illustrator, Amy Senftleben; and our production assistant, Amanda McGonigal. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you'd follow the show, rate, review, and share it with people you love. You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook at nicolejchristie. Until next time, thank you so much for listening. Here's to you being here for you...and to the power of choosing yourself.