A few years ago, I picked up some Studio Ghibli journals. I am finally getting around to using the Kiki's Delivery Service one. It's my new tarot journal.
For my first reading with this journal, I pulled 6 of Swords. This is a complicated card for me. It can point toward recovery from a difficult time, but it holds a certain amount of melancholy. A woman and child sit in a boat as a man ferries them across a large body of water. They are in transition, leaving one shore without knowing what the next shore will hold or when it will appear. This is one of the loneliest places to be.
I know what is gone: my parents, my sense of safety in the world, assumptions I had about life and people. An entire world has been destroyed with my mother's death. I know what is lost. I know where I cannot return.
There is no way back. Just the long passage toward another shore, another life, but the old life continues inside me. That's why the swords are perhaps still in the boat with the woman and child. They did not leave them behind. The past comes, too.