Stuckness

From the Llewellyn Tarot, the Eight of Swords; from the Beasts of Albion, the Swan:

The tarot's Eight of Swords symbolizes feeling trapped and overwhelmed by outside forces; those embedded swords emphasize our 'stuckness.' Feeling powerless to create change is frightening. Yet the more we focus on our worries, the more tangled in their net we become. What we generally don't pay attention to is the kind of thoughts we're having, and how our emotions have influenced them to the point where they no longer reflect reality. This is not an encouragement to embrace toxic positivity - using false optimism to diminish, ignore, or deny actual problems. But can we take a step back from our spinning mind and simply observe without judgment what actually has happened? The Swan is often used in tales of transformation, where people are turned into these birds or swans are returned to human form. Even The Ugly Duckling is about such a major shift. It is possible to do this with our thoughts, to make the mind more spacious by reminding ourselves that we just don't know. As Kaira Jewel Lingo put it, "When we let ourselves hang out in the space of not-knowing, there is enormous potential, and life could unfold in innumerable ways."