Bringing Organic Tarot to Life Card 19: The Sun

Some cards ask to be painted.

Others ask to be lived.

The Sun has been sitting quietly on my table, waiting for me to become honest enough to make it.

At first, I thought this card would be easy. The Sun is warmth. Joy. Vitality. Success. Illumination.

But every time I approached it, another truth surfaced.

This card belongs to my father.

My father taught me many things. Some intentionally. Others simply by the way he moved through the world. He believed in excellence. Precision mattered. Details mattered. Finishing mattered.

Somewhere along the way, those lessons transformed inside me into something heavier.

Perfectionism.

For years I believed that if something wasn’t exceptional, it wasn’t worth sharing. If I couldn’t execute an idea exactly as I imagined it, I hesitated. I revised. I started over. I waited for some mythical version of myself who finally “got it right.”

That voice has followed me through exhibitions, grant writing, photography, and now this tarot deck.

Ironically, it almost kept this deck from existing at all.

The Sun has become my invitation to step out from underneath that shadow.

I’m beginning to understand that perfection isn’t light.

Presence is.

The real sun doesn’t rise because it is flawless. It rises because that is its nature. Some mornings it is filtered through smoke. Some mornings through clouds. Sometimes it blinds us. Sometimes it barely peeks over the horizon.

Yet it still shows up.

Perhaps that’s the lesson my father was always trying to teach, even if I interpreted it differently.

Today I no longer subscribe to perfectionism.

I choose completion over endless revision.

Curiosity over certainty.

Growth over performance.

This deck doesn’t need to be perfect to carry truth.

It only needs to be honest.

As I continue pairing each card with an ancestor or person who shaped my life, I’m realizing these aren’t simply archetypes. They’re conversations I’ve been having for decades. Some have brought comfort. Others have required forgiveness. All of them have left fingerprints on who I have become.

The Sun reminds me that healing sometimes looks less like fixing the past and more like standing fully in the light it casts.

So this card is for my father.

Not because he made me a perfectionist.

But because through him, I’m finally learning how to let perfection go.

The deck continues.

And for the first time in a long time, that feels more important than making it perfect.