January: Realignment

This year begins with Adjustment.

Not a surprise, really. And when you think about it, a very literal card to open a year with.

January so often lives in the space between endings and beginnings. A threshold month. A time of resolutions, intentions, and quiet hope. We stand facing forward while still carrying the weight of what came before.

Our collective January is already unfolding in ways that feel heavy and difficult to name. The year opened under a Wolf Moon on January 3rd, amplified by a Supermoon. And in the early hours of January 4th, news broke that the United States had bombed Venezuela, kidnapping its president and First Lady.

The reaction to this has been complicated. A dangerous man was removed from power, and yet the act itself was not born of pure intention. Venezuela is a land rich in resources. It is also a place where the U.S. has increasingly deported those it deems undesirable. Liberation and violence is tangled together. Justice and exploitation existing side-by-side.

These realities sit uneasily beside one another as I consider Adjustment both symbolically and personally.

All of this weighs on me as I sit with the meaning of Adjustment, both collectively and personally.

To me, Adjustment does not signal dramatic upheaval or sweeping change. It doesn’t feel like a call to burn everything down and start over. After years marked by massive shifts and ruptures at a personal level, I feel myself settling into something steadier. More rooted. More secure.

And yet.

Adjustment still asks something of me.

Not a tearing down, but a fine-tuning. A continual aligning of inner scales. Small, precise shifts that keep me honest with myself and with the world as it is.

Here is the tension that I can’t ignore.
Personally, I’m being asked to recalibrate.
Collectively, I find myself wishing for massive, sweeping change.

I want the world to correct itself more quickly than it seems able to. I want systems to break where they are violent and unjust. I want accountability without collateral harm. I justice for those that continually seem to be escaping from it.

But Adjustment seems to caution me here.

It doesn’t ask me to carry the weight of the world’s rupture in my nervous system. It doesn’t ask me to burn myself down in order to care. Instead, it asks for balance. For clarity. For regulation. For the discipline of staying aligned internally, even when the collective feels massively misaligned.

Alignment, here, feels more like preparation.
Like, learning how to grieve without hardening.
How to hope without bypassing reality.

Adjustment doesn’t promise immediate justice. It just asks me to live justly anyway. To hold my inner scales steady while the world around me trembles. To make small, necessary corrections that allow me to remain compassionate rather than overwhelmed.

So, that is how this year begins. With the quiet work of alignment, and the trust that staying balanced is enough.

Always,

Your Trusted Friend ❤︎

“The Inner Scales” Tarot Spread

Hold January in your awareness.

When you feel ready, shuffle slowly.

Question:
Where am I already in right relationship with myself and my life this month?

Draw the first card and place it to the left.

Do not rush to interpret.
Let this card orient you.

Let this card remind you that balance begins with acknowledging what is already working.

Question:
What small but meaningful recalibration is being requested of me right now?

Draw the second card and place it in the center.

This is the heart of the spread.

This card does not point to rupture or transformation.
It points to precision.

Question:
How can I remain regulated, compassionate, and present as I move through this adjustment?

Draw the third card and place it to the right.

This card offers a way of carrying what arises. This card supports your nervous system as much as your understanding.

Once all three cards are drawn, take a final moment to look at all three cards together. There is nothing to force or rush. January just asks for alignment. Carry what resonates.