November's Cards: What If Coming Home Is a Gathering?

An exploration of ancestral wisdom, belonging, and the possibility that becoming ourselves isn't a linear journey.

Last December, during Coming Into Focus, I drew thirteen cards to accompany me through 2026.

Each month, I return to the corresponding card, curious about what it might reveal when held alongside my lived experiences.

November's card was The Elder of Fire, reversed.

My immediate reaction wasn't concern about the reversal. It was curiosity.

What belief might be challenged?

What story have I been telling myself that I'm ready to reconsider?

What new truth about myself might be revealed?

Then I noticed something else.

The Elder of Fire was depicted honouring her ancestors during Día de los Muertos, a celebration that takes place at the beginning of November.

That felt significant.

But before I could explore why, something unexpected happened.

The Card That Asked Me to Pause

While searching through my deck for November's card, another image caught my attention.

The Three of Earth.

In all the years I've owned this deck, I couldn't recall encountering this particular card.

And something about it stopped me.

Three women gathered around a table, working with herbs, creating medicines, sharing knowledge.

At first glance, they might appear to be friends working together.

But that's not what I saw.

I saw family.

Three generations of women.

Maiden. Mother. Crone.

And as I looked at them, I experienced something difficult to describe.

It was as though the card was asking me to pause and really look.

A feeling moved from the image into my heart space.

The core of who I am.

And the only word I had for it was home.

Not somewhere I wanted to go.

Something I recognized.

The Ancestors and the Soul

For some time now, I've been contemplating an idea about reincarnation.

What if souls sometimes incarnate within their own ancestral lineage?

What if I have been one of my own ancestors?

What if, in another lifetime, I participated in creating the very lineage that eventually brought me into this world?

And what if time, from the perspective of consciousness, isn't linear at all?

What if the lives we experience as past, present, and future exist within something much larger than our human understanding of time?

I don't claim to have any definitive answers - only curiosity.

But the possibility has been calling to me.

As have particular countries connected to my ancestry.

Not simply as destinations I'd like to visit.

It's something more visceral.

I keep imagining myself standing barefoot on the earth.

Walking where my ancestors walked.

Perhaps even where another expression of my own soul once lived.

Where people loved, grieved, celebrated, raised families, and eventually returned their physical bodies to the earth.

I don't imagine travelling there to uncover some extraordinary revelation.

I imagine standing there.

Present.

With them.

The closest analogy I have is a radio frequency.

I can sense the connection, but there's static.

And I wonder whether physically standing on those lands might bring greater clarity.

Not proof.

Not certainty.

Just the possibility of experiencing something differently.

A Homesickness Without a Home

This exploration brought me back to something I've experienced since childhood.

A persistent feeling of homesickness.

Not for a particular house or place.

A feeling of being separate from the whole.

I've encountered spiritual teachings that describe this as the soul's longing to return to Source.

The desire for individual consciousness to reunite with Creator consciousness.

And perhaps there's something meaningful in that interpretation.

But another possibility emerged.

What if what I've experienced isn't homesickness at all?

What if it's an absence of belonging to myself?

That's a very different question.

Because I've spent much of this year examining the Good Girl.

The stories about who I should be.

The expectations I've internalized.

The ways I've sometimes questioned my own knowing, accommodated others, or made myself smaller.

And perhaps belonging to myself isn't about discovering some entirely new version of who I am.

Perhaps it's about allowing myself to fully inhabit the woman I've always been.

Without negotiating my right to exist as I am.

Without needing to become someone else first.

Three Women, One Soul

And that's when the Three of Earth took on another dimension.

Maiden.

Mother.

Crone.

Three generations of women gathered around a table.

But what if, symbolically, they're three expressions of the same soul?

If consciousness exists beyond our linear experience of time, perhaps the Maiden, Mother, and Crone aren't simply successive stages of becoming.

Perhaps they're expressions of one consciousness, each contributing something to the whole.

The Maiden brings curiosity and discovery.

The Mother brings creation and nurturing.

The Crone brings experience and wisdom.

But none is more complete than the others.

The Crone still needs the Maiden's wonder.

The Maiden has something to offer the Crone.

And the Mother isn't solely responsible for holding everything together.

They're collaborating.

Creating.

Belonging.

What if becoming ourselves isn't a straight line?

What if it's a gathering?

A gathering of experiences, perspectives, wisdom, and expressions of consciousness.

And what if coming home to ourselves isn't about returning to who we once were, but recognizing the wholeness of everything we are?

The Elder of Fire, Revisited

Now I look at November's Elder of Fire reversed with different eyes.

The Elder represents wisdom, transformation, leadership, and the relationship between personal power and responsibility.

Her reversal invites us to examine where those qualities might be out of balance.

But perhaps, for me, the belief being challenged isn't simply about leadership or authority.

Perhaps it's something more fundamental.

The belief that becoming myself is a linear process.

That I must leave one version of myself behind to become another.

That wisdom is something I acquire only by moving forward.

That belonging is something I must find somewhere outside myself.

And perhaps even the belief that surrender requires relinquishing my individuality to something greater.

What if I can be fully myself and fully connected?

What if individuality and unity aren't opposites?

What if my relationship with the Divine is one of participation rather than separation?

These are questions, not conclusions.

And I'm comfortable allowing them to remain that way.

Coming Home

There's something wonderfully fitting about the timing of this exploration.

I'm completing The Sacred Unraveling, a container devoted to noticing, allowing, releasing, embodying, and ultimately coming home to ourselves.

And here I am, encountering an image that evokes home so deeply I can feel it in my body.

Perhaps the Three of Earth isn't showing me somewhere I need to go.

Perhaps it's reflecting something I already carry.

The Maiden.

The Mother.

The Crone.

The ancestor.

The descendant.

The woman I was.

The woman I am.

The woman I'm becoming.

Not separate pieces waiting to be reunited.

But expressions of a whole I'm learning to recognize.

And perhaps the ancestral lands will call me to stand upon them someday.

Bare feet against the earth.

Curious about what I might experience.

Open to whatever unfolds.

But I don't have to wait until I get there to begin exploring what belonging means.

Because perhaps homecoming isn't always about finding our way back.

Perhaps it's about recognizing that every expression of who we are already has a place at the table.

Always,

Juniper