Boundless Love in Changing Times: A Tarot Interview with Sadriana Zea

Tarot Interviews. Welcome to Tarot Interviews. I'm your host, finn, and today we're joined by the multifaceted Sadriana Zea, based in the USA. Sadriana is a gamer and a writer, a big fan of Dragon Age Origins, sims 4 and Minecraft. Today, we'll let the tarot guide us through a discussion on whatever comes up, whether it be mental health, writing or the unique ways we connect in an ever-changing world. Let's shuffle the deck and begin. How are you doing, lovely?

I'm doing well, thank you. How are you?

I'm not bad at all, I'm just shuffling these cards. Whereabouts in the US are you based? Cleveland, ohio, cleveland? Well, I lived in Cleveland, middlesbrough, which is probably quite different.

Probably.

My knowledge of American pop culture is pretty limited, but when I was a kid I used to read these books called Fat Freddy's Cat and it was this cartoon about the Freak Brothers, and I think they mentioned Cleveland, Ohio, as being like one of the second layers of hell. I've never been.

I've been trying to escape my whole life.

Oh, bless you.

It's cold and wet and gray most of the year, so like that's got its downside and then I live in England. Right, but when I say cold and you say cold, we're not saying the same kind of thing.

Well, I mean mean I would measure fahrenheit against celsius, but fahrenheit doesn't mean much to me. But so, for example, if you were to go outside wearing a t-shirt and shorts, what would your life expectancy be?

in like the winter here, yeah, hours, okay, it's like we hover in the winter. We hover around five to seven C, so it's cold and there's snow. Yuck, yeah, it's very cold and there's snowy and then it's just so interminably gray. And I know England gets a lot of red and it's kind of interminably gray too, but there's still a lot of green and we don't have a lot of green here.

And I can imagine that since the beginning of 2025, things are probably less great, am I thinking?

oh yeah, no, it's warble. The country is on fire, literally and figuratively, and it's been like bad news bears um all the way around sorry, bad news bears.

What are bad news bears? They're like the Care Bears, but with like really sad emojis on the front.

I mean, you can make them that way. It's just a phrase to say that things are not well. I think that one might be a me-ism. Truthfully, I don't know how many people say bad news bears. I say a lot of things like sex bunnies and you say look sex bunnies or son of a motherless goat. Especially when I'm trying not to swear, these things come out so they're kind of me-isms okay.

So I've been on this planet for nearly 40 something years. I've never heard any of those phrases uttered by anybody, ever in my life right, which makes them me-isms.

Yeah, I like them though if I haven't had a few me-isms. It helps with like breaking the ice and you know people talking and you need your own version of duo lingo that would. That would be funny bless you right.

Well, this is me, I'm Fin hi um. Thank you so much for responding to whatever it was that I put on Blue Sky.

Not a problem. It was really an interesting premise and I was like this is a thing I could do. I could have fun with this.

Thank you so much for joining us. Right, I have so many questions and those will be woven into the cards that we pull, but what I'm going to do is I've got my deck here, this is the Rider Waite, and I'm going to keep shuffling until you say stop. Right, can you describe what you see?

Looks like the Eight of Cups. I don't know what the Eight of Cups stands for, but it's actually really neat art, isn't?

it.

With the cups stacked on the bottom and the hiker.

Okay, it's actually really neat art with the cup stacked on the bottom and the hiker Okay. So the eight of cups that you see there just describe the scene, and I'm very curious to know what your intuition says about this particular car. You don't have to know the actual meanings and don't worry about that at all, but what's your impression and what are your feelings that you get?

Since it has a hiker, kind of going through mountainous or hilly terrain, kind of see it as me being on a tough path right now, which makes sense because I'm trying to recover from a recent mental health episode. Things are not the easiest right now and I'm facing a major med change, which those are always hard because once you don't know what's working and you have to start scrapping stuff, you usually have a period of time that it gets worse before it gets better. So that's kind of my instinct on it that I'm on this kind of rocky path and hopefully the other side of it will be a little easier.

I think the traditional interpretation of the Eight of Cups is something like a journey of emotional growth and transformation, a moment where you recognize that something no longer serves you and it prompts you to walk away in search of deeper meaning and fulfillment. So, with that in mind, the idea of walking away, my first question to you is going to be have you ever abandoned a game or a project for the sake of personal growth?

Ooh, that's not for long.

That's the trouble with Baldur's Gate. It just lures you back it does.

I'm playing One on stream right now, and I'll just get one yeah, because I decided I was going to go through the franchise, which is why I say like nothing is ever a short term with me. Uh, yeah, so I started with one and it's I don't remember playing second. I did play second edition AD&D, but I didn't like I don't remember the rules, so it's it's extra challenging. I've been fortunate that people have been interested in it and come in and like kind of helped me get through it. Yeah, I don't abandon things for long. I have, like, for example, a baby blanket that I have been working on for long enough that the baby is in double digits, or a new person to gift it to, and I like I'll do it for a while and then I'll put it down because I need to focus on something else and then I'll pick it back up.

My hobby is collecting hobbies, so I kind of rotate through them as the need arises and as they sort of serve my purpose. Games are very similar. I'll rotate through based on what is kind of helping me cope or not cope. If it's something that I have to let go of for now because it's painful or I need to kind of move in a direction around it, then I do that. The best example I have is Stardew Valley, of all things. I used to play it with my partners and then when those partners left me, I found I couldn't play it anymore. I'll go back to it someday, I'm sure, but I need to be a little more distant from those feelings and that pain before I can entertain that. So that's kind of the closest I can say, that I have walked away from something for my own growth and nothing is ever permanent.

When you mentioned Stardew Valley, you mentioned the partners that you associated with the game. Were there particular people within the game that reminded you of them, or did you normally spend time with those people playing Stardew Valley, or was it just that particular time in your life that it reminded you?

So we all had a farm together. I don't know how much you know about Stardew Valley, but it's a farming game and you can have other people join you on your farm to all play together. So the three of us played together I'm Poly, so the three of us played together and we spent a lot of hours in it. There were a lot of firsts in the game that I hadn't seen, even though they had played more of it. I felt so connected to this time that we spent together that I would start the game and try and play by myself or try to play with someone else, and it would rush back memories and brush back feelings that I kind of couldn't cope with at the time. So I just needed to put the game down and until I could get a little more distance, I'm sure I will go back to it because I want to see the end of the. Well, it's not the end, but like I want to get through the plot of the game.

It's not been something that's high on my priority list right now. Lately it's been more creative, tangible, creative ventures and incorporating community into my streams, so that I can kind of grow past those breakups and loss of community. Probably breakups suck, like breakups suck in general, but when you lose more than one person at a time or you lose a sense of community that you had, like, there's just a brutality to it that I have not had with singular breakups. So it was just such a sense of loss and it rearranged so much of my life. So walking away from that meant walking away from some hobbies for now, but I will go back to them when I feel better no-transcript.

I think for many of my poly friends the big dream there is to have almost like a kind of like a Hamlet setup. You have your big house in the middle of the village and you have all the little houses dotted around, and of course that's something that you can obtain in Stardew Valley, as far as I understand. I haven't really played it more than 10 minutes than one person in a single playthrough.

I'm not sure how far you can take those romantic interests and if they stay in their own homes or they move into your home or how that works. I haven't succeeded in that part of the game. I can see why. I can see why it would be challenging.

Well, any game that has monogamy as a focus can be challenging for Polly, because it's just not how it works in our brain, right like our brain is set up to love so many people and to care about so many people around us and to have that deep sense of connection that monogamous like you could only like one person, you can only focus on this. One person is so foreign, even having done it like I'm on. I am married, so I have had the monogamous relationship before and it didn't like it rubbed. I don't want to be someone's soul, everything I can't. There's just too many needs that I'm not going to be able to meet, whereas I can be part of an ecosystem that meets everyone's needs. And as long as everyone has their needs met, then we can be a healthy, well-bounded system.

That's a beautiful way of thinking about it. I was just thinking the idea of say you like cake and you like lemon meringue pie, the idea of thinking well, I like lemon meringue pie, therefore I cannot have the apple turnover. I must never have that chocolate shoe bun. It must always be the cake that I have chosen. No, I like that idea.

Yeah, it's no. One person is going to meet every need. It's just not possible. And I know a lot of people that are monogamous, that are happy because they found someone that thinks the same way as they do. I just find for myself that that stress of being someone's everything and then making someone else my everything just rubs so hard Like it's a little chafing.

Have you always been poly, or is this something that has come into being since you've started to prioritize things more?

Um, it evolved I and after my marriage ended, he up and left and was like I'm never coming back. And I'm like what are you talking about? We promised forever I've bent over backwards to make this work and I don't understand how you can just leave, know how to not love people. I had always, to that point, heard of poly as kind of an excuse to cheat versus a well-based, built on honesty and communication kind of setup. Everyone I knew just use it as a free for all to hurt the others that they were with. I met somebody who was like that's not how it's done, let's talk about how it's really done.

It kind of opened up what I already knew wasn't working to a possibility of like what could be, because I knew that I don't stop loving people. I knew that I had the ability to love more than one person and to be connected to more than one person and to care about a group of people. But I didn't know what it was called at first. And something about how society has evolved has really helped, because when I was in school, you liked the same bits, you liked the opposite bits, you liked both bits or you liked none of the bits. Now it's you like the same bits, you like the opposite bits, you like all the bits, you like none of the bits and you want your soul and I'm very much a person who wants your soul. I want to be connected and have that deep connection and have that bond where we can grow together as our own people and still be together as a couple or trouble, throuple or like, yes, trouble, or, you know, have our other people that I'm not connected to and still have our bond.

That makes a lot of sense. Or, however, those setups and structures change over time and I imagine they would when somebody may find that they are no longer attracted to so-and-so in such a way but have grown closer to another person within that setup, I can imagine things ebb and flow.

Yeah, there's a lot of ebb and flow. There's a lot of people that I that first person. I was not connected to their other partner at all. I knew that other partner existed. I knew when they went to visit like I cause it was all long distance. That's what happens when you're on the internet. I don't need to be connected to everyone as long as I know, honestly, where things stand, what kinds of relationships for my own health and wellbeing, and I need to know what kind of relationship you have with a person. But I don't need to be involved in all the details. I don't need to be dating them too. If I'm dating them too great, if I'm not dating them too great. It's just really about the honesty and communication and continuing to grow together and continue to grow as people.

Yeah, that's an excellent and eye-opening answer. Thank you so much for that. And that was only the first card. We've still got two more to go. So I'm gonna shuffle away, I'm gonna keep shuffling away and, again, like before, tell me when to stop. What do you see?

Oh, is this a nine of rods?

Yeah, the nine of rods, wands, batons, staves.

There's a person on the card kind of clinging to one of them in particular which is interesting to me. Surrounded by all of them, there's this one that they seem to be connected to. I've been struggling since the breakups of letting go of that partnership, so I can kind of see it as being that difficulty in letting go which kind of goes into that whole hard emotional growth path. There's so much to let go of as you move forward and to have you know options and directions because you could weave through between those rods in any place. Imagine you can go somewhere different in any direction. It's kind of an interesting. I don't know what it means normally, but that's what I'm taking from it.

I think you've summed it up wonderfully. I think if I was to bottle up the meaning, for me it would be if you're feeling battle-worn but unwilling to give up, the Nine of Wands tells you to hold firm. I was just looking up a particular quote by Calvin Coolidge which I think really goes with the card. It's the one that goes Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not Unrewarded. Genius is almost a proverb. That's what I thought of when I saw that card. Right, so this means that you need to get another question, as the card represents resilience what keeps you going when you hit a creative block or a gaming frustration?

Other people, for the most part For games, because then you can turn to resources, be it the people in chat with me or look on the internet to something somebody already wrote. So when it's a roadblock specifically, specifically, with games, it's generally other people. When it's a roadblock to my creativity, when it's like for my writing or you know, a project is just not rubbing the right way, usually what gets me through those moments is my cats, like the one above my head I could see something moving in the background.

I don't want to ask what that was. I wasn't sure if it was just a friendly shadow.

No, that is my cat, my void. That's what I've heard black cats called as voids. So it's my black cat. Something about having someone else looking out for you like having they're dependent on me so completely. I make sure that they're healthy, I make sure that they have what they need, I make sure that they get love and support, and having something that's depending on me makes me want to keep fighting through.

Having a terminal health diagnosis has meant that I had to find not just meaning to the life that I have, but I had to find peace with the fact that it's short. I don't have forever. It's really easy to get lost in the sauce when we're young and like I've got forever. 30 years is a lifetime. 30 years is not a lifetime. To be okay with the fact that you know what you're on borrowed time. You have to make it count. Even if it only counts for you and the cats, it has to count.

I lean on them heavily, like they're an emotional support that I can't really replace. I let that be kind of my guiding force of of how do I get through the next big challenge. Games are honestly the easiest one to go to because you go to the internet, you find the solution and even if the solution frustrates you, you do it and then you're on to the next thing. I find roadblocks to creativity so much harder. I find getting that, getting the discipline of actually like pouring that creativity out because it lives in my head all the time. I have a slew of characters that tell me about their life stories, but not like psychosis, that's a different problem. But my characters have always taken on their own life and kind of told me the story that I'm writing how do those characters manifest?

You imagine them in the room with you to as you're writing.

It's like they take over what happens it's not like a takeover, uh, that would be more of like a a disassociative identity disorder problem and that would be a mental health issue. It's more that they kind of they kind of come into being as I start to write the story, like I start to set up the setting, and they kind of interject themselves internally and take the story by the hand and kind of like this is what I do, this is how I feel, this is my reality. And then as I write that and it unfolds, I ask questions and that character answers kind of in their own voice. It's not an immediate thing, it's kind of a process over time. But yeah, it's, it's. It's always up there. There's always a story to tell. It's just getting them out onto the paper.

Yeah I wish I, I wish I had that particular talent. In rare moments of inspiration there'll be that particular poem that just needs to get itself out. It could be any way, it could be. In fact I find it easiest if I just get you know the kind of the the back of a receipt or a scrunched up bit of paper from my pocket and get it down. But once it's out it's done and I have to wait until the next lightning bolt strikes. But I like the idea of having that guide that you've just described.

Getting past the I'm waiting for inspiration is probably the hardest roadblock for creativity, because if you're waiting for inspiration to strike, you miss all opportunities and oh, that's me.

That's me, hi, I'm waiting. It's right here right.

But if you, if you observe the way that your thoughts are, you can put down random thoughts in poetry, since you're not necessarily having to rhyme. You're not necessarily having to rhyme, you're not necessarily having to have the most clever turn of phrase, it's just the act of putting your observations, your feelings out on the paper, even if it's not the best work you've ever written. That's what editing is for Getting it out when there's no sense of inspiration, when there's no quick quip of phrase, and just trying it, just diving in and just trying it is the hardest thing to get past, as far as actually getting the creativity out and making it part of an ongoing process. It's been hard for me. I am no pro at it.

I took classes and the classes had deadlines and that was the big part of getting past the waiting for inspiration. Because if I just wait for inspiration, I will never write. Have enough stories in my head to entertain me and then when they entertain me to a certain point and they're done, like they've told me their story, it's not on the page yet. I still have to write it, but it's concluded. So if I'm waiting for that inspiration to just drag the story along, I'll never write them how I want to live my life with just this kind of piled in my head and no one else to share it with.

In terms of your process. Do you jot things down in countless notebooks? Do you have the one specific place that you go to, something as old-fashioned as a typewriter? Pop them in Notepad. How do you get those ideas down?

So it depends on what we're talking about. I do a lot of flash fiction, which is just me sitting down 10, 15 minutes and writing a short story based on a prompt. I find, or something that prompted me, flash fiction is very much just a one and done. You edit it, but like it's, it's a moment, it's that like waiting for inspiration. You read the prompt, you get inspired, you write the story.

OK, so card number three. Let's see what you get this time. Tell me when we need to stop.

I'll try and be more patient this time. Oh well then, Wow.

Okay, describe the card that you've got.

I got Death.

You got Death.

I don't know that I was prepared for that one. Um, it is a dark soldier on a horse, surrounded by death, uh, and carrying a black flag. Interestingly enough, there's a lot of, there's a lot of death in my life that I'm still like wrestling with. We have the ended. We have my sense of wellness being a terminal diagnosis. We have changes in family relationships that are trying to negotiate whether I'm going to cut off my brother or whether I'm going to continue in what seems to be an unhealthy relationship.

There's just a lot of chaos and upheaval in my life right now that I'm trying to navigate, which is the first thing that comes to mind when we talk about death, not necessarily like the oh I'm going to die tomorrow moment. There's so much change. Hell, I'm going to have a major med change in a couple of weeks and that's going to be its own sort of little death because as the meds go out, your feelings change and your symptoms change and then the new meds come in and hopefully relieve that. But it's its own sort of mini death as you kind of transfer from like what was to what is going to be absolutely, I mean it.

I've heard the minor arcana described as being the four elements and the major arcana is being the fifth and that of spirit or soul, and of course, this is a transition. It could be relationships, career beliefs or personal identity, but something that is utterly profound. So it's not a card to be looked at lightly, but you're absolutely right. And, uh, when it came up, I I think I laughed out of shock more than anything, but, um, I was thinking, please don't be something like the death. Oh no, it's the death card. Here we are, but that embracing of transformation is something that you've just described so vividly and wonderfully. So on that, let me think. So, on the subject of letting go, has there been a time where leaving one community has brought you into another and helped you grow?

I think there's some communities that have come full circle. When I first got on Twitch in 2020, as a viewer, there was a sense of needing a home, needing connection, and the whole world had flooded to the Internet because we were all in our homes.

Yeah, I was already on the Internet a lot because I'm disabled, so I spend a lot of time kind of trying to connect with people from what I can do.

So I was already there and then here comes the whole world joining my party and I wanted to find places to belong. I found some small communities that I stuck with that then drifted as I was dating. Because there is something that there's something to be said about developing relationships and how they kind of take you away from communities and build you into different communities and restructure your life. With those relationships ending, I needed to find a place to go back to, and so I've gone back to some of those smaller communities and made some new connections and kind of tried to embrace that change. One of the communities that I was part of when I was dating was the Magic the Gathering community, because I'm such a nerd I mean I do D&D and Magic the Gathering and video games, like I'm such a nerd but when I broke up with well, when they broke up with me, I found myself stuck and unable to really navigate that space without running into them. So I ended up having to walk away completely from a whole collection of people that I really care about and hope for the best for them. But it's just not good for me to continue to try and and navigate that and knock on that door when it's barking at the wrong table. People take sides, take judgments like it's just what happens when people lose, leave communities. So I've had those communities come full circle. Where I was with them before I started dating, had a nice little date time gone back to them.

Letting go of people is probably the hardest thing because, as I mentioned before, I don't stop loving people and I still want the best for them and I still want to know they're okay. And when people draw lines like don't ever contact me again, it becomes very jarring and very painful and kind of requires some of that also experience disability, that also experience emotional frustrations and can come together and connect, knowing that we're safe for each other because we have common experiences, not just in the common experience of the game that I'm playing, but the common experience of like my life is hard and the world's on fire. And how do I navigate this when I don't want to be alone, because nobody wants to be alone? We're not built to be alone for good. We're built to have quiet time and our alone time, but we're not built to be completely alone for the most part. Yeah, and letting go is a tough one. Really, it's not the instinct that I have. My instinct is to claw and fight and keep things going and trying to continue to grow and trying to continue to be with the people I love, and sometimes it's just not.

Sometimes letting go is your health, sometimes letting go is like your mental state. Those things are all required instead of optional. All required instead of optional. Like my brother, for example. He's a couple of years younger than me, has a wife, two kids, good health, the family's healthy. He doesn't think about things ending and shifting and changing the way that I do. So he doesn't understand me because it's in his mind well, they'll still, still research it, you could live another 30 years. Uh, odds are not. Odds are really good that if I, like they've told me, if I see 60, it'll be a miracle. I'm on borrowed time and I know it like from the time from my diagnosis with autoimmune hepatitis to now, like my expected lifespan has expired. So now, until 60 or whatever, I live to borrowed grace time. I don't see letting go, I don't see it as being something that's optional, but I also don't see it as something to be desired. It just is, just has to be, which is so, so hard.

I think that makes it harder than anything is the fact that it just has to be I'm very moved by that and I have to say just thank you again so much for spending your time with a random man from the uk running tarot interviews. Um, that was Tarot interviews. That was beautifully poignant. It makes me think about some of the more difficult challenges that I've had over the last couple of years and that resonated with me completely. Thank you so much for expressing that.

You're welcome.

That brings us to the end of another thought-provoking episode of Tarot Interviews. A huge thank you to Sadriana Zea for joining us today and if you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the podcast and leave a review. It really helps, and you can also connect with Sadriana and catch her streams over on Twitch at https://twitch. tv/sadriana The link is in the show notes. And until next time, keep exploring and let the cards reveal their magic.