The Hill You Keep Avoiding

There's one particular thing you've been walking the long way round for years. You don't have to search for it, it arrived the moment you read that sentence. The conversation. The decision. The appointment. The thing you already know. This week's *Light Over the Hill* is about that, and about a claim I'll make and then spend the hour defending: the hill is not what's hurting you. The circling is. We begin at a ford at dusk, with the Bean Nighe, the Washer at the Ford, who kneels at Scottish crossing places washing the shrouds of those about to die. The old rule was unambiguous: if she sees you first, or you turn your face away, you lose the use of your limbs. Approach her, and she must answer you truthfully and the fate she's washing for can be turned aside. Flee, and be paralysed. Approach, and be answered. We follow that into the Highland world of fosterage, where the way to master the thing you dread was not to fight it but to go close enough to make it kin. Then we look, honestly, at what avoidance does inside a person: the relief that teaches your brain to keep avoiding, the hill that grows because you never gather evidence against it, and the world that quietly narrows around it. Including the disguises avoidance wears in capable women, because "staying busy," perfectionism and always putting other people first are on the clinical list of ways we avoid. The over-functioning *is* the long road round the hill, and everyone praises you for walking it. And then the good news, which is better than you'd think: research on how badly we predict our own feelings, and the psychological immune system you keep forgetting to count. The dread isn't a preview. It's a tax. And we sit with the card people cancel readings over: Death. Four figures meet the rider, a king who tried to outrank it, a bishop who stands and looks, a child offering flowers, and a maiden whose face is turned away. And behind all of them, between two pillars on the horizon, the sun is rising. The light is on the far side of the thing they're all avoiding. It always was. The episode closes with a gentle guided practice. We're not climbing anything. We're just going down to the water to look. *A note: this one talks about avoidance, and about the Death card, steadily, and without drama, but come to it when you have a little quiet. Not all avoidance is a problem, and the episode says so.* Next week: *When Hope Doesn't Feel Bright* ~ for anyone listening to all this with a hill they genuinely can't climb yet. **This week's card:** Death ~ not an ending so much as a transformation, and the only card in the deck with a sunrise behind it. The light is on the far side. **Your free companion** Walk with a lantern of your own. *The Light Over the Hill* is a free six-card tarot spread that lays out along a path climbing the slope, to help you find your own hill, what you're carrying, and your own next step. Download it at sageinthesky.com, and you'll also start receiving the weekly *Light Over the Hill* letter: a story, a card, a prompt, and one small practice, every week.