MYTH REALM · WINTER · FIRE
Playing Card: S-5, The Five of Spades
Opening Image / Sensation
Not long ago, I was scrolling through TikTok when I saw a woman confidently declaring that people who deconstruct Christianity are just trying to find excuses to pick and choose what they believe. She said you cannot do that. That faith does not work that way.
I went straight to the comments.
People were already saying exactly what needed to be said.
Picking and choosing what you believe is called a denomination.
That is called choosing a religion.
Did you say that when you became Presbyterian after the Episcopalians ordained women?
That last comment mattered. The commenter later posted their own video explaining they were blocked for it. Evidently, they knew each other in real life. The truth had teeth.
Anyone who has actually walked through deconstruction will tell you the same thing. The goal is not rebellion. It is reconciliation. People are trying to reconcile the idea of a loving God with the damage done by church leaders. Not just the ordained, but also the thought leaders, the influencers, and the quiet social enforcers who wield soft power while claiming innocence.
And when people finally name that damage, when they bring it to those they trust, the responses are painfully predictable.
Let it go.
You have to forgive.
You have to be the bigger person.
I went through that and I turned out okay.
No, Peaches. You did not.
Ignoring cruelty because no one protected you does not make you healed. It makes you capable of cruelty. Life is already harsh enough without inviting more of it into your home, your faith, or your body.
You owe it to yourself to remove as much cruelty from your life and actions as possible. But unfamiliar peace can feel more terrifying than familiar punishment. Peace requires collapse. It requires removing people and institutions you trusted. It requires watching them fall into nothingness and taking with them identities you once built your entire sense of self around.
A broken throne does not collapse quietly.
Why This Card Matters
This card matters because we are afraid to let old institutions die.
Traditions carry weight. Expectations shape identity. When a structure falls, parts of us fall with it. Some small. Some enormous. The grief feels unbearable. The time spent feels wasted. The thought of starting over feels like an insult to everything you already survived.
This is not limited to religion.
It can be family systems. Careers. Political ideologies. Creative identities. Relationships. Entire ways of seeing yourself as a good person.
Yes, there is loss. You may need to build again. You also may not.
What hurts most is imagining how much joy you could have had if you had left earlier. But the truth is simple and sharp. You would not have enjoyed that joy where you were. You were surviving a structure that required your silence to stand.
Collapse is not failure. It is information.
Personal Story / SSoA Grit
I am fifty two years old in 2026 as I write this.
I have deconstructed many lives.
I deconstructed being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. I deconstructed what it meant to be a Black woman in the United States. I deconstructed motherhood as a Black woman raising daughters in a hostile culture. I deconstructed what it meant to be a nerd and a technologist in spaces that were not built for me.
During that time, I traveled the world. I was married for over twenty years. I raised two women I am deeply proud of. Life is tough, and they are tougher.
I published twenty-seven books. I edited two bestselling fiction compilations. I wrote two tabletop role-playing games and created four card decks. I worked at Apple on the iPhone as it launched. I worked at a startup that became a world leader in WordPress.
Each rebuild was hard. Each collapse hurt.
But when I look back at what I have already survived and created, I cannot deny the evidence. I know how to build. I know how to learn. I know how to endure collapse and still move forward.
That is why I can now face the hardest deconstruction of all.
The belief that I can create my own tabletop role-playing system.
It sounds small to most people. To me, after everything I have dismantled and rebuilt, it once felt impossible. But now I am finally in a place where I have the skills, the experience, and the clarity to do it.
I had to let many things die to reach this point. And I still have to build what comes next.
This time, that building will be joy.
Lens Overlay
Empathy allows you to grieve what you believed in without shaming yourself for believing it. It acknowledges that trust is not foolish. It is human.
Truth tells you that the throne broke because it was already cracked. It was never as strong as it pretended to be.
Kindness reminds you that you are not obligated to rebuild the same structure that harmed you just because others expect it.
Anti-Greed protects you from giving your labor, loyalty, or spirit to systems that demand sacrifice without accountability.
Joy does not arrive all at once. It appears quietly when you realize you are no longer defending something that hurts you.
What the Card Teaches the Listener
This card teaches that collapse is not something to rush through or decorate with positivity. It is something to witness.
You do not need to rush to replace what fell. You do not need to justify why it broke. You do not need permission to walk away from rubble.
False thrones rely on obedience and silence. When they fall, they reveal who was benefiting from your compliance.
Letting a throne remain broken is an act of self respect. It means you will not rebuild your life around someone else’s comfort, ego, or hunger for control.
The Path to Unpunishable
On the Path to Unpunishable, collapse is inevitable.
Punishment culture survives by convincing you that leaving will cost you everything. The truth is that staying costs more.
Every broken throne teaches discernment. Every collapse sharpens your ability to choose structures that do not require your suffering to function.
Unpunishability is not invincibility. It is freedom from systems that thrive on fear and obedience.
Closing Image / Blessing
Imagine the throne in ruins. Metal twisted. Bone cracked. The seat empty.
You are not standing above it in triumph. You are kneeling beside it, calm and breathing.
May you honor what fell without rebuilding it out of guilt.
May you trust your ability to create something better.
May you walk away from the rubble without apology.
The throne is broken.
You are still standing.
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