Welcome to the GRACED Podcast! A space for everyday magic for your everyday life. We do this through rituals, aligning yourself to your soul’s purpose, and creating Alchemy to heal our mind, body, and spirits so that you can bring in more love and joy, manifest your desires, and believe in your dreams. Listen and watch over at grace.com/podcast and on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Instagram, TikTok and all the places you can find me on social media. Now let’s dive into today’s episode.

💖 Introduction

Grace: Welcome to The GRACED Podcast, a space where we talk about everyday magic for your everyday life. Today’s guest is Kristen Jonas, who happens to be one of my Create Your Deck Club students. In this episode, we’ll hear more about Kristen’s inspiration behind creating her deck, Forest Friends, why she wanted to create her own deck, and how she’s honoring the passing of her father and the birth of her son, and lineage through creating her own deck. We talk about how creating a deck can be a very healing process, handling the ebbs and flows of grief, and how you can be divinely supported by those who have passed through your creation process.

If you’ve ever wanted to create your own tarot or oracle deck, Check out the Create Your Deck Club and join our membership of deck creators from all over the world. If you’re curious or even hesitant about getting started, the first step is to get going. And what better way to do that than to surround yourself with deck creators who are on this deck creation process with you. You can check out more information on the Create Your Deck Club at cydc.mysticmondays.com.

Now let’s dive into this episode.

✨ Interview Begins with Kristen Jonas

Grace: Hi, Kristen. Thanks for being here.

Kristen: Hi. Thank you.

Grace: Yeah. So today we’re here to talk about your Create Your Deck Club experience. So I wanted to hear from you. What drew you to join the Create Your Deck Club?

Kristen: So I have had the Mystic Mondays Tarot card deck for a really long time. I got the Mystic Mondays deck back in 2020.

I was having a tough time in my life and I saw that you were having a Masterclass. And I was really excited to just hear you talk about the tarot deck that I just got. And then you started talking about your experience, and I was just really touched and moved, and I wanted to learn more from you. And I’m glad I did!

✨ What Made You Want to Join?

Grace: Yeah, so what about the Masterclass touched you, or made you want to join?

Kristen: So you had such a creative way of explaining how you put yours together. Like you said something about having a dark night of the soul and I really resonated with that because I was experiencing some crazy sudden losses in my life.

It was all the things that I thought I knew were just flipped upside down. And I needed an outlet. You had talked about how creating your characters and going through the process of making your own tarot deck really opened your eyes to your own inner child. And I just could feel this almost bleeding heart of my own little inner child in there.

And I knew I needed to do something and I just felt like a connection there. So it was inspiring, for sure.

✨ Ideas and Inspirations Behind the Creation of the Deck

Grace: Yeah, and your deck is so inspiring, too. I’d love for you to tell us about it, your ideas, your inspiration, and how the process has been creating your own deck.

Kristen: Yeah, it has been super an inner working process, for sure.

My deck is called Forest Friends. And it is such a personal piece, all of the characters in my deck, except for the really wild ones that are kind of dangerous. I actually know all of those creatures in my deck, and I had the honor of loving all of them. And they have their own energy and their own love to give, and I really tried to encapsulate each one of their energies in the card.

It’s taken on a total life of its own, and it’s truly helped me through the grieving process. And it’s helped me find some peace, too, in saying some hard goodbyes.

Grace: Yeah, so for anyone that doesn’t know, Kristen lost her father during this process, so a large part of creating your deck was going through this brief process and also honoring your father through your cards, and I thought it was really beautiful that your father was a mathematician, so you would overlay layers of his calculations on the cards, And also, your son’s name is Forest, and you grew up surrounded by animals, so these different creatures like dogs and roosters and chickens are honored in your deck, too, so there’s just so much life in your deck, created from your own story.

And that’s what I find really unique about the deck that you created, because there’s so much love in your deck, and I could tell that you also just loved making all of the cards, too.

Kristen: Yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s been really fun. I’ve been able to figure out how to get my dad’s actual handwriting from some of his own math assignments.

He taught calculus and pre calculus in college and I found one of his answer keys and I was able to pull his handwriting out of those and put them in the card decks. And so some of my favorite characters are blessed with his handwriting in the deck too. That’s really special to me.

✨ Connecting the Deck to Her Father

Grace: Absolutely. So how’s it been incorporating your father’s presence within the deck?

Do you feel like you’re crafting a closer relationship or a different kind of relationship as you’re creating this deck?

Kristen: For sure. I feel like this is totally a co creation. I feel closer to him when I am sitting down and writing these affirmations because it’s my own way of healing. It’s my own way of dealing. This is what I need to hear right now.

Like, how can I best help myself? And it’s been three years since my dad’s, he was killed in a car accident. It was very sudden and traumatic. Fortunately, I don’t think he suffered, but it was hard on everybody he left behind. And I truly feel like this deck has allowed me to bond with him even after I can’t hug him anymore, you know?

✨ Connecting the Deck to Her Son

Grace: Yeah, and how does that tie into your relationship with your son, connecting that relationship with your son to your father?

Kristen: Yeah, my dad was like the words of wisdom guy. He had so many things. To teach. He was a teacher. One of the saddest parts of my son not getting to meet him was how much he wouldn’t get to learn.

I feel like I get to pass on some of my dad’s greatest words of wisdom that I soaked up over the years to him and it’s a legacy. It’s something that will live on past me and Forrest will have something that maybe brings him comfort when he has to say goodbye to somebody in the future because we all have to.

There are. Moments in everybody’s lives where goodbyes happen. We’re human.

Grace: That is very wise, and I think really beautiful to capture your experience of not only grief and loss, but also hope. There’s a connection, even though your father has passed on, you’re still creating that relationship with your father through creating these cards.

And I also feel like there’s a link between naming your deck, Friends, and having that relationship with your son, tying that to your father even though they haven’t quote unquote met in the 3D world, that doesn’t mean they’re not connected in the 5D world.

Kristen: There was this passing of time where I was pregnant with Forrest and grieving my dad and it was like being so close to birth and death at the same time was just so surreal.

And I do think that this Forrest Friends isn’t just Forrest. It’s a namesake. I named Forest, Forest because we love going to the woods and seeing the beautiful rivers and trees and critters out there. It was one of my dad’s favorite things to do. That’s what he was doing when he was in his accident on his way home.

He was gone for vacation for two weeks in the woods. It’s doing it’s favorite thing ever. There’s so much. There’s so many layers to it.

✨ Connecting the Deck to the Animals and Serenity Spots

Grace: Yeah. And what is your relationship with the critters in your deck? Because I know it’s not just about honoring the animals, it’s also about honoring the different places that you have in your deck.

So it’s the specific spot in the woods, or the stream, or a waterfall.

Kristen: I have tons of, I call them, serenity spots. They’re actual places that I’ve gone and visited, like hiking on one of our road trips. All of the places in there, I’ve gone and taken snapshots of, so I’ve been to all of those places, too, and they are so beautiful here.

We have some just really beautiful mountain places.

✨ Gaining Confidence to Becoming a Tarot Reader

Grace: Yeah, so I know that Forest Friends is an Oracle deck, but I also know that during creating your deck, you’ve also started reading for other people, and you’ve been growing your own practice. Did creating your own deck give you confidence to become a tarot reader?

Kristen: Definitely. I use the Mystic Monday app almost every day, and I do in times of Question. I will do tarot readings for people in my family and myself. It can be very eye opening and it can be very healing to pull some cards and go within and think about it and what apply it to what it means in your life right now.

To be really present with what your experience is takes a different level of consciousness. Yeah. And it can be really deep and healing, but it can be really scary. But those things that scare you, I think are the things that heal you the most.

Grace: Hmm. What was scary about it?

Kristen: I think because my experience was harsh, like losing my dad so suddenly and then having to say goodbye to my grandma right afterwards.

I felt like there was this cruelty in the world, that like, anybody could just be ripped away at any moment, and I didn’t have a whole lot of trust that there was safety in connecting. So there was a lot of fear, period, in my world at the time, and turning to anything for comfort could have just been hard for me, but I’m glad I did it.

Because I learned so much. It kind of like cracks you wide open. You have to be willing to look at those cracks though.

✨ Growing as a Person

Grace: Yeah. And how would you say you’ve grown as a person since creating your own deck and going through those experiences?

Kristen: I am more of my own person. I know how to hold some boundaries now.

There’s definite growth. I’ve shown myself Some grace and in being able to forgive, not knowing how to process some incredibly challenging things has been huge for me. I feel so much more peace than I did even two years ago. And this process has taken. Some beautiful turns along the way. It didn’t end up what it started like.

I’ve added so much to it, and I’ve taken pieces out of it, and it definitely has its own energy, too.

✨ Using the Deck Kristen Created

Grace: Yeah. So, do you use your own cards? Because I know that you’re on such a roll. Honestly, inspiring. Like, every meeting you showed up with A leap in your progress, and it was just so cool to see, because when you joined the Create Your Deck Club, you didn’t necessarily have a deck yet, but then each week you had progress and progress, and eventually you printed your own cards, and so are you using your cards to read for other people?

Kristen: I am, I do, I guess, I have my hand printed card that I sat there and taped front and back together so they’d be a little more sturdy and I shuffle them up almost every Tuesday and do a card draw. I do a little affirmation with my card draw, a Grief and Loss inspired affirmation. So it’s definitely a deck revolved around soothing your heart after loss, for sure.

But I’ll do a little card draw on Tuesdays and I usually go live in my Facebook group and do a short little video and share the card and do little updates and talk about the deck and the projects that, that I’ve going on.

Grace: Yeah. And I know that this was a healing process for you, but I’m sure that anyone else that uses your deck, because I know you’re in the process of talking to a printer right now, and get your first print run going.

But I feel like you encapsulating your experience into your cards will also help other people going through a similar process. So, there’s a lot of I think exponential healing that can happen when you share your experiences and I know it can be really difficult, but something I want to credit you for is you always showed up to every meeting with lightness and a really great energy and I just want to say I know it’s not easy because you’re going through so much life stuff, the things that life throws at you, but your commitment to yourself during this time shows a lot in what you’re able to do, how you’re able to show up for yourself in the meetings and also for your family.

So I just want to honor you for that too.

Kristen: Thank you. I felt fueled by it. It kept me going. I had sort of a fire in my heart to build. It took on a life of its own and I am truly grateful for the inspiration that I found in all of those classes. And I’m so excited for the professional print to come back and to have a fancy deck, but I enjoyed the process so much that this deck I would like to do another version of it and have that light energy because what I was going through that kind of sad darkness it shows in the deck it’s a you see that in the deck and so I want to do like a lunar and a solar version so this deck is going to be a little bit more night inspired and then do another deck.

That is a little bit more sun energy, daytime energy. So I have more inspiration.

Grace: Yeah, it’d be really cool because I think there are seasons in Washington, right? So perhaps you could have the seasons affect the different environments in your deck and how that affects your animals. Because for example, winter, there could be a winter scene and the animals hiding or that animal comes out in a spring scene when the flowers are blooming or something.

That’s just an idea, I’m totally just throwing it out there, but if that’s something you’re interested in, it could be a series.

Kristen: Yeah, for sure, that gives birth to a lot of ideas. There’s so much more to it.

Grace: Yeah, and I can see that in your deck, because I know that you have a lot of blues in this deck, which I think can symbolize some of that Dark Night of the Soul experience you were talking about.

✨ Experience in the Create Your Deck Club

Grace: Yeah. So, what has it been like coming to the Create Your Deck Club meetings, and do you feel like that has been supportive in your process? Yes.

Kristen: Oh, definitely. The classes, I looked so forward to them in the beginning and throughout connecting with everybody. Some of the girls, we broke off and did meetings on a different day just to help inspire us and have some extra creativity.

going and just set some time aside so that we would actually sit down and work on the deck because life gets really, really lifey and it’s hard to stay focused sometimes. It’s easy to get swept away, but having those meetings was huge for accountability and support. Huge. Some pretty amazing people in the group.

✨ Closing Statements

Grace: Yeah, life does get pretty lifey. So, Kristen, I just want to thank you so much for your time and for sharing your experience with the Create Your Deck Club. I know I really appreciate you sharing your vulnerability and your authenticity during this process because your deck is so you. I feel like it’s such a beautiful way to honor your friends.

Father and your son, and just have this deck live on beyond your lifetime, creating that legacy for your family, and also honoring where you grew up. I just feel like it’s just a beautiful encapsulation of your life experience.

Kristen: Yeah, I agree. Thank you so much. 

Grace: For sure. Okay, we’ll talk soon.

Kristen: Thank you.

Grace: Thanks. Bye!

✨ End of Episode – Remember to Leave a Podcast Review on Apple Podcasts!

Grace: Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode with Kristen Jonas. I’m so glad Kristen was able to candidly share with us her creation process in creating her deck, the passing of her father, and honoring his memory, as well as what it’s been like being a part of the Create Your Deck Club.

If you are interested in joining the Create Your Deck Club, find out more information at cydc.mysticmondays.com.

Until next time, my dear mystics. Your channel creation is waiting for you on the other side of aligned action. Sending you grace today and every day.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode. Remember to subscribe and check out other Graced Podcast episodes for how to apply everyday magic to your everyday life.

See you next time!

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