The Wreck Deck cards let you know that, whatever you’re feeling, those feelings belong here. And YOU belong here, feeling them.  

I mean, I don’t have to tell you. You already know. There’s a reason the word “doomscrolling” exists. Not to mention the stresses and setbacks and pain and violence of just ordinary life, which range from the trivial to the tragic.  

Same with this card deck. 

Depressed. Failure. Flashback. Heartbroken. Hopeless. Impossible. Shame. 

If you’re anything like me, you absorbed the message: Oh yes, feelings are wonderful! Show how you feel — unless you feel BAD, in which case HIDE those motherfucking feelings in a double-chained chest at the bottom of the deepest ocean available, thank you very much, because if you’re feeling THOSE feelings, you are definitely doing something wrong and are probably personally very bad and if the people in your life knew the REAL you they would definitely stop loving you (if they ever really loved you in the first place).   

I hate everybody. Everybody hates me. Worst-case scenario. Unbearable.

If any of this feels familiar, I’m really glad you’re here to keep ME company. Because I didn’t make this deck to sell. I made it for myself, creating one card after another in a frenzy of inspiration and anger and grief and pain during a time when my life was coming apart at the seams. I just couldn’t think positive any more. I had to be where I actually was, at the bottom of the pit. 

WHY I made the Wreck Deck

I designed the Wreck Deck cards to keep myself company through big hard feelings

I’m married to an amazing man, a combat veteran, who was nerve-gassed in a war three decades ago and who suffers from Gulf War Illness (chronic pain and fatigue, fibromyalgia, headaches, GI problems, brain fog, the list goes on). For years, I was caregiver and advocate (fought for years for VA benefits), dietician, cook, researcher, analyst, comforter… and also highly codependent and choosing to sacrifice a lot of my own life because that’s what I thought was necessary in order to be loved. Ha! What a wreck of a situation!

And THEN something amazing happened… through a series of events and treatments too complicated to go into here and an absolute shit-ton of work on both our parts, including weaning himself off his doctor-prescribed opioids, hubs woke up from his brain fog and came to life again. 

It was incredible, AND it was also incredibly hard. Again, too many details to go into here, but we had to figure out if we could still be married. Who was I if not a caregiver? Who was he if not an invalid? Did we even like each other? Could we give each other freedom and respect instead of playing the comfortable roles? All the patterns of self-sacrifice and codependence and victimhood and control and fear were running at full volume. I was blaming him for my years of making myself small. He was terrified that I was going to leave, abandonment issues on high alert. It was the perfect storm to bring up every old issue in our bodies — all the most painful feelings of abandonment, anguish, meanness, despair, guilt, humiliation, worthlessness. For literally months we screamed and wept and talked and read and went to therapy and wrote music together. If we wanted to stay together, which we really did, there was nowhere to be but WITH the feelings. 

HOW I made the Wreck Deck

Layered, emotional images that carry embodied energy

That’s when I made The Wreck Deck. Turning feelings into images required me to actually sit and feel the feelings, tune into the nuances and resonances in my body, instead of trying as hard as I could to just feel better (i.e., get rid of the “bad” feelings) as quickly as possible. 

What happens when you actually give hard feelings your attention and care? When you let them exist as is, instead of rushing to numb them or hide them or disavow them? When you love up on the parts that you thought didn’t deserve it? 

You discover the beauty underneath. 

The card “Wrecked,” for example, layers two photographs: 1) the photo of a house destroyed in Hurricane Katrina and 2) an x-ray of a broken bone. You can’t quite make out the shape of the bone, or even necessarily tell that it’s a post-hurricane photo — to me it looks more like debris going over a waterfall. But even if you can’t identify the constituent parts, the card as a whole carries and transmits the energetic signature of both images. Plus something else, something greater than the sum of those parts.

The effects of the Wreck Deck

The Wreck Deck card deck doesn’t set out to make you feel better. Yet by just witnessing your feelings, something eases, setting the stage for change. 

I got a single deck printed, one set of 90 cards. Then I just carried them around with me for a while, taking it out of my fanny pack to show people here and there.

An art gallery owner said, “Oh, everyone should have this.”

An award-winning novelist said, “This made me feel less lonely.”

And a bunch of folks asked, “Can I get a few decks for some friends?”

Great news: no homework!

This card deck is unique in that, unlike tarot or oracle decks, there’s no learning curve. 

With the Wreck Deck, there’s nothing to fix or change or interpret or decide. These cards just want to be with you during the hard feelings. 

In class, my qi gong teacher has us do a body scan, usually moving from head to feet, paying attention to each part in turn. “You’re not trying to release any tension or fix your alignment,” he says. “Just put your awareness there. Often your awareness will release something on its own, without your having to try and make it happen. If so, fine. If not, also fine.”  

The Wreck Deck is full of terrible things, and it’s also full of love — for you, for myself, for all of us, for everything.  

Being with your feelings is a superpower. So, whether or not you choose to back this project, I just want to say again: Whatever you’re feeling, you’re not alone. Your feelings are correct and they make sense. And we are all, truly, in this together. 

Come on in, the water’s on fire.