Turning the Cup Upright: Separating from Codependency
"As a child, I learned: Love is earned, not given."
The Situation
The Queen of Cups Reversed has been haunting me lately.
The last time I was haunted by a tarot card, it was The Tower — and that was the year my wasband asked for a divorce.
When the Queen of Cups shows up upside down, she whispers about emotional overwhelm and self-neglect.
The big message for me this time? Codependency.
The irony: I’m coaching a client through this exact pattern — proof that the Universe doesn’t send you what you want. It sends you what you need.
Understanding Codependency
The simple definition (according to Chat GPT) is a relational pattern where your sense of identity, worth, and emotional stability become overly tied to another person’s feelings, needs, or approval.
(So far this is not feeling too great… )
The examples given include:
“If you’re ok, I’m ok.”
“If you’re upset, I’ve failed.”
“If I meet your needs, maybe you’ll stay.”
The Background Noise
Pain rises up in my body. I can feel it creeping in. I know those words. I know the pattern. My mother believed if she kept a perfect house and had a cocktail ready, my dad would be content. She prepared acceptable meals (for a household in the 60s and 70s…Swanson’s Salisbury Steak anyone?) But still my dad wondered.
As a child, I absorbed the silent message: love is earned, not given.
Current Capacity
In my own marriage I could never reach my mother’s standards. I’m all over the place when it comes to housekeeping. I can’t even SEE that the place is a disaster until someone points it out. I’m more of a food assembler than a chef.
I tried in other ways. I always stopped whatever I was doing to help him find his forever misplaced car keys (which he blamed on my messy housekeeping…).
I was agreeable to the things he wanted even if I didn’t want them at all.
I thought harmony meant safety, but really it meant disappearing.
I tried to meet his needs to the point where I became numb to my own feelings. Ask me what I wanted, and I had no idea. I want whatever you want. I became fluent in his needs but mute on my own.
No wonder I could no longer taste food. I went along with the team. I thought if I was agreeable, the relationship would be stable.
I thought harmony meant safety, but really it meant disappearing.
The Signs of Codependency
Today I read the core traits of codependency, which, as it turns out, are characteristics of women who have been the “strong ones” for decades:
Feeling responsible for fixing or managing others’ emotions or problems
Saying yes when you want to say no to avoid rejection or guilt
Ignoring your own needs or intuition to maintain harmony
Letting others’ moods, crises, or approval dictate your own energy
Trying to keep people close by being indispensable or endlessly supportive
Feeling uncomfortable being helped, loved, or cared for— easier to give than receive
Not quite knowing who you are outside of your role as partner, mother, helper, listener, fixer.
Apparently codependency starts in early childhood when love felt conditional— based on behavior, helpfulness, or peacekeeping. I learned that love was earned, not given. As an adult that pattern runs on a subconscious level until you bring it to your awareness.
The Queen’s Message
Which is EXACTLY what the Queen of Cups Reversed is trying to point out to me. It’s a wake up call to shake myself out of the NUMB and into real time. To FEEL. To TASTE. To SMELL. To wake up my senses and experience life for myself and not be the codependent partner any more.
And NOTE: codependency is not a pathology. It’s a SURVIVAL STRATEGY that has simply outlived its usefulness.
How to Overcome
(hear the music: We shall Overcome...)
Awareness without action changes nothing. So here’s the model I’m practicing now on my path from codependent to sovereign:
Awareness. Being AWARE that this is how you are by noticing your patterns. (For me, dropping everything to help others even though I’m enmeshed in my own work.)
Acknowledging the pattern. “Oh, there I go again practicing codependency.”
Add Loving Kindness. “This practice has been helpful in the past but is no longer my way.”
Allowing others to be. They can have their feelings without me trying to fix them.
Anchor your worth in who you are not by what you do for others.
The reframe here is:
Codependency isn’t a flaw. It’s love without boundaries.
Healing is simply love with boundaries.
I am Sovereign
So the Queen is shaking me up, bringing me to life, getting me to recognize my own need for self-care. It’s time for me to look at my own energy level and see where I am and what I have the capacity to give. It’s time for me to focus on the Queen of Cups Upright, standing tall, with her nourishing energy. She loves deeply AND she has boundaries.
It’s time to realize that taking care of myself ISN’T selfish! I am sovereign. To be sovereign means I hold authority over myself — my thoughts, emotions, energy, body, time, and choices.
I am the Queen of my own realm — no longer a subject in someone else’s kingdom.
That’s what it means to turn the cup upright: to reclaim my energy, my emotions, and my life.
I used to think numbness was protection — that if I didn’t feel, I couldn’t hurt.
Now I see it was a pause, a grace period, giving me space to rebuild my boundaries.
Feeling again is messy, but it’s also proof that I’m alive, upright, and ready to pour from a full cup.