Ask Otea
Life advice from realms real and imagined.
Click on the stars to submit a question.
The Otea Oracle Deck
The Otea Oracle Deck
COMING SOON
Dear Otea:
What is the most beautiful color?
Cara Mia:
The most beautiful color is the one that receives all of your rainbow. It is the pigment that is strong enough to envelope every last liquid drop of your love and your loss. Wrapped in the tent of its tint, the arcobaleno of your body bows towards more of all this sky.
For me, it is caramello and camel. The crema that coats the bottom of the cup. The silvered spuma that ices the crest of the wave. My bare feet meeting every microcosm of sabbia, in the buff. The honey and aranciata set of sun on the edge of the field where I let all my colors run.
Your most beautiful color always becomes you. Against it, you will become you in every light.
Un abbraccio forte,
Otea
Dear Otea:
I don't know how I'm feeling about the end of the year and beginning of the new! Anxiety, hope, fear, love. I know we don't know or can't know what will come, but it all feels so scary—almost chaotic—right now. What's a peaceful path forward through the raging unknowns?
Cara Mia:
Your peace through the raging unknown begins and ends with the only person you’ve always known: you, and you, alone. That you already awaits this you all the way on the other side of this scary, hopeful, chaotic year ahead. Conjure this self from spirit into solid, twelve whole months and so many lifetimes from right now, patiently awaiting your own arrival at their timeworn table. Their steady hands on the cloth that covers it, freckled from 365 more sunrises. The curve of their spine where they’ve borne whatever the weight. The lift of their chin where they’ve caught every light. A new map of lines carved in their still familiar face where they’ve laughed and cried with abandon over moments they’ve already made that you’ve not yet met. When you look this person in the eye, you will turn the fear of your fate into the inheritance of your fortune.
You will always be known to yourself. You will always prevail. Your love moves forward and forever onwards, onwards, onwards. There is no other way. So start on your way towards the you that is already rising to meet you.
Un abbraccio forte,
Otea
Dear Otea:
I have recently become very interested in my family history, but am realizing that there are so many questions I won't ever know the answers to! This pains me a little … how can I honor my ancestry and sit comfortably in the unknown?
Cara Mia:
The conversation has already begun! So live in the question and let it unfold. From the side of life, I know it can sometimes seem linear. A call and a response. An ask and an answer that leads you from here to there. And yes, certainly, your history has backbone. It has the people in their places and you, trying to trace their steps and track their scent. But from the other side, from all sides—where I sit—your history also has breath. It arrives through transmission. Through the moments when you’re caught in a movement that seems like more than just yours. A gesture that feels unconscious. An inexplicable craving. A choice without clear pros or cons. This is the conversation. In these moments of mystery, your family reaches for you. They are as present in the space that surrounds the photograph as they are bound within its frame. Scour the archive. Delight in the stories told and the letters written. But know that their lives, and yours, are made as much from what you allow to come undone as they are from what was said and done. You must let their lives live through your own longing. Otherwise, your ancestors have no way to reach for you and nowhere to go. And when you let them come out of nowhere, and be with you everywhere, you’ll both come closer to home.
Un abbraccio forte,
Otea
Dear Otea:
I'm happily child-free but sometimes struggle with the cultural stigma around that. I want the world to see me as I see me: a mother to my creative endeavors, my pets, my garden, and all of the beings in my life that want and need love. Should I say to hell with what people think, or try gracefully to get them to see that I, too, am a mother?
Cara Mia:
Being in this world as you are needs no name and no witness. Mother is present each time the world makes way for you—in the depth of your hands digging into that garden dirt, in the rise of your animal’s fur reaching for your fingertips, and in the plush press of a cushion bending around your body. And it is present each time the world has its way with you—as you dance in its downpour with your widest hips while they try to call all that you conceive of anything other than love, love, love. Your love is limitless. So be wordless. Bear no mark. Ask for no introduction. Creation has already conceived of you and you can conceive of it however you wish. To hell with them and all the way back, to the place where you choose to bear
all this beauty instead.
Un abbraccio forte,
Otea