Three Parts, Three Cards, One Path

How a tarot reading echoed the trauma, survival, and healthy parts described in De Fontein, and something clicked into place.

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Several times now in other articles, I’ve mentioned I’m working through De Fontein (or The Fountain) by Els van Steijn. I’ve started reading this book over a year ago, then stopped. Somewhere in March 2025, I opened the book again, start from the beginning. This time I’m highlighting important passages (important to me) as I go along.

I think with all that happened in the last few months — discovering lies by my parents, and being in contact with my brother again, to name two — it’s a better time to read the book now than it had been in early 2024.

Even before I started working through this book again, I had been wondering about my memories. That I remember very little (only mostly positive highlights) came to the foreground again after conversations with my sister-in-law. My brother remembers so much more.

I started wondering about dissociation. Is that what I’d done? Dissociated? Why? What’d happened?

Then, on the evening of 23 June 2025 (it will become clear later why this date is significant), I read about three important inner parts: the trauma part, the survival part, and the healthy adult part.

This framework helps explain why, as adults, we sometimes get stuck in old patterns — and why certain childhood memories may be vague, incomplete, or entirely missing.

It was an eye-opener to me!

The trauma and survival parts

The trauma part holds experiences from your childhood which were too intense to process. They were painful or overwhelming, and your child-brain might not have been able to comprehend what was happening. This part develops when something disturbing happens.

The survival part comes into play directly after the trauma part and is your inner protector. This can happen before your conscious memory starts roundabout three/four years old.

The survival part protects you from being hurt again, developing strategies like people-pleasing, perfectionism, keeping distance, self-sacrifice, or excessive control.

Together, the trauma and survival parts help you survive in an environment where you may not feel safe, seen, or loved. Those protective mechanisms often remain active — unconsciously — well into adulthood.

Why are some memories vague or gone?

The way the trauma part and the survival part work together can result in experiences from your childhood being blocked or only vaguely remembered.

This isn’t a weakness or a defect. It’s a protection strategy of the mind. The brain suppresses memories, or the feelings associated with them, to allow you to keep functioning. Your nervous system ‘freezes’ (dissociation) to protect you from being overwhelmed.

This can show up in different ways, such as blank spots in your memory, remembering facts but not the associated emotions, sensing something happened but being unable to name it, or experiencing strong emotional reactions that don’t seem to match the current situation.

There isn’t an age where the trauma and survival parts stop working together and you magically remember everything. These inner parts are not age dependent, but safety dependent. Those parts remain active until your system feels safe enough to allow old pain to surface. It can happen at any time in your life, but it only happens when your healthy adult part is strong enough to handle it.

The healthy adult part then slowly takes the lead. It looks at the other parts with compassion, acknowledges what was — without drama or judgment — and helps you let go of what no longer serves you.

Healing doesn’t mean you remember everything. In reality, healing is not about the memory, but about emotional integration. The full story doesn’t matter. What matters is that you allow yourself to feel what needs to be felt, and learn to look at yourself with kindness — including the parts you once had to suppress.

The universe at work

I read the above after I’d spoken to my brother again for the first time in almost 8 years. We spoke about many things, and in that conversation, I tried to explain to him about not remembering much of my childhood. I couldn’t because I simply didn’t know how. Not how to explain it, but also not how dissociation happens.

Reading the above in De Fontein was like an epiphany for me, and I will return to this subject in another article. There is so much more to be said.

Like I said, I read about those three parts on the evening of 23 June 2025.

Now my dear friend,

May More

, had done several tarot readings for me in the past, and about two weeks before, I’d asked her to do me another reading. There was just something in me telling me to ask for a reading, to see what it says about reconnecting with my brother.

It was on the afternoon of 24 June 2025 that May sent me the reading, and honestly, it gave me goosebumps. To me, it felt like an energy in the universe was at work, because of how the reading and what I’d read in De Fontein connected with each other.

The three tarot cards — May’s image

Tarot cards and what they said

I have May’s approval to share the reading with you:

While pulling the cards, I thought about your mum's lies to you and the split for so long with your brother and how he felt he had been treated badly in the past. I pulled three major cards — The Empress, The Lovers, and Temperance — which already tells me this is something big in both your lives.

The Empress
This is twofold, I think. The root of it all — your mum. The lies, the love that was tangled up in control or fear, and the generational trauma. It also reflects your role as a mother and how that early experience shaped your behaviour over the years. There’s tenderness in the card, but also a reminder that love can exist alongside harsher things.

The Lovers
Can mean two close people as well. Two siblings, face to face after years apart. It represents your relationship and choices. Also, perhaps the different viewpoints or values you and your brother have. And there lies tension if you let it. It’s not about who’s right, but about learning how to connect without losing yourself. Remembering, you don’t have to merge into one version of events — you just have to listen to each other to bond.

Temperance — (the future)
Temperance is quiet but strong — it offers the possibility of healing. Not all at once, but slowly. Keeping your life in balance as you go. It’s about not rushing. Or trying to fix or prove anything. Just about staying present, and weighing up the past and present. If you both stay open, something solid can grow between you.

So, to me, the cards say there’s pain — but also something good trying to surface. Not by rewriting the past, but by making space for both of your truths. And accepting who each of you are. Healing is already in motion, and for you this was most certainly an event — meeting him — that was your destiny to move you forward in your healing.

It was that bit about the Temperance card, which struck me the hardest. About the healing. The keeping life in balance. The not rushing, or trying to prove something. That touched me deeply.

So did the mention of how The Empress reflects how earlier experiences have shaped my behavior over the years.

I’ve frequently said, I’m my own harshest critic. I’ve chastised myself so much for so many years, feeling anger, and shame and guilt for my life, for the things I’d done, for all my mistakes.

I know this is what healing really looks like. Not one big breakthrough, but small moments of recognition — like seeing myself in the pages of De Fontein, or feeling understood in the message of a tarot card.

I may never remember everything from my childhood, but I’m beginning to understand why. That gives me something even more valuable than memory: compassion for who I was, and hope for who I’m becoming.

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I said above the universe is at work. Two days after I received May’s reading, this happened…

The Night Our Family System Spoke

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Also read this wonderful essay by

Ute Luppertz