🃏 Strength (ADHD Edition)
I used to think Strength meant might. Turns out, for an ADHD brain, real strength might be the exact opposite.
This is the ninth post in a series about the meanings of Tarot cards through an ADHD lens.
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When I first saw the Strength card, I didn’t think of patience. I didn’t think of softness. I thought of my figure skating coaches.
Specifically: the macho Russian pairs skater and his wife, who was still skating and demonstrating moves at eight months pregnant. My next coach, who skated through various injuries without ever complaining. My first speed skating coach, whose legs were the size of my waist.
I thought Strength meant might. Being big and strong. Persevering through injury, illness, anything in your way — and not tolerating any less from yourself. That was the message I absorbed for decades. Push through. Show up no matter what. Be tough.
And honestly? It worked, until it didn’t.
I know this from personal experience.
In the last few weeks, I convinced myself that I just needed to be stronger.
I pushed myself to get up early to get to the gym. I lived on six hours of sleep. I even climbed two mountains in as many days.
But, as I’ve said elsewhere, it didn’t make me stronger. It just made me burn out.
Athletes in particular tend to treat the body as something to override and the mind as something to discipline into compliance.
For a neurotypical body and brain, maybe that’s sustainable.
But for a neurodivergent nervous system, it’s a slow-motion catastrophe.
Because here’s the thing, the card has been trying to tell me, and what I’ve only really understood recently:
In the context of ADHD, Strength can mean the opposite of what I thought.
🌱 Strength’s Meaning
In traditional Tarot, Strength is the eighth card of the Major Arcana (or the eleventh, depending on your deck — I see you, Marseille).
It depicts a woman gently engaging with a lion — sometimes opening its jaws, sometimes closing them, but always in calm, unhurried contact. She’s not afraid of the Lion, nor trying to dominate it. They are meeting each other without a hint of threat or anxiety.
This is the kind of courage that doesn’t announce itself.
It’s not the rider in full directed control (that’s the Chariot). It’s not the king on the throne (that’s the Emperor).
It’s the quiet, steady presence that knows it can sit beside something wild without needing to crush it.
Symbols to Notice 👀
The lion — Primal nature. Raw instinct. The parts of us we’ve been told to suppress: our impulses, our emotions, our fire, our hunger.
The woman’s gentle hands — She’s not subduing the lion. She’s in dialogue with it. There is no force in the gesture.
The lemniscate (infinity symbol) above her head — Mastery that doesn’t have to try. The kind that flows from understanding, not effort.
White robes — Purity of intention. She’s not performing strength. She’s simply being it.
The flower garland — Beauty meeting power. Softness as adornment, not weakness.
The mountain in the background — Stability earned slowly.
If we made Strength into a person, they’d be the former competitive athlete who now teaches yoga to people in chronic pain.
They’ve been on both sides.
They know when to push and when to listen.
They earned their gentleness the hard way.
⚖️ Reversed Meaning
When Strength flips, the energy doesn’t disappear — it distorts. It becomes self-criticism dressed up as discipline. It becomes pushing through, thinking it’s a strength, while actually making yourself feel worse.
One extreme is the white-knuckle trap. You override every signal your body and brain are sending — the burnout, the executive function crash, the emotional flooding — because you’ve decided that listening to those signals is weakness. So you grind. You force. You shame yourself into productivity and call it grit.
The other extreme is collapse. The lion takes over completely. Impulses run the show. There’s no patience left to be gentle, because every reserve is gone. You can’t even pretend to manage your reactions anymore.
Both extremes have the same root: a refusal to be in actual conversation
with the wild parts of yourself.
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P.S. — Workshop on May 16 coming up fast. 90 minutes on using Tarot to see your own loops. Not the woo version. Click here.
