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Meet Allison Blakeney

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Allison Blakeney.

Allison, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started deeply engaging with tarot, and combining my love of tarot with my love of movement/dance, when I got sober, a little over four years ago. At that point, I had been dancing for about 20 years and had been around tarot before, but not in the degree I was. I was looking for a non-traditional way to connect with spirituality. I started looking into witchcraft forms and was struggling with the gendered aspects of many different religions and spirituality. I am nonbinary—I identify as somewhere between, or somewhere entirely outside, the gender binary. So any kind of worldview or framework that distills things through the gender binary doesn’t work for me.

Through a series of connections to different feminist podcasts, I found Lindsay Mack, who teaches tarot through a soul-centered lens. I started listening to her podcast and she completely dissolved the gendered aspects of tarot. So I started taking her classes and learning from her.

At the same time, I was re-working my relationship with dance again. I grew up in the competition dance world in Colorado and at the age of 18, moved out to Los Angeles to pursue a career in commercial dance. These worlds are extremely gendered and although I wasn’t out as queer or nonbinary, I felt like a square peg in a round hole. I did not belong. I also fell out of love with dance and was deep in my addiction. From there, at age 20, I moved back to Colorado, ready to quit dance and go to school for Psychology and Philosophy.

Through another series of serendipitous connections, I found Jenny Schiff and her (since closed) organization The Schiff Dance Collective. Jenny grew up in the commercial dance world so I really related to her. Through her teaching, I learned to love myself again and love dancing again. I learned there was a space for me in dance, and I began to find liberation in my body. Well, as much as someone in the throws of addiction can. It gave me a way to engage with movement and dance from soul and healing instead of ego and low self-worth.

Fast forward to 25; I was living in New York City, pursuing my Master’s at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, NYU in dance and queer theory. I had relapsed and was deep in my addiction. I was slowly losing myself (and the people I loved). I felt terrible and just did not understand why I did not get this thing called life. I thought I was just terrible and that I had to accept that I was just a terrible person. By the grace of something bigger than me, and through another series of events, I started to get sober.

Getting sober was the catalyst that finally sent me back into myself to do some serious soul searching. It was in sobriety that I really began to come back into my skin. When I was in elementary school, my mom used to take me to psychic fairs, which I loved! I loved getting my tarot read and I loved playing with her oracle cards. When I got sober, I began finding this love again. So I started reading tarot just for myself and learning as much as possible.

After finishing graduate school (around 27), I moved back to CO to be with my partner. I got a job doing violence prevention work at a domestic violence organization because I was again fed up with my relationship to dance and how gendered dance spaces are. I was ready to focus on activism. A pause might be useful. The three core tenets that are my guiding lights are Spirituality, Creativity/Artistry, and Justice.

So I was ready to focus on justice and activism. This job was super difficult because the violence we worked to eradicate externally also showed up internally. I decided to start bringing one of my tarot decks to work to ground myself in my purpose and spirituality. My coworkers would come into my office and ask for little readings or would ask what card I drew for the day. This is how I started reading for others. It gives me such a deep feeling of connection, belonging, and justice to work with people this way.

Tarot has been such an important tool because it deals with archetypes that show us both what is going on right now, in the present moment, as well as facets of ourselves we can rely on to support us in the moment. At the same job, I started taking 10 minutes out of my day to walk to a nearby park, pull a tarot card, and move (dance) in whatever way that tarot card spoke to me. This was such a huge resource in a time that felt extremely overwhelming and triggering. This is where I started to put these two loves together.

Movement is such an important piece of healing for me and it is a possibility at many different physical abilities. It is also such a key piece of moving out of traumatic responses like fight, flight, and freeze. I was also struggling with dance here in Boulder and Denver because it is so gendered as well. I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere, so the practice of moving on my own with the tarot cards was (and still is!) super healing.

So I am now working on building up a tarot and movement business that seeks to support individuals through spiritual and emotional growth. Currently, I am reading tarot for individuals and designing a class called “Tarot in the Flesh”, that I will teach on April 19th in Northglenn, CO.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Hahaha… I suppose my last answer helps answer this question a bit, but no it has not been a smooth road. It has been a spiral!

It has not been a smooth road, but I also wouldn’t take any of it back for anything. For me, I really experience the challenges as emotional and spiritual. The challenges and struggles for me are believing that I belong (where ever that is, or in whatever context) regardless of what other people think, or the externally validation (or lack thereof) I get.

What I mean by this is reading tarot and building a business like this means that I have to market myself. But this is such a deep trigger for me. Actually, it is a core wound because I was not allowed to have a self growing up. My self was to keep other people alive and I learned early on that I needed to be who others needed me to be in order to survive. To begin a process of creating a business around what I specifically have to offer is terrifying! It means I have to believe in what I am offering and I need to be clear about it.

Alongside hating the emotional process that comes with marketing, I also know NOTHING about it. Instagram is so triggering for me and I know very little about how it works (though I am starting to learn!) For example, In the summer of 2019, I decided to do this project on Instagram where I picked words for each week (expansion, joy, trust, contraction, etc.), pulled a card for that word, and created a dance video that embodied that word. I put it out on Instagram and got like two likes on some of the pages!

I was putting hashtags on it and everything so I really didn’t understand why I wasn’t getting likes. Months after that project, I was talking about this with my partner and a friend and my partner said, “Isn’t your account private?” !!!!!! OMG… so I found out that hashtags don’t work with private accounts which is like DUH, but it was just something I didn’t consider. See doing this project felt so vulnerable and scary for me that I didn’t even consider this logistical, factual piece of it at the time.

I am now learning tips, and things to start doing through Sarah M. Chappell’s podcast “So You Want to Be a Witch” and her work with soul-centered entrepreneurs. I recommend her for anyone looking for some guidance around your business. The business aspects are not easy for me, but I am enjoying learning about them so much.

Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
My business doesn’t really have a name, it is just me right now. So, Allison Blakeney. What I do is read tarot, teach dance, and bring these together to help folks grow spiritually and emotionally. I am also interested in making this available for transgender and nonbinary people and activists.

I feel that so often, different healing modalities are unavailable to trans and gender-expansive people because they are so gendered. There is a lot of talk of divine feminine and divine masculine, and for me, these do not work. That is not the case for all trans people by any means, but I also know I am not alone in feeling like these archetypes are dated and ineffective.

I also want to provide this healing work to activists; we spend so much time building, creating, and fighting for others that we do not take care of ourselves. I have watched this lead to burnout for others and myself. How can we support each other into joy and liberation? How can we support one another so that we can continue building the world we want to live in?

This is what I’m called to do. I am also known for teaching dance classes for LGBTQIA+ people in Boulder and I run a queer dance intensive called Excessive Realness, with my Co-Director Anthony Alterio. We don’t really make money for ourselves yet, but we pay our artists really well and provide a week-long summer dance intensive for LGBTQIA+ people who do not always feel welcomed in their sexuality and gender in traditional dance spaces.

I am most proud of my ability to synthesize many different worlds/frameworks/modalities together to help support people in who they are holistically. I am proud of how I understand this work as collaborative and collective, as opposed to placing myself up on a “healer” pedestal. I am not here to be a healer. I am here to accompany and facilitate growth that I too am engaged in. Those two things are also what sets me apart from other people. I have a distinct ability to take in a lot of information and connect it in unique ways. This allows me to support people from multiple angles and through different frameworks.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
The thing I would have done differently is detaching my self-worth from the business side of the work sooner. For example, I am now able to look at my Instagram and say okay, that copy is not working, or those photos don’t work and that is okay. Instead of looking at it and freaking out internally because no one likes my picture, or I don’t have enough followers, etc.

Boundaries… that is definitely something I would have done differently. I started by really feeling uncomfortable about setting boundaries with people: how they can contact me, cancellation policy, price, etc. I mean let’s be real, I still have a hard time with it! I wish I was clearer from the beginning with what my boundaries are, what I need and desire, and how to communicate that in the copy on my website and social media.

Also I think focusing on what I am creating, why I believe it is important and will help people, and clearly articulating this is so much more important than spending hours on figuring out how to get people to like my social media. When we ground ourselves in the work we do, the fear is less important. This sentiment comes from social justice fundraising work that I do and is a derivative of an Audre Lorde quote: “When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision—then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid,” Audre Lorde. When we ground ourselves in the clear belief in what we do and why it is important, the fear is less important. It is still there, but it isn’t driving the decisions.

Pricing:

  • In Person 60 Minute Tarot Reading: $44.00
  • In Person 30 Minute Tarot Reading: $22.00
  • Skype/Facetime 60 Minute Tarot Reading: $44.00
  • Skype/Facetime 30 Minute Tarot Reading: $22.00

Contact Info:


Image Credit:
Nicholas Caputo
Megan Newton Photography
Wendy Turner Photography

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