Stage Four Cancer, 34 Years of Tarot - and What Happens Next

By Cheryl Kerr

I'm not staging a comeback. I’m trying to give 34 years of Tarot knowledge somewhere to live - without sacrificing the life I still have to live.

I have stage four breast cancer.

There is no elegant way to ease into that sentence, so I’m not going to try.

Back in April, I told my email subscribers that my breast cancer had returned. At that point, I didn’t know the full extent of it. I thought I was dealing with a recurrence, an operation, a short course of treatment and then I’d be back on my feet.

Then came the stage four diagnosis: my breast cancer had spread to my liver.

In my email, I said I wasn’t disappearing. But I did. I withdrew into a world of endless hospital appointments and drug cycles and at that point, I deactivated my Instagram account.

Treatment, tiredness and the sheer mental load of trying to work out what to do with what’s left of my life - and my business - took over.

Stage four cancer isn’t a neat before-and-after story. It is blood tests, scans, hospital waiting rooms, drug cycles, shitty side effects and the knowledge that every plan now has an asterisk beside it. It’s waking up with energy and not knowing whether it will last for two hours or two days. It’s trying to earn money without sacrificing the few good days I could be spending actually living.

If you’re new around here

Hello, I’m Cheryl.

I’ve worked with Tarot for 34 years and read professionally for 15 of them. My website ranked at number one on Google for Tarot readings in Liverpool for over ten years, and the income from Tarot has supported me and my daughter for a large part of our lives.

People have been asking me to teach them how to read Tarot cards for years. I tried a couple of times, but the part they want is the part that ‘speaks to Spirit’. Where do I get my ‘messages’ and insights from?

And I refused to teach Tarot by asking people to memorise 78 separate card definitions.

Straight off I tell people: “I can’t teach intuition. Intuition needs to be developed and built upon, and it comes with time and practice.”

But what I can teach are the patterns, systems and relationships running through the deck - how the cards behave together, why certain personalities keep appearing and how a confusing spread begins to make sense once you understand its underlying structure.

Tarot isn’t 78 flash cards, and a spread isn’t a row of separate definitions. The cards interact. They support, contradict, strengthen and alter one another.

The Court Cards alone are not sixteen random people with lists of personality traits. A Page doesn’t move through a situation like a Knight. A Queen doesn’t hold power in the same way as a King. The Wands family does not respond to life like the Cups family - and neither of them will build, decide or communicate like the Swords or Pentacles.

Numbers repeat. Elements cooperate or clash. Personalities form alliances, create tension and expose what is really happening underneath a situation.

That is what I can teach: how to see what the cards are doing, rather than simply reciting what somebody once told you they mean.

After 34 years, I don’t just have a collection of card meanings. I have an entire system for understanding how Tarot operates.

That is the work I know.

The question I’ve been wrestling with is: what does a woman with 34 years of knowledge do when her body will no longer let her work the way she used to?

I tried to pivot

When I wrote to my subscribers in April, I thought building websites for other spiritual businesses might be the answer.

I’m self-taught, I’m good at it and I genuinely enjoyed it. But website building requires long periods of concentration, deadlines and other people depending on me to be capable on a particular day.

My health doesn’t work like that anymore.

My treatment runs in cycles. I can have a few days when I feel almost like my old self, followed by days when my energy disappears completely.

I can’t promise a client that I will feel well on Tuesday because when Tuesday comes around, that might not be the case. And I hate to cancel or reschedule people unless it’s absolutely necessary.

So I stopped building websites.

I also stopped offering regular one-to-one Tarot readings. A reading requires my full attention and energy, and I refuse to give somebody a watered-down version of my work. I have a solid reputation as a reader that is direct, yet warm and empathetic. If I don’t feel good in myself or have physical energy to spare, then you’re going to get a shit reading.

And that’s not what I’m about.

But none of this changes the fact that I still need an income. Cancer doesn’t make the bills disappear!

I have spent months going around in circles

I have a huge body of work in the form of books, manuscripts, teaching systems, card interpretations, exercises and my ideas everywhere, filling my Google Drive and my head.

There is no shortage of material.

The problem is turning it into something organised, updated and useful without exhausting myself in the process.

I have considered creating online courses, memberships, ebooks, subscriptions, blogging, videos and all sorts of complicated combinations of the above.

Every idea eventually became another enormous job that I just couldn’t face.

There have been days when I have looked at the whole lot and thought, quite honestly, “Can I actually be bothered with any of this?”

So that’s where I’ve been.

Not secretly building an exciting new empire behind the scenes. Not preparing a perfectly planned relaunch.

Mostly trying to work out what I can realistically do without making myself ill, overwhelmed or thoroughly sorry that I started. And trying to heal.

The Aim of the Game

My main aim in life right now isn’t to build another business empire. It’s to make memories with my 19-year-old daughter. To travel when I’m well enough, laugh, eat good food, see new places and make ordinary days count.

We took a recent trip to Krakow and it mattered more to me than anything I could have achieved sitting behind a laptop. I don’t want every good day in my treatment cycle to be swallowed up by work.

I’m her mum before I am a Tarot reader or business owner, and whatever I do next has to fit around that - not the other way around.

During all of this, my website carried on without me

This is the interesting part.

While I was doing virtually nothing to promote it, people continued to find my website.

They used my free online Tarot reading. They created accounts. They explored the site.

People even joined while I was abroad for

three days, completely ignoring my business.

That reminded me of something important: I’ve already built something that works when I’m not constantly feeding it.

I don’t need to dance on Instagram, film my life or churn out content every day to prove that I still exist.

So, what happens now?

I’m going to write.

Not to a punishing schedule, and not because somebody has told me I must publish three times a week to please an algorithm.

I’m going to use this website and blog to bring my Tarot knowledge together properly.

I’ll write about the Court Cards and why so many readers struggle with them. I’ll explain card combinations, recurring patterns and the systems hidden inside the deck. I’ll answer the questions Tarot students actually ask - and the points where traditional card definitions stop being useful.

I’ll also occasionally write about the woman behind the work, because pretending none of this is happening would be ridiculous.

Some weeks I may write several things. Other weeks, treatment will take priority and nothing will appear.

That is not a promise broken. It’s the cold hard reality of how I have to work now.

I’m not returning to performative marketing

I still have my Tarot page on Facebook, and I may use it to share something when I have something worth sharing.

I won’t be returning to Instagram. I hated the constant pressure to perform, post, appear and pretend to be endlessly enthusiastic.

My website will be the home of my work.

I know relying on search engines is the long game. But a genuinely useful Tarot article can still be discovered months or years after I write it. It can help somebody while I’m resting, receiving treatment, travelling or watching television.

That makes far more sense for my life now.

There will be no dramatic relaunch and no grand promises about courses or products that do not yet exist.

I am going to start with what I know, work when I can and gradually organise this enormous body of Tarot knowledge into something useful.

I’m not writing this from the safe distance of a survivor story with a neat lesson at the end.

I’m right in the middle of it.

I’m having treatment, watching my energy, paying the bills, making memories with my daughter and trying to give 34 years of Tarot work somewhere to live beyond my head and my Google Drive.

I have stage four cancer. I feel like I’m fighting for my life.

But I am still here.

The knowledge is still here.

And this is where I begin again.

Cheryl xx