Tarot Memoirist Draws Winning Hand

Shortly into our conversation, even before we start doing readings for each other, it quickly becomes obvious that Kimberlee Auerbach (right) has known more about tarot, and for much longer, than she lets on in the opening chapters of her memoir, The Devil, The Lovers, & Me, where she uses a session with a card reader named Iris as a narrative framework to explore her life issues. She admits that she dumbed herself down as a character and passed some of her knowledge about the cards and their symbolic meanings on to Iris (who is also based on two real-life readers she knows) for dramatic purposes. (“Iris is like my higher self, my wise woman,” she says.) While the Kimmi in the book has a lot of basic questions, the real-life Auerbach has been reading the cards, and drawing inspiration from them, for decades. “I’m usually such a verbal person,” she explains, recalling one of the first cards that connected with her: a picture of a woman in a birdcage, throwing herself angrily against the bars, and failing to notice the unlocked door behind her. “It was great to be able to learn more about myself through images.”

“You know how people walk around with certain stories and don’t let them go?” she asks. That was how she felt before she began turning her experiences into a one-woman show, which inspired Dutton to sign her up for a memoir. “Writing my story and speaking it has really helped me to let it go—which is great, because it was really exhausting. But I feel much more integrated than I ever have. I feel like I’ve gotten my strength and spark back.” But such epiphanic moments don’t always guarantee happy endings: The relationship she writes about in the memoir ended a few months ago, shortly before the book’s publication. Auerbach speaks fondly of her ex, saying that they had incompatible levels of comfort with being in the public eye. “My life path is to be open about what’s hurtful and shameful in our lives,” she says. “I don’t want just to feel better about myself, I want to help others feel better about themselves… In the end, I had to honor my needs.”

“My story isn’t really all that unusual,” she says, and it’s true that’s one of the memoir’s strongest charms: Many women in her generational bracket will hear echoes of their own experiences with body image issues, creepy boyfriends, and trying to carry on adult relationships with your parents. If they find the book, that is; right now, because of the tarot framework, it’s generally being shelved in the mysticism section at bookstores. “But I don’t use the cards for divination,” Auerbach emphasizes. “They’re more like a Rohrshach test.” By conversation’s end, however, after we’ve had a chance to compare our decks, she’s able to put the concerns behind her, ready to focus on forging her own path.

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