028: JESSICA DORE - @thejessicadore (Tarot, Psychology, Dancehall, NOLA)

Episode 028 of *The Upful LIFE Podcast* welcomes JESSICA DORE (@thejessicadore) to the show. On Twitter and Instagram, my longtime friend is a new-school tarot superstar, Jessica has hundreds of thousands of followers for her unique approach to tarot as a therapeutic tool. She's a licensed social worker, tarot practitioner and journalist/author interested in using tarot cards to help people understand the interplay between internal and external life.  I'd seen a variety of media features about her in recent months, and made a mental note that she'd be an ideal guest for this show, which came about rather serendipitously.

Introduction to Jessica Dore @ 8:00, Conversation @ 12:30 

Jessica and I go way back to Jazz Fest in NOLA some years ago, and we've stayed in touch sporadically. She's always been a friend on my radar, in spite of the many moons or miles between. Not long ago, we randomly bumped into one another on the streets of Oakland, and I knew it was a cosmic re-connection. Jessica was kind enough to invite me up to her idyllic treehouse studio in the Berkeley Hills for an interview that was really like a conversation between friends catching up.

She has been influenced by the people and landscapes of the places she’s lived and traveled including New Orleans, Jamaica, Central America, India, Northern California and New England. In just over an hour-long powwow, we share a dialogue that touches on her time in New Orleans, and Mardi Gras gone by. Plus her passion for Jamaican dancehall music, why she moved to Kingston, JA, only to subsequently leave dee-jaying behind. That narrative provides a launching point for an enlightening rabbit hole on the topics of roots, culture, family heritage, and the nature of our collective appropriation. From there, we briefly explore her daily and unwavering devotion to ashtanga yoga. 

Yet the majority and priority of our conversation is focused on tracing the embryonic roots and rapid evolution of her work as @thejessicadore on Twitter and IG. She combines her knowledge from years of studying psychology, behavioral science, tarot and mysticism to support people during times of both change and stuckness. Her ideas and tarot practice have become wildly popular across social media over the past few years, and she's at the forefront of a revolution in tarot and psychology, so much so that she's out here in the Bay writing a book on the topic, contracted to a major publisher. In a language that everyone can easily understand, Dore breaks down how tarot entered her life, the connections she first discovered while working in psychology book publishing, and how they organically blossomed into @thejessicadore daily readings. How she interprets and interpolates self-help principles and therapeutic concepts into her practice and profession. The study of the soul at once ancient and brand-new.

Jessica Dore's avant-garde, revolutionary tarot practice has been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine‘s The Cut, VICE, Teen Vogue, Yoga Journal, Philadelphia Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, NPR’s Weekend Edition and more. Her writing has been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, VICE, and Psych Central. Jessica has studied behavioral therapies extensively and holds a level 1 certificate for essential skills in energy psychology.

 

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Theme Song: Mazel Tov by CALVIN VALENTINE