Most people think tarot is about pulling a card in the moment; looking for quick answers or daily guidance. But what if the cards could tell you the storyline of your life as it unfolds? That’s where tracking comes in. By layering pulls over days, weeks, and months, patterns emerge that stop looking random and start looking prophetic. The majors hold the bones of the story, the minors bend with free will, and when you cross-reference your life with others and the collective, the hidden chessboard of karmic cycles comes into view. Tarot becomes less about “What’s happening today?” and more about “Where is the story heading and how do I move within it?”

Divorce will bait you into chaos. That’s the trap. If you spiral, you spend money, lose credibility, and hand the other side your power. Holding the board steady isn’t about staying calm, it’s about refusing to leak. You track yourself harder than you track them. You wait, document, and deliver. Judges don’t just read evidence; they read you. The one who sits still, speaks clean, and times their moves…wins.

You think you know how the game is played; motions, hearings, papers served. Due process, right? Wrong. One Friday afternoon, the courthouse number flashed across my phone. I answered, expecting bureaucracy. Instead, I got a judge, off the record, telling me I had 24 hours to hand my son over or face 180 days in jail.

No paperwork. No emergency order. No chance to respond. Just a verbal checkmate, dropped straight into my lap. In that moment, I realized: this wasn’t family court anymore. It was a chessboard where the rules bent to whoever held the gavel, and I was playing blindfolded.

Nobody prepares you for the unspoken rules of court, the way judges watch your body language, the way attorneys weaponize time, the way credibility can vanish with one sloppy filing. Court isn’t just about laws and evidence. It’s theater, it’s energy, it’s strategy.

I learned these lessons the hard way, and now I’m giving them to you straight, so you don’t walk in blind and get eaten alive.

The courtroom isn’t about who’s right. It isn’t even about which side you sit on. Whether you’re on the petitioner’s side or the respondent’s side, the judge is watching for one thing: who has their pieces in order.

What most people don’t realize is that you don’t actually submit your evidence when you file. Proof doesn’t reach the judge’s desk until you’re standing in front of them, if you even make it that far. I’ve had airtight evidence dismissed before a hearing was ever granted, while at the same time, a temporary order was granted against me based on nothing more than outlandish lies and zero proof.

In one day of observation, I saw it all: a woman who desperately needed protection but was dismissed because she wasn’t organized, a “spitting” case filed just to evict someone, a divorced couple where the husband’s robotic, narcissistic performance actually confirmed the wife’s fear, and my own case, dismissed because the petitioner came in messy, with a story full of holes.

Court doesn’t reward truth. It rewards clarity. It rewards presentation. It rewards the person who can stack both the evidence board and the emotional board in their favor. And until the system changes, that’s the game.

Petty motions don’t prove strength, hey prove desperation. Every pointless filing drains your wallet, clogs the court calendar, and torches your credibility in front of a judge. And let’s be real: the only people who win are the attorneys billing you by the hour.

If you’ve been firing off motions just to get under your ex’s skin? Knock that shit off. You’re not playing chess, you’re throwing tantrums on a checkerboard. The smart move isn’t more filings, it’s better filings. Precision over pettiness. Strategy over noise.

I don’t miss photography, not even a little. And that surprises people. For years, boudoir sessions were at the center of my work. But the truth is, I never loved the camera itself. What I loved was what it revealed: the stories women carried, the moment they finally saw themselves clearly, the transformation that happened when shadow met light. Photography wasn’t my forever, it was my apprenticeship. And now, I’m carrying those lessons into deeper work that no longer requires a lens.

Divorce isn’t just paperwork. It’s patterns, timing, and energy. Most people only track what’s on the surface; the filings, the texts, the dates. But the real power? It’s in tracking the silences, the cycles, and yourself.

When you track, you stop being blindsided. You stop reacting. You start playing chess while everyone else is still throwing tantrums on a checkerboard. And the best part? Tracking isn’t obsession, it’s sovereignty. It’s how I stay five moves ahead, and it’s how I teach my clients to do the same. 😉

The Chessboard Revealed

Once I started mapping the board, I realized abuse wasn’t random, it was systematic. Every move had intent: to destabilize, to discredit, to isolate. And while each abuser adds their own twist, the patterns repeat so often they might as well be scripted. That’s why I decided to break the game down play by play. Below, I name each tactic for what it is, reveal how it looked in real time, explain why it works on the psyche, and show you how to spot it if it ever shows up in your life.

For a moment, Maine felt like freedom. No stress. No one watching me. The boys were thriving; mud, books, bugs, laughter. It finally felt like home again.

Then I opened the door of communication with my son’s dad. I told him the truth: I couldn’t afford Florida anymore. Instead of a conversation, he hired legal counsel and filed an emergency custody motion. I never withheld my children, never cut off communication. I hadn’t even listed my condo yet.

Days later, the judge himself called my personal phone, while on Zoom with my ex and his attorney. No notice, no hearing, no due process. Just a threat: if I didn’t turn Finn over, I’d spend 180 days in jail.

That same week, an ex started sending emails using the exact language my other ex had used against me. The overlap was impossible to ignore.

This wasn’t random anymore. The pieces were moving together.

There comes a point where battles stop feeling separate. The weight you carry from one crisis bleeds into the next until the storms overlap. That was the merge for me, the moment I realized I wasn’t just facing one conflict at a time. I was holding financial strain, co-parenting breakdowns, and escalating threats all at once. It wasn’t just about me anymore; the pressure began to spill over onto my children. And when the safety nets failed, the truth became clear: these weren’t isolated struggles, but a larger game playing out on the same board.

I thought he was different. Steady, attentive, calm. But underneath, he was just another ego-driven man who twisted every scenario until he was the victim. Déjà vu with a different face.

It started with the red flags I ignored; dark “jokes” about killing me if I ever left, promises that if he couldn’t have me, no one could. Then came the money problems. He borrowed thousands, rarely paid his share, and when I managed his finances and pulled him out of the hole, he resented me for it.

Resentment turned into fights. Fights turned into silent video recordings I took for my own safety. He drank more, ranted louder, sat with a gun across his lap, and pinched bruises into my arms when he didn’t get his way.

The breaking point was his affair. The night I confronted him ended with cops at my door, a 2 a.m. scene of blasting music, and one final fight where he clipped me with his truck before disappearing.

A few days later, he emailed: he had spoken to someone and “knew the entire truth of my life.” Then he went silent, except for the truck that kept showing up around town.

We agreed it would be amicable. List the house. Sell at the peak. Cash out and move on. Instead, while I was away on a pre-planned trip, he moved back in, filed for divorce, and changed the locks.

From there, the game escalated. Lavish vacations with his new girlfriend while he buried me in custody motions. A private investigator tailing me, feeding false reports to DCF. Urgent orders designed to bleed me dry, one $225 test at a time. Even my own attorney played both sides.

The house I invested $150,000 cash into became leverage. By the time he was done, it looked like a squatters’ den, appraised $150,000 lower than the year before. On closing day, cornered and desperate to move forward, I signed away almost everything.

Abuse isn’t always a fist. Sometimes it’s a filing. Sometimes it’s a lock changed behind your back. Sometimes it’s watching your investment rot while your name is still on the deed.

This wasn’t just divorce. It was sabotage dressed up as strategy. And in the end, I realized: the only way to win was to play the game better than they did.

Abuse doesn’t always show itself on the first date. Sometimes it hides behind a pressed suit, a charming smile, and a real estate license.

When I met my youngest’s dad, he looked like safety: successful, professional, and put together. After years of divorce battles, feeling undesirable, it was easy to fall for the illusion. But underneath, he was a master manipulator. A stalker. A man who fed on feminine energy until nothing was left but survival.

What started with small rules; check your phone, avoid this person, keep friends at arm’s length, ended in violence, surveillance cameras inside my home, and isolation so thick I nearly lost myself. The mask slipped fast. Locked doors. Slaps across the face. Other women paraded in front of me to “remind me of my place.”

I cut my hair, gained weight, and tried to disappear, because in his world, shrinking was the only way to survive. It wasn’t until another woman moved in that the truth began leaking out. She saw the rages. She heard the words. And she was the one who told me plainly: “If you don’t leave soon, I’m going to come home and find you dead.”

She was right.

This wasn’t the end of my chess game. It was only the beginning.

Abuse doesn’t always look like bruises. Sometimes it looks like a shut-off notice on the kitchen counter. Sometimes it looks like an attorney smirking while your child is taken under false orders. Sometimes it looks like black toilets, rotting food, and soiled diapers passed off as an acceptable home for your baby.

That was my reality. My name is Marissa, and I’m an abuse survivor who learned to play chess in a courtroom that only ever offered me checkers.

This isn’t just my story, it’s my strategy. I document every lie, every filing, every desperate move. I hold the line for my kids when the system won’t. And I share it for the women who feel invisible, disbelieved, or too exhausted to fight.

Because when you realize the abuse has a pattern, you stop playing defense. You start playing to win.