Meet the Beasties!

If you’ve been following my social media, you may have noticed a new product I’m talking about: The Brain Beasties Oracle Deck. For those of you who don’t: it’s an oracle deck I made to help deal with mental issues. The general idea is to provide insight into the workings of your brain in any given moment and some advice or thought prompts to get your mind moving.

But I can’t claim all the credit for the idea. It came from a lot of digging and loads of other inspiration. So I wanted to just give a quick shout-out to the folks who (whether they knew it or not) helped inspire me to make this thing a reality.

Olivia from Leafing Out Gardening (and my co-writer for the Aces High, Jokers Wild series) originally gave me the idea to make an oracle deck late last year. She has some of her own decks based on the language of flowers and the Ogham that are incredible, if you’re the collecting type.

The Little Brain Wolf comics by Sam Davies of Stutterhug and the beautiful illustrations from The Latest Kate were also big influences. I find that giving shapes and names to emotions and internal patterns can really help us identify them and figure out ways to change or improve. Both Stutterhug and the Latest Kate are really good at that--so I kind of stole the idea for my Brain Beasties deck.

Each card features either a Brain Bestie or Beastie with a cute little character to represent it. (I also find that cute helps ease some of the bad feelings associated with some of these.) Besties are positive emotions and habits that can help us grow, while Beasties are the more negative emotions and habits that can hinder us. There are 21 of each, meaning 42 cards in the entire deck (shout out to the nerds here that I just couldn’t resist).

So that’s the short version of where the idea of the Brain Beasties deck came from. Check back next week for some ideas on how to use the deck to work on introspection and improving your mental health.

And drop by the Wandering Jotun shop on Valentine’s Day to treat yourself to the preorders of the deck. After all, no one said Valentine’s Day can’t also be about self-love.

- Nonir