Today we’d like to introduce you to Syd Beacham.
Hi Syd, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My story started in small town Southern Utah, where I was raised in a bustling-to-the-brim, big Mormon family. I grew up surrounded by love, art, and music, and needed every ounce of each to survive the illness and death that I became accustomed to in adolescence. Additionally, being surrounded by foster siblings from my earliest memories, I was granted a broader perspective of privilege and struggle that I owe so much of who I am to. The rest I devote to being a Weird Kid, from choosing vegetarianism at the age of 7– before I knew there was a word for it–, to my endless crafty nature that’s endured lifelong, to the crazy socks and rainbow lips, and now, brightly-colored hair. Despite devoting her life to children, through social work and foster parenting, no child tested my mama more than I did. Through a series of unfortunate triggers, my mom and I learned a lot about mental health, and grew through a lot of loss and pain, side by side, or rather, glaring face to face. I followed my older brothers into children’s theatre at six or seven years old, but to my family’s chagrin, I took my love of the arts all the way to a BFA program at the University of Utah. After finally “escaping” to Salt Lake for college, I was quickly anchored back home to do some serious healing from lifelong illnesses that had finally crippled my mental health. Desperation pushed me to unusual places, and I was seeing reflexologists and naturopaths as frequently as western medical practitioners, primarily through the generosity of family friends.
It was then that I found the tarot and oracle, through a rabbit hole of healing, from energy work, to crystals, to cards. I finally began to settle into my own spiritual exploration, which brought me more comfort than I’d ever known. It’s taken a great push through holistic medicine and trust in a broken medical system for several surgeries, a medical implant, and what felt like a million medication changes, to get me where I am now.
I started reading tarot “professionally” and launched my website in 2019, while still recovering from surgeries and in school. It carried me through a challenging pandemic, that left me feeling sicker than ever, as an immuno-compromised person, who contracted COVID twice. I was so grateful for it, as I pushed through a stint of homelessness and then a few years of incredible dream jobs, highlights of which were as a professional vegan baker in an ice cream shop, and then, as a set contractor for SLAC, an amazing local non-profit theatre.
I moved to San Marcos last year, to finally give my body a break from the toll of Utah Winters. I was lucky enough to be able to follow a partner’s family to the river, magic, and sunny weather. I immediately found a community here with Free Range Farmers Market, and have been presented with really gracious opportunities to do what I love; which is providing a cocoon of healing for people in the ways that I have found personal comfort with (and feel qualified to offer it!), in observance of how my mom heals children and those she comes into contact with, effortlessly, and how a monumental variety of practitioners, doctors, and healers have done for me.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The biggest struggles that I have faced in my life have been in the effort to love a body that has seemed to fight against me my whole life.
I was born sick, being coined early on, by one of my three dozen or so uncles, as “the puking worm”, noting in his favorite story, that you could follow a “snail trail” of bile to find me when I finally started crawling– so it goes without saying that I
also became a medical enigma pretty early on. The bulk of my early perceptible symptoms impacted my bladder and digestive system, so I experienced a lot of invasive surgeries, appointments, and operations before an age that could really comprehend consent of anatomy, let alone what was happening to me. Until the age of 16, I was a medical “guinea pig” for all sorts of medications and treatments, as my parents valiantly pursued answers for me. Chronic pain became the background of my life, as I watched in bewilderment as kids around me played and jumped and ran without consequence. My body took revenge, in the form of pain, fatigue, and any additional combo of nausea, chills, hot flashes and more.
Figuring out how to advocate for myself with doctors has been especially challenging, when very real and vicious symptoms are excused without a second glance– especially when you look like a woman, especially when you’re young, especially when your symptoms are invisible. For example, I was talked out of the ER, twice, at 12 years old, my pain being excused both times, before my uncle(a doctor), urged us back, just in time to remove my appendix before it burst. It’s a continued effort to pursue answers and care for the discomfort or pain I live in daily, due to IC and other diagnoses I do and don’t have answers and names for, and the two or three surgeries I still have ahead of me, this year alone.
Not seeing my body as the enemy has been my greatest hurdle. I developed OCD around eight years old, due to what I suspect was a need for control, when my own body was a stranger to me. Understanding how OCD operates in a world inundated with lack of mental health research and access to quality care, it took me far too long to know my own intuition and internal voice from the unsafe compulsions and anxious thoughts that crowd my head. My mental illness doesn’t have to feel like a barrier to me, when I can give my brain the tools it needs. The physical side of things tends to be harder to soothe; there is so much that I want to be able to do physically, that I just can’t, in a body that feels foreign to me in so many ways, on so many days; as a queer person, as someone with lifelong chronic pain, as a patient with a “sixty year old bladder” by 25, and just as someone who lives with a body, and all the normal human stuff that comes along with it. It’s hard not to blame the invisible barriers that come crashing down when I pursue something too physically exhausting or eat something that somehow triggers an unbearable flare, or just do one too many tasks in a day. It’s taken a long time to love my body, to treat them with care, and to see it as the only partner I have had and will have for my entire life, through every terrible night and every hopeless day. It takes constant balance to choose to enjoy the beautiful chunks of life I can, while making space for the illness, and the necessary care that goes along with it.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Beached Souls Tarot ?
Beached Souls Tarot started in 2019, just as a shoreline for people to find me for my work with Tarot and Oracle cards. As soon as I stepped foot in Texas last year, it began to blossom into so much more than that. It’s now turning into a vision of itself that I didn’t think I would actually be pursuing in this lifetime!
I started popping up at local farmers markets last July, and offer tarot reading samplings within the community around the Hill Country. I love sharing my knowledge and love of the tarot, especially here in the South, where it’s super stigmatized as something dark or evil. My market booth is full of simple spiritual comforts: kids get a free card pull from my children’s tarot deck, and a free crystal from my grab bag– It wouldn’t be a Beacham endevour if there weren’t kids involved! As well as tarot readings, I sell Herbal Smoking Blends. Plant medicine is something that I am incredibly passionate about (Oppose bills SB3 and HB28!!).
I started smoking cannabis in 2020 and found it kind of life-changing for my pain management and it really leveled out some severe symptoms, despite all the assumptions I’d had that it would do the contrary; through my exploration of other herbs and their benefits, I started mixing each blend with different herbs, like Rosemary, for anti-inflammatory purposes, or Rose and Mullein, for lung health. The eventual result was the three blends I currently sell: Extra Spoons; the anti-inflammatory blend, Floral Bliss; the anti-anxiety blend, and Lung Love; the respiratory blend. I source my herbs from my favorite local apothecary at Solidago/Green Heron Book Store, where I found the level of care and intentionality that I wanted to have be a part of everything I offered at Beached Souls. I currently sell my blends as prerolls, in preground jars for smoking, or as a loose-leaf blend for baths, shower steaming, vocal/facial steaming, intention, and more.
The booth also offers handmade crystal jewelry, crystal bead bracelets, handwoven by my partner, and a stunning variety of ethically sourced gems and minerals. Every piece on my tables has been treated with love, intention, and mindfulness.
To find me around TX, you can usually see me set up with the incredible people at Free Range Farmers Market at Wake the Dead Coffeehouse on Fridays, from 9-1, at Doc’s Drive-In Theatre in Buda, on Saturdays, from 10-2, and at La Cima Farmers Market, every Sunday, from 10-2! I post monthly market calendars on my social media page, and am always available to book for private readings, group readings, parties and events!
To me, tarot is an introspective tool, long before it’s a predictive one. I don’t pretend to be a qualified mental health professional, but the insight and tools that tarot provides for self-exploration have been priceless in my life. I still do a reading for each of my younger siblings each time I visit home. My aim when you sit across from me is never to tell you extraordinary revelations, but to help you interpret whatever it is that you need to hear, right now, to feel seen in your current state, and to know how best to move forward in whatever respective way it applies. The only spirit I’m talking to for a tarot reading is yours, I find most of us are quite good at tuning the best and most insightful parts of ourselves out. I want to help others see their strengths, their paths, and their way to healing.
My dream for Beached Souls is that it will be the access point for various kinds of healing modalities. Whether you need an easy comfort like a crystal or a card reading, I hope to be an access point for deeper exploration, whether people need to be pointed to a gem and mineral class to learn more about crystal bodies, or in the direction of a sound healer, or if they need the repeated introspection of tarot as a private client, I want to give people somewhere they can feel safe to let some walls down, in a terrifying world, and show them somewhere safe, where healing can take place, and they can find deeper pieces of themselves.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Food is my favorite thing, with a bias in favor of my sweet tooth. I spent a little over two years working at a vegan ice cream shop, where I eventually got to play the part of head baker for a while. I learned so much during my time making vegan baked goods, and got to incorporate so much of my love for food into my job, and turn it into something really fun and creative. Naming and creating ice cream flavors is something I loved to do so much, that I still do it as a favorite game, assigning flavors, toppings, additions to a tv show, movies or book series with partners and friends. I still experiment in the kitchen with cultivating my own book of recipes, and cook dinners for friends every chance I get. Hosting is where I am happiest, and if everyone’s smiling with a mouthful of orange cake, that’s a bonus.
Pricing:
- Market Reading: $20
- Full Spread Oracle/Tarot Reading: $40-80
- Mystic Duo (a reading for you and one other person, or a two person spread): $70-90, or a Group Readings: $100 for 3 people; then $30 for every added member
- Tarot Reader for Parties or Events: $50 hourly + tips
- Jar of Simmer or Smoke Herbal Blend: $10, Herbal Preroll 3 pack: $5 , Herbal Preroll, Hemp Wick, & Bonus Crystal: $3
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.beachedsoulstarot.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beachedsoulstarot/?hl=en
- Other: Email: beachedsoulstarot@gmail.com to Book
Image Credits
Chris Spence(booth photo with business card)
Haeli Spence(booth photo with Market Littles)
