We were lucky to catch up with Margaret Mason Tate recently and have shared our conversation below.

Margaret Mason, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

My parents both passed away in the span of the last 2.5 years, and the question of how they have impacted me creatively has been one that’s on my mind a lot lately. My parents were both professional creatives at one or more points in their lives, and their own deep appreciation for creativity and art of all kinds made a huge mark on how I perceived creative careers. In fact, it is why I chose to switch paths in just my second semester of college, opting out of a stable if grisly career in forensic psychology and pathology and into…a fine arts degree in poetry. The only reason I believed this to be a viable option for me—aside from blind optimism and founded but yet untested confidence—was having grown up in an environment where artists were respected.

As professional comedic writers and performers, my parents gave me some great advice.

Here are one thing my father taught me that I wish I could tell every human being:

When I was in the second grade, I was invited to attend a birthday party. We were going to see BEETHOVEN’S 2ND in the movie theatre, and I confided in my father that i was nervous I would laugh when no one else did.

He looked at me and said, “Look, if you laugh and no one else does, then you’re the only one who knows what’s funny.”

This has impacted my willingness to laugh and to be the only one laughing, metaphorically and literally, throughout my creative career. It has enabled me to take risks, to believe in my own taste and creative sensibilities, and to go out on limbs I might not otherwise have been confident enough to go out on.

Both of them are gone now, and both of them ultimately retired from 9-5 careers that were not creative. I feel that my choice to earn a living on my own creative terms is a testament to them in so many ways. I know they’re proud of me and the example I’m setting for their grandchild.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

In 2017, my whole life changed when my husband and I got divorced. I chose to leave the industry I’d been devoted to, which was birth and postpartum care work, because being in the happy families business after my own family had dissolved was too challenging emotionally. I hadn’t had a boss in years, I was a newly single mom, and I needed to figure my life out.

In December of that year, I asked the Internet if there might be any interest in hearing what I had to say about self-care. There was an overwhelming response of “YES!” From then on, I made it my point to be sharing what I had learned about taking care of myself in spite of trauma over many years of extreme hardship after extreme hardship. That is how my flagship online challenge, the Tough Love Self-Care Challenge, was born.

After a very positive response from a few rounds of the TLSCC, people wanted and needed a continuation of that challenge, so I began an online community. This community was built to support personal development and self-care, and it encouraged thousands of people to improve their lives and situations. It was a great space for a few years!

During that time, I began to do private consulting with people who wanted to take better care of themselves and needed support, creative problem solving, scripts, accountability, and more. My calendar booked up quickly and I was on Zoom calls all day, every day. I loved helping people and connecting, but it was requiring an untenable amount of face time from me.

I had also began taking private divination clients.

My concept of Self-Care is five-fold, and involves Spirituality first and foremost. For me, spirituality as a polytheist and witch involves divination. And having been practicing different divination techniques such as tarot cards, rune stones, augury, and more for twenty-five years, it became evident that I could contribute to people’s lives by showing up as a conduit for divine messages. I spent years taking private divination clients before determining that it was not sustainable for my gift to continue at that pace one-on-one with people.

This led to the creation of two memberships: my self-care membership and my monthly forecast membership. Now I am able to focus all my time and energy into these two projects.

The self-care membership is an ongoing, perfectly-paced self-care journey. Every two weeks, you receive an email focusing on a different fact of your Self, with actionable items that WILL improve your life if you choose to take the time to do even one of them. Curated tools and resources, built in micro-coaching with me via the Marco Polo app, and just enough help to not overwhelm you.

The monthly forecast membership includes a look-ahead divination forecast in one or more of many techniques. You also have access to me via the Marco Polo app for Divination on Demand day, a free-for-all day each month in which I open myself up to messages on the members’ behalf. Along with my personal family rituals for the eight holidays we celebrate, this membership is super fun for anyone who would love an ongoing witchy treat.

I do still offer Yearly Forecasts and one-on-one consulting with people, but these are premium services that are reserved for clients who apply and are in an ongoing relationship with me. People get help with everything from writing their online dating profiles to sending letters of resignation to troubleshooting daily routines to gaining clarity on a fight with a friend.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Fun fact: I exclusively date [much] older non-creatives. It’s just who I attract, I tend to be a magnet for engineers, CEOs, and folks in medical technology. And while that seems very quirky and Dharma & Greg of me, it can be exhausting outlining what I do and how I actually earn a living to these people. They understand retreats, but the personal development and divination stuff…that’s where I lose them.

Imagine trying to explain to your dad’s best friend how you make money posting on Instagram and playing with tarot cards, and that’s every first date I ever go on.

What I help them understand is that when properly executed, self-employment is as solid and reliable as the type of work they’re used to. One can have an IRA, health insurance, and stability as a self-employed person, and even as a creative. It can be hard to see value in making art when you’re used to making other things, like money or software or lifesaving medical devices.

But laughter, art, and self-care save lives, too.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn my feelings about publishing on the internet. For years I had been writing and submitting to literary journals and publications that I felt were “real,” versus the internet that I felt was…like one big blog. It felt embarrassing to self-publish, and I felt like I was failing. I also felt really vulnerable to copyright infringement.

Ultimately what helped me unlearn this was seeing my reach. I can write something and try like Hell to get it published by a literary magazine I really respect…and probably fail…because failure is the name of the game more often than not in publishing. Or, I could self-publish and reach hundreds of thousands of people.

This lesson has appeared in a few different ways, like wanting to run a camp retreat, but it manifesting in ways that I hadn’t anticipated or seen coming or been prepared for.

Essentially this comes down to a more universal lesson that we should all learn, which is that a ton of the time, getting what we want won’t look like we thought it would. And we can choose to fight against what we are given in spite of it being what we asked for, or we can accept what it is and be grateful for getting what we wanted in the first place. I’m choosing the latter every day.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.margaretmasontate.com/emails
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/margaretmasontate/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@margaretmasontate

Image Credits
Arlyn Zuniga, Vivid Life Photography