emotional healing

Tell me something good.

It’s human nature to seek pleasure and avoid pain.  Nobody wants to feel bad, or go through difficult situations.  I have been an astrologer for more than half of my life now, so it’s hard for me to remember what it was like before I knew about planetary cycles that were likely to bring challenges that required adjustment and change, but I imagine that it is pretty confusing.  Life is going great, and then all of a sudden here comes a curve ball and suddenly I’m feeling depressed for apparently no reason.

Some of you have heard me say that I have the hardest chart I’ve ever seen, and I like to think that’s so that I can bring some understanding to the table when consulting with clients.  When I talk about healing the core wound, or dealing with depression, it’s not just a concept – I’ve been there.  I know what it’s like to consider suicide.  I know what it’s like to feel that life will never get any better.  But I also know what it’s like to have moved through these horribly difficult times and come out the other side with great joy and happiness.

Sometimes in a consultation the client will say “I’ve just had a terrible time but now I want to move on.  Tell me something good.”  And it would be easy to help her to forget about where she has just been and talk only about the Jupiter transits that are coming, or the fact that her Moon has just progressed into Sagittarius which will make it easier for her to avoid the pain that she’s feeling.  But my experience tells me that before we can REALLY move on, we have to understand […]

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By |2019-11-10T19:09:05-05:00August 28th, 2019|Astrology|3 Comments
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Grief is like a river

Yesterday I played some music for a community event called “Death and Cupcakes,”  an exploration of the expression of grief.  Although there were a few men in the group, it was the women who shared their stories.  One whose husband died from ALS and struggles for her children to find a way forward after this devastating loss.  One whose son died a few years ago and seeks to find a ritual to remember him on the third anniversary of his death.  One who struggles with “anticipatory grief” knowing that someone she loves plan to take his life.

Grief is the deep emotion of mourning a loss.  Typically we think of grief as mourning the death of a loved one, but I wonder if grief can be defined as any loss of love.  In life our losses can mount up.  The loss of an idea of a mother’s love.  The loss of a dream of a marriage that didn’t work out and the love of that partner. The loss of a special pet.  The loss when a child leaves the home. The loss caused by regret that we didn’t do enough for someone we love once they are gone.

One thing that struck me yesterday is that there is no one structure that we can build for healing our grief.  Not only is every situation of loss different, every one of us experiences grief differently and crystallizes the experience of loss into our lives in different ways.  Grief can make us feel closer to the ones we have lost.  It sometimes becomes part of our story – a new identity that we take on.  After my mother lost her husband the first thing she would say when she met someone new […]

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By |2019-11-10T19:04:58-05:00March 24th, 2019|Inspiration|11 Comments
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Astrology in my world: Pluto transit to Chiron

Pluto ChironEarly in my career as an astrologer, each day I carefully studied all of the bumps that the planets and luminaries (Sun and Moon) would make to my chart. After a lifetime of emotional disarray, it gave me tremendous comfort to see how when the Moon made a 90 degree angle to Saturn in my chart I felt depressed for a few hours. I could predict by watching the movement of Mars in relation to my chart when I would blow up at a friend or colleague. I was almost obsessive in my correlating the planetary cycles with my behavior.

Understanding these relationships between the movement of the planets and our personal experience helps us to ride through periods of distress in a way that I don’t think is possible without that knowledge.  I have clients come to me in a terrible depression or some other kind of psychic distress, and when we are able to identify the planet that is at work in that client’s chart we can identify not only the nature of the distress this person is experiencing, but also the timing of the difficulty and when it will begin to lift.

“So I’m NOT crazy,” the client will say.  It’s only Chiron.  Or one of the other Big Guys: Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

When I was younger I feared the intensity of my emotions and worried that if I let them, they would completely take over my psyche.  Over the years I have learned that emotions are simply energy, and that if a planetary cycle brings about emotional distress there is something to be learned and observed.  If we run from those feelings or try to block them, exterior situations such as relationship problems […]

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By |2019-09-17T17:11:11-04:00April 14th, 2011|Astrology in my world|4 Comments
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