“You could lean to the extreme, though.”
I sit taller. Goosebumps shiver up my arms. I feel my ears press back as if to make more space for receiving a truth I already know in my inner worlds to be true.
“Here,” she traces over a delicate sheet of paper detailing the story of my life as narrated by the stars. The astrological birth chart gleams in faint black. I gaze down into a miniature universe depicting layers of circles, ripples revealing symbols, divined planetary landings and potential meanings for cosmic play and destiny weaving into my everyday Gemini journey.
Gemini. Sun Sign. :: Enthusiastic Communicator.
Cancer. Moon Sign. :: The Lunar Goddess reigns supreme in my emotional house. My emotions are strong waves, a power to be harnessed or a force that can sweep me into unsteady, turbulent tides. I choose how to utilize.
Scorpio. Rising Sign. :: Gemini meets Scorpio, Scorpio meets Gemini. I illuminate the shadows with light. I speak. I advocate. I shine on the wounding for healing.
“Baby, not everyone wants to be seen in the way that you see. Not everyone wants to be revealed in bright authenticity. And you can’t help but do the revealing. That’s your light. Do you know how you are?”
I lean closer to where she points, into a quivering heartbeat of a line hinting at my upcoming course.
Does Jessica know? I wonder if my coworker reading my chart knows that I am planning an uproot, a life change predicted possibly here.
I’m rumbling with plans to leave the work that even the chart seems to point out is well-fitted for me…facilitating talks on bystander empowerment, on interpersonal violence, initiating action, calling out the shadows, calling in the light. Soul work.
Soul work that directs me a few times to answer the hot line in the front office of the domestic violence shelter.
“I’ve had no formal training,” I whimper as I anxiously scan a well-worn notebook describing what to say and what not to say to someone in crisis. Behind me, two coworkers discuss a client, a woman who has returned back to her abuser.
“She went back!” I gasp, jumping into their conversation.
“This,” my coworker motions to my face, my big reaction, what a plain therapist once described as an over-the-top facial expression (I’m just theatrical and feel my feelings openly).
“This. Got to go. It’s probably one of your charms, but leave it out. Women go back to their perps all the time, so keep it neutral.”
Then, Jessica appears, walking into the office in search of tape, and her earth mama energy embraces me, and our conversation shifts to birthdays, Zodiac signs, letting me momentarily drop the fear around answering the hot line. And my curiosity to seek, to derive messages from this turbulent chapter of my life sparks my decision to have her read my birth chart.
I sit on the floor of her cozy living room. Candles burn. A winter night presses up against the windows, but I feel electric with a heat stimulated from soul learning.
Jessica shares that my work at the domestic violence shelter is aligned with the stars, with my destiny, and yet…there’s another pull of fate whispering to go west. A change is brewing. I am leaving, and she may be one of the first to know…to guess that my upcoming Saturn Return may galvanize a drastic life turn.
“You’re highly independent. Freedom, claiming freedom, breaking free are major themes for your life, specifically for this lifetime.”
I purr with pride.
“Be mindful. You could lean to the extreme, though. Claim independence and raise your walls.”
A vision shimmers to the surface. I am alone, and I am happy in my aloneness, and there’s also the cautionary whisper to stay open.
And this vision dances into being while I celebrate my Austinversary.
I dance on Austinversary to hype up my energy for my party.
I dance to Beyonce. I spin in circles, in the creation of my own orbits, a Gemini expressing her Lunar lightness. My Scorpio takes part in the dance, points out this expanding well of happiness-- this stretch of space, this is mine, and only mine, to claim.
I am single. Superstar single. There’s no crush holding weight. There’s no former flame skirting in on the edges of thought. My life shimmers in possibilities, ideas, the blooming of manifestations I initiate by shedding fear and trusting gut. I have no one distracting me, dictating my steps, influencing my interests, selfishly stealing my time for his own therapy.
I am wild with independence here in Austin, and I do not want to swipe this singleness away in an attempt to skip the trembling responsibility of choosing the direction of my own life.
I am grateful for this gift of time in my life to untangle my love knots, focus on healing and becoming, and boldly immerse in creativity. My singleness is exuberant wholeness. My solo escapades energize my courage to keep daring.
I am a twenty-seven-year old, educated woman with the freedom to forge her own path. In the history of women on this planet, and in the current conditions for so many women still on this planet, this freedom to be single, to decide and independently create my course, is a rare, wondrous, powerful gift.
And. I still hear the echo of the reading from that November night over a year ago.
I know I could to lean to the extreme.
I brush up against the wall now, and its presence teaches me boundaries and openness.
I keep watching my reactions.
I untangle my love knots. I pause and trace the orbits of my own patterns. I shed the layers of people-pleasing, conditioning, misbeliefs, and learn to only accept the love, respect, affection, lightheartedness I deserve and am worthy of in a relationship.
I keep returning to feeling.
What would it feel like to be in a healthy relationship with a man who loves, appreciates, admires me in the same sparkling way I love, appreciate, admire him? What does adoration feel like? What would it feel like to be adored by a man whom I adore, and to let myself receive that adoring openheartedly and wildly?
I lean into the feeling, into unearthing the feeling, and once the feeling is clear, I release my prayer to the Universe, to Cupid. Because who I choose romantically has a significant impact on my life, my creativity, and to the people I share my life with. So I must choose well, and be open and protective, too.
And I watch my Loves, my Women, and their spins with men.
I see my Loves, my Women, choose men who are undeserving of their brilliance. I watch my women fall for the crafted promise proposed in a text, for the wink and declaration that he’s changed, but Love, he hasn’t changed, just his diction and tactic. I watch my women exhaust their energy into patterns, into giving, moving, analyzing the whims and self-centered needs of their men. I watch my women sacrifice again and again for men who never would sacrifice for them. And then they sugarcoat their sacrifice by calling it compromise. I see so much compromise, and see so much hurt, and see a lessening of my women’s shine.
And I understand, loves, I do, because, this has been me, too.
Throughout my early twenties, I relinquished power to men who were utterly undeserving of my affections, my mental space, my energy. These men did not hit, but they inflicted emotional abuse through ghosting, ignoring, comparing and pitting me up against other women, and gas-lighting.
The eye-opening lesson comes from a covert narcissist, who masterfully manipulated and messed with my feelings to feed his own ego, his own bloated sense of worth. He'd fake future, engage and then aggressively avoid, and I got tangled up in this dysfunctional behavior that I couldn’t name, didn’t have the language to speak to this silent interaction of energy.
(This memory emerges. We’ve been talking, and he asks to me a party. I show in all heartbeats of nervousness. He briefly glances at me, makes eye-contact, and maneuvers to place his arms around another woman, and ignores me. I leave. I sob in the car ride home. I vow to not be mistreated, disrespected in that manner again. He sends a sugary text, because he is of course sorry he didn’t get the chance to talk to me, and back into the cycle I go.)
He is the best warning I have ever received.
I think of him as I watch her respond to the text, notice the light of excitement beam through her face, making her voice like honey, and she’s elated to be going out with him. And my heart sinks in heavy doubt and concern. This man is a narcissist. This man will make her feel good until he gets what he wants and then he’ll return to tactics that are cruel. I know their pattern. I’ve been abused that way, and now I see why I lean to the extreme.
I keep my face neutral as she tells me. My training from the shelter informs me how to respond.
Compassion.
Only compassion, and an alignment with truth and trust to speak the words that when they are ready to be heard, when they are asked for, then will be received.
Self-compassion, too, for me as I dance into my second year in Austin, as I continue to break free and expand into inviting healthy relationships with men.
Yes, I receive the warning, the warning of how wounded men can behave in relationships, and the warning to not close myself off to relationships that emanate goodness, grace, gorgeous, all-encompassing embraces of admiration, adoration, attentive respect.
I determine my own balance, an aligned center that will attract a love that cradles and frees this Gemini all at once. And affirming that love is already here, it’s within, and it can be released through a Beyonce playlist and a bow to what once was and a rising in love to what will be. And right here and right now, there is only love to guide, to circle my women, and teach how to proceed in soft, authentic shine.