I am having some major insights into my self esteem issues as Venus and Mars continue to transit through the sign of sunshine and self, Leo after starting to clear the square to foggy Neptune in Scorpio. Due to my education being derailed by my Dad at the age of 19 I never got to really pursue my gifts and passion. In fact being put into a secretarial role meant I was there to support others. One of my longest secretarial jobs was working for the State Director of the New South Wales Liberal Party as a PA. I fell into this job after coming back from 2 and a half years overseas where my heart got broken by two men I had fallen in love with. I started doing a temp job after moving to Sydney to live with my God parents, since on my return Mum told me she was remarrying, we had only lost our Dad 2 years before this and later in her life she admitted it was a ‘mistake.’ I do not see it like this, I think in some ways it was good for Mum not to be alone but she loved my father deeply and often criticised this new partner. He on the other hand worshipped her.
Anyway my God parents took me in for some time before I moved out into a share house of alcoholics and people who used a lot of recreational drugs.. This was not a healthy place and I had a third termination of pregnancy while living there and that actually precipitated me moving out and buying my own flat which was a healthy step forward and one my mother supported me with to a point though she made the choice and often vetoed mine, something which my God father could not forgive. Later in life he took a set to against my Mum and some of my family often telling me “you are the best of the bunch” and giving me a lot of validation when I opened up to him about my sobriety.
Sadly my self esteem stayed low and it was lower when I drank. Finally as you may know I got sober in 1993 but at that point I was offered the opportunity to buy into the alternative shop I was managing in Sydney. Since we were soon to be married my husband and I decided that might not be for the best. This week some self judgment came up inside my mind for me not having the strength to take it on. But as it was soon after the business was sold I had a crisis and got sober and then lost my job there which meant I was free to focus on my sobriety and attend a lot of AA meetings. It was from this time on that my inner emotional journey (Neptune in Scorpio, and Chiron in Pisces two deeply emotional signs) began. It took me 6 years of attending meetings to then decide to move overseas to the land of my ancestors (something I did not know much about at the time in 1999) and begin in depth therapy. I also began two years later in 2001 to start studies with the Psychological Astrology school in London run my Liz Greene and Juliet Sharman Burke. But then I had another crisis precipitated by a flash of electric energy up my spine in June 2001 on the night before I was due to give my first tutorial on chart interpretation. In this dream there was a spiral staircase in which there were two couples, one ascending and the other descending, then in another part of the dream the walls were closing in on me making it difficult to breathe as I struggled in the dream to answer the phone to my Psychological Astrology tutor Juliet.
Shortly after this we decided to come back to Australia. At that time my mother had fallen and my sister in care was going through a lot of crisis. I immediately regretted this decision but my husband made me come back. I then had another crisis and went back to the UK for 6 months and when I returned to Australia my husband then wanted to move back to the UK but I felt to scared to leave my mother and sister, a decision I now see did hold me back but at least did mean I was there with them for their final years of which there were 10 and 14. But not before a third attempt to go back where I fell off my bike and hit my head open on an iron foundry, an accident the PTSD elements of which is still with me every single night and day.
As I look back I see what a challenge I had with Moon (emotions) Mars (desire, will, ambition) and Venus (relational and self esteem issues) and the Sun (sense of True Self and identity). In my chart Mars is limited by the suffocating influence of Saturn in Aquarius and Venus and the Sun are in challenging aspects to the Ascendant (sense of identity and self) and Neptune in the third house of siblings. My father had a lot of challenging Venus aspects in his chart with Venus in the soft sign of Libra. Dad was a quiet and gentle soul often pulled around my the restless ambitious energy of both my mother and brother who were both a lot alike in being strongly achievement oriented. At one time my brother put my Dad under so much pressure around money that his health deteriorated and in time he died. There were other stresses too which Dad as a long time smoker could not survive. Isnt it interesting the amount of pressure I too have been put under for money but two men that I connected to in both 2018 and 2022. Only slowly am I learning to set my boundaries around this.
Louise Hay often says that we attract relationships as mirrors, they are indeed mirrors of issues we grapple with. In addition I have just connected with a man also from the Netherlands (like my Dad) wiht a young daughter with long blond hair who looks a lot like me when I was young. Isnt this interesting?
Lately reading back on old posts I see the work I am having to do to rescue myself from those high emotional and ancestral seas. It is taking some time to achieve a point of clarity and I am going to post an except from the gnostic scripture The Gospel of Thomas after this which speaks of the journey to self love and to self understanding that speaks of how, in time, with inner work, what is hidden to us will be revealed if we can only be true to our soul and self. It also talks about how in any beginning we are also at an ending.
Today after a slow walk around the neighborhood with Jasper smelling everything, I was very patient with him and allowed him to sniff away to his hearts content instead of dragging him on the lead, I had a big spin spiral where I saw how often I see my friends as more worthy due to the fact that they have successful careers where as I do not. But you know what? I am actually in some ways more insightful emotionally and spiritually at times due to the challenges I have been through and really when I felt like I was being judged it hurt. I had lunch with one of these friends on Monday at Parliament House where she works as a speech writer for a government minister. This friend once told me I was living half a life. But the truth is I was living as full a life as I possibly could suffering all that I had.
Today I see that I have a lot of work to do with honoring my path. I also have work to do with where I may surrender my power. Sadly in our family another issue is that its actually emotional closeness we have struggled with most. Money was never a problem, there was always a lot of money but emotional closeness, comfort and empathy were often in short supply. So in many ways attracting people who want to be emotionally close is an important issue and may show me things about my own shadow. Sometimes we just need that soft and soothing understanding… And in time we must most certainly learn to give it to ourselves. But it is also important that as we open our hearts to our self and our journey and gifts and limits that we do the same for others, for most certainly only self knowledge leads to true happiness. And we are here to be strong to our inner centres most of all which is where a good relationship with the Moon, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Mars comes in. For some of us the insight into our True Self can be clouded by F.O.G. (the fear obligation and guilt) that does not come from a healthy sense of self and self esteem. As Neptune the ruler of both F.O.G. and where we connect as souls slows down to station retrograde this week things may at times feel foggy and nebulous but we may also through this process, over time, be gathering more insights into our True Selves.
Emerging From The Dark Night 