🌚 The Weekly Vibe: week of September 15-20
Welcome to Eclipse Season! Watch your mood around Sept. 17; things may get emotional leading up to the eclipse. Don’t be impulsive, and don’t make final decisions, but take notes on what’s surfacing for you around themes of the practical and the intuitive. These themes might be bringing significant changes or just resetting your beliefs. Watch out for illusions and hearing what you want to hear instead of the truth. Bring forth your inner Observer.
“What should we tell clients who don’t have any Earth in their chart? Would wearing a necklace with some grounding stone help?” was a question someone in my astrology class threw at our professor this week.
She responded with a masterful and gentle retort, hinting that it might be time to revisit the idea that “there are no dumb questions.”
Her response cut to the core of something we all do: waste time trying to be someone we’re not. And to the core of astrology’s message: here is who you are, make the best of it.
Instead of opening our charts (or the mirror) and looking at what we’re given with appreciation and ideas how to use it for good, we analyze what’s there to fix next. What crystal, what ritual would let us compensate for what we lack?
Later that same day, I came across a Chinese proverb that stopped me in my tracks, cementing the same idea:
Stress is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.
We so often think “working on ourselves” means eliminating flaws. In the quest of trying to round out all of the pieces of the Wheel of Life, we completely miss the point that the real work is to get closer to who we already are.
Astrology gives us the language to describe what we’re working with. Why would we try to rearrange the paragraphs and get further away from the truth?
As a perfectionist myself, I get how tempting it is to “work on” every perceived flaw—an empty area of a chart. What we lack frustrates us. It makes us feel out of control. Helpless, perhaps. Worthless, occasionally.
When I first dove into astrology seriously a decade ago, I was working as a beauty publicist for a massive brand—a glamorous dream on paper. In reality, I’ve never felt more miserable. Frankly, I was so bad at it.
Yet, I kept gaslighting myself that if I could just master small-talking over lipsticks, spend more time obsessing over the way I described a moisturizer in emails, and learn to catch when a press event invite was off by a shade of blush, everything would be okay. If I could just burry my real self, my narcissistic boss would finally tolerate me. I knew to feel better, I just had to fix myself, that’s all!
What initially came to save me was astrology.
While doomscrolling one day, I saw a post from a journalist I’d worked with before. She was leaving her high-profile beauty editor job to do astrology full-time. I DMed her immediately, and a few weeks later was commuting to the same astrology school she’s gone to, an hour and a half every Saturday for full-day classes.
In one of our initial classes, as we began to explore the fundamental elements of astrology—literally and metaphorically—it clicked for me. There was nothing inherently wrong with me; I was just in the wrong environment. My water-element strengths were being wasted in a high-fire, high-air setting that drained me instead of fulfilling me.
Within a month of starting classes, I had quit my job, packed up my apartment, and booked a one-way flight back to California.
I am not saying astrology magically fixed my life overnight. What it did, though, was offer me a lens to look at my experience and acknowledge the misalignment. It gave me the permission to stop forcing myself into roles that didn’t fit, even if they looked good on a resume.
One of the absolute truths is that we can’t find answers outside of ourselves. But sometimes we bury ourselves so deep, it becomes a path too long and dark to travel through. Astrology can be a shortcut. A crutch we can use as we get through the spiky terrain. A soothing reassurance for what we’ve felt intuitively all along.
So, why would we want to “compensate” for what’s in our chart when what’s present there can be so healing?
To get a bit woo-woo:
"You cannot look at yourself in bogus ways and be happy. You cannot argue for your limitations and be happy. You cannot beat up on yourself about what you should've done, or even what you should be doing right now, and be happy. You have to make peace with yourself, you have to make peace with where you are. It HAS to be alright that you don't make your bed and it HAS to be alright that you lay there all day if you feel like it. It has to be alright! You have to stop letting other humans who need you to do conditional things so that they can be conditionally happy guide you away from what TRUE love is."
Making peace with laying in bed all day is not refusing growth for the rest of your life. It’s acknowledging what’s present, with gratitude. There’s always room for stretching.
I know this message doesn’t “sell” astrology. An anxious mind craves a simple fix (and a pretty crystal). A worried mind has been told it was wrong plenty of times.
Nevertheless, my message is: leave your stone necklaces at home. Come as you are. Life’s too short to do otherwise.
🌝 On a Lighter Note
📺 I have been binging watching and reading work-related reading, so I have no fun recommendations this week, but I did finish KAOS, which I briefly mentioned having mixed feelings about, and my verdict is: I’m ready for another season!
🔮 Local Monterey area friends, pop by Untamed Fire on Sept. 22 to say hi and get a mini astro reading from 11 am - 5 pm. There will be all kinds of other esoteric readers and cool things to shop.
How Might I Support You?
Have you had enough of feeling burnt out and resigned from the things you love? You want to take action, but the fear of getting it wrong holds you back. At the same time, staying where you are may feel safer, yet the longer you wait, the more trapped you feel.
As a coach, I’ll support you to get clear on what is truly important to you, allowing you to break free from limitations imposed by societal expectations, self-doubt, and past experiences.
Are you searching for a deeper understanding of yourself and the patterns that shape your life? You’ve felt the subtle forces at play, but struggle to put them into words.
Astrology gives you the framework to articulate your experiences and uncover the wisdom behind them. With these insights, you can move forward with clarity and confidence.
Not Retrograde is a newsletter about the beauty and complexities of life on Earth, from an astrological perspective. Questions or topics you’d like to see covered in the future? Hit reply to reach me directly.
This is such a masterpiece on the ontological view of Astrology. Not compensating, but being who you really are! That’s brilliant and exactly what I needed to read today 🙌🏻
I loved this read Olga! So beautiful and so true. P.S. So curious who the beauty editor who quit her job is now 🙈