Happy (Astrological) New Year!
The Spring Equinox is here and it marks the beginning of the astrological new year, so I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what I’ve learned over the last year. Spring has quickly become my favorite time of year post spiritual awakening because of how dense the energy is during the Winter. It tends to require everyone to slow down, isolate, and turn inward and this only got more true the more I opened up to the energy around me. The first Winter after my spiritual awakening was the worst, but each year has gotten easier and I attribute some of that to me learning how to work with the astrological transits and seasons.
Before considering the spiritual path that I walk now, I was interested in astrology and the zodiac signs. I started exploring that more after leaving church for good and I came across profection years which has been a very helpful tool along my healing journey. If you aren’t sure what they are, annual profections originate within Hellenistic astrology and it’s the belief that each age is aligned with the theme of a specific house out of the astrological wheel. This year I was in a 2nd and 3rd house profection year so a lot of my lessons were around my values, communication, and how I show up in my community.
Communication and public speaking have always been difficult for me, so for this to be big theme in the energy around me was very overwhelming. I had to reflect on everything that had led to my hesitation towards this aspect of life, especially if I want to share what I’ve learned with others. What I love about profection years is the one before always sets you up for the next one to come, so I started this with examining my values about myself and everything I have in my life. I have struggled with valuing myself or what I bring to this world for many, many years and this created a lot of issues as I tried to evolve myself and my work. I had to get my priorities straight about what was truly important and what wasn’t and I definitely learned a lot of this the hard way.
I’ve healed a lot through the relationships in my life and they’ve hardly been through peaceful circumstances. In the pursuit of valuing myself more this year, I’ve learned how to stand up for what I deserve and those who benefitted from my lack of boundaries didn’t stick around much after that. This brought up a lot of inner child wounds for me to tend to and even though these relationships didn’t end well, I’m still incredibly grateful for what they have taught me. I had held onto so much pain surrounding the mistreatment I’ve experienced and I’ve allowed those experiences to dictate how I navigate through life. I realized that it was creating a lot of people-pleasing tendencies and it was pulling me further and further from my authentic self. I used to think people exiting my life was a reflection of what was wrong with me when in reality we had just fallen out of alignment with each other which is perfectly normal. People come into our lives to teach us something about loving ourselves and others and most aren’t intended to stick around forever anyway - including family.
One of my biggest takeaways from this last year is that I’m not helping anyone by being quiet. By trying to please everyone around me, I was not only dishonoring myself but keeping others from what they needed to heal too. By quieting myself, I was keeping others from my perspective and wisdom that they could have learned from so I try to be as honest with myself and others as often as I can, no matter how uncomfortable it makes me. I appreciate what my time in the prison of people-pleasing taught me about being considerate of others but this year taught me how to extend that kindness to myself. I can’t depend on people to consider me in the same way I do for them, so it’s up to me to consider myself as much as I would others. I deserve to experience the love that I put out in the world.
This last winter was hard, but it has shown me my value. I am beginning to understand why my voice, magic, and energy are important in this world and this has made such a difference in my battle with self doubt and imposter syndrome. It’s given me the confidence needed to start bringing my ideas to fruition and to share them more proudly because I finally believe in myself and this dream of mine. I’m looking forward to sharing what I’ve been working on and some of the creations that have come from the last few months of healing. I’ve evolved in every aspect of my spiritual work and finally feel connected with my personal power. I’m excited to see what this new year brings everyone else as well. I encourage you to learn more about what the themes of your year may look like and learn how you can flow with them over resisting what it may entail.
If you aren’t sure how to celebrate the spring equinox, take a look at some of the practices that help me start the new year off strong here.
