What does healing even mean? To be willing to work on healing you first have to acknowledge that you have weakness–something that not everyone is all that willing to do. Everyone has scars. Everyone has triggers. Often our wounds scab over and heal the best that they can for the time being but often they are still actively infected under the surface. They lie dormant (or not) until they are inevitably triggered. To really fully heal a wound, often we have to open it back up and cut away all of the infected tissue. This is obviously not a fun process. It can be incredibly painful. When it comes to emotional wounds, sometimes talking about what happened to us can feel like being traumatized all over again. This is obvious why many people would rather continue to ignore their wounds and pretend like everything is okay when it is not.
We often develop coping mechanisms and may even have blindspots in our logic about our wounds. The human mind is fascinating. We are built for survival and sometimes we cannot psychologically bare the trauma that we went through (especially when it occurs in childhood) so we may block our own memories. The gaps in our logic may help us to avoid feeling pain, or we may blame ourselves rather than who really caused our pain. Working with someone who can gently point out some of these gaps in your logic or memory will greatly aid in the healing process. Being shown another perspective of the events that occurred can be extremely freeing. Victims often tend to blame themselves and this needs to be pointed out as well.
When you’re Ready to do the Work
As previously mentioned. healing really is hard work and it can be absolutely terrifying to face your past. It takes a lot of bravery and vulnerability to look at old wounds and to talk about them. Having someone by your side who both encourages you and gives you a reality check when you need it, is invaluable! This value can be multiplied by a thousand if that person is an astrologer. An astrologer will be able to see your wounding in your birth chart and will also see themes that connect to the wound. A good astrologer will help you to understand better all of the levels of complexity that show how your wounding may still affect you in your current life. It is also incredibly validating to see for yourself in your birth chart your trauma. Astrology can also help you to put together the words to describe how you feel which can feel incredibly empowering.
To be clear, everyone will have Chiron and Lilith somewhere in their chart. No one escapes wounding and shame in this lifetime all together and pain is definitively relative! Everyone’s pain and shame matters. It is my belief that there are some souls that have signed up for extremely difficult lives in order to later use their experiences as a gift. Healing your own wounds enables you to help others. It also makes you a much safer place for someone else who has been traumatized because you can understand.
Trauma Indicators
It is absolutely incredible how obviously painful experiences can show up in a birth chart. The biggest indicator of wounding in the chart is an aspect between the moon and Chiron, especially a conjunction, opposition, or square. This shows a connection from the person’s emotions (and perhaps their mother) to their deepest wound. The same is true for Lilith, which can represent the part of us that we feel ashamed of. Our moon is our most sensitive point since it represents our emotional comfort. Because of this it can also be painful to have aspects from the moon to Saturn or Mars. If any of these planetary bodies (Chiron, Lilith, Mars or Saturn) are in the 4th house it can indicate a tough early home life. Any planet in close aspect to Lilith can indicate shame linked to whatever that planet represents. Another house worth mentioning is the 8th. Any planets in the 8th house in a birth chart is meant to transform. It will have to figuratively die and be reborn over and over again throughout your entire life. This obviously isn’t easy but it does makes for a very dynamic individual that can learn to embrace transformation. The last difficult house that I will mention is the 12th. Planets get lost here sometimes and can have a hard time expressing in a healthy way. The sun or moon in the 12th house may represent an unavailable parent, whether physically or emotionally.
When we see several indicators of trauma a story starts to unfold. One or two of these indicators can be luck of the draw and may not manifest terribly in a person’s life. However, if there are many trauma indicators in the birth chart the astrology is difficult to ignore and it often manifests.
Trauma tends to get stuck within a person. In some cases people get stuck in victim mode and subconsciously find ways to retraumatize themselves. They will play out the same patterns again and again and be drawn to people who’s energy feel familiar and/or exciting. When the energy that is familiar to you is abusive, you are almost drawn to it because it is how you may subconsciously (or not) feel that you deserve to be treated. When people are “too nice to you” it can feel uncomfortable or fake. It can be hard to let the good in. It can feel scary to trust a good person for fear that they will let you down and prove you right that everyone does eventually hurt you.
Making Peace with Yourself
This may sound weird, but the hardest person in the whole world to forgive is often ourselves. Tied into our past experiences and memories of trauma is a lot of guilt and shame. We victim blame so incredibly badly when the victim is us. We always think that we should have reacted differently and we think of past versions of ourselves as weak or pathetic or asking for it. Oftentimes too these traumas have happened in childhood. Can you imagine yourself looking at a child that you do not know and calling them weak when they are treated wrongly? Of course not. The child that you used to be deserved to be protected and loved. One of the most empowering things that we can do is to visualize our inner child and let them know that they did not deserve the treatment that they got. It is okay to feel sorry for ourselves. It is healthy for us to grieve the childhood that we did not have.
Once we begin to be able to forgive ourselves, we can begin to forgive others too. I think carrying hate in our hearts is a really big burden. It is obviously a very personal decision whether or not to forgive our abusers. I understand that for some it is not something that they have any interest in doing. That is okay. I do not think this step can happen until someone has really come to terms with their past. The key to forgiving our abusers is for us to begin to wrap our minds around what must have happened to these people for them to be able to treat you how they did. What patterns are they repeating? What pain is locked inside of them? And oftentimes what are they using drugs or alcohol for to try to escape? If you can figure out how to pity your abuser, they are not so scary anymore–they are quite sad and tragic.
So What now?
Once you get your full story out it will have less power over you. Things trapped in our heads tend to spiral and can feel much bigger and more powerful than they are. Hopefully getting it all out and being able to see what happened to you from different perspectives will help you to make peace with your past. Now we can use that same astrology chart to look for gifts. We can learn what makes us incredibly unique and special and begin to focus on that. We can learn about our communication styles especially in contrast to others in our lives. We can see and appreciate how different we all are. We can begin to cut others slack because we see how differently they process things than we do. We can begin to have better and more fulfilling relationships.
We tend to normalize our own positive traits and often assume that other people are like us and have the same abilities. We do not always realize how special our minds and hearts are. Astrology can help us to find our greatest strengths and what makes us special. It also helps us to know more what we like or might like so that we can spend more time doing those activities. Astrology can also inspire us to try new things so that we can find our passions and what we love to do. It also can show our values and what kind of people we should surround ourselves with.
Please Heal Yourself
Heal yourself so that you can help to heal others. That is what the world needs now and I believe that it is ready for it. Learn how to communicate with yourself and others in a healthy and constructive way. Learn to love the world and the people in it because that kind of energy is incredibly contagious. The rules of the world are changing! We are creating the future together. Best of luck and love to you all and as always I’m open for readings and life coaching if any of you are interested.