Sharing Stories

Our Medicine for the World

I think, like many of us here, I wonder what I am doing in this space.
What am I doing in this writing space?
What do I even have to write about?

There are already so many people talking about these things. About astrology, motherhood, mythology. And then I remember. We are here to share our stories. We all have a story. I have a story. You have a story. Our stories intertwine. We are stories within stories, all part of the greater Story, the One Story.

Each of our stories holds a piece. And maybe all we are here to do is share our piece.

I am here to share what I have learned along the way, what I am still learning, and what I would like to learn. I am here to share where I have fallen and how I have gotten back up. I am here to share what it is like to be a woman, a mother, a wife. What it is like to feel the greatest sorrow you have ever known, because I have felt it.

A couple of years ago, my life seemed to be falling apart, and I lost what I cared about most. I did not know where to turn. I thought I had failed, that every decision I had ever made was the wrong one, and that I would not make it through, or I did not care to.

But, as often happens in a descent, something unexpected occurred. I signed up for an astrology class through the California Institute of Integral Studies, a course on archetypal astrology. Not because I thought it would be helpful, but because I wondered why so many people were interested in this field. I didn’t believe astrology had much merit or that it could be useful in my life.

When I looked at my birth chart for the first time, it took a while for something to click. I started on the cerebral side, learning the planets, the archetypal combinations, how to calculate aspects, all the details. But eventually, we reached the part of the course where we calculated our transits.

In that moment, I realized I was at the peak of transiting Pluto square my natal Pluto, while also conjunct my natal Moon, and simultaneously square my natal Saturn. Suddenly, it all made sense. The descent I was in, the underworld journey I was living.

And when I went deep into Pluto, I discovered Persephone. I discovered Inanna, Ereshkigal. I discovered Demeter, Hekate, Lilith, and Kali. I found all the foremothers whose stories carried pieces of my own.

I was at the gates of the Underworld, hanging on a hook for days like Inanna, believing I would die. I had to strip everything away, lay down everything I ever cared about at those gates in order to find myself.

Someone once told me that after a Pluto transit, only what is real remains. I was living that truth. Every false identity, every illusion of what I thought I needed, every pursuit of recognition, gone in an instant.

And in that moment, I experienced something else. What I thought I couldn’t live without, I could. And not only that, but having it ripped from me (and it had to be ripped from me, I would never have given it up willingly), was the only way to become myself. Only the guardians of the Underworld could have taken it, knowing I needed to lose what I loved most to truly individuate, as Jung would say.

My whole world changed. Memories came flooding back, memories of who I really am. I began to see the myth of my life. There was no failure, no mistake, no wrong turn. It was all part of the story, one that had been written in the stars from the beginning.

When I had this map laid before me, at the very moment of my greatest descent, and I was given the stories of goddesses who had lived what I was living and emerged transformed, I felt I had found the medicine. The medicine I needed to share, and to keep working with.

The stars bring us home to the stories we are living. Within them are the stories of our ancestors, reminding us of who we are, why descent happens, why things are taken, and what we came here to grow.

So, together with the stars and the stories, I am growing myself again. I am remembering something that has been buried for a long time. And I am writing about it, because what else is there to do? That is what has always been done.

The stories have always been told, always carried forward. And even though part of me wants to hide from the world, because it is a fast, bewildering, and often harsh place, I feel a responsibility to share them. For my children. For my children’s children. For their children after them.

Because that is where the wisdom lives. In the stories, in the memories, in the connections.

I am not here to educate or to inspire or to fill a gap. I’m here to share my story. Because I believe that in sharing our stories, we offer one of the most powerful medicines there is.