Reimagining Ourselves In 2023
Happy New Year!
From an astrological perspective 2023 begins with a bit of a delay as both Mars, the planet that represents motivation and desire, and Mercury are retrograde through January 18 (Mars changes direction on the 12th). Which is perfect because in many ways 2023 is about reimagining your life and what is possible. When we don’t slow down and reassess giving ourselves the time to breathe and ground, the momentum of past experience pushes us forward and we recreate the same pattens.
When I was 23 I read a Joan Didion essay that opened “We tell ourselves stories in order to live…or at least we do for a while. I am talking here about a time when I began to doubt the premise for all of the stories I had ever told myself.” My life was altered in that moment. It had never occurred to me that in essence I was living a story that I had told myself about life. A story that I when I began examining it actually had been told to me by my parents, my school, my culture, that fact that I was a young woman vs a young man. All of them contributed to “my story” which in many ways defined not who I felt I was but who I was supposed to be. The gap between who I believed I was supposed to be vs who I was pretty much felt like agony at that point in my life. And until that point it had never occurred to me that that gap was in essence a story.
Here is the funny thing about stories: They can be either liberating or a prison. Our stories define us. They set the boundaries, the limits, of what we believe is possible for us and our lives. We actually unconsciously base our actions on these tales, the meanings we have given them and though these meanings we act within the invisible boundaries drawn by them.
Our stories become a prison when we began identifying with them as a noun instead of a verb.
Paraphrasing Rumi, we are the universe in ecstatic motion. We are always becoming. Our life, which in many ways is an ever changing story is meant to move. But sometimes we are so very transfixed by a particular version of ourselves that we keep recreating different version of the same story. These are the patterns that show up again and again. These stories, these tales of belief, are why we seem to date the same person in different clothing, why we never get the promotion we desire or why we repeatedly gain and lose weight. They are our own glass ceiling.
We get stuck when we don’t process, assimilate and integrate our stories. We have to digest them so we can release what is no longer nourishing us
I repeat 2023 in many ways is about reimagining your life and what is possible.
Personally, I am using this time in early January to pause and reflect. To take a moment and ask myself what I am truly hungry for, what experiences I crave. And even though I have been speaking about the retrogrades of Mercury and Mars that we are experiencing as the year begins, I am also looking at the interweaving, the dance, of all of the planets within the first quarter of the year.
This Friday, January 6, at 4:46pm Sedona time (MST) we have our first lunation of 2023; a Full Moon in Cancer. A sign that is connected to birth, belonging, comfort and security. Full Moons symbolically are about culmination and release.
What an opportunity to release our stories about ourselves, about our lives that we have used to stay “safe and secure!“
These are the shells we have in essence outgrown. Crabs must molt when they have outgrown their shell and they do so prior to the new shell being fully formed. While this new shell is hardening they are in an intensely vulnerable position to predators but it is a biological imperative. They would literally die if they remained in the old shell.
What “shell” are you still living in that you have outgrown?
One of the beautiful things about gazing at the world through the spectacles of astrology is that astrology is a lens of connection, it actively demonstrates the connection of the macrocosm to the microcosm that is our life.
When we become aware of the stories driving us they are, pardon the pun, no longer in the driver’s seat. When we are unconscious of them our stories in essence have us vs us having them. And we reenact them again and again just like a bedtime story that as young children we wanted read to us again and again as we were being tucked into bed. Even prior to being able to read children can often recite these stories from memory because they are engaged in them.
In order to reimagine our lives we must first become aware of what we have in essence already seeded and been nourishing through our own myths about our lives.
Astrology is a language of symbolism. To me the fact that Mars the planet of action and desire retracing his steps in Gemini, a sign that Mercury rules as Mercury is also retrograde is an invitation to retrace our steps/stories as the year begins. Particularly the pathways in our internal world; there is never an external solution to an internal problem.
Where have you been living by a definition what has grown far too small and constricted? What creature inside of you is unable to thrive?
Cancer also nourishes. By taking just a little time to contemplate this we have the opportunity to reseed as they year begins and then nourish those seeds such that they give birth to something entirely new over the course of 2023. Something bolder, something bigger something that breaks past old boundaries and heads out into a new frontier.
2023 is a year of re-envisioning what is possible for ourselves. Redefining our world is a powerful choice that takes agency over our lives. It is work to do it, but it is soul work and that is a profoundly beautiful thing that blossoms over time in ways that are gorgeous beyond our current imaginings.
