Aries, symbolized by the ram, is the embodiment of the Emperor card in tarot. He is the literal rebirth, the newborn baby asking us to take up aligned space. Although very masculine in energy, he is reminding us that we are worthy and enough just the way we were born. This is our birthright as human beings on this earthly plane. It’s society and our culture that makes us think that we have to strive to be something that we are not. It’s our job as individuals to remember who the fuck we are. And then we have to go on the long journey of living our lives in that way. This is not to say that any of this is easy, as simple as it sounds. This is a bumpy road to travel, mainly because we have spent so much time meandering on a path that someone else has laid out for us to follow.
Ramming Into It
The ram rules the head, fittingly enough considering how they like to smash into things with their curved horns, destroying anything and everything in its path. Aries is governed by the planet Mars, the warrior planet, and with that holds the main themes of the ram. This is all to say that this is the time in which to nurture our mental faculties, our inner strength. It is with this tenacity that we can overcome our own personal weaknesses, whatever they may be. I am constantly working on my own, a journey that I am starting to realize I may never conclude.
The Tower card in the tarot is also ruled by Mars, and can accompany us on this path forward. People tend to fear the Tower, much like the Devil in the tarot. It’s actually one of my favorite major arcana cards in the deck. It digs at things from the roots, wrecking the foundation in the process. Sometimes the infrastructure is the problem. We can see that very clearly in our society in regards to racism, for example, or misogyny. If the systems that we’ve created for ourselves are flawed, than no matter how much lipstick we put on it, it’s still fucked. The only thing we can do is to start over, to rebuild ourselves from the ground up.
If getting blown up in a food truck has taught me anything it’s that sometimes things need to burn to the ground. Sometimes the ground needs to be cleared out so that something new and wonderful can be built in its place. Is it scary? Fuck yes it is. Is it necessary? Also yes. I don’t believe that everyone needs to hit rock bottom in order to see change occur in their lives. Some people do very well learning those lessons from watching others fall on their asses. Me? I’m one of those people that has to learn things the hard way. I would relegate it to the perseverance of that ram, but I don’t have anything in Aries in my chart. My Mars is actually in Capricorn; that stubborn goat probably has more to do with it than I give it credit for.
Rerouting Opportunities
No one wants to admit that their path is flawed, or that they were on the wrong one in the first place. I’ll be the first. The direction that I was headed in my life was either going to land me in jail, or worse dead. It’s the whole reason I left. I didn’t tell anyone else that. I wrapped it all up in this pretty little package of starting a new career, one that wasn’t at all involved with restaurants. That was a half-truth. I absolutely want nothing to do with restaurants, except maybe occasionally dining at one. When I quit the hippie bar though, I had no plans. I just knew that I needed to get out, and make it a quick escape before I had time to change my mind. Call it an Irish goodbye. Cheers! I’m out.
I didn’t really know how I was going to make a living. I just knew that I could no longer repeat the same patterns and not continue to suffer. I had to be the one who changed, because I know damn well that the industry won’t. Those who work in restaurants will continue to be abused by the system, will continue to be abused by the people that frequent them. I am fully aware of the fact that I, as a higher up within that system, participated in the maltreatment of the people under me. This is something that I am still learning to forgive myself for, and yet another reason why I walked away. I began to hate myself. It was what my anxiety had been telling me all along had I taken the time to sit and listen to what it was telling me.
Meditation and mindfulness practices have been a lifeline for me. That along with my morning pages. The give me the space and the capacity to stay tethered to my center, the core of who I really am. That is the space that I want to live out of everyday. It has taken me a ton of discrimination to discern what thoughts are mine and what thoughts have been implanted into me by others. This is key to living from our own hearts, learning how to cut away at the dead and extraneous parts of us that are no longer serving the person we want to be.
Chasing Dreams
There is grief that resides in this renewal process. Walking away from one life in order to begin a new one can bring with it both elation and sorrow. I cried a myriad of tears when I made the decision to walk away from both participating and purchasing the thing that I had worked my whole life for. This was a dream of mine that I have held onto since high school. I went for it, slowly climbing the ladder into all the various job titles in that industry. I got all the way to the top only to realize that I didn’t want it anymore. The ladder was leaning up against the wrong building. Then I got the opportunity to mourn that fact, the one where I spent my entire life chasing the wrong dream.
The upside to all of this is that I now have new dreams, ones that don’t keep me awake all night in a state of panic. I’m still trying to figure out how to make them all come true, which is a task in and of itself. I guess I never realized that the panic was telling me that I was out of alignment with what my heart wanted of me. I was trying to suppress the anxiety through a hefty cocktail of Xanax and various anti-depressants, which actually just numbed me from all of my emotions. I am not against medication, but in this case, it wasn’t helping me to solve the problem. It was only covering it up, unsuccessfully I might add. I learned that when I tried to up my dosage and my doctor kindly informed me that I was taking that maximum allowed. Well shit!
I spent the better part of this pandemonium having my own personal come to Jesus. There was a little bit of white fragility in the beginning, followed by a bunch of therapy both group and individual. I admit this because as a white woman who grew up in our society, I was and probably still am slightly racist. How can I not be? I am unlearning so much, not just from this perspective but also about myself as a person who has emotions. I’ve suppressed them for so long, and now they are so big. It’s like when there is a large undercurrent in the ocean, you know there is a big wave coming soon. I’m still over here learning how to surf. Cowabunga!
Mad love, Jenna
