Every time we begin a new zodiacal season, we get taken on a new adventure. About a week into each new season, we then get the new moon for that sign, this particular one being in Leo. Knowing the archetype of each sign and where it lands in your own personal birth chart can give one great insight into how the next six months of your life are going to go, or at the very least grant you a peek into what maybe you might want to take a closer look at. Leo is my moon sign and and lands in the eleventh house of teamwork and technology, ruling social activism and humanitarian work. Your moon sign dictates how your emotional systems work. It’s an internal clock of sorts, giving you a clear directive about the five senses and what your intuition may be telling you. It can provide you with an amazing insight into what it is that you hold dear to your heart and how you feel about the world.
Leo Season carries with it the archetype of the performer or the creator. Landing smack dab in the middle of summer, and also being ruled by the Sun, we can use these extra daylight hours to become more acquainted with the things that bring us the utmost joy. The Sun, being the Giver of Light, is essentially telling us to grab the tiger (lion?) by the tail and do whatever it is that makes us happy in the moment. I have been finding myself simply learning how to play more in this life, something I had long forgotten was important. Our society is so fixated on the concept of hustle culture, and I got completely wrapped up in it all. The pandemic really forced me to slow down and assess my life in a completely different way than ever before. As someone who jumps out of bed, ready to begin each day with an annoying amount of gusto, I have always been a person on the go, hurrying to get to the next thing. This whole rest and relaxation thing has proven to be yet another confusing mountain to climb, another teaching for me to unlearn.
You Better Work Bitch
I was taught at a very young age that my worth was wrapped in my productivity. I was constantly coming up with ideas to make money: lemonade stands, yard sales, craft sales, and the like. In school we had fundraisers, and I was the person ranking at the top of the sales charts. In seventh grade I beat out everyone, winning a limousine ride to Pizza Hut for lunch for me and my chosen friend. I got my first job working the gate at the local pool near my house, sometimes even working the concession stand for extra shifts. I could ride my bike there, and to be honest, I was going to be there all day everyday anyway. I may as well make a few bucks was my thought process, not realizing that I was going to go down a path of working 80 hours a week for the rest of my godforsaken life.
Here’s the problem with instilling these values into your children: they don’t know how to rest. The idea of doing nothing causes me severe anxiety. I’m talking laying around and reading a book causes my physical body more distress than waiting tables ever did. I know that sounds like the weirdest concept in the world to some, but this stems from a childhood of being constantly on the move. I had afterschool activities and weekend activities, and I was rarely allowed to sleep in. “You are sleeping the day away,” they would say. Resting made me a much less valuable person in people’s eyes, deeming me unworthy, as not enough. I kept up this work mentality beyond even getting blown up in a food truck. And to this day I still catch myself going down that negative thought cycle.
I guess you could say that I have been spending these past few years learning how to chill the fuck out, how to enjoy what I already have. This isn’t to say that I want to stay in this place, because I do have dreams that I want to realize and goals that I want to accomplish. I’m just enjoying the ride a little bit more, something I never would have been okay with before. I can remember a very specific time when I was riding in a car with an old boss. She was driving, and I was trying to work from my phone. It was around dusk and a sunset was forming on the horizon. My boss excitedly told me to stop working to look at the beautiful colors landscaping the sky. Without even looking up from my phone, I responded with, “who has time to look at sunsets?” What?! The question should be, “who doesn’t have time for sunsets?”
Life is for Living
It is no easy feat trying to remain in the present moment. We as humans like to know what’s on the next horizon. We don’t exactly like uncertainty, even though when we get down to it that is the only certainty in life. We don’t really know what it going to happen next. We can predict, we can make some educated guesses, but we can’t for sure say what a person is going to do in any given situation. Some people thrive on this type of spontaneity, but as someone who has gone through a boatload of trauma, that quite frankly terrifies the hell out of me. Don’t throw me a surprise party either. I had someone try that once, but luckily I ended up finding out about it ahead of time.
I like planning. I like knowing what we are doing, where we are going, and who’s going to be there. As soon as we get there, I’m going to locate all the exits and figure out the quickest way out possible. I will probably do an Irish Goodbye somewhere in middle of it all. This, my friends, is called hypervigilance. It’s a trauma response, a method used in an attempt to find some calm within the body and one I still use on the regular. As much work as I’ve done on myself, this is one thing that I can’t seem to shake. I have even done some odd forms of EMDR to try to resolve some of the stress that I still put myself under in social settings, to no avail. And as much as I believe that this work is a lifelong journey, I am reminded of therapist number three telling me that I need to stop trying to solve all of my problems at once. Life is also for living.
Your problems aren’t going to go away, but that doesn’t mean that you entire life needs to be focused on fixing everything. You aren’t broken, and I say this as someone who has cried those words of self-defeat while sitting on the therapy couch. I described myself as a broken glass doll, thinking in my head that my life had shattered before my eyes. I desperately wanted to glue the pieces of my broken self back together, only to come to conclusion that I wasn’t actually defective. Those cracks, the parts of us that we try to mend, that’s where the light comes out. We rupture because we keep stifling our true selves, hoping that by shoving certain things away that we will be more accepted, that we will belong to something. It’s really the only thing we humans need in order to survive, to be seen and to be heard in the fullness of our glory.
Chasing Joy
All I have ever wanted was to be happy and I have been chasing that emotion for years, which is exactly the thing I am now learning not to do. Happiness can’t be maintained, and neither can sadness if we’re being honest. It’s physically unsustainable to be constantly going in one direction. Much like the ocean it can’t always be high tide, nor can it always be low tide. Mother Nature requires this back and forth motion so that we can in fact make progress in our lives. I was going so hard that it led to the inevitable demise, that of burnout, something I think a lot of us have recently felt. I was trying so hard to get to the next big life achievement that I was missing out the little things that happen on a daily basis, much like that sunset. We will skip the fact that the reason my boss was able to enjoy said sunset was because she had delegated much of the workload to me.
I take much more time now for myself, something I rarely did before thanks to my people-pleasing tendencies. I try to get outside most days even though this humidity is killing me, because nature is truly healing. Plus the cat does really love his evening stroll through the garden. I worked hard on my outdoor space; I should take the time to enjoy it. I fucking deserve it. I say that only to seriously drill it into my own head. I am still a work in progress after all, just maybe not one that needs such constant attention. One thing that I am learning is that like attracts like, so the more you shit on yourself the more evidence your brain will find to verify that fact. It’s only doing its job. It’s yours to tell it to fuck off.
It my not be tied into the pretty little bow that you would like for it to be, but progress is progress as they say. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither were you, so maybe give yourself some grace during this process. Learning how to cherish the small blissful moments in life and to make the most of them while they are in reach is easy to say, but like many things in this life not always to easy to do. I try to remember because they are gone in a second. It also helps to remind myself that I don’t have to work for my worth, that I don’t have to prove myself anymore. What goes around comes around, and I for one intend to make it good.
Mad love, Jenna
To see more…
It’s Good to Be King | Domme Boss | A Bright Day | A Day at the Beach
