The Star, our tarot card for Aquarius season, is the manifestation card. With this card comes hope, which I think we could all use a little more of about now. We all have these mental pictures of what we wished our lives were like, our aspirations for the future. Then reality kicks in and brings us back down to Earth. My life has turned out drastically different from where I thought I was going to be today. I was supposed to be owning and operating a restaurant by now, a dream that has since been shattered. Funny how things work out. As it turns out not accomplishing that goal (aka landing hard on my ass) was the best thing that ever happened to me. I would have lost everything.
I realize now that it was never my dream to begin with. It was someone else’s. I hid my own dreams down in the recesses of my soul. I was so terrified that they would never come true that I tried to ignore that whisper of a voice telling me to go for it. It always amazes me how loud other people are inside my head, and how quiet my own thoughts are. This quarantine forced me to slow down, to stop and really think about my next move in this life. What I learned was that I had been doing so much to pursue those dreams, I forgot what my own even were. I forgot that I had always wanted to be a writer. So I started these journals. I crowned myself the author of my own life, and here I sit.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and Toto found themselves the most colorful of all places. Her black and white thinking of what the world looked like was limited on her family farm, as is much of our own when we fail to look outside of our own bullshit. These past few years have been an awakening to the trials and tribulations of others, but it has also brought me back to myself. I have spend far too much time worried about what other people are thinking about me, when I should have been looking at what I think of me. That is still so difficult, especially in a world where everyone has an opinion about everything.
The Star is the one bright note in the vast black sea that we can find ourselves wading in at times. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel, which is nothing to fear. I have heard people say not to go toward the light, because that’s where death lives. Some parts of us need to die, mainly the ones that hold us back. We all hold limiting beliefs, things about ourselves that we believe. I have been one to self-sabotage at times out of fear, fear of succeeding mostly. They call this imposter syndrome. It all boils down to the thought that I’m not good enough. That is the biggest lie of all.
We say such horrible things to ourselves, things we would never utter to our best friends. I wish someone had taught me how to be my own best friend sooner, but alas here we are. I had to leave “I am enough” written in red lipstick on my mirror for damn near a year before I even started to believe it, a practice I learned from hypnotherapist and author Marisa Peer. I now hold a better sense of self, although not perfect. I can appreciate who I am at the core of my being more than I have been able to in years. I am still learning how to love her.
Keep the Faith
Without hope, life can seem pretty bleak, pretty dark. If I’ve learned anything it’s that embracing those dark nights of our souls leads us into the Light. It’s that whole saying that you must go through something in order to get to the other side. It’s when we step into our doubts and fears that they actually loosen their control and puts us back into the driver’s seats of our own lives. I’ve had this control thing backwards the whole time.
Faith is hard for some people. Putting your trust into something that isn’t actually based in fact is challenging. We can’t even seem to agree on scientific fact these days. (I’m talking to you Church of Drinking Bleach.) But isn’t everything just leaping blindly into the void, and praying that we don’t fuck it up too badly? I feel like that’s just what life is, throwing spaghetti against a wall and seeing what sticks. Yeah, it’s not done yet. Throw it back in the pot. Give it another stir.
Your Own North Star
The North Star tends to be the brightest, and thankfully the easiest to find in the night sky. For centuries we have used this star to give us direction in guiding us home. That’s what the Star in tarot is inviting us all to do. This is a homecoming of sorts, as one’s personal truth is the source of one’s dreams. We simply have to find it among the muck of what everyone else projects onto us. Those are their wants, dreams, desires. Not mine.
Ironically enough I did in fact lose everything. I lost my job, people who I thought were my friends, my sense of being in this world. I walked away from everything, stripping myself bare in the process. Thank God for therapy. I don’t know how I would have made it through without that, but I endured and faced those challenges head on. I must admit some of them were very ugly too. Nobody says you are going to like everything that you have said or done in the past. Forgiving yourself for those mistakes is a tough one, to say the least.
In the end of the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy taps her red sparkly heels together and repeats the phrase, “There is no place like home.” It wasn’t the farm she was speaking of. It was herself. She found the beauty in the mundane, joy in the simplicity of this life. She went on the journey of a lifetime, one that we all must walk at some point or another. “It is good to have an end to journey toward,” said Ursula K. Le Guin “but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” With some faith, and an open heart, I think we can get there if we do it together.
Please enjoy my Spotify playlist for The Star.
Mad love, Jenna
