Astrology for Skeptics: Sonya Renee Taylor Reads Our Charts

Speaker 1 Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things Pod Squad. Today you're about to hear something we did not see coming.

Speaker 1 We asked our beloved friend Sonia Renee Taylor if she might read our astrological charts, mostly because we just thought it would be fun.

Speaker 1 And maybe you could find little pieces of yourselves in what she saw in us. But what happened was wild.
So Sonia shows up and she starts showing us our charts. as a map of our soul's purpose.

Speaker 1 She explains that the gap between who we really are and our learned personalities is suffering. The gap between the two is where all suffering comes from.

Speaker 1 She said the way that we lessen suffering in our lives is by becoming more aligned with what our souls came here to do.

Speaker 1 The rest blew our minds and kind of changed a lot about how we're going to approach 2026.

Speaker 1 So today, you'll hear Sonia tell Abby and me about the journeys we're on and why it feels the way it feels right now in our actual lives.

Speaker 1 It rang so deeply true that we needed two episodes to digest everything Sonia said. So on Thursday, you'll hear Amanda's reading, which absolutely blew us away.

Speaker 1 After which the three of us had to stay on to stare at each other and debrief about what the hell had just happened. So you'll hear that debrief too.
See if any of this lands for you as we go.

Speaker 1 We weren't sure about astrology before this conversation, and now we might be believers.

Speaker 1 Sonia Renee Taylor is a New York Times best-selling author, transformational thought leader, world-renowned activist, artist, and founder of the international movement The Body is Not an Apology.

Speaker 1 She is a podcast host, sought-after speaker, and New World midwife. She is also an intuitive astrologer helping to decipher our unique soul work through the planets.

Speaker 1 Here is Sonia Renee Taylor reading our charts. Let's go.

Speaker 1 So, Sonia, we just finished some technical difficulties. We are about to launch into this beautiful conversation.
Abby suggested that the technical difficulties might be due to retrograde.

Speaker 2 Mercury being in retrograde.

Speaker 1 And then you said what?

Speaker 3 I said that I recently, I'm not going to take credit for this. There is a choir, I think, that was singing, and the song was Mercury's not in retrograde, you're just an asshole.
And

Speaker 5 that checks out. I have been a real big asshole lately, yes.

Speaker 3 And it feels so fitting in the sense that, like, oftentimes, I feel like it's a very asshole thing to blame all the stuff happening on you on something else other than looking inward first.

Speaker 3 So, it feels like an appropriate song for self-reflection.

Speaker 1 And it's so depressing when that happens. Like, my sister keeps going to the doctor asking if she's in paramenopause because she's being such a bitch, and they keep saying no, you're not.

Speaker 1 And then she keeps having to leave and deal with her situation.

Speaker 3 It's me, it's me, it's just me. Yeah, Hi.

Speaker 4 Hi. I'm the problem.

Speaker 3 It's like the new Cardi B album. Am I the drama?

Speaker 1 Yes. Sonia, before we jump into all this juicy stuff, why is astrology important?

Speaker 1 Why have you chosen to dive in so deeply and understand the world through it?

Speaker 3 I really believe that we are...

Speaker 3 not an accidental experiment on the planet and we're not an accidental experiment in the cosmos.

Speaker 3 I believe that life is happening intentionally, on purpose, in service of our highest good with radical love. I believe that with my deepest parts of me.

Speaker 3 And I believe that we are inherently connected.

Speaker 3 And I think it's really interesting because I say I believe like I'm saying something, you know, like subjective, as opposed to the objective reality that we are made of the exact same materials that the stars are made of, and that the planets are made of, and that the oceans are made of, that we are all the same chemical compounds.

Speaker 3 And so there is, for me, an understanding that there is an intrinsic relationship between us and all of life. I believe that all of life is trying

Speaker 3 to

Speaker 3 be in relationship with us as we journey through this experiment called life. And

Speaker 3 every opportunity that there is to see life more clearly through the multitude of mediums that exist in the world, why not look at life through that?

Speaker 3 Why not be like, oh, what what do you have to teach me, tree? What do you have to teach me, ocean? What do you have to teach me, Mars? What do you have to teach me, Sun?

Speaker 3 I believe that all of them are teachers and they're all here to guide us. And also, I just found that, like, it works.

Speaker 3 The first time I saw my birth chart, the snapshot of the sky at the moment I was born, I was like, Oh, that's why my life looks the way it really

Speaker 3 was so clearly evident. It was so clearly, this is you.

Speaker 3 This is who you are. Through these symbols, through these energies, this is your existence, Sonia.
And I don't know what else to say except it works.

Speaker 3 So I'm a firm believer that I don't need to know how or why it works. Once I know it works, I know it works.

Speaker 1 It's so interesting because I'm just starting to form language around these thoughts. So I don't know how to say them yet.
But as we close up witness the illusion of

Speaker 1 all of these people in power taking what is God-given wisdom in the form of the stars and plants and all the things, and they've kind of taken it.

Speaker 1 made it their own and then sold it back to us in the form of dogma and religion and all of that.

Speaker 1 It is a very ancient and something inside of me that's saying maybe we should have been listening all along to the people from whom they took it.

Speaker 1 And maybe

Speaker 1 they figured out that there was power in what these largely women were doing with the herbs and the stars.

Speaker 1 They took the midwives from us, they took the astrologers from us, they packaged it all up, put it in buildings. and rules and sold it back to us.
And so there's something to me that feels very

Speaker 1 right

Speaker 1 about

Speaker 1 thinking maybe we go back to what was always ours.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there it makes me think of two things. One is one of the sort of key principles of the way in which I live my life and some of the experiments that I'm in right now around world building.

Speaker 3 The focus of them is to become new by becoming ancient. How is it that that which wants to emerge comes through by reclaiming that which has always been, right?

Speaker 3 And so there's this practice for me that's like there is something in the ancient wisdoms that has information for us in this moment about how we might move into the future.

Speaker 3 But the other thing that I think about this specific about astrology is, so, and we'll talk more about sort of some of the specifics, but Each

Speaker 3 in the Zodiacal wheel, it has 12 houses, and each house corresponds to a different aspect of life. And the 12th house historically used to be called the house of death, institutions, and prisons.

Speaker 3 And which is awful, right? It's like, that's horrible.

Speaker 3 And what I realized is that we called it the house of death, institutions, and prisons because it's actually the house of the spiritual realm and the ancestral realm.

Speaker 3 And if you were engaged in trying to access that realm by yourself, you would be a heretic, you would be imprisoned, you would be called crazy, crazy, or you would be burned alive.

Speaker 3 And so, yes, it is the house of death in institutions and prisons because the systems at the time held the power to access that part of life.

Speaker 3 And if you tried to access that part of life without them, you were going to have some consequences. But actually, what it is, is the location where we have

Speaker 3 profound connection with all of existence, with what is and what was and what will be.

Speaker 2 Why were you and and Amanda so taken back? Like, what was your feelings?

Speaker 1 Well, first of all, number one, I feel about Sonia what she just said about the ancient and the new.

Speaker 1 Like, when we were in Colorado at Andrea's Memorial all together, and Sonia took the stage, it's just a very in-your-body experience of you can see something very ancient, the sageness, the wisdom that comes out, and then Sonia's like colors that she's wearing and all the brightness and the vividness.

Speaker 1 It's like very now and brand new and very old and whoa, we better pay attention. Vibes.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 1 That's how I feel about Sonia. So that was cool.
And then I just always resonate.

Speaker 1 It feels true to me that whenever people or women in particular get close to truth and power, that the people in power label that as death and dangerous and crossbones and stay away and burn them.

Speaker 1 Like that makes perfect sense in the history of the world.

Speaker 4 Totally.

Speaker 1 So how should we do this, Sonia? We were thinking maybe you could read our charts for us and maybe the pod squad could find themselves in this as we go.

Speaker 3 I am happy to do that. My little disclaimer that I like to say is like I'm a baby astrologer.

Speaker 3 This technology is still very new to me, but I also don't want to be dishonest about how I'm being guided, which is that I have an intuitive relationship with charts and I don't know why, but when I look at them, they talk to me, they tell me things about you, and then my job is to tell you what they tell me about you.

Speaker 3 And so that is just what is true. But it is a very intuitive relationship.

Speaker 3 And so I just like to like make that disclaimer because there are people who have been studying for decades and who have been, you know, building on their knowledge base for, you know, for a very, very, very long time.

Speaker 3 And I always want to honor those people who have done that work and who have fed into the, what I believe is sort of the like collective consciousness of the wisdom of astrology.

Speaker 3 And I think that what I'm i'm allowed to do for whatever reason is like put my little energetic finger in there and receive some of their wisdom that's actually what i think is happening so um yes i'm happy who wants to go first

Speaker 5 what does your intuition tell you sonia who should go first

Speaker 6 does it just mean you know everything now no

Speaker 3 damn it Let's start with Glennon. Let's start with Glennon.
Okay. I see a chart.
You see a chart. So I'm going to shout shout out my one of my favorite astrologers, Chani Nicholas.

Speaker 4 Ah.

Speaker 4 Chani.

Speaker 1 She's the only other astrologer we've ever had on We Can Do Hard Things.

Speaker 3 We love Chani and we love Chani's birth chart app inside of her website.

Speaker 3 What Chani does that I think is amazing is that oftentimes when you pull up someone else's chart elsewhere, you'll see these symbols on a circle, on a wheel.

Speaker 3 And then you'll see a bunch of lines going through that symbol. There'll be red lines and blue lines and it can look very intimidating.

Speaker 3 And what that's demonstrating is the relationship that each planet or placement has to another planet or placement on the chart.

Speaker 3 All of those things are energies happening all at the same time in the chart.

Speaker 3 My first experience when I saw that was like, oh my god, there are 35 red lines going across my chart, which almost feels like when someone marks up a paper you wrote

Speaker 3 with a bunch of red lines. I was like, okay, obviously I'm failing at my entire life, right?

Speaker 3 And what actually is happening is all of the planets in the sky the moment that we were born are in conversation with other planets in the sky the moment that we were born.

Speaker 3 And those energies all exist, but you're not plucking every string of energy all at once. The way I describe it is you're born and your life is like a harp.

Speaker 3 And the universe, God, source, whatever you want to call it, will pluck some strings. There are things that are going to happen in your life that are out of your control.
People will die.

Speaker 3 People will be born.

Speaker 3 Incidents will happen. Those things you don't have any control over.
Those are just things that happen.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 3 you are also co-creating the music with life, which means you will pluck some strings as well.

Speaker 3 And what astrology gives us the opportunity to do when we understand our charts is choose the energetic strings we are going to pluck, which means I can choose to pluck strings that harmonize with life, or I can choose to pluck strings that are really discordant with the tune that life is already playing.

Speaker 3 Ooh, well, okay. And it means that our chart is dynamic.
It's alive. It's happening in real time.
We are actively engaged with life, and our choices matter.

Speaker 3 So, Glennon, I want to start by talking about the sun. We're going to talk about your big three.

Speaker 3 In astrology, if folks who are familiar with your horoscope, often what they're doing is talking about your sun sign.

Speaker 3 And the reason we talk about your sun sign, there's all sorts of like pop culture reasons why sun sign astrology got so popular. But the sun is not the only aspect of your existence.

Speaker 3 The same way the sun is not the only aspect of existence in life, right? There is also a moon that happens when it's nighttime. There is also the way that the planets are moving throughout the day.

Speaker 3 There's a sunrise and sunset. So the same way that life is dynamic, our charts are dynamic.
But our sun represents in our chart our life force, our vitality.

Speaker 3 It is how we give our unique light in the world. The thing that is important to remember about the sun inside of the birth chart is that it really is a representation of,

Speaker 3 I believe, the sun in the sky. And actually, in order to say all of this, I need to say what my focus of reading charts is.
When I look at a chart, I am here asking, what did my soul come to do?

Speaker 3 And how do I, Sonia,

Speaker 3 align with my soul? And the way I describe it is,

Speaker 3 here's my soul on one end, and here's my personality, Sonia, on the other. And the space in between is called suffering.

Speaker 3 And the way that we lessen suffering in our life is by becoming more and more aligned with what our souls came here to do. That is how we limit suffering in our lives.

Speaker 3 And so, I believe that each placement and planet in our chart has an evolutionary quality, a quality that says, here's your basic version, and here's your soul upgrade version.

Speaker 3 Here is how this energy can evolve inside of you to become its most authentic manifestation.

Speaker 3 And so with that, the sun is here to take us from our attempt to shine, our performance of shining, what we think we need to do to shine, right?

Speaker 3 That's our personality and our ego, which is also inside of our sun sign, to our most authentic being.

Speaker 3 The sun never has to try to shine. It's never doing any effort to shine.
It doesn't matter if it is cloudy where you are, if it's nighttime where you are, if there's a tornado where you are.

Speaker 3 Guess what? The sun is still doing: shining, shining its ass off, shining its ass off.

Speaker 3 And so, part of what our chart is asking us to do is stop trying to shine because when we stop trying to shine, we just will.

Speaker 3 Our authentic self just will. And so, you, my dear, have a sun in Aries.
Aries is the first zodiac sign. It represents the first sign in the zodiacal wheel.
It represents beginnings.

Speaker 3 It represents energy. It represents life force.
It represents action. It is ruled by the planet Mars, and Mars is assertion, action, go.

Speaker 3 Aries understands the value of going first.

Speaker 3 the willingness to go first, the willingness to pursue a thing.

Speaker 3 And it's all about beginnings, beginning energy starting something new and this is at zero degrees for you in your chart which means it's a very baby sun it's a brand new sun learning how to do something brand new one of the things that you'll notice is like I said there are 12 slices of the pie in your zodiacal wheel and then inside of that there are all these little symbols and signs they all represent planets or asteroids or placements in the sky and then on a zodiacal wheel, you may notice that there are little numbers beside those symbols.

Speaker 3 Those numbers are called degree points, and they represent how far along

Speaker 3 that particular planet was in its journey until it moved to the next sign.

Speaker 3 And so it goes from zero degrees to 30 degrees in each slice of the pie. This is the way I think about it.
And each 10 degrees is called a decan.

Speaker 3 So 0 to 10, first decan, 10 to 20, second decan, 20 to 30, last decade, then you move to the next sign.

Speaker 3 I correspond these degree points to like

Speaker 3 grade school levels. So zero to 10 degrees is first day of preschool.

Speaker 3 First day of preschool to end to eighth grade, right? Into middle school. And then the next 10 degrees, 10 to 20, is like high school to end of college.

Speaker 3 And then the next 20 degrees, 20 to 30 degrees, is grad school, doctoral program, dissertation, turn it in, get out of here, right?

Speaker 3 So a zero degree sun, my love,

Speaker 4 is the first day of preschool.

Speaker 4 It's the

Speaker 4 first day of preschool.

Speaker 3 And here's why this is awesome. Because part of what I believe is when we see a zero degree, one degree, two degree placement in our charts, it means we are brand new.

Speaker 3 Life sent us here to initiate a brand new energy inside of us and inside the world that has not been here before. Something is starting that has not been before.

Speaker 3 And it also means the sign before it is the energy it's leaving behind. And the sign before it that is the energy that it's leaving behind for you is Pisces.
And that is the energy of being absorbed.

Speaker 3 Pisces is happening for you in the seventh house. The energy of being absorbed, of losing yourself to the other.

Speaker 3 And what more clear demonstration have you, Glenn and Doyle, given us other than to completely begin again, to leave the story of the dutiful Christian wife who's given her life over to her husband and his development, and instead to begin again focused on what your desires have led you to understand about yourself?

Speaker 3 That is a zero degree sun in Aries.

Speaker 3 That is a magical new assignment you have. A beautiful offering for the collective to say, you too can start again.

Speaker 3 You too

Speaker 3 can be

Speaker 3 new from what you know to be true about your own desires. Because Aries also governs our desires, what we want.
And you let yourself want something new and then start a new path. That's your son.

Speaker 2 No, notes. I like where this is going.

Speaker 3 No notes.

Speaker 3 Now I want to talk about your moon sign. Our moon represents our internal emotional landscape.
It represents

Speaker 3 how we navigate the emotional terrain of our existence. It also changes rapidly.
The moon changes every two and a half days to another sign. And so just as our emotions change rapidly.

Speaker 3 But I think that one of the things that feels important about understanding the moon is it really represents the same way we would be if we were walking in a dark night with only the moon to illuminate something.

Speaker 3 We would be seeking what security and safety and stability might feel like inside of us because we might be a little nervous. We can't see all the landscape.
We're not sure what's over in the corner.

Speaker 3 There's some shadows over there that we're afraid of, right?

Speaker 3 Now, the desire for that security and safety and stability that our moon often calls us towards is sort of a gift and a curse. Because, yes, it says, Oh, this is what soothes me.

Speaker 3 This is what makes me feel good. This is what makes me feel stable.

Speaker 3 But often, what soothes us and makes us feel good and stable can often be the thing that helps us avoid the shadow we need to look at, right?

Speaker 3 The thing that is actually asking to be tended to and addressed, but we fear it. And so we're like, nope, I won't look at that.
I'm going to keep going towards the thing that feels good.

Speaker 3 And so, your moon is in Sagittarius in the fourth house. Now, Sagittarius is our philosopher, our professor in the astrological wheel.
It is represented by the centaur, half man, half horse.

Speaker 3 So it has both the instinct of the animal and the rational

Speaker 3 mind of the human, right? It's a fire sign. And so it takes action.
And it is ruled by the planet Jupiter. And Jupiter is the planet of expansion, good luck, and humor, and wisdom.

Speaker 3 And so, a Sagittarius moon can be the energy of humor, of quick-wittedness. It can be the energy of playfulness.
It's also the energy of wanting to learn.

Speaker 3 I need to know more, and I need to know more, and I need to know more. It has an insatiable quest for knowledge, and it wants to know where the information comes from.

Speaker 3 It wants to have a source, and it wants to have the source because it feels safe when it has a source. It feels like I know why I know this,

Speaker 3 right?

Speaker 3 Now, here is the challenge, and this is happening for you in the fourth house, which is the house of our parents, our mother and our father, our roots where we grew up, our ancestors, and our home, our home foundation.

Speaker 3 I want to understand what's happening in the landscape. I want to have the information.
I want to know all the things.

Speaker 3 I was listening recently to you talking about being an empty nester and how activating that would be because it means that something in home has changed, and I don't know what the landscape will look like anymore.

Speaker 3 I'm not as able to see it. One of the other things that Sagittarius does is it uses that information that it gathers to teach others.

Speaker 3 That's part of its deal: it's like I'm gonna learn something and then I'm going to relay what it is I know. But it can avoid going deep,

Speaker 3 it can choose to know through the mind and not feel through the body.

Speaker 4 No. I'm sorry.
No. Sorry.
Mind it.

Speaker 1 You were so unpoint until that one.

Speaker 4 Until that one.

Speaker 4 And so

Speaker 3 what a Sagittarius moon is asking us to do, it is saying, if keeping it sort of light and mental and action-oriented is keeping me feeling safe and secure and stable, then what actually surfaces when I don't know from the mind, when I don't have all the information, what happens inside of me when I feel uncertain?

Speaker 3 How do I deal with that? And that's part of what you're being asked to learn is to find out inside of you, what's the other source of knowledge?

Speaker 3 How else do I know?

Speaker 3 What are the other ways of knowing that are trying to come through me that are not about having all of the mental information so that I can take action, so that I can go do the thing, right?

Speaker 3 Yes, that is tracking. So, that is your moon.
And then I want to talk about your rising sign. And I find our rising sign to be such an important piece of how it is that we journey through life.

Speaker 3 Because the rising sign or the ascendant represents where the sun was on the horizon at the moment that you were born.

Speaker 3 And so, oftentimes, people have talked about the rising sign as the mask you wear. I think that we talk about it that way because you're right.

Speaker 3 When you're first born, when you're young, it's literally just representing the sliver of that sign, the just the little beginning of it, right?

Speaker 3 But the sun does not stay on the horizon, it rises and sets every single day.

Speaker 3 And if we look at our zodiacal wheel, our astrological chart, as a full 24-hour rotation, right, that circle, then it means that energy will rise in our life become more prominent and then it will set in our life right

Speaker 3 and so i see the ascendant as literally the energy that is here to help your soul ascend on its journey That is why it's the ascendant.

Speaker 3 That energy becomes more prominent and then it gives you more of its characteristics to help you develop in your soul's journey. Now, your ascendant is in Virgo.
Virgo is a mutable earth sign.

Speaker 3 It is what I call the second earth sign. The first earth sign is Taurus, and Taurus represents the organic earth.

Speaker 3 It's like the flowers and the trees and the soil and the food we grow and all the beauty and comfort and nourishment that the earth gives us just naturally. The second earth sign is Virgo.

Speaker 3 And Virgo represents the maiden in our astrology or the virgin is the way we talk about it. It's the physical body.
it is the mind-body connection.

Speaker 3 It's ruled by the planet Mercury, who controls our mind and our thought, but it governs the body and its systems. This is why Virgo is often considered to be very detail-oriented.

Speaker 3 We can talk about it as sort of always making sure that the things are in place.

Speaker 3 Sometimes people talk about it as critical, but I think Virgo is one of the most misunderstood signs in the zodiac. And I'm going to tell you why.
Because we talk about Virgo as the virgin,

Speaker 3 and we translate virgin to mean pure. And I don't think that that's a mistranslation.
I think we do mean pure, but we don't mean pure as perfect.

Speaker 3 Right? People take pure and then mean that means perfect, and then Virgo is like perfectionistic and always trying to get it right and needing to figure out all the things.

Speaker 3 And that is part of the dynamic. That can be the sort of more

Speaker 3 human version of how that energy gets expressed. But its higher energy is Virgo, not the virgin and pure as imperfect, but pure as in the essence of a thing.

Speaker 3 I think about how perfume is pure, right? How all the notes and aspects of it or pure vanilla, right? It means we haven't diluted it. That's what it means, right?

Speaker 3 It means we haven't added a bunch of other stuff to it. It's pure essence.
The other thing that Virgo as the virgin represents is not perfect, but sovereign.

Speaker 3 What ultimately Virgo desires is for every aspect of ourselves

Speaker 3 to be fully present in ourselves.

Speaker 3 It means not I didn't give myself away to you, it means I fully belong to myself, all the parts of me, the imperfections, the misalignments, the confusion, the whatever aspects of me without judgment are welcome here.

Speaker 3 And when they are all welcome here, I am a whole being, fully embodied in the pure essence of my beingness. And from that place, I give my service.

Speaker 3 That is what Virgo is in its fullest, most authentic expression. And so this is happening for you in the first house.

Speaker 3 And so, part of what you are here to do is to reclaim all the parts of you, to see every aspect

Speaker 3 as

Speaker 3 necessary to fulfill what it is you came to fulfill here on this planet. To give your service, you need to be a whole person.

Speaker 3 You need to be fully embracing every aspect of your beingness.

Speaker 3 The part of you that is deeply spiritual, the part of you that is deeply carnal, the part of you that desires this, the part of you that doesn't want that, the part of you that overthinks, the part of you that is totally afraid, the parts that you have perhaps been afraid to fully look at, can they live here?

Speaker 3 Are they welcome home?

Speaker 3 Because when they are, then you're a whole person. And from that whole being, you have infinite gifts to give the collective.
That Sagittarius moon wants to teach you something.

Speaker 3 And it wants to teach you once it understands it. And Virgo is saying, can you understand you? The first house represents us.
Can you fully welcome and understand all of you?

Speaker 3 Because that is where your most authentic light is given in the world. And that's your sun, your moon, and your rising, Glennon.

Speaker 1 Wow, Sonia.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 3 And so, again, this is the invitation to welcome yourself home.

Speaker 3 This is the invitation to say, every piece of me is necessary, makes up the essence of what it is that I am here to offer to the collective. It's you.
Like, this is what an Aries sun means.

Speaker 3 It means the gift is you, right?

Speaker 3 And every time you disavow some part of yourself, you deprive us of the full gift that is you.

Speaker 2 That's right.

Speaker 3 And here's the key piece. This is so important about for people who have placements in Virgo.
That zero degree sun.

Speaker 3 First day of preschool. First day of preschool.
Because Virgo can be critical. It can be like, I don't understand why I haven't mastered that.
It can be judging the thing, right?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 Your job is to treat this journey the way that you would want someone to treat your preschooler on the first day of preschool.

Speaker 4 That,

Speaker 3 that is how you are being asked to be with you. Brand new journey.
There better be some naps. There better be sweet snacks.
There better be nice colors.

Speaker 3 There better be name tags and sweetness. There better be hugs for the other kids.
Sweetness.

Speaker 1 I mean, Sonia, I became a preschool teacher so that I could create that world that I wanted to live in.

Speaker 3 My dear, it is time for you to turn it on you. You became a preschool teacher so that you could learn how to be a really good preschool teacher to the preschooler in you.
Shit.

Speaker 1 That's why every day I'm like, why do I always feel like I just got here?

Speaker 3 The amount of times that I say this to my sister,

Speaker 6 I just got here. I am brand new.

Speaker 3 You are brand new. You are brand new.
It's awesome.

Speaker 6 Making so much sense of her insistence that we always have beginner's mind.

Speaker 1 That's what I say because I try to make it sound like something someone's done before. I'm just entering an ancient spiritual tradition of having just arrived.

Speaker 3 Yes. This part of you is brand new.

Speaker 1 Sonia, thank thank you for that gift.

Speaker 4 Oh, you're so welcome.

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Speaker 5 Let's talk OCD, the actual realities of living with it. OCD is not about being super neat or hyper-organized.
It is actually about relentless, intrusive thoughts you don't want.

Speaker 5 Doubts about your relationships, fears about your health. OCD targets what you love the

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Speaker 3 all right Abby this is a snapshot of the sky at the moment that you were born my dear oh my gosh all right

Speaker 3 yay

Speaker 3 so you

Speaker 3 your son remember this is your life force your vitality your energy your personality your ego and where life is asking you to drop the performance and just be. That is what's happening with our son.

Speaker 3 And you are having that experience in the sign of Gemini in the 12th house. Now, Gemini is one of three placements in the chart that I call duality placements.

Speaker 3 They are here to teach us about and ask us to reconcile the story of separation. Gemini

Speaker 3 is represented by the twins in astrology. It is ruled by the planet Mercury.
If you remember from our last reading, Virgo is also ruled by the planet Mercury.

Speaker 3 You all have similar Mercury action happening in your charts. And Gemini is an air sign.
And one of the ways that I describe Gemini oftentimes is Two sayings I feel like apply to Gemini energy.

Speaker 3 I think, therefore, I am,

Speaker 3 and I said what I say it.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 3 those two energies are because the Gemini energy is mind energy. It is ideas.
It is curiosity.

Speaker 3 Unlike that Sagittarius energy that is very much concerned with knowledge, Sagittarius is its opposite sign. It wants knowledge acquisition that it can prove.
Gemini doesn't really care about proving.

Speaker 3 It's like, I thought it, and so therefore it is. It was my idea, and that's what it is.
Now, what that Gemini energy can do, it's the beginning of a new thought. It's the beginning of an idea.

Speaker 3 It is endlessly curious. It wants to know all the things.
The duality thing it's working out is the Gemini is represented by the twins in astrology.

Speaker 3 And what almost is always true about that Gemini energy is that it means, oftentimes it means there is a real twin, that there's a twin someplace, but oftentimes it is representing an aspect of ourselves that we have disavowed, that we have decided is not so welcome here.

Speaker 3 And so one part of us, we're like, yay, that part. And then the other part of us, no, not that part.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 part of the reconciliation of duality for Gemini is integration.

Speaker 3 The job is to find the twin you have outcasted

Speaker 3 and bring that twin home.

Speaker 3 To say, yes, you are welcome here. Yes, you can come here.

Speaker 3 Yes, you are allowed to exist here in me. Now, this is happening for you in the 12th house, which remember early on I said death institutions and

Speaker 3 death institutions and jails. Now, what we're really saying, though, is this is the house of the unseen.

Speaker 3 It is the house of the hidden. It is the house of the spiritual.
It is the house of our ancestral dynamics. It is the house of surrender where we return back to source.

Speaker 3 So oftentimes what can happen with a Gemini energy in the 12th house, we can experience feeling difficult to be seen.

Speaker 3 Some part of us feels not seen. Some part of us feels behind the veil.
Some part of us feels we are not fully able to be recognized.

Speaker 3 And part of the work, again, of the Sun, this is one of the, I think, most challenging aspects of the Sun is because the Sun is meant to shine and it's literally shining in a place where it is difficult to be seen.

Speaker 3 The work

Speaker 4 of

Speaker 3 how do I

Speaker 3 allow myself to be

Speaker 3 fully expressed? How do I allow myself, the full vitality of me, to come through in the world?

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 not from trying to prove it.

Speaker 3 Not from trying to prove that I am worthy, good enough, deserving, whatever it is that that son is trying to do to convince you through being charismatic and curious and interesting and all the things it's trying to do to be like, hey, see me.

Speaker 3 The other side is saying, what if you didn't do any of that?

Speaker 3 What if you just trusted? Because the thing about the sun in the 12th house is who is supposed to see you will.

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Speaker 1 Is this blowing your mind? Like, I'm just going to say off the record, Sonya, if you understood, all day yesterday, we had this conversation, what you're saying right now. Wow.
Okay, go ahead.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 I mean, this is why I tell you that, like, I was like, I'm not special. I don't know the interiorities of your lives.

Speaker 4 I'm just looking at them on a chart.

Speaker 3 And that's why I mess with astrology, in case we ever have any questions. That's why.

Speaker 3 Because all of a sudden, I know something about you, not because I've been hanging around in the interiority of your life, but because there is a map to your life that already exists.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 this 12th house sun says,

Speaker 3 I often see it as, you know, protection in many ways. It's like, you will be seen by those who have eyes to see you.

Speaker 3 And that is actually more than enough.

Speaker 3 That is part of what you are here to let yourself do, is to be seen by those who have eyes to see you. Now, remember, Gemini is an air sign.

Speaker 3 So it is another one of those placements where it's in its head. It's in its ideas.
It's full of its ideas about what it needs to do to be seen. It's full of its ideas about how to achieve this thing.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the invitation is actually

Speaker 3 to say, what if there's not an idea to it? This is not a function of the mind, right? Actually, for you, the full self-expression of you is asking to come through

Speaker 3 your emotional realm. And we'll talk about that in a second.
So we're going to leave your sun and we're going to go on to your moon.

Speaker 4 Well, you're spot on so far. Spot on so far.

Speaker 4 Keep going.

Speaker 3 And so our moon is our emotional landscape, our inner terrain. It's how we experience safety and stability and security.
But it also means it's the place where

Speaker 3 we could be avoiding the things that make us feel insecure and unstable and uncertain, right?

Speaker 3 This is happening for you in the sign of Capricorn. Now, I talked in Glennon's reading about the first two earth signs.
Taurus, the organic world, the plants and the flowers and the...

Speaker 3 trees and the bees and the beautiful things and good food. And then Virgo, the physical body, the the mind-body connection, the organic material turned into flesh.

Speaker 3 Capricorn is the last earth sign, and it is what the human mind-body-flesh connection figured out what to do with the organic earth.

Speaker 3 So, it is how we made systems, and structures, and money, and organizations, and buildings, and all of these things. It is ruled by the planet Saturn.

Speaker 3 And Saturn is constriction, restriction, boundaries, barriers, rigidity. That's one version of Saturn, which always sounds like trash.

Speaker 3 The other version of Saturn, the other part of Saturn is discipline, integrity. hard work, effort over time to build something that withstands the test of time.
That is Saturn in its highest energy.

Speaker 3 And Saturn is the first thing until you figure out the work it wants you to do, and then it becomes the second thing.

Speaker 4 Right?

Speaker 3 It's like, oh, I figured out the work, right? It's like, oh, I feel like I'm running against the brick wall. You are because you haven't figured out the work Saturn is asking you to do in your chart.

Speaker 3 And once you figure out the work Saturn is asking you to do in your chart, then you start doing that work, and Saturn will reward you out of your hard work over time.

Speaker 3 So,

Speaker 3 this moon, this Capricorn moon says, oh, feelings. We're not so much into them.

Speaker 3 We're not a super fan of them feelings things. I have lots of ideas.
Oh, who got time for them feelings? Capricorn, like, likes a container. It wants a structure.

Speaker 3 So, it's like, I need it to make sense. I need to package it.
It needs to happen in a way that, like, that goes there. It's really good at compartmentalization.
That belongs there. That goes there.

Speaker 3 That's there, right? It's like, and then when things start to bleed into each other, it doesn't understand it. It's like, I don't understand that, right?

Speaker 3 Now, this is happening for you in the seventh house, which is the house of our committed partnerships and our long-term relationships and marriage.

Speaker 3 And so,

Speaker 3 both of you are in this interesting little dance of

Speaker 3 helping each other delve into the parts that feel difficult to delve into.

Speaker 3 It's like, oh, I'm supposed to go there. I am.
You're supposed to go there too. You are.
Oh, we're supposed to go together. Okay.

Speaker 4 Ah! That's right.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 3 through the willingness to go there, right? What happens, like, is there's this container and you really want this container and organize it. Except that life doesn't work that way.

Speaker 3 Life is not neat containers. The emotions are not neatly folded inside.
And what can happen in a Capricorn moon is it can become very harsh on itself.

Speaker 3 So you both have these harsh on themselves placements, right? I need to toughen up. I need to work harder.
I just need to get it together.

Speaker 3 That mind then comes in and tells the moon, like, right, you just need to get it together. You need to work harder.
You need to sort of tuck that away. Like, you just need to toughen up.

Speaker 3 Except that what it's hiding is the deep, deep vulnerability that the seventh house is. The seventh house is

Speaker 3 the vulnerability of relationship, right?

Speaker 3 And it can also be that, like, I need to be the strong one for my partner, but being the strong one for your partner then denies the twin who is the soft one,

Speaker 4 right?

Speaker 3 Then you are constantly this rock.

Speaker 3 And then the other part of you that doesn't get to get all of its space, which is the tender you, which is the part of you that is deeply sensitive, doesn't get to have as much.

Speaker 3 And so let's talk about, that's your rising sign. Cancer is ruled by the moon.
It is the feeling of our deep sensitivities. It is the feeling of our maternal instinct.

Speaker 3 Cancer is often the energy of the mother.

Speaker 3 It is the energy of family and tribe and closeness. So here's what happens: Your Capricorn moon is like, Yes, be the strong one.
Your cancer rising, it wants to do the caretaking.

Speaker 3 But if the story that the Gemini mind says is the only way to caretake is to be the strong one,

Speaker 3 then the other part of you gets left behind. And so this cancer rising says, Can you

Speaker 3 be your vulnerable, sensitive self first for you.

Speaker 3 It's you. Every time there's a cancer in the first house, it is, can I mother myself?

Speaker 3 Can I be the most nurturing, loving, sweet, tender,

Speaker 3 kind self to myself? A Capricorn moon is another one of those placements that's really internally harsh.

Speaker 3 It tells itself a lot of really rough stories about not getting it together and not having it right. So the Cancer Rising says,

Speaker 3 hey, there's a loving, gentle, maternal energy that you are being called to learn. Remember, Saturn wants your work.

Speaker 3 You are here to work on how to let this loving, gentle, softer, receptive, caretaking energy into yourself.

Speaker 3 You are here to be that for you. You have figured out how to do it from the workplace for everybody else, but not for you.

Speaker 3 And your Cancer Rising says it's your turn to lovingly mother you.

Speaker 3 And when you do that, then Gemini gets both sides, and then everybody who needs to see all the parts of you can see you as an integrated being. And that's your Sun, your moon, and your rising.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I think what's coming up for me right now is that when I first met you,

Speaker 1 I thought

Speaker 2 you were going to be able to do that for me.

Speaker 2 And I think as our relationship has gone on, we've been kind of like the mirrors for each other. I've been doing quite a bit of shadow work and parts work in therapy, and

Speaker 2 this feels like such an elusive, like I feel like I sometimes can grasp it and I feel it. This idea of like mothering myself and loving and the self-worth and all of that.

Speaker 2 And then sometimes I it goes away and I can't grab it anymore. It's interesting because I think I've been fighting against resenting you for not being able to do it for me.

Speaker 3 So I want to point out another thing. So you, Abby, have a one-degree Venus.

Speaker 3 Venus is our planet of love. It is our planet of nurturing.
It's our planet of resource. It's also our planet of relationships between

Speaker 3 women. And it's the feminine energy.
And so

Speaker 3 you, my dear, are six months preschool, right?

Speaker 3 You're six months preschool, and Venus is in the first house. It is in the first house.

Speaker 3 So this is why you're like, oh, it feels elusive, this part of like loving myself, of like really learning how to hold that.

Speaker 3 It's because you're new at it. It's a brand new assignment for you, too.

Speaker 3 And so here's what you two get to do together. You get get to be great, sweet preschool classmates.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 3 For babies.

Speaker 3 Who get to practice together, right? Because Glennon's role is to be sovereign. That's that Aries' son is here to be like, oh, I'm here to learn about me, right?

Speaker 3 And then you are here to be like, oh, this other part is,

Speaker 3 there's something that she can show me about that.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 3 And so rather than being mad, she won't do it for me. Let me just keep keep taking a clue from

Speaker 3 what she got going on over there. Because once I get it, I'm going to get it.
I can't get it. Right.

Speaker 3 And this is what I tell everyone. The hardest lesson for a preschooler is to just sit in the seat, to just stay in the seat.

Speaker 3 That's like, just stay in the seat.

Speaker 1 The only words tattoo I have. Be still.
Still.

Speaker 3 Be still.

Speaker 3 That's it. And so in these new lessons, what happens is we start to feel really uncomfortable.

Speaker 3 And then our instinct is to go to our default right i it's really hard i'm back in my head it's really hard i'm leaving my body right this is these are the two locations nope the invitation is okay i'm gonna sit on my hands i'm just gonna feel it okay i have been experiencing like the last year i've been experiencing an extraordinary amount of um Fascism?

Speaker 2 No, and then yes, but yes.

Speaker 2 Difficulty. I'm struggling.
Like, it feels like everything's heavier and harder and more difficult. And I'm hoping that you're going to tell me that it's going to end.
That part of

Speaker 2 that's going to stop soon, is what I'm asking.

Speaker 3 Oh, so here's what's happening. So, the nodes, which are two points on the moon, and this is where the eclipses happen every year, those nodes rotate about every year and a half.

Speaker 3 And the nodes represent in our charts, the south node represents where our souls have already been, our energy has already been. We know it.
It's easy and it is comfortable.

Speaker 3 It's often our default, but it doesn't grow us. And so part of our work in this lifetime is to shed that energy, to have less and less of it.

Speaker 3 And then the north node is where our soul is going in this lifetime. Where is it trying to get to? What's the new soul lesson that is trying to meet us?

Speaker 3 The nodes in the sky are currently the north node is in Pisces, the south node is in Virgo, which means any places where you have places or planets or placements in Virgo or Pisces, you will be feeling these nodal tensions, which moved into those placements in January.

Speaker 3 and will remain there until March, April-ish, May-ish, somewhere in there next year. So you have Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter in Virgo.

Speaker 3 Saturn, remember, restrictions, constrictions, boundaries, barriers, tension, until you figure out the work it wants to do.

Speaker 3 Then you have Jupiter that makes everything bigger. Everything feels magnified.
Everything feels intensified. And then you have Mars, the planet of action, of movement, acceleration.

Speaker 3 right they are all in the third house which is the house of your daily life It's also the house of your communication. It is the house that Gemini governs, your son.

Speaker 3 So you are feeling the pressure of Saturn saying, what's the work we're asking you to do around communication? Mars is saying, do it now.

Speaker 3 Jupiter is saying, and it's really big and we're intensifying it. And then the south node is saying, whatever aspects of that are not in alignment, we're shedding.

Speaker 3 So where you have over-relied on perfectionism, where you've relied on hypercritical communication, where you have over-relied on needing to understand all the details to feel like your mind can wrap around it because that's how you can trust because you can't trust the unknown.

Speaker 4 All those places,

Speaker 3 life is like, yep, great liquidation sale. Gotta go.

Speaker 3 Now, I don't agree with a lot of the language that astrology uses. Saturn and Mars are called malefics in astrology.
It's awful. Malevolent, right? But again,

Speaker 3 from an old school perspective, they're like, oh, these are hard, which means they're bad, right? As opposed to these are difficult because they're here to grow you.

Speaker 1 Right? Right. We can do maleficent things.

Speaker 3 We can do malefic things. We can do malefic things.

Speaker 3 But Jupiter is a benefic, meaning it gives you good things, supposedly. Really, what it means is, hey, there will be tension in this location of your chart as you are here to master something.

Speaker 3 You are here to develop in this area, and there is tension because we are upgrading you. System upgrade, which means a whole bunch of the old ways that used to be are shedding.

Speaker 3 And so it's going to feel that. But that Jupiter, Jupiter says, what's the wisdom that I am being asked to bring to this part of my chart?

Speaker 3 Jupiter rules Sagittarius. Sagittarius is in your sixth house, which is the house of your daily schedule, your work, and your health and well-being.

Speaker 3 And Neptune is there in your sixth house. And Neptune is the planet of our divine wisdom, our spiritual knowledge.
Your way to lessen this intensity is to listen at the level of spirit.

Speaker 1 That's her least favorite thing.

Speaker 3 Of course it is, because the mind, which is Gemini, where your son is, which is your ego, says, I know better.

Speaker 3 And everything in your chart is saying, sorry. No, you don't.

Speaker 4 Okay. Okay.
Thank you very much.

Speaker 4 That's helpful. Very helpful.

Speaker 2 Very spot on. I love you.
Amanda, it's your turn.

Speaker 4 Oh, I can't wait for Amanda's.

Speaker 1 I'm so excited. Okay, so here's what we're going to do, Pod Squad.
We're going to stop there. I feel desperate to hear Amanda's chart.
Me too.

Speaker 1 And so we're going to stop here, sit with this for a couple days. Then we're going to come back to you.
And Sonia is going to begin again with us, read to us Amanda's chart. And then Sonia,

Speaker 1 Amanda, Abby, and I are going to process all of this together. And then just the three of us are going to try to process all of this.

Speaker 2 We needed a lot of processing time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so we're going to do that. in the next episode.
We are Shuketh. Let us come back together on Thursday and dig deeper.

Speaker 1 We love you, Pod Squad.

Speaker 1 We Can Do Hard Things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human.

Speaker 1 And you can follow us at We Can Do Hard Things on Instagram and at We Can Do Hard Things Show on TikTok.