Last year, in January 2023, I decided to set myself new year’s resolutions based on each of the astrological houses – a system designed to add some astro oomph to my usual, tired, new year’s resolutions.
I love setting new year’s resolutions, even though I don’t always see them through – because for me the why of why they don’t get done is always a fascinating insight into the random unpredictability of life.
People think that to be an astrologer is to have total control (or to want it) on how life’s events will play out. It’s really not. You’ll never meet anyone as gloriously relaxed in the fact that nothing is ever certain or predictable, as an astrologer. Because to work so closely with the patterns and symbolic meanings of time is to understand the limits of any quantifying system we could come up with.
Anyway, here’s the list :
- 1st house of Self / Physical Body : to go running every morning for 20 mins
- 2nd house of Ressources : to pass my driving licence
- 3rd house of Communication : to write a book
- 4th house of Family : to get pregnant (this had originally read “4th house stuff I’m not sharing yet” in the post I shared at the time)
- 5th house of Creativity : to play the drums 20 mins a day
- 6th house of Health : to stay clean of c*ke for the 3rd year + to hold stronger boundaries around my morning routines
- 7th house of Relationships : to keep building our relationship as a team
- 8th house of Transformation : to continue somatically healing my cPTSD
- 9th house of Expansion : to keep studying astrology, IFS, magick
- 10th house of Visibility : to coach, teach, write, run workshops
- 11th house of Social Networks : to continue building networks with like-minded people on and offline
- 12th house of Mental Health / the Invisible : to continue healing my Selves and working with them energetically
So, how did I do ?
Well, I got pregnant on the 3rd of January 2023. So I’d already accomplished the 4th house goal on the 7th when I published this list as a post on my Instagram – but didn’t know about it yet. I hadn’t wanted to share it as a goal, in case we struggled with fertility, or out of a kind of superstition around sharing the goals closest to your heart with other people, like it might get jinxed. How one can believe in jinxing things and also manifesting things at the same time is part of the human paradox I guess.
And then I basically couldn’t get out of bed until April. My 1st trimester was utter exhaustion and sickness like I’d never experienced before – and I have a lot of Saturnian and Martian energy in my chart which generally makes me an incredibly enduring and resilient person, physically and mentally. But wow, this child took every single drop of anything I had to give. Having gotten to know him quite a bit over the last 5 months, this makes total sense in regards to his personality. He’s not difficult in any regards, but his 8th house placements, his 29 degree exalted Mercury, his Saturn conjunct his ascendant … He commands all of the space and attention. He’s intense. Luckily he’s got a whole load of Venusian energy that makes him so deliciously agreable and charming, you kind of forgive him the drama and intensity.
And even after the worst of the 1st trimester had passed, I still spent all of the year pretty drained, sleeping 12 hours a day (I’m normally quite happy with 6) and unable to eat anything apart from cheese. He wasn’t an above average size at birth, but he was lifting his head a few hours after it. He’s 4 months in 9-12 month sized clothes now.
I was repulsed by so many smells and tastes, couldn’t think about anything clearly or concentrate, didn’t want to eat anything because everything was disgusting but also was about to die of hunger, couldn’t sleep all night from the anxiety and nocturnal activity of Sam vogueing in my belly, couldn’t wake up until noon or woke up starving at eight, had breakfast and was asleep again by nine thirty.
So that’s my excuse for not having been able to go running, play the drums, pass my driving licence or write a book : I got pregnant and didn’t realise quite how incapacitating it would be. That covers the goals of houses 1-5.
House 6 goal : I did stay clean another year. That’s 3 whole years this Pisces season (of course I got clean as the Sun was joining up with my Saturn, lol). And I did manage to prioritise my morning routines – even when they happened at 2pm. I did yoga nearly everyday until 4 weeks before birth. I journaled my way through the world turning upside down experience that is pregnancy. I meditated consistently, to help me stay connected to my body as it changed by the day, and to generate all the serene vibes I couldn’t get from running.
House 7 – to “keep building our relationship as a team”. If you’d have asked me how I evaluated our success on this in November, early December 2023 even, I would have said yes, great, all good. When we got engaged in 2022, we had planned to get married in the summer of 2023, but then I got pregnant so we’d pushed that idea back, as there was no way I wanted to get married pregnant. We were engaged for the whole of my pregnancy and talked about how lovely it would be to have our son present as a toddler at our wedding, maybe in 2025 to give us time to adapt to our new normal as a family of 3.
Now it’s the 23rd of February 2024 and I haven’t heard from my ex-fiance in nearly two months, since he dumped me via text message at Christmas.
Sorry, I don’t actually know how to bounce back from that sentence either.
I’ll just leave that there and move on.
8th house of transformation, of death and rebirth cycles – well, I guess we’re very much in the middle of it here. My goal was to continue somatically healing my cPTSD that stems from the various trauma that comes with life. Before my pregnancy, the tools I was using were movement, creation, getting to know my inner Parts (ie IFS framework) via therapy, journaling etc, drumming and therapeutic psilocybin. Obviously I couldn’t use that last one while pregnant or now that I’m breastfeeding. It’s always been one of my preferred healing tools since I started using it as such in 2021 when I got clean from coca*ne. I’ve written a whole article about it that you can read HERE if you’re interested.
Pregnancy re-triggered my shit like never before. Well, “never before” since I stopped qualifying as having “active” PTSD in 2021, post EMDR therapy, anyway. Pregnancy asked me to be so deeply in my body, while also constantly reminding me that my body was no longer mine to control, and that everything in it felt wrong. It was a ride.
But now, 5 months postpartum, I can honestly say that as much as I hated being pregnant, I’m glad I did it, not only because it gave me the most delicious pudding of a baby, who’s gonna be my bff as soon as he can talk, but also because of the satisfaction I now feel knowing I did that. I have a newfound respect, reverence even, for my body and for what it’s capable of doing. I went from hating and abusing my body, perpetrating the cycle started by others, to accepting it’s right to just be, body neutrality and tentatively healing, to post pregnancy, feeling like we’re actually friends now.
(It just so happens that in my chart, my 8th house is ruled by Cancer, the sign ruling motherhood lol can you tell ??)
9th house of Expansion : to continue studying IFS, astrology, magick. Check. This was actually a very easy goal for my Sag rising self – I’m never not learning. I might have to pick a more challenging goal for my 9th house for this year…
10th house of Visibility / Vocation : to coach, teach, write, run workshops. Check as much as could check given all the |baby| happening. I actually was running a Tarot workshop at one of my fave boutiques in my area the day I found out I was pregnant. It was super early, like 3 weeks, and I was giddy with excitement, I wanted to tell every single person in that workshop, but felt like it was wayyyy to early to tell people. Other notable 10th house stuff of 2023 was doing a mini class on annual profections for The Zine Witch’s patreon, joining up with Em from Olive Astrology to co-host Vitamin Astro podcast and holding my 2nd ever Tarot stall at a music festival.
11th house of Social Networks : to continue building networks with like-minded people on and offline. This goal was definitely met. My North Node is in Libra, in my 11th house, as well as my Chiron. I think that for my younger self who was so intensely bullied by her peers, the most beautiful embodiment of Chiron’s progression arc from “wounded” to “healer” for me is to learn trust of people and groups. To enjoy collectivity, to actively seek it out and co-build it. Online, this looks like the people I meet through our shared interests in astrology, the occult, coaching, artistic expression and liberatory politics. Offline, this looks like connecting with people locally via the community space in my village I’m a part of (shout out l’Ecurie) and investing my time and energy there building it up as a collective space.
12th house of Mental Health / the Invisible : to continue healing my Selves and working with them energetically. I actually feel like I took a step back from Selves as a project in 2023, having spent the entirety of 2022 working on it so closely. It’s definitely making a 2024 comeback though, so watch this space.
Ok I’m actually going to stop this post here, as it’s been in my drafts since the 23rd of Feb and at this point I just want to publish it. I’ll be back soon with the updated for 2024 version of this list though. If anyone else wants to use this structure to set themselves some goals when 2024 ACTUALLY STARTS aka at the Spring equinox lol #fckthegregoriancalandar, then I’d love to hear about them, so tag me! Or whatever. Love you, byeeeee.
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