Honoring Scorpio

In true keeping with Scorpionic November, I am honoring the birth/death process. Its cold here in Sacramento. All over California, I have brought with me my fall rituals of living through the explosion of that which is meant to crumble. Persephone returns to Hades to be with Pluto, son of Saturn. Diana, her mother, withholds her Earthly bounty until Persephone's return in the spring. The people do their best to stay warm while they await the newly harvested gold Persphone shares from the Underworld.

This time it is about facing the lurking dragons behind me that ultimately are here to teach me an oft overlooked lesson: Be glad your Self ten years ago is a decade away, and take what you need from her memory so you can let the rest of it go.

Strange times have come and passed. My Self has opened up to some unknown places within me, places that do not feel like home, but like the world held inside of me. I enter this Scorpio phase with some gained understanding that all is as it is, and suffering is part of all. It is tiny, but still valuable, this understanding. Somewhere, somehow, there is a place within us that is able to take in the lead of our expectations and attachments and alchemize them into the gold of wisdom and peace.

After years of this rhythm I come with love to offset the cold November blow, a gift of the greatest kind. With a deep connection to my partner, so much love floating around has a charging and strengthening effect. My spiritual partner loving me through an old deep re-opened wound fills me up with support as I allow my relationship with my mother to die.

Baby Sage, our happy, heavy, sunshiny, Libra Buddah baby gives us so much joy, love and strength. Emma, her elated big Big Sister, teacher and care giver extraordinaire, shines her light of pride and satisfaction about us. She calls Chris her Superhero and we melt, Sage smiles and we swoon. We are passionately loving that which is true: our family. We are mourning that which is false.

Over the last few years, while undergoing my Pluto transit, I have faced the pain from my relationship with my mother head on. When I was 11 she left one day two weeks before Christmas and never came back. After we were taken in by a friend of the family, she kidnapped my brother. When I was 18 I contacted her after detoxing from meth and coke and healing from losing a baby. I moved in with her for six months while I began attending massage school. Again, two weeks before Christmas, she disappeared, this time for committing check fraud and later going to prison.

I went on with my life, finishing massage school and finding real work. Years went by and I meandered in and out of the stripping industry to supplement my income. I spent my days as a serious, professional massage therapist helping people to heal from severe injuries with other alternative health professionals. I spent my nights stripping for lonely men and women with other women whose mothers and/or fathers had passed on little security.

After meeting a kind man, I left stripping behind, moved out of state and got married. WIthin a year we had a child and had all but run out of tolerance for one another. One turn of Uranus through my seventh house was enough to break down our material-based relationship forever. Off I went, Emma in tow, in my own direction, at the start of a demanding Pluto transit.

While healing my work life and addressing the falsities there, I also began to look inside at the place where I carried around old rotting feelings about my mother. I began to work toward healing my inner child and sorting out my pain for once and for all. As the work progressed, so grew my willingness to forgive. In time, I contacted my mother and began to rebuild a relationship with her.

The last year and a half has been a dream come true with my mom. We spent weekends on outings with Emma, sharing stories about our babies, and bonding. Eventually, I chose to move Emma and I in with her while I worked on The Empress Project and shared bodywork and healing work with my community. It was a time of excavating and cleansing that brought me great inner peace.

Chris and I connected and things began to change as they always do. Emma and I moved in to a new apartment with Chris, and we received news that a surprise baby was on the way. Mom and I kept in contact, talking about our joys and sorrows and the daily happenings. The baby grew. Chris and I built our life.

As I became larger and more cumbersome in pregnancy, mom started spending weekends helping with Emma, housework and grocery shopping. Those weekends turned into weeks after being laid off until the day came when we discussed moving in together. I reveled in the feeling of having my mother to help me through something as intense as pregnancy, mothering and childbirth. Much of my pregnancy was colored by a nagging fear that when Sage came, we would not have enough resources to care for her, and my mothers presence quelled some of that fear. Time flew and before we knew it Sage was born. Simultaneously mom found a gorgeous new place where she offered to pay the deposit and first month's rent. We moved in just one week after Sage was born.

Fast forward two weeks and here we are, scrambling to repack all of our belongings and distribute them to the various garages and spare rooms of friends and family in the area. We have been evicted. Mom's checks have all bounced and not one dime of rent or deposit has been paid since we signed the lease on October 18th. Sage, now just about 4 weeks old, Chris, and I will be living in Chris' dad's living room, thankfully. Emma will have to come over for visits as there is little room for her and she has a whole household at her dad's house nearby.

The place in me where once I felt only heartache after going through this cycle with my mother is padded with love. The let down still aches, but not like it used to because there is too much authentic joy in my life to wallow. I move through Plutonian waves of sadness, disbelief, overwhelm, resolve, determination and embarassment. My old gaping wound, however is no longer rotting, and I am emoting healthfully.

My lover, naturally optimistic and positive, is too disheartened. We hold one another up as we attend to the daily needs like breastfeeding, preparing food, changing diapers, and doing laundry while also packing and making last minute arrangements.

Needless to say, that's it for trusting mom. One of the more confusing aspects of this situation is that I can feel my mothers remorse and shame and I want only peace for her too, though I also feel so angry. Emma will also likely feel sadness after this. She and grandma have gotten close. Sage is largely unaffected, other than feeling mommy's waves of emotions. Chris wants dearly to make it all better for me and I him, though we can't. But we can love one another, we can comfort and love Emma, and we can continue to introduce Sage to our world of love. What really matters is still thriving.

A tough Scorpionic lesson learned on what I believe to be (could be wrong) the sunset of my Pluto transit. Forgiveness has been achieved, and I have learned that discernment is still necessary. Just because we have the guides to confer with and we have the Universe at our fingertips does not mean we need to leave the door open to all the creatures that want to come in! For this too, I will work toward forgiveness of my mother, but my need to protect myself and my family has put a stop to trusting her word. Had I heeded my intuitive messages, I would have likely made a different choice. I balance this knowledge by remembering that this all happened post giving birth, one of the most psychically, physically, emotionally and spiritually challenging times in a woman's life, hands down.

All this birth and death. We are wet with it here. Sage, born 10 lbs 4oz just 2 hours and 24 minutes past her due date, was born beautifully and smoothly at home with our midwife and Chris supporting me. While her birth was smooth, however, it was not easy. Several times during the birth I wondered how a human could feel so much pain and not die. In fact, a part of me did die, the part that was not quite up to hard work and pain. There was no way for her to survive that. The birth of this home and its swift death also yield incredible pain, though I sense that some miracle awaits us at the outcome. If giving birth to Sage could be so painful yet deliver such an incredible gift, can't this?

Though I have never partaken in an Ayahuasca ceremony, I imagine it works a bit like this, with a more obvious interaction with the divine in the meantime to light the way. I envision my next Plutonian experience as one where I consciously deal with dragon slaying rather than having it pop up out of the water at me like a basketball held under.

In the meantime...

Persephone returns to Hades to be with Pluto, son of Saturn. Diana, her mother, withholds her Earthly bounty until Persephone's return in the spring. The people do their best to stay warm while they await the newly harvested gold Persphone shares from the Underworld. I look forward to spring and in the meantime embrace the wind and snow.