3. First stop: Therapy \ Next stop: ...Astrology?!

My evolution from Victim to Survivor to Thriver (yeah...I just said thriver..I need to make use of a thesaurus)

Well, before we get to the therapy we have to review the trauma: let's go back to my husband's affair (apologies to my beautiful soulmate...it's vital to the architecture of this blog!). His infidelity was, well is, my life's ground zero. Remember--because I know you're following along and read from post 1--my intuition was completely drowned out and I had ***NO*** idea in any way, shape or form that my husband was doing anything unsavory outside of our sacred marriage. Actually...hold up. Maybe we should back up even further...all the way back to a June night in 1996...

The end-of-year seventh grade dance. What a thrilling and hormone-soaked night in our middle school commons! But not only was this the last dance of the school year, it was the last dance of the NIGHT -- I HAD to find someone to dance with, and I had to find him FAST. I don't remember much else from this dance, other than taking water breaks in the hall, and it was there when I heard the last song of the night announced. --PANIC!!-- I had no date and wasn't actively standing with a boy, so holy eff I needed to grab some testosterone and I needed to grab it fast. Somehow I wound up, in that moment, connecting with [TT] a friend from a couple years' prior--someone I had not kept in contact with, who I had hardly spoken to since entering middle school. But, it was the last-dance-of-the-night panic, so TT and I linked up and went on the literal prowl for boy-things to fill our dance cards. I can still feel the anxiety swelling up into my neck even as I type this...such an insecure, growingly unconfident preteen..oh, my poor 12 year-old self who I still revert to, time after making-myself-small time. But back to TT and me: we were hungry and prowling when she came upon someone *gasp* for me! TT grabbed my hand and said:

"Oh! There's my neighbor! You should dance with him."

Maybe THIS is the pivotal moment of my life! Actually...it really probably definitely is. The moment I re-met my soul's mate. Butterflies. All over, fluttering all over, all over again.

TT introduced us and thrust me into his sweaty, sweaty, s-w-e-a-t-y arms, and we danced our little hormonal hearts out to Boyz II Men's On Bended Knee. Here again I can feel the feels swelling up to my throat, but this time instead of anxiety, I had the most glorious and exciting and exhilarating butterflies bursting all through my body. I can feel my future-husband's ohsosweaty back - which I cared NOT AT ALL about - and the warmth of his clammy neck. I can see his thick head of black hair and his crisp-white (but drenched--did I mention he was sweating beast-style??) cotton T-shirt. I'd like to say I knew it then, that he'd be my husband, that that was my SOULmate, but I didn't. The only thing I knew was that I was obsessed with this new person I had somehow never met before, even though I grew up in our town my whole life and prided myself on my scholar-level knowledge of society. I went home and wrote a whole page in my journal dedicated entirely to him, complete with hearts encompassing our initials and labeling myself Mrs. ["NewfoundObsession" ] {anonymity rules, remember}. But, don't forget: this was the end of year school dance--I never saw him again after that Cinderella-esque night. --Well, not until 3 months later when 8th grade started. In fact, I had a string of new obsessions that summer who took over my journal pages, so he quickly became lost to the boy-craziness that gripped my first two decades life.

But...one guess who was in my 8th grade team and had every single class with me (except Math because I was on the slow track and he was/is always on the high track)?? That's right...none other than Mr. NewfoundObsession. Thus began our kinship, and my strangely changed feelings towards him -- boy-crazy obsession wore off, but a new infatuation persisted: platonically.

I spent 8th grade like a lot of pubescent folks: "dating" multiple boys (which meant walking each other to class in awkward fits of start-n-stop conversation, making out in deplorably embarrassing ways in front of peers and teachers alike, then breaking up - through a note or a friend - approximately 1.3 days later). I did also spend 8th grade seeking out the attention of my soulmate, making sure we were always seated together and partnered together at every possible turn--of course, all while trying to maintain the *coolest* of adolescent cools like, it ain't no thang...I don't care, whatever happens happens... But, you know, I didn't LIKE like him since that lone night of 7th grade dance magic...no way nuhuh not me.

It was during this time, believing myself to be free from the pang of any heart-throbbing for him, that my future Love would tell me, repeatedly and emphatically:

"Our children would be beautiful...but too bad we can never get married because you aren't 100% Italian."

The dagger that stuck directly into my adolescent heart when he uttered those words...we can never get married...ahh. This became a frequent sentiment of his, in what I can only surmise was his schoolboy way of flirting. As the school year wore on and I grew tired of my revolving door of boytoys, all of a sudden I was confronted with an uncomfortable reality for which I had not previously accounted...my 8th grade soulmate wanted a girlfriend of his own, but *gasp* it wasn't ME! It was at this point that I realized, holy hell, not only was I obsessed with garnering the attention of this boy-man, I had actually become obsessed with making this boy-man my boy-FRIEND!

Eff.

Well now what was I supposed to do?? I did the only thing my severely insecure self could do...help my soulmate get the girlfriend he wanted -- a girl who wasn't me, but one of my friends. This, of course, is all memorialized forever by him in my 8th grade yearbook. And thus 8th grade ended--as well as any last hint of self confidence I had before completely retreating into myself and introverting almost every aspect of my high school existence.

I spent the next 4 years breathlessly turning high school corners, wishing my soulmate would be sauntering down the other side of the hall (he was always so damn HAPPY!), for the briefest burst of excitement when he would offer me a "hi." The still-sweaty, black-haired friend I knew from 8th grade had drifted away...and I myself had drifted away...from myself. All I had of him were those infrequent bursts of hallway acknowledgement joy, with a smattering of AOL-turned-AIM correspondences (iykyk...sorry young'uns). He always strung me along with those damn IM's! It's amazing what visceral aggravation blasts through me momentarily when I think about this... So charismatic and familiar--but only in written form. IRL I held extremely little regard in his life, but on the screen...he acted like we were the best of friends from 8th grade still. In fact, I came in time to refer to him as "the devil" because of his cruel game stringing me along.

Despite my burning desires, he didn't belong to me. In actuality he belonged to the whole school, basically. He shot right up to popularity and star athlete status, charming the pants off just about everyone (even, I believed, a grown ass woman teacher...who he only recently confirmed to me was not actually a rumor !!!!!! but someone he almost actually took the pants off of had it not been for her cold feet in the parking lot on their way to a tryst!!!). Ah, my soulmate. So charismatic and familiar.

With very little human interaction beyond heart-fluttering hallway hello's, we graduated high school. Unfortunately for me my heart only grew larger for him, but I wasn't quite sure what to do with him in my headspace once I arrived at college. I no longer had the daily anticipation of looking for his face in the crowded halls and his IM correspondence had largely dropped off, especially in the wake of the loss of his beloved mother our senior high school year. I had to put him out of my mind once and for all, and had quite the ample opportunity to do so with a whole new crop of eye candy in college. Distraction after distraction took me away from thinking about him, but then...he'd pop up. On my computer screen, in instant message form, there he'd be just when I had "gotten rid" of him. He had a knack for this--messaging me just as I had decided I wouldn't care anymore (as if that were ever really a decision..).

The only way I could describe my soulmate to my college friends was to liken him to a celebrity. Seriously. I didn't/don't have celebrity crushes--no handsome actors or sexy musicians nor anyone else that made my heart stop; no one for whom I would drop everything and run to see if they showed up, no posters adorning my dorm walls, no daydreams of improbable encounters. No, just my soulmate...he was the only one who held that status of "next levelness," that butterfly-fluttering giddy schoolgirl excitement, in my mind.

But, that's no way to live, so eventually I did turn him out of my brain. I deleted all of his screen names and his phone number and determined that it was time, now that I had graduated college, to GROW UP and grow out of this childhood infatuation. He wasn't worthy or deserving of my time--what had he actually done for me after all these years, except come messaging whenever he felt my attentive gaze straying from him??

A number of months went on without trace of my soulmate and I held steadfast in my deletion of his presence in my life. Of course, obviously, we all know what happens next. Out of nowhere, a text message arrives on my phone. I was at work, substitute-teaching at my childhood upper elementary school, and had gone out for a walk along the very back forested area of the school grounds while the class was at lunch. It was a gorgeous spring day and that wooded periphery was giving me such life--how many hours I had spent gazing at those trees, envisioning so many stories and fairytales in that magical setting of my youth! It is perfectly fitting that my soulmate chose that time and place to send me his message, asking me to come work with him at a restaurant in need of a bartender.

Since I had deleted his number I had no idea who was texting me about this job opportunity and had guessed (wrongly) at someone else that we went to high school with. He's going to hate me for this next revelation, *so* much more than sharing his infidelity with the world -- being wrong with my initial guess, when I pressed to find out who he was he responded:

"It's [me], the Italian Stallion!"

--Can you see the *head-smack* and *cry-laughing* emojis? Ah, my soulmate. So charismatic, so familiar.

And so it was--by that evening I had met with him and his friends running the bar and I knew my entire life had just shifted, even though it would still be four agonizingly exciting months before we officially started dating.

We haven't been apart since. He STILL, and I am positive always will, STILL elicits the same ecstatic butterfly flutters in my body when he comes into a room, sends me a message or calls me on the phone. My soulmate...so charismatic, so familiar.

Perhaps the scene has been set a little better now, to understand how it was that discovering my soulmate's carnal infidelity led to the emotional violence of PTSD. I'll elaborate on the specifics of that and how post-trauma played into my life in the next post but, for now, we'll pick up the story from November 30, 2020...

November 30, 2020:

Within an hour of discovering the adultery of my soulmate I reached out to a dear friend and *gasp* did the unthinkable: I went into another human’s home with no masks, no social distancing, full on hugs and dreadfully needed human contact --which, to some, was/is not a big deal at all, but for me...for my materialist ultra-fear-based terrified of paralyzed by death previous existence...this was beyond huge. For me, this was the equivalent of signing a very probable+literal Covid death sentence...but I couldn't not run to my friend. (By the way, it wouldn’t surprise me at all when I find out one day that this friend and I have had either our own soul contract(s) together or at least familiarity with each other in previous lifetime(s). Sorry if that’s too much for you as you read this, friend! Sorry I’m not sorry ;) )

So, in the covidly unsafe safety of my dear friend's kitchen, she heard the sorrow of my heart and bore the pain of my life with me. She listened when listening required and advised when advising required--and her advisement is always first-rate <3 A woman of science, a woman of experience; it is my great fortune to have a friend with such deep compassion AND wisdom.

Armed with resources from my beautiful friend--along with her (and her own beautiful soulmate's) unwavering support no matter which path I walked next--I returned to my home, the scene of the awful monstrosity that was now, somehow, my life, and called one of two options I saw for my unfortunate future: a therapist. (The other option, you wonder? A divorce attorney. That call wouldn't come until the next day and in no way felt like the right call to be making, but was made out of "due diligence" I felt from other outside forces. Wake. That. GD. Intuition. UP!!!)

The therapist was a direct recommendation from my friend and, mercifully, turned out to be another beautiful soul--one who I very quickly came to feel like I wanted in my own family, in some kind of grandmotherly or great auntedness capacity. This amazing lady is not only one of the top therapists but the only active Master Trainer in Imago Therapy across our magnificent globe. With my soulmate more than willing, ready to do any and everything I asked--and with me in no way wanting to take advantage of that but to only do what would be best for myself and for us together--we entered with pure, Loving and forgiving intention into Imago therapy.

Less than a week after ground zero I found myself in another kind of therapy as well: trauma counseling. At the gentle urging of our Imago Therapist, she pointed me towards an EMDR specialist. This in itself was something I railed against:: not against therapy but against allowing myself to describe my situation as Post Traumatic Stress. And not because I didn’t feel like I was suffering from post traumatic stress...I sure did feel that I was--but because I felt unworthy of the label. I have family who have served in the armed forces - a medevac pilot cousin at war in Afghanistan, other loved ones with other "real" trauma - friends who have been raped, lost babies to SIDS, another cousin smashed face-first through a car windshield in an accident he should not have survived -- these are the people, I believed, who were truly allowed to use the PTSD title.

It has taken me some time to reconcile what those loved ones have suffered through with my own different level of trauma, but trauma nonetheless, without insulting or belittling it. What I’ve awakened to in recognizing that this husband I have, he is my actual soulmate -- he is actually the living, breathing embodiment of my higher self's partner for this and other lifetime's -- this makes it far more sensible and far easier to feel into, that an affair at the hands of my soulmate could lead to this level of complete mental, emotional and physical undoing.

I was so traumatized in fact that I was only ever able to withstand a few minutes, just a handful of times, of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing - a common and powerful psychotherapy tool for the treatment of PTSD). My therapist quickly realized my brand of acute sensitivity and we would try EMDR gently, then pull back. I didn’t realize the depths of my intuition at the time, but there was a knowing somewhere very deep inside of me that there was something else for which I needed my therapist, something outside of EMDR. And, I might suspect, she had this knowing as well. So we worked together for almost exactly four years, at times every week and at other (later) times with entire month's in between. And then September 1, 2024 happened...I needed her again full-time--but now so did my husband. From where the Hawk perches on high, we can look down and understand why other supports fell through and it landed to my therapist to pick the ball up for him: this was how our story was meant to progress. Post 9/1/24 I like to think that I finally "graduated" from therapy, but the reality is I still could and did lean on my therapist for sessions when it feels right. And now, with the additional and critical understanding that came out of her working directly with my soulmate on his own previously ignored post-trauma healing, our growth deepens even more.

From earlier posts you'll recall that September of 2024 was a key turning point in my current life's journey, but it would take a number of events/synchronicities/knowings to solidify my abandonment of an oppressive materialist lens through which I experienced life. I had, of course, shared with my therapist the spiritual rumblings that began after September 1. With seeds planted in September came my therapist's October 7 text message, directly setting in motion the final destruction of that iron-wrought materialist pair of glasses I still clutched:

Hi! Now that you’re open to all kinds of new things ☺️ I wanted to let you know about a woman who reads birth charts and also looks at couples birth charts together to see what lessons they are trying to learn together this lifetime. Her readings have really been amazing and helpful for a lot of the people I work with and I wanted to see if you might be interested in having her do a reading for you and I can put you in touch with her. No pressure at all!

Astrology… Not many single words in the English language, or any other, was capable of stirring up such disgust and repulsion in me, but there it was (yeah, that's a pretty bold statement because there are definitely other far more vehement and venomous words). I had a lifetime of learned angry, forgetting, disbelieving arrogance and that lone word intensified it all. But here I was, not completely open, but not CLOSED... This was worth the plunge, I calculated. After all, my current life status was being rocked and uprooted at a staggering intensity and dizzying frequency--what could it possibly hurt to try something new? First stop: therapy, next stop: Astrology!

That night I emailed and received the response, outlining the very few things I would need to provide to [the Astrologer] (you know me, always protecting anonymity!) for her to do the reading--birth date, time and city--and by October 17 I had the reading that changed my life.

Since then we’ve had my husband's and children's charts read as well as our synastry (couple's) chart, each more miraculous than the last. Reading through my own chart was like reading my own memories as well as my own thoughts in black and white; it has helped me integrate things that I have forgotten or things that had been too complex in my mind to express in words. And this was true not just for me: the bulls-eye-ness held just as intensely and unbelievably true for my husband, our relationship, and our children. The specificity and thoughtfulness of our readings are nothing short of mind-blowing. It would be exceedingly hard to receive the caliber and accuracy of readings that we did and still walk away with skepticism. This alone broke so many walls down.

From where I stand, on one hand a birth chart reading simplifies while on the other it amplifies, regarding the understandings/knowings that it brings forth. Astrology has also shown me that the Universe works with infinite synchronicity at all moments and in all heartbeats.

This post is not a call to study Astrology (though I certainly now would encourage rather than deter such an inclination), but a chronicling of the evolution of my remembering, a tale that would be interminately different--and most likely, probably, definitely, far slower-progressing--had it not been for the powerful interplay of Astrological knowings. I now LOVE Astrology-time each day! --A moment (or more) where I either catch up on or rewatch any new insights from the esteemed Pam Gregory or Kathy Rose, and even work on interpreting my own chart's placements and angles for myself.

Had my therapist not suggested a birth chart reading I am sure I would’ve found my way around to these new OLD understandings eventually...but chances are that path would have been more winding--most likely with even more pain and suffering. Taken together with the other experiences I'm outlining through this blog, Therapy + Astrology = CCSeer. And so it is. <3

Do you pay attention to Astrology in some form or another, whether mundane (global) or individual? Have you ever had your birth chart read? Tell me about your experience<3