The Body As An Altar: 90-Day Rest & Rebirth - Week THREE

Week three

This week marks three weeks of self-love completed. It’s really interesting that just having the focus on what I can do as an act of self-love every day for 21 days can make all the difference in how you move through your week. It was a good week for me even though there were moments of frustration and irritation. I like to look at it as the challenges will come but I will get better at handling them.

With Thanksgiving two weeks ago, the week after was a bit of an adjustment back into the routine of school and work, as it usually is after holiday breaks. I didn’t necessarily do any specific self-love activities this week but one thing I did do was make myself a yummy chai tea latte most days to savor after breakfast. It’s funny because my daughter always tries to get a sip from my cup even though it’s hot. I’ll be sitting at the dining table and here she’ll come with her pitter-patter feet ready to hop aboard my lap to see what I’m up to and/or nurse.

loving yourself through the mood swings

This week, I was tasked with being a calm space for my kids who have big emotions and are very expressive with them. I had to hold myself together as I experienced their emotional waves which are less effective communication and more loud roars, especially my daughter, my little Leo Sun. Funny enough, my son is a Leo Moon. I had to remind myself that trying to get them to stop won’t help and matching them definitely won’t work. I just had to be curious about what the root issue was at hand.

My son, I know has his “moods” which come usually from being overly stimulated, exhausted from school work, hungry, and waiting too long to tell someone. This week, he didn’t eat the school lunch a few times and came home hungry but he didn’t express this to us and he also didn’t want what we were serving for dinner. So, that led to a meltdown. I know that it’s best to let him ride out that emotional wave. As long as he isn’t yelling and throwing anything, he’s allowed to take that time to feel his feelings. It’s hard for me because I feel all of those emotions as an empath and highly sensitive person. In Human Design, I have an Undefined Solar Plexus and my entire household all have Emotional Authority. Each of them has different emotional “waves”. My son has a Tribal wave which is a steady incline followed by an intense drop. The majority of my household has Tribal emotional waves which are fascinating to observe in hindsight but in the midst of it it can be debilitating for me. I do my best to hold space and not take it personally but it definitely can feel personal.

My daughter was also having a hard time this week. At first, I wasn’t sure what was going on since she was just really clingy one night and had a slight fever. Then, for the next couple of days, she was refusing to eat meals, just snaking but even the snaking was followed by irritability. Turns out she’s teething but my goodness was it hard to hear her “roaring” from frustration and throwing herself on the ground or thrashing in my arms. We had to figure out what she was trying to verbalize to us about what she wanted to eat or wanted to grab and when we didn’t get what she wanted, she got more irritated. Nighttime naps and sleep were no better until the end of the week. Thankfully, I figured I should use the tools I do have to help me like my woven baby wraps. I kept the ones I bought when my son was a toddler so they come in handy now that I have a little one again. I wrapped her up and sang and hummed to her since rocking her to sleep in the rocking chair was failing to help.

Finally, success.

I can’t say I did much for myself this week other than keep my cool and focus on the tasks at hand. I made sure I did the basic things like showering and brushing my teeth and enjoying the food I consumed like the delicious pho I got on Wednesday. For me this week, being compassionate with my kids was self-love because I know they are just sorting out what they’re feeling and feelings aren’t dangerous. They can be intense but they are safe to express them and to feel them out— the full spectrum. Also, they both have Gate 55 defined in their charts, the Gate of Spirit, which Is something they will and will have to encounter on their life’s journey. With this knowledge and awareness, I can prepare myself and strengthen my toolkit to allow me to withstand those turbulent times.

Moving into next week

Next week, we have a Full Moon in Gemini which I’ve been seeing others expressing as pretty volatile. The Moon will be conjunct Mars in Gemini which is currently in its retrograde cycle. I expect emotions to be high and there may be a lack of effective communication again. It’s happening in my 12th House so it’s probably a subconscious connection along with a heavy need to seclude myself and replenish.

One this that has been heavy on my mind is the concept of intergenerational healing. Just as I acted as a calm space for my kids, that is an act of healing our lineage because I didn’t have that as a kid. When I had big emotions, I was shut down. When I made a mistake or misbehaved, I was punished, shamed and hit. My kids don’t have that. They have discipline that isn’t in the form of physical, emotional or verbal abuse. They have a home and spaces within the home where they are safe to retreat to gather themselves if necessary.

My whole motive for diving into my own birth chart and understanding it was led by my desire to understand myself and to understand where and who I came from. I was already on the journey of connecting to my ancestors and Astrology was and is a why to deepen that connection by understanding the patterns that are on display on the birth chart. I have birthdates and some birth locations and I hope to learn how to rectify charts formally soon. Also, I’m in a Human Design training and I’ve been seeing how effective it is to have a foundation in Astrology and bringing in this modality as a way to guide people in the here and now. Human Design includes the unconscious parts of us that are formed while we are in our mother’s wombs and I truly believe the definition we see is explaining parts of the prenatal experience as our brains were forming, the reptilian brain which is the oldest part of our brain. My other belief is that the unconscious or Design part of our BodyGraph is also how the 12th House functions in the Astrological birth chart and the Personality or conscious part is our 1st House. That’s a pretty cut and dry way of explaining it but that’s the theory I have.

While I’m in my hermit mode in January I plan to spend time diving into my family’s birth charts and putting some pieces together. Plus, I have a workshop or course I’m thinking of putting together.

Talk to you next week!