EPISODE# 3: Finding My Voice + A Little Astrology & HD

podcast

Mar 25

Introduction.

Welcome back to another episode of “ASPIRE. CREATE. INSPIRE.” In this episode, I’ll be sharing with you my personal journey of becoming more comfortable with speaking and being comfortable with my voice. Also, I’ll share a few resources that have helped me over the years.

Before I get into that, I wanted to share a brief life update.

In the last episode, I shared Moon Journal Prompts for the Full Moon in Virgo. I wanted to share a little bit about how the energy has been expressed for me and how it directly showed up in my chart.

Astro Update

So, the Sun in Pisces was in my 10th house which speaks about career, long-term ambitions, your public persona, your public life, and your reputation. The Moon in Virgo was in my 4th house which speaks of the family, home, private life, and ancestry. The Sun shines its light and the Moon reflects that light back to it. With that imagery, the Moon is reflecting things from the 4th house onto the 10th house for me.

In a sense that’s true.

There has to be a balance between my home life and work-life especially as I work from home. But to get more specific, I have other aspects that were going on. Also, Virgo governs your body health, daily habits, and mundane tasks in your life. Pisces is spirituality, the abstract, your dream world, illusions, and going with the flow.

The Moon made a trine which is an easeful aspect to my natal Moon. Right now, Pluto is sitting pretty close to my Moon so I know that Pluto is intense, it speaks about transformation, rebirth, deep subconscious issues, and power struggles. The Moon speaks about emotions, your instincts, family, women, and heritage. My mom and I had conversations around the dreams she had which were about family, funny enough.

Another aspect that I had was the Moon and Sun squaring my Venus and Ascendant. Venus speaks about our intimate relationships, what we value, what we deem as worthy, our self-esteem. Your Ascendant is the marker that sets the rest of your chart up into the 12 different Houses. The Ascendant is where the first house begins. The first house speaks about many things like your experience during birth, your overall body condition as well as certain features that stand out to others. It’s the first impression you give off to people.

So, last weekend, I was training with my mom with her personal trainer and my body was so tired from the time change and probably from the overall energy. As I was doing core workouts, I was trying to do a certain exercise and it felt impossible, but I pushed myself as best as I could which actually made me cry from frustration. Squares are external influences that cause frustration and conflict so I wasn’t surprised that I felt this way, but at the moment, I didn’t take into account how this was playing out. In terms of Venus, my husband and I did have a hard conversation but it was much needed and went well because of the harmonious energy from the Sun and Moon aspecting my Moon and Pluto.

So, I hope that helps you kind of look at your chart and see how the energy of the Moon cycle may have influenced you. Of course, according to your unique chart, the themes and aspects will create their own story. I just love that Astrology can help you prepare for things even though at the moment it isn’t always clear how it will manifest because of Free-Will. I see Astrology as a tool for self-empowerment and to cultivate greater compassion for myself and others.

Did you experience some of the same themes as I did? Let me know in the comments on the blog or shoot me a DM on Instagram. I’d love to know how that energy has been showing up for you.

Okay, let’s get into this episode.

Do you follow Humans of New York on Instagram? I’ve been following that account for years, maybe since 2017. I love reading about all the unique stories shared by native New Yorkers and other people Brandon Stanton has interviewed. Last year, Brandon shared a post with his words reflecting on how he goes about recording the words of these individuals while being true to their unique tone of voice.

In the post he says,

“Story is often lying on the surface. It’s the way the events of a person’s life string together. Voice is much harder to quantify.
Voice is the way someone speaks. But it’s not the actual sound of their voice because that can’t be transmitted through writing. It’s how a person uses language. The things they say that no one else says. Those combinations of word that belong only to them.”

I have felt like I’ve been looking for my voice for years, but really I was looking for acceptance of how I speak and allowance in finding the best ways to get my words and thoughts crossed without judgment or punishment. For me, my voice is attached to my identity, my personality. I wasn’t confident in what I wanted to say and afraid others wouldn’t want to listen to me.

Growing up, I was labeled as a “shy” kid and a Tom Boy. Truth is, I just liked to watch and observe, check the vibes first. Like many people, my childhood experiences left me feeling insecure, unsure of myself, and afraid to speak up. Doing “the work” helped me regain my confidence and learn some hidden truths about myself. words.

I can look back at old Facebook posts and see how I was almost mimicking or parroting the language styles of my peers. I remember I would pick up and try on different phrases I liked that people around me said. I think that’s normal since I was just trying to fit in. At some point, I think we all have done that and might even still do it, unconsciously. You know, when you hear new catchphrases and such. It wasn’t until recently that I took notice of why I had a hard time speaking confidently. I felt like I had to say what people wanted me to say or rather, what I THOUGHT they wanted me to say. Basically, my words really did not truly belong to me. They belonged to whoever I thought I wanted to connect with. I found a way to remedy this when I learned about Human Design, but the journey to that point took some time.

I’ve listened to many women and girls share their stories over the years wishing I’d have the courage to share my story, my truth. I know now that I am not what happened to me. I am who I am in this present moment.

When I hit puberty, I remember I called my friend on the phone once and he said that I sound like a dude. He probably doesn’t remember this, but it stood with me for such a long time. I won’t blame him for saying what he said. We were in junior high and kids are just mean. We didn’t know any better. Not really. But I didn’t like my voice and I hated speaking on the phone after that. My grandma or my dad would call and ask to speak to me and I literally felt pain in my body with just the thought of speaking on the phone. I dreaded it.

It takes a lot of unlearning & unpacking the beliefs and values we learned during childhood based on what ppl told us and showed us that still live within our cells.

Sometimes this looks like throwing the whole thing away and starting over. This is where the nitty-gritty stage begins in self-awareness, what no longer serves a purpose in your life? Or rather, how can this serve a new purpose for this stage in our lives? Like instead of the experience of being afraid to speak up causing me to run in the other direction, how can I sit with the feeling to let it pass? What is the feeling teaching me?

This is what I wish I knew more about as a teen. I wish I was comfortable talking with someone about the beliefs and values I held on to from my childhood experiences but I didn’t have the necessary tools to start the conversation either.

So, I just used what I knew to be true and made my decisions that way. Even if I knew it wasn’t “right”, I did it because it fulfilled a need. Understanding my circumstances and self-awareness wasn’t something I dove into right away. Funny thing about it is when I look at Mercury in my birth chart, it makes sense why things happened the way they did. I’m self-taught in a lot of things. I had to learn a lot on my own and was expected to know things even when I had no clue consciously.

Adulthood

For most of my early 20’s, I had a hard time communicating with others and that was partly because I have hearing loss. I guess I was able to get away with not hearing clearly until I was placed in situations that required me to not miss the details being explained or communicated. I didn’t receive my first ever hearing aids until I was 26 and I experienced hearing loss around the age of 10, give or take. Either way, I spent over a decade without being able to hear clearly and in turn, I couldn’t establish real relationships with others. A lot of people around me were impatient with me because I would say “Huh?” over and over.

Having the gift of vision allowed me to flex a muscle that hearing loss inhibited me to do. It allowed me to invest in non-verbal forms of communication and self-expression. It taught me how to read body language and energy when a person’s words and tone were muddled for me. Forming a union with another person reflected a mirror of myself, one that reminds me of what I project into the world, positive or negative.

Becoming an entrepreneur back in 2018 thrusted me into what freedom has the ability to be. It has given me experiences to curate an environment that nourishes this freedom, the freedom I desire— creative, financial and physical, and psychological freedom. Of course, I had my own challenges with that since I wasn’t comfortable with being on the phone just yet.

During the Summer of 2019, after I quit the 9-5, I began thinking of ways I could create passive income. I received the idea to create my first course, eDesign For Beginners. I had received messages from other designers who loved my renderings asking what software I used and how I created them. I thought a great way to help other budding designers would be by creating a resource that showed them how to start creating quality renderings especially if they didn’t have the funds for expensive software. In the process of creating this course, I realized that the process was teaching me something about myself.

I realized I haven’t actually heard my voice recorded. I mean I did record myself as a kid on my Barbie cassette tapes when I would sing and see how I sounded. I had one of those Barbie Sing-With-Me Karaoke Machines and would listen to NSYNC and other early 2000’s artists. This time was really wild because it felt like I was listening to a stranger but it was me. I remember being so nit-picky about how I said certain words and would constantly delete and re-record. I was frustrated that I couldn’t just speak freely like other people I’d see recording videos of themselves. I wanted to just use captions instead of recording myself because it was just so frustrating for me. It was a huge lesson for me in terms of finding my voice. I was learning to accept myself by listening to myself.

Finding my voice meant releasing judgment and allowing myself to be heard. No one was judging me as harshly as I was judging myself. I postponed the release of the course to make sure I had time to record myself. There were points where I would keep putting off recording but I finally started to make progress. I created scripts for me to recite from to act as a guide as I recorded for the video. Thankfully, I’d been in therapy during this time, too so I was able to change my perspective with someone who was neutral, encouraging, and supportive. I really needed that.

Recent Years

In the Fall of 2020, I had my Human Design chart read by Aycee Brown. I had stumbled upon Human Design by accident over the Summer when I was trying to find a way to articulate the vision I had for Visionary Revamp. After diving into a few links and a friend of mine sharing a post from Aycee, I dove into her content and a couple of months later, I decided to invest in a reading. I was truly guided to this tool and resource to begin doing what was needed to freely speak my truth and stand firm in who I am and what I wanted to share. I learned as a Projector with a Self-Projected Authority my Throat Center is connected to my Identity Center. By feeling like I couldn’t express myself with my voice, I wasn’t allowing my full Self to show up authentically.

It’s taken me the last almost two years to settle more deeply into this realization. And if you know anything about Astrology, I was just about to have my Saturn Return at the beginning of 2021 so this knowledge was very helpful. I’ll have an episode on what I experienced and learned during this time soon. Even though Saturn isn’t exactly on my natal Saturn, it’s still in Aquarius so the lessons are still ongoing.

Finding Astrology and Human Design has helped me to ground into who I am and who I am becoming. Having them in my toolkit has helped me during pivotal points in my life where I had to take a leap of faith and trust that all would be well. It helped me to learn how to best use my energy and how to understand the ways other people’s energy interacts with mine.

If you’ve been curious about either of these tools, I’d love to share more with you!

I will be launching Visionary Revamp at the end of next month where I’ll help you understand your unique energy and how to cultivate the home and lifestyle you desire. I noticed that lots of my interior design clients would use words such as “sanctuary” and “retreat” to describe what they would like to feel in their homes. I’ve found, through my own experience, true sanctuary and spaces of retreat require your lifestyle to be in alignment with it. When caregivers are creating homes for their families, they are creating a safe space for their children and all who live there to thrive within. In order to do this more effectively, we have to examine the foundation of the home.

What is the vision for your home life?

What core values support the vision?

How do your wants and needs support your values?

Even if you aren’t ready to have a huge transformation in your home, you can start to get clear on where to place your resources when you are. When I say resources I mean your time, money, and energy because any transformation you agree to requires your commitment.

Many of us just need the right support and I’d love to guide and support you as you get clear on your vision of a beautiful life.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, please join my newsletter for updates on an official date.

Talk to you soon.

Take care.

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