All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts…” — As You Like It
William Shakespeare
In 2007, after 7 years of working as an attorney, I started my solopreneur journey as a NYC real estate broker.
My family viewed my new role as beneath my level of education and training. Nobody put it more bluntly than my grandmother, who said that being a real estate agent was “a housewife’s job.”
To her generation generally, and specifically for Holocaust survivors and immigrants to America, prestige in education and career roles was an important value.
For many years in social settings, whenever I responded to the inevitable question of “what do you do?” if my grandparents were nearby they would quickly interject to add that I am also an attorney with a law degree from Columbia University.
It was important to them for others to see me in that role, even as I was trying to move past it.
Eventually, they caught up to where I was — so much so that when I broadened my scope of business to include speaking, coaching, and consulting, my family again was resistant.
Others, too, had difficulty with my multi-hyphenated approach to career and calling, and with my seemingly endless need to constantly reinvent myself.
People tend to think of “real estate broker” and “coach” as two completely separate roles; they would seem confused about how I can be “both at once.”
Of course, it’s natural to have multiple identities and roles in life. This is certainly true in today’s world, where many people have side hustles or do several different things for their career, but it’s always been true.
Anyone who is a parent and works a job outside of the home has multiple roles. Nobody questions how they can do both, because it’s built into our social construct that parenting is a role outside of “work” — even though parenting is a full-time job.
Yet, somehow, I bought into the skepticism offered by people with limited vision, imagination, and understanding of what goes on beneath the surface of what I do.
As a result, I stopped sharing and promoting my best work — to the detriment of myself and those who I serve.
And I lost the narrative arc of my own story.
Stories are powerful things. The stories we tell ourselves about who we are and our role in life shape our experience. If we don’t examine those stories and their origins, we can end up living lives that are not aligned to our truth and our personal values.
Our Roles Are Always Evolving
On The Astrology Podcast, astrologer Austin Coppock observed that in the larger narrative arc of our lives, we are usually one character for about a decade.
We don’t always realized life has changed and that we are now a different character from what we were.
Sometimes our roles shift and it takes others a while to catch up to who we are.
And sometimes it takes us a while to catch up to where we are.
You are not the same person you were a decade ago, or even a year ago. You are growing and evolving. Yet perhaps you are still playing the same role in your family, career, and community that you’ve always played.
New Moon in Gemini: Examine Your Stories
The new moon in Gemini, occurring at 12:37 am Eastern Time on June 18, invites us to examine the stories we are living out and the roles we are playing within those stories.
If we’ve lost the plot in the narrative arc of our lives, this is a good time to get it back.
What role are we playing in the unfolding dramatic arc of our experience, and is this the story we want to be living?
As Coppock said:
When you know the story that you’re in, you can play your part better and more effectively.
A Mercurial New Moon Square Neptune
At a new moon, the sun and moon come together in the same part of the sky. This new moon occurs in Gemini, a sign ruled by Mercury.
Mercury is the messenger, the communicator, and the storyteller.
At the time of the new moon, the two luminaries will be in an almost-exact square with Neptune in Pisces.
Neptune is the great dissolver. It is a planet of imagination, creativity, and escape.
Whereas Mercury seeks to categorize, and wants us to name and label our roles, Neptune is looking beneath the surface, where all labels and roles are dissolved.
The Neptunian influence at this new moon may feel murky, like we can’t quite define our roles or our part.
And yet, this is often how life is.
Life, and the role we play in it, is always changing. It’s often easier to tell the story of what we were — to explain our old role — than it is to say who we are, because who we are is constantly evolving.
And there’s the added challenge that we tend to define ourselves relative to roles that people are familiar with, because that makes it easier for people to understand where we fit in to their constructs.
So what happens when not only are you constantly evolving, but also you are innovating new ways of defining yourself that don’t yet have a place in the social construct?
This is part of the tension in play at this new moon.
And the new moon, and surrounding astrology, also tells us how to resolve this tension
Imagine a New Story
Just before the New Moon, Mercury will form a sextile to Venus — an aspect that is fun, lighthearted, and playful. That sextile will still be exact when the sun and moon come together, giving this lunation a playful quality.
Combined with the square between the luminaries and Neptune, this aspect invites us to embrace our imaginal realms. This is not a moon for concrete plans or solid answers; it’s a moon for dreaming and imagination, for playfulness and creativity.
So we can use this new moon to examine the stories we are telling about our lives and the roles we play, to explore the origins of those stories, and to dissolve any stories that no longer fit where and who we are.
And with the support of Neptune, we can dream into the new story we want to live, and the roles we wish to play in it.
In time, the murkiness will fade and we will find clarity to express our role. And in time, people will catch up to where we are.
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