There are days when I sit down to write and the words flow like water rushing through a firehose: a focused stream aimed at its target backed by an endless energy supply. Sometimes they say important things.
Other times, the words do not flow. The ideas are there and the concepts easy enough to explain, but the entire process gets stuck, as if there’s a knot in the hose.
Except that knot sits in my chest, or in the back of my throat, or in the pit of my stomach.
We use our bodies in everything we do. Even the act of sitting down to write is an embodied experience. The only question is whether you’re paying attention to the signals.
These sensations are signals of fear — a sometimes paralyzing fear.
These signals and sensations tell me that the thing I’m about to do matters.
The sensations only arise when I truly care. When it feels most on point with my soul’s highest purpose.
What wants to be written in this moment comes from my heart. Or, more accurately, the depths of my soul.
It’s personal. It’s relevant. It matters.
And I care about this enough to want to get it “right” in whatever way “right” means at the moment.
Usually what that means is that I want it to serve.
I want the words I share to have impact, but more important I want them to help catalyze insights. I want them to provide nourishment, to offer some nurturing, to be a hand at your back.
Understanding the Midheaven
In an astrology chart, the midheaven is the highest point in the chart — it represents our calling, our vocation, our most public role in the community.
My midheaven is in Cancer, the sign of care, nurturing, emotions, and intuition.
When it comes to my work, care is my calling and my currency.
No matter what I do, what role I play, I can’t help but infuse it with care.
And, if I’m not careful, it can be my downfall, leading to burnout.
One of my soul lessons in life is learning how to create a structure around my caring for others so that I can also care for myself enough to persevere in my work, to serve at the highest level.
The other relates to the shadow side of Cancer: a killing fear of risk and a tendency to hide safely behind the mask of the caregiver.
Playing the role of caregiver all the time, supporting others in their work behind the scenes, is a convenient way to staying safe from my fear of visibility.
Illuminating Your Soul’s Purpose
Once a year, the traveling sun passes over this high point in our chart, illuminating our sacred calling and our soul’s mission, asking us to check in with whether we’re living aligned with our soul’s purpose.
For me, that day is today, as the sun meets my midheaven at 6 degrees of Cancer. Tonight the sun will form a supportive trine to Saturn, which also will impact my midheaven.
This astrology, combined with other personal transits, is telling me that it’s time to step into greater visibility, to embrace my next chapter, and to stop hiding behind old patterns.
And thus the stomach clenching, the chest gripping, the knot in the back of my throat.
It tells me that I’m on the right path.
That my caring is needed, that the words matter.
Stepping Into the Fear
The knot is strong, the clenching hurts.
My default here is to go where I’m strong: to write an easy how-to article, or share something fact-based. To harness the strength of my natal Mercury in Gemini and rely on my intellect.
Staying behind the screen typing words is safe.
The other choice is to stay with what’s happening, to embrace my experience, to lean into the fear, to feel the discomfort in my body, and breathe through all of it as I let go of the quest for the perfect words.
This isn’t what I planned to write; it’s not the thing I wanted to share. But these are the words that came. This is the experience I am having. And my work is to trust that this will serve.
With my midheaven in Cancer, I know that my true act of caring doesn’t come from my words, but from how I hold space.
And this perhaps is my soul lesson of the moment: to let go of the words, step away from the keyboard, and put myself in public view.
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