I feel destined to be an astrologer. I’ll explain.

When I was a little girl, my cool hip Aunt Sherry from NYC passed on to my mother a beautiful piece of metal art of a joyful sun. A symbol for each constellation of the zodiac was found at the end of every ray. It is one of the few things I remember hanging in our early home, and I always was enchanted by it. What was that? What did those symbols mean? And more important, is Mom going to take it with her when we move into our new house? It made the cut, but ended up in the basement.

 When I was a tween, I found it while digging through the rubble of old Christmas decorations and extra household items stowed downstairs. I painted it silver with my Dad, and hung it proudly in my room. At this point, I still didn’t know what it was, or what the symbols meant, but I knew that piece belonged to me. When I went to college it traveled with me (and by this time I finally knew what astrology was!), and I hung it in my first rented home and then finally in my current settled domicile. Now having studied astrology intently for several years, I fell more in love with it. At the same time, I have become more and more curious as to why, out of all the possible things to fall in love with as a child, it was that old metal sun with the funky rays.

 I certainly didn’t start out on the path of an astrologer, quite the opposite actually. I wanted to be a scientist, an environmental scientist to be exact, one that would help heal Mother Earth. I eagerly went to Penn State and double majored in Biology and Ecology, and needless to say, the scientific community there would certainly not entertain reading omens from the sky. Nor was I interested in doing so at the time. But becoming a scientist developed rigor in skills of analysis, application of laws and theories, and developing an eye for patterns and cycles. All of these skills are super helpful in practicing astrology!

After being in the field for a few years, I longed for more human connection (delineating wetlands on your own is kind of lonely!), so I soon found myself inside middle and high school classrooms teaching science. Here I had the opportunity to learn that my love of service could expand to my fellow humans. I loved seeing the individual spirits and the journey of learning each child seemed to be on. I saw how truly unique each soul really is.

In my late 20s I met and fell in love with my husband, Blake, who in the future would become a very successful Chinese Medicine practitioner. Our early years of marriage involved him in graduate school, and I became quite involved and curious about the energetics of the human body. I was so fortunate to learn the language of Chinese medicine beside him, and as it turns out, this language is foundational to the understanding of Astrology. These two practices are birthed from the same philosophy, and it was my humble and simple understanding of the medicine that Blake practices that allowed me to quickly learn the language of the planets.

Finally, and perhaps the most important piece of my journey to the moment of arrival as “Astrologer,” was that of becoming a mother. A mother who, left her professional life behind and pursued the humble job tending the hearth for a family of 5. It was during these 14 years as a stay at home mother, where my ego was purified and all my judgements about the nature of the world and the lives we are all living came into question. It was a time I had to search for meaning and deeper understanding of the journey each of us takes. It was in the quiet space of the home where inside I discovered why I loved that sun so much as a child. I am in awe as how it feels that every significant life step I made prepared the way for this moment in my life of practicing astrology.

“God has prepared a path for everyone to follow. You just have to read the omens He left for you.”

-Paulo Coelho