Hello from the Twelfth House

Recently my astrologer, John Marchesella, gave me my annual reading. This is something I do because it helps me frame my life from year to year. Patterns emerge. Influences get uncovered. And suddenly, confusing situations become infinitely clearer.

For instance, the past year has been strangely slow for me. My fiction work ended, another book I was writing wrapped up, and I’ve been building a corporate consulting/teaching business about self-care. It’s been slow to develop.

Dealing with long COVID, a month of laryngitis and a three-month renovation in which we lived alongside the guts being ripped out of our house has kept me otherwise occupied. Add to this the fact that my corporate work is now focused on self-care for hybrid workers. This is an unfolding, dynamic situation requiring much research, and the editing of all my current materials.

Turns out this meandering progress is typical when a person is in the 12th house. This is the house of reflection, reviewing, summarizing, and it includes a vague sense of being a little lost. This final, critical house embodies the swirling, morphing inexactitude of water.

It also happens to be the house of death and ghosts. Which is appropriate, because earlier in 2022 I finished Free Spirited, my memoir about the death of my daughter Teal, the healing I experienced as I connected with her spirit, and how it changed my life. (It’s due to publish in February, 2023.)

“This is a time when you should just be connecting to Spirit and really doing nothing more,” John told me. And why? Because the only planet in my 12th house is Chiron… and Chiron is all about healing ‘the wounded healer.’

Which in this case would be me.

So now I’m moved to simply surrender. There really is nothing more to be done than what I can reasonably do each day.

And after that… well, I must truly let go. I have to stop shaming myself for not ‘getting more done’. Instead, I find myself in guided flow.

For instance, today marks the final day of our major renovation that included the kitchen of my dreams. Exterior painters showed up to paint some fading house trim and replace a little dry rot on some window sills. One hour later, I found out this 100-year-old house has termites.

I hopped on Google to learn more about termites—and a few clicks later, a highly rated company with fair prices got in touch. “We can be there Sunday to inspect and remove,” he texted me.

For all the airtime I give the concept of letting go, I can’t say I’m the quickest to do so. However, sometimes life intervenes and you simply have no choice.

We don’t get to control the outcomes in our lives. And no matter how busy we make ourselves, things don’t always go our way. So we’re left with surrender.

This aware but relaxed state is what my late daughter Teal called, ‘just being’. Not trying to fix or ameliorate. Not rushing to change what is happening. Instead, ‘just being’ is about not resisting or fretting. It’s about leaning into each situation to see what it yields.

Teal wrote about this in her journal while backpacking through Italy’s Amalfi coast. One evening at sunset she passed a cemetery, and pausing, decided to go in and meditate. Afterwards, she wrote this:

“I realized in life I am never really there. I tend to be thinking about the future or past or something someone said instead of being in the moment, and taking it in for all its beauty. After this meditation I knew I had been transformed because I looked out over the ocean and mountain scene in front of me and started to cry. I was really able to take it all in and I finally realized how blessed I am to be here and how many beautiful things there are here.”

May you join me in this massive letting go…this massive expansion…which will lead who knows where?

I’m up for the adventure. How about you?

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