Greetings Good Listeners, I’m Shaunga, creator of Otherworldly Giants. This is my Live Memoir where I share behind the scenes of my creative practise, healing journey and sacred entrepreneurship. In this post I speak about how I relate to ‘success’ and ‘failure’ when it comes to switching or ending careers. You can read it below, and/or listen to the audio version as a Patreon bonus episode (it’s free).
Summer Solstice Blessings, People!!
Welcome to my LIVE MEMOIR! I have recently completely re-designed my website, and created a space for new parts of my work to emerge – like this Live Memoir – which I have wanted to do for a long time!
But…before I speak more about the new website and the world of a new career emerging from it…
I need to take a moment to fully say thank you and goodbye to my previous career.
The career I had for the last 10-15 years was multi-layered. I worked as a writer, performance artist, arts educator, queer cabaret event producer, not to mention my 14.5 year career as a Cat Mama…these aspects of my career are a different conversation for a different day.
Today I want to talk about my career as an Astrologer.
This is the part of my career that I probably have been the most known for.
For those who don’t know: about 12 years ago I finished my astrological training and began offering individual birth chart readings to community. Throughout the years my talents and offerings grew into clairvoyant astrology, especially via sharing regular youtube horoscopes.
My birth chart readings grew more expansive and multidimensional. I was skilled in interpreting birth charts through their complex technical elements, but I also began channeling directly with the planets and zodiac signs themselves, as a form of ancestral communication.
My readings were very beloved amongst a growing community that came to know me.
Then, when the pandemic started in 2020, I went into a deep underground/underworld portal of cleansing and repair, and I put my practise on hiatus.
In spring 2022, I emerged with the birth of my new company, Otherworldly Giants <3
In many ways, Otherworldly Giants is a natural evolution and alchemical integration of my work from the last decade coming together in full bloom.
But, on a level of ancestral and energetic DNA, it’s a complete departure.
When we look at the previous era of Pluto in Capricorn (2008-2023/2024), arguably, the primary mission of this time period was for the Earth Itself to completely dismantle and transform its ancestral and energetic DNA, and lay a new foundation for new life to eventually bloom and grow.
For anyone who devoted themselves to a healing path during this time, we experienced this transformation alongside Mama Earth within ourselves, and in our lives. Some more intensely than others. The intensity was only amplified from 2015-2017 up until very recently.
With the arrival of Pluto in Aquarius, we are in a whole new world now, and the intensity we’ll experience in the coming decades will still be intense, but the story around the intensity will be completely different.
We can’t deny how much we’ve changed on a cellular level.
That’s what I mean when I say – the career I’m engaged in right now has so many similar elements to what I was doing before…but my ancestral and energetic DNA is barely recognizable.
So, I want to talk about the idea of “success and “failure” when it comes to ending or switching careers, especially when that happens “late in life.”
FYI: I just turned 39. In certain paradigms, I guess that qualifies as changing careers late in life 😂 While these judgements and assessments on age and accomplishment are pretty much nonsense, it’s worth pointing out because they still make us feel bad about ‘not having our shit together’ by a certain age, or they can stop us from fully embracing a change that needs to come through in exactly the right time.
Personally, I am not someone who sees things through the lens of failure. It’s just not my nature.
My Sagittarius Moon sees success everywhere. I see thwarted plans as learning portals. Missed goals as important re-direction. Rejection as divine intervention. Disappointment as opportunity to learn more about my needs.
I think that break-ups and fall-outs – even if they are tumultuous and painful – can also just be simple, clear indication that two entities need to part ways for no reason other than it’s time.
I don’t believe in failure because I don’t believe every relationship needs to stay together forever no matter what.
I don’t believe in failure because I don’t believe everything we want is supposed to work out, or that everything we pursue is meant to last.
I don’t believe in failure because I trust the Universe flowing through me more than I trust my expectations, my goals, my “check-list”, that turn out to be informed by my wounds, limited beliefs, or capitalist/colonial conditioning.
Don’t get me wrong, I have been thoroughly devastated by the failure of things I really wanted to work out, many times.
But, I always-eventually return to the part of me that is absolutely in Awe of the Universe and its process of bringing me things that are so much better than anything I could have imagined myself.
All that said, as the Solstice approached, I felt the energy of my new work in the world coming more into light – but something didn’t quite feel right.
I realized I needed to acknowledge the failure of my previous career and specifically use that word. I needed to name it as Failed, Fulfilled and Finished.
It is a little ridiculous to think of my career as an Astrologer as a failure. For the most part it was a wild, incredible success.
I connected and supported so many people. I added great value to people’s lives. Many people have said that I’ve changed their lives, or that something about my work even kept them alive. I know that many people will carry the birth chart readings I did for them throughout their lives.
When I started practising, I was the only queer person of colour professional Astrologer in my community that I knew of. My enthusiasm for this field, and the work I did, contributed in no small way to the collective energy that helped astrology explode all over the internet as many BIPOC Astrologers came into their genius and mastery with this medicine.
Even more than what I offered, my success first and foremost lies in the beautiful relationship that bloomed between me and the planets and stars themselves.
I remembered my ancestral clairvoyant gifts because of astrology.
I understood how expansive my magic is because of astrology.
I developed my psychic talents in public because of astrology.
The energy that generated around my work was palpable. I learned so much. I gave so much. I gained so much.
I am in awe that so many strangers trusted me with their intimacy, their vulnerability, their dreams, their journey. My heart is touched by every single person I had the honour to sit with and read for. I am grateful for everyone who supported my work, uplifted it, and kept me going with their cheerleading.
But even with all of that…
In my career as a full-time birth chart reader…I never actually felt success in my body.
It never landed.
I was constantly exhausted. Constantly working too hard. It was like the energy I put into the work never fully returned to me.
When I look at this career energetically, I see myself grinding my teeth, as a way of being.
There was always a cap on how much reciprocity I received. I would work harder and harder, and still reciprocity would just be chasing me, struggling to keep up.
I was always a little bit uncomfortable. Chasing satisfaction and financial freedom like a dangling carrot.
I wanted that freedom SO bad. I tried everything. I gave it my all.
And yet, this career failed to support my life the way I needed it to.
Let me tell you how healing it is to speak these failures out loud.
When I hold my failures in my heart, my heart can breathe, it feels light, it grows wings.
Maybe the freedom to fail is what this career needed
all along.
So, allow me to make a case for why failure matters.
1. Embrace Failure to Clear the Stigma
What’s so bad about failure, really? It’s a natural part of life.
Why does failing in public feel so horrific? Where does the shame come from? Where does the panic come from?
When I feel into the energy of failure, there’s an aggression we keep around it. Aggressive pursuits to stop our friends and family from making choices we believe will result in failure. Aggressively searching to name an experience as anything other than failure, even if it applies.
Why the need for aggression? What does it say about you if you fail? Where does the stigma come from? Where does the trauma come from?
We have shared and unique relationships to these questions, which varies according to culture and lineage.
In many immigrant/diasporic/racialized cultures, the trauma of failure is rooted in experiences of displacement, violence and war. If we fail it means they won. If we fail, it means white supremacy has obliterated us.
For me, this trauma is mixed with the upper caste South Asian culture in which I was raised – where it’s drilled into us that the idea of “failing” is Spiritual Blasphemy.
We have to be the best. If we fail we’ll be punished by society and by God.
This idea of failure keeps us beholden to cultures of supremacy. We hurt each other when we don’t live up to impossible and aggressive standards of perfection. It also enforces a learned supremacy over others. If we’re always better than failure, then we are also better than anyone who doesn’t live up to our version of success, right?
Cultivating a soft, open and available relationship to failure in myself is part of my work to heal trauma and dismantle supremacy, perfection and aggression in my lineage. This healing remembers that failure is not the end of the world, and it can be a natural part of a thriving life.
2. Allowing Failure as an Act of Love, Respect and Generosity
An old mentor once said to me: Just because you’re good at something, doesn’t mean you should do it.
I know there are a lot of people who would be happy if I started up my birth chart readings and monthly horoscopes again and did it forever. I know there are people who feel like nothing I do in the future will ever be as good as what I did in the past.
Yes, I’m good at it. That’s not a good enough reason to keep doing it.
We all have, or will at some point, come to the kind of relationship juncture where one person loves receiving something, but the other person doesn’t love giving it anymore.
We will probably experience being on both sides of this at one point or another (I know I have).
When you’re receiving something in a relationship that makes your life better, it can be hard to remember that you’re not automatically entitled to it just because you want it, or just because you’ve gotten used to it.
It is an act of love, respect and generosity to say: I love getting this thing from you, but I don’t want it if it’s no longer making you happy.
What if we learned to say to ourselves: Just because someone is benefiting from what I’m providing, it’s not a success unless it’s mutually sustaining and supportive for me.
Personally, there is no doubt in my bones that what I’m about to do with my new career will be epics and eons more phenomenal than anything I’ve done in the past. I know I’m in a much greater expression of my life force. I know this is what Mama Earth needs from me. I know it’s what my Ancestors are longing for. I know it’s what my Descendants are craving.
I’ve barely even started, but I already know the success of my new business will be wild beyond anything I’ve experienced before – because I already feel that success completely landed in my body.
I also respect the people who will always love my birth chart/horoscope readings more than anything I do in the future. I take that to mean what I offered them for a time was incredibly valuable, and that my new work is not as relevant to their continuing journeys. There’s nothing wrong with that.
In fact, it’s beautiful.
3. Failure as Closure Ritual and Energetic Clarity
When you’re engaged in any kind of magical practise, energetic protection is a priority.
Closure rituals are part of our energetic protection. We need to properly close a portal that has served its purpose so there is no ambiguity. So both parties have full freedom to move on. If we don’t do this, the energy around us stays confused.
Even though I have been intentionally engaged in many layers of closure rituals for elements of my past life that are done…I realized that as long as I wasn’t naming the failures in my previous career, I was still kind of hanging on to it. I wasn’t fully letting it rest.
There’s a finality that comes with the word failure. There’s a deep acknowledgment of something big that didn’t work out, and of the need to start over.
When you’ve built something for a decade or more, it’s hard to let yourself start over.
Without the energetic presence of failure, I was not giving myself the full opportunity to say thank you and goodbye.
Astrology will always be a part of who I am and what I do.
The truth is, I’m not just an Astrologer, I’m a Planetary Priestess. This is an Ancestral Calling woven deeply into my celestial DNA. It doesn’t disappear or reappear based on whether or not I get paid.
My relationship with astrology is just that – my relationship with my Ancestors and my Star Relatives. What I do with this relationship is my sovereign right that can and does shift and change throughout time. Sometimes I will offer it to others, and sometimes it will be private.
I’ve always loved talking in public about elements of my personal birth chart as a vessel of teaching and story sharing (yes, I’ve been that Astrological Exhibitionist at astrology conferences lol), and I want to continue doing that through my Live Memoir.
But, for the sake of energetic clarity, I can say pretty definitively, I will never open a full time practise of doing 1-1 birth chart readings again. I will never organize the community building portion of my business through regular horoscope readings. That part of my practise is done.
Naming the energetic clarity of failure in relationships not only frees you to move on, it also frees others to move on, who might otherwise be hanging around with the hope that you might go back to the old thing. You might even have that energy clinging to you in the form of other people’s ancestors, which can cause brain fog (among other things). You definitely want to clear that up!
4. Failure as a Badass Protector
Where would I be right now if I had achieved my financial goals in my previous career?
Where would I be right now if I had gotten the success I dreamed of while doing something that my heart ultimately could not sustain?
Thank Goddess I did not have to experience that kind of Tower moment!!!
My failures kept me accountable to my authenticity. Kept me accountable to what I would eventually birth. Even as I craved stability and consistency, my failures kept me connected to a version of me that wanted to be so much more free.
Whatever you are leaving behind – a career, a relationship, an identity – that part of you is an Ancestor. That part of you is energy that lived in a body for a while, and then transitioned and still needs your love as it gently lays to rest.
So, here is what I want to say to you, my beloved Ancestor;
My blessed Fulfilled and Failed Career
I see you. I see us.
You tried so hard to support me. I tried so hard to make it work.
We gave each other OUR ALL. You are the only one, aside from me, who truly knows everything we’ve been through.
In the end, we had to admit that we neither of us really wanted each other in the way we thought we did, or could.
We were not right for each other for the long game.
But we were beautiful for each other for a time. What more could I ask for?
We grew up together. We learned, we healed, we repaired. We had some fantastic adventures. And, we were right to break up.
My beloved Failed and Fulfilled career, I want you to know how fucking AMAZING you are. Look at what you did! Look at the people you inspired. Look at how you changed lives.
Look at what you did for me! You changed my life.
Thank you for lifting me on your shoulders. I carry so much wisdom because of you. You will always be a part of me.
Whatever flowers I receive in my present, or my future…whatever glorious successes and bloomings I get to live through now…when all my dreams come true and more – I share them with you.
I will always share them with you.
The flowers of my dreams are yours, as much as they are mine, as much as they are for my future.
So many parts of you are coming with me.
And the parts that cannot come, they really, really need to rest.
I lovingly lay you down. I let you go freely, into the loving arms of Pachamama, Mama Gaia, Grandmother Multiverse.
I thank you forever, my beloved friend.
Thank you beloveds for reading and listening! Anyone else in a moment of big life shifts? What is your relationship to success and failure? What closure rituals are you engaged in? Follow me on my new instagram page as our life journeys spiral!