I’ve been trying to find a less ableist term than “blind spot” that still expresses the truth of what I’m trying to communicate when using that term…and I think I’ve finally found something!
Okay, here’s my thought process:
This came to me because I was thinking about how I need people around me who hold me accountable to pay myself well, who will challenge me when I slip into tendencies of under-charging and over-serving, or when I’m working too hard for not enough reciprocity, somehow convincing myself that doing so is okay.
It’s been a game-changer and deeply appreciated to have community around me over the years who are invested in me living in the truth of my worth and reciprocity.
Because, this truly is my “blind spot” – in that I can’t always see the truth in this regard, or see myself and the situation clearly.
Like most of us, I wasn’t raised in a culture that taught me reciprocity. Instead, I so often found myself in cultures or relationships that functioned more like:
How can I get more from you and give less?
How can I take what you have to offer, and then cheat or lie or steal so that I can get out of offering a fair balance, or acting in good faith on fair agreements?
This is an area of life where I get confused. Lack of reciprocity is so familiar to me, that I need solid friends, community and support to hold me accountable to what I often “can’t see”…
…But if we’re not going to call this a “blind spot” – that’s ableist – I’m going to start calling this a “fragile spot.”
It’s fragile, because of my history with it.
But then, opening up the energetic of “fragility” becomes a huge and fascinating topic.
(and we’re not gonna cover it all here, but here are some initial thoughts.)
We can talk about the “fragility” of capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy – systems that thrive on lack of reciprocity, knowing these systems are ultimately very fragile.
They are not built on anything sustainable, so we have to go to great lengths to uphold them.
…Which is why people get so stubborn, defensive and even immovable (qualities that are OPPOSITE to fragility) in order to PROTECT the fragility.
So, this is a “fragile spot” for me. It’s tender, it’s vulnerable, there’s a lot of pain here, there are still a lot of fresh wounds.
And the “fragile spot” is also resting on a system that is inherently fragile.
A community that functions on lack of reciprocity is ultimately so fragile. It can break and collapse at any moment, because the Universe, our Planet, and Nature itself operates on balance and reciprocity.
It’s just THE WAY of the primordial forces of the Universe. These forces are so strong, anything counter to that strength will crumble beside it.
This brings me to the duality between fragility and strength.
In my practise with decolonizing astrology, I work with what we call the QUANTUM BIRTH CHART.
Along with configurations of constellations and planets, the Quantum Birth Chart is made up of many other things in our Quantum Energy Field in the moment you took your first breath: like…
Promises you made your Ancestors…
Parables that show up as relationship patterns…
And also other kinds of really cool quantum matter like equations, riddles, and technologies.
I have an ANCESTRAL TASK written in my Quantum Birth Chart, and the task is this:
“On my birthday, I am REQUIRED to give gifts to others and to the world.”
In terms of Quantum Matter, this is both an Ancestral Task and a Requirement.
If you have a “requirement” in your Quantum Birth Chart, that means you have something you MUST do in life, you MUST have, you MUST be, or you MUST experience.
No matter what happens in life, you keep moving forward on this requirement.
No matter how many people you piss off, even if you get punished for it in certain environments, even if you don’t understand why or how you do it, you just do it.
The trick with REQUIREMENTS is to find relationships and environments where it is easy to do what you must do, it’s easy to have or experience what you must, and where your requirement is celebrated and supported.
The first step here is of course to figure out what your requirement actually is, why it matters to you, and why you agreed to it.
Requirements that were imposed by others without consent or true free will also exist, and they can be dismantled.
The hardest part for some may be in discerning the true medicinal nature of your requirement, and not investing in an expression of your requirement that is riddled with wounds, shadows, unprocessed trauma or colonial / warring paradigm conditioning.
An ANCESTRAL TASK is slightly different.
A task is something to perform in a specific way, in specific circumstances, with specific tools.
An Ancestral Task is gifted from your lineage, which can include blood, soul or star lineages. Those in your line do things in a certain way, and it’s what makes you who you are.
Thus, an Ancestral Task is something we do out of love for who we really are, and it helps us remember more of who we really are.
It’s also something that we don’t have to do.
Unlike a requirement, one may go for years and years without performing their Ancestral Tasks – but there are definitely consequences.
Your energy doesn’t flow freely, your money and relationships get tangled up, you ultimately feel unfulfilled and unhappy because you’re not being and expressing who you really are...AND you’re not offering that reciprocity back to your lineages.
So, like I said I have something that is BOTH an ANCESTRAL TASK and a REQUIREMENT.
Or rather, it’s an ANCESTRAL TASK, and that task is a REQUIREMENT.
(That means, yes, tasks can be a requirements, but they don’t have to be.)
Here it is:
On my birthday, I am ANCESTRALLY TASKED to give gifts to others and the world. And, I am REQUIRED to perform that task.
A birthday is a day that typically we are supposed to receive gifts. But I am TASKED to give gifts to others on that day.
I’ve always done this, by the way, before I knew this was a thing in my Birth Chart. I’ve always loved treating my loved ones and giving out gifts on my birthday.
It gets more complicated for me because…I’m also the kind of person who’s like
HEEYYYY EVERY DAY IS MY BIRRRHHTDDAAYYYY
HAAYY GUESS WHAT IT’S THE 3-MONTH ANNIVERSARY OF MY BIRTHDAY TODAYYYY
HEY FRIEND, LAST MONTH WAS MY BIRTHDAY LET’S CELEBRATE
If you’ve been following along, I turned 40 last June, and I’m determined to celebrate every single day this year as my 40th birthday because it’s just such a huge milestone.
This means, I am a GEMINI and we are annoying and you love us.
It also means that if I Am the FURREVER IT”S MY BIRTHDAY (GENDERQUEER) GIRL…
…It means that I am REQUIRED and ANCESTRALLY TASKED to give gifts to others and the world, every single day.
When you look deeply at what that is in a Birth Chart, in someone’s life, it means that it is not my natural inclination to think about reciprocity.
It is my natural inclination to think about CELEBRATION.
It’s my natural inclination to believe that reciprocity will just naturally work out, because that’s how it is when you live in the Field of Celebration.
It’s Why I Am Here. Why I’m Alive. It’s my Medicine.
I help people remember how to Celebrate Life, every part of life, and that is why I am a Death Doula, or a Death Surgeon, too. (More on that later!)
I help people remember how to celebrate the SPECIFICITY of their lives. That’s why I became an Astrologer. I help people remember how to Celebrate every single part of the specificity of their lives, including the painful parts.
And, anything in the Universe that doesn’t have sincere intentions to celebrate life – from genocide to military violence to intimate partner violence to capitalism – all of it is too fragile to survive any time it gets close to the STRENGTH of celebration that I hold.
I said this in an earlier podcast episode called: “AM I IN (the) RIGHT RELATIONSHIP?“
When you know and understand the gift that someone walks, rocks and rolls with, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna take advantage of that gift? Or are you going to protect it?
I attribute this spot in me, the Spot of Fragility and Strength – with the role and task of “community mothering” ie the role of nurturing, providing and caring for communities via gift giving.
I’m always concerned with the well-being of others.
It’s actually not a shortcoming that many of us tend to think of ourselves second.
It’s a shortcoming in the wrong environment.
But, in the right environment, and the right relationships, it can indicate a deep trust that still lives in our Ancestral Memory.
That we remember…that we come from communities where we could just relax and do our jobs, and give our gifts, because we had communities that ferociously protected us.
Mothers, Fathers and Genderqueer Caregivers & Gift Givers were revered, and people made it their lifetime commitment to give back to us, just because they wanted to.
They made sure we were well taken care of all the time. They held us accountable to prioritizing our own well being, so we could just be who we are, because they understood and protected the gift.
Now – as Mothers, Fathers, Genderqueer Caregivers and Gift Givers, it is absolutely our Self-Responsibility to make sure we are open and available to being well reciprocated.
We have a lot of internal work to do to reclaim our self-worth, and for many of us, that has been our main focus for the last 15 years of Pluto in Capricorn.
We have to learn to stop rejecting reciprocity on notions of “false humility” (we’ll talk more about THAT later) or purity/morality politics that have us believing it’s noble to sacrifice ourselves to the point of depletion and dehumanization.
We have to be badass, and even sometimes cut-throat in our self-respect.
That is ALSO because we carry the memory so deep in our bones of being so WELL RESPECTED by our communities.
We carry memories of being able to put others first, and think of ourselves second, because the balance between SELF-CARE and COMMUNAL CARE was ALREADY SECURE AND UNQUESTIONED.
Somewhere along the way, we ended up in communities who would rather make it their mission to figure out – how can I get more while giving back less?
Then, we got really stubborn, defensive and immovable about this ultimately fragile way of being. And we started investing in that fragility, as if that investment would save us from its inevitable collapse.
But, that fight between FRAGILITY and IMMOVABILITY is like a dam that will break as the power of our TRUE STRENGTH courses through the veins of the planet, like a beautiful River Ancestrally Tasked, and Required to heal itself.
The Power of Healed and Healing Masculinity in the Universe, and as it flows through us, is far more STRONG than the FRAGILITY of patriarchy and rape culture.
The Power of our Grief and Love in Returning to balanced and deeply loving ways of being in community is far more STRONG than the FRAGILITY of white supremacy, theft, extraction and colonization.
The power of our Ancestral Memory, our personal and communal medicines, and our deeply felt ways of knowing how to be in good community with one another, is so STRONG that it has survived EVERYTHING that has tried to kill it, and it is still here.
I turn to you Good Listener:
what is your gift that needs to be protected
that is also your fragile spot
that is also your strength
…that is then, also your vulnerability that needs to return to the right relationships…
…so that others around you will not take advantage of your gift because they too are Ancestrally Tasked and Required to protect it?
(Wow, I really took that sentence on a roller-coaster, didn’t I?)
As we exit the roller-coaster, I want us to think about the process I just took us through, which started with wanting to find a less ableist term for “blind spot” – and reflect on the importance of not relying on ableist, or any kind of oppressive language, to illustrate our points.
Ableist language is a fragile spot in and of itself – the language is trying to uphold a fragile system, and we can get really defensive about it: But there isn’t any other way to describe this. But I like using this term.
But, by energetically opening up what I’m really trying to express when I want to use that term, I took us on a journey of exploring so much more specificity and truth.
In other words, the ableist term is the fragile dam that is going to break as the deeper strength courses through the veins of our planet and our lives.
Tell me what this conversation opens up in you, my friends. Where does it take you?
I am hosting a workshop on the QUANTUM BIRTH CHART coming up on November 2nd, 2024.
Those who join will get the chance to connect to their own birth moment, and discover more of what’s in THE QUANTUM ARCHI-TEXTURE OF YOUR FIRST BREATH <3
Do you have Requirements? Ancestral Tasks? Or other fascinating Multiverse Phenomena?
Early Bird Pricing ends on October 16th. Check out everything you need to know in the link below.
REGISTRATION IS CLOSED.
MY NAME IS SHAUNGA, AND I AM CELEBRATING 40 YEARS OF SERVICE, FORWARD & BACKWARD
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