I have spent my entire life trying my best to choose love, because I wasn’t shown it very often by the people who had the duty to teach me. I compromised, I rescued, I made so many mistakes, and each one I learned from helped me make choices out of dealt cards that were never in my favor. My inner child is staring up at the inner world she built full of magic and gold and silver linings.

Like a figure in red, this year I will be exploring my innate desires and passions, which until now I kept in strict check. The religions that I was exposed to told me those natural ambitions and needs were wrong, selfish, ugly and painful. I never let them become a true form, or a true expression, I just fed them enough to keep them from starving, honored them just enough in secret to keep them from poisoning me from within.

Anger and rage were emotions I only let myself feel intentionally alone. I know people have helped to inspire them in me, and I also know that they have escaped me in times of extreme injustice and in the wounding of unconscious wounds. My anger and rage were feared by me, because so often people used their anger and rage to justify causing me deep harm on every level. I’m sure we all have a few stories like that.

I’m an adult now, and a woman with more power and agency in my common life than every single one of my ancestors.

I am clever, and my emotions are mastered but not tamed. I am not required to be the moral center for anyone. I am just a human being who gets to feel alive and do whatever the fuck I want as long as it doesn’t cause harm to others.

I don’t have to turn the other cheek when someone tries to harm me.

I don’t have to rise above.

I don’t have to adhere to any spiritual vision or framework that someone else came up with.

I know myself now.

I have written down what I value.

I know what I don’t stand for.

I know what I am passionate about.

I know how to manipulate manipulators.

I know how to change my mind and accept new wisdom and knowledge.

I know how to bite that apple while grinning with mischief into the eyes of that snake.

Don’t you know the snake is one of Scorpio’s seven forms?

I am clever, kind, and know that harmony is my core value – but not my definition.

I am the girl with a heart full of magic, and the blood and flesh of nature and wisdom that has survived things people don’t want to hear or imagine, much less talk about.

I have nothing to apologize for, and I have not lived a life I regret.

Every demon that life gave me has a name now, a story, and I have talked to each one and learned just what it was that I inherited. I have taken my own life in my hands, balanced it, and chosen to keep it.

The future is no longer overwhelming, or scary.

I know I won’t lose myself again.

Well, at least not permanently.

It’s like I am suddenly looking at my internal control panel and know what most of the buttons mean and do. Now I just need to figure out my most powerful combination moves.

I’m excited, because even if I face pain and all its companions, I’m not afraid to evolve anymore. I won’t lose the best parts of me. I know myself now, and am pretty uninterested in the perceptions of others when it pertains to “me” or “my character”.

Unless, of course, an outside perspective is positive or curious. As long as you approach me with respect, I will give you whatever I’m able to give with the joy of a heart that knows it is limitless.

Here’s to the rest of this channel of time we’ve been given, and the creative rage I am delighted to begin cultivating to put my mark on the world.

I’m ready.

Are you?