enjoying tea with your ghosts
image by Michael Cina
A month after my birthday last year, I fell in love with a Scorpio.
Often these days in trauma-informed spaces lalala we don’t go straight to the gritty stuff because everyone wants to tiptoe around the taboo topics of life. I get it, after trauma therapy training I’m like ok now I really know why we don’t go from 1-100 on the scale of chill to hectic. So I was kinda shocked when this Scorpio Sun basically asks me point blank, hours after we met: so tell me about your childhood trauma.
Within minutes I’m crying, and later I’m like, who does that these days!?
If I didn’t believe in astrology then, I sure do now!
A few years ago, a wonderful friend of mine would always say: did you know that when scorpions are backed into a corner, they sting themselves first?
Under threat, the scorpion panics and thrashes their tail around and inevitably stings themselves.
The reason it took me so long to get into astrology, despite my keen interest in archetypal systems, is that I never fully resonated with what I read about Scorpio on the internet. Intense, vindictive, vengeful, possessive, jealous, secretive. SEXY? (ok but I fully claim that now)
Me?? But I am sweet and lovely and nice!
Where Scorpio lands in my chart (7th house of The Other), I now understand how some of these qualities have often have projected onto others, or how I have experienced others as. And part of my healing journey has been around integrating parts of these qualities into my own experience. To reckon with the parts of me that were forced into the dark, into the shadow, into hiding, because I was simply not allowed to be those things.
I am now learning to keep embracing all parts of me: bitchy, mean, jealous, petty, obsessive, lazy, sexy, chaotic, shallow, frivolous et cetera et cetera.
Scorpio medicine is alchemising the ugliest parts of yourself, the most painful wounds you have experienced, into a powerful healing force that transforms you and everything you encounter.
Scorpio medicine is becoming the antidote to the poison you were drip-fed.
Every one of us has Scorpio tucked away in our charts.
The subterranean, the underwater, those deep wells, the swamp.
Let water stagnate and shit builds up and soon you’re feeling yucky and stinky.
~
That one Scorpio irrevocably changed the course of my year. Showed me where shame was still contained in crevasses of my body. Where my body still held patterns of constriction in deep layers of suppression. Soon, I began to own my desire for romance and sex in a new way and started dating again after 5 years of not.
I gotta say, Scorpios got some kinda kink for pain… aaaand, I no longer want that to be my only haunting ground. Yes you can get mired in the mud, yes you wade your way through swampy grounds, and yes you also get to feel lighter and freer and metabolise what was once your prickliest thorn, the jabs less sharp and a little more smooth.
It will still be here. But it will hurt less. And maybe one day it won’t hurt in the same way anymore. Your ghosts will just be floating around your home, and you’re like, it’s kinda cute living with you. Do you want some tea?
You don’t have to date a Scorpio to transmute your pain into pleasure, you can just come work with me - your local Scorpio - in 1:1 somatic work. It’s intimate in the way that you will feel seen in connection, you will be witnessed in process (which is vulnerable and tender and precious), and you will leave feeling different, like something has shifted in your inner realm, your felt-sense experience.
No we are not healing your traumas in one day. No we won’t be delving into your deepest darkest secrets and most painful memories.
But we will be saying hello to your body. We will be inviting more safety and presence in the here and now. And when your body starts feeling safe, your body will begin to reveal what feels ready to be known, for now.
We welcome all parts of you. The ‘good’, the ‘bad’ and the ‘ugly’.
AND THE SPOOKY!
Somatic work is for you if you’re sick of DOING THE MOST, telling the same ol’ stories, being cognitively aware of your patterns and triggers, trying to assert your boundaries but it’s not quite sticking, if you’re constantly over-exerting yourself to please others, if you find yourself caring for everyone else (including the suffering of the world) before yourself, if you feel burnout, irritated, tired, anxious, lethargic, if you feel overwhelmed by all the pile of tasks you need to get done so you freeze, don’t get anything done then berate yourself for being disorganised.
It is never This or That. It is not a binary. We are widening our inner rivers to contain our myriad of experiences, the paradox of our internal life - our ambivalence and our anger, our cringe and our courage, our exhaustion and our excitement.
We are increasing our range, so you get to act instead of react.
꩜
We are in the midst of a Grand Water Trine - with the Sun, Mercury, Mars in Scorpio, trining Saturn, Neptune, North Node in Pisces and Jupiter in Cancer… Mercury and Mars in Scorpio stealthily and swiftly stole some jewels from the Louvre and then Mercury’s going retrograde and Venus will move into Scorpio.
It’s crying season my friends!
Okay maybe not all of you will be crying your way till the end of the year. But water - symbolically and astrologically - represents emotions, healing, regeneration, intuition. And something is being stirred up in the Scorpio, Pisces and Cancer parts of our charts that is ushering us into a deeper dialogue with these emotional landscapes within ourselves.
This season, as we enter a period where the floodgates are opening, we are going to be deep in our ~feels~.
Emotions need containment so it doesn’t flood our system. When overwhelmed, feel into what allows you to feel contained and held - this could be simply hugging yourselves with your arms, tucking yourself under a warm blankie, or pulling a scarf over your shoulders and arms to feel the fabric on your skin.
Sending you so much love this Scorpio season. Thank you for being here, thank you for being a powerful agent wielding your magic in the world.
♡
Rachel x
plum ripples playlist
I’ve been making a playlist for Plum Ripples since last year, and in the last few weeks, I’ve been adding more songs, feeling into the vibe of what we’re exploring in the realms of Plum Ripples.
Listen here on a cosy and expansive Venus afternoon under the spring sun, when you’re ready to say yes to the heaven of yourself and adore your tender heart.
