APPLIED ASTROLOGY
When My Life Needed to Make Sense
The Journey That Led Me to Applied Astrology
There comes a point in life when the answers you have carried for years no longer answer the questions you are asking. That happened to me much later in life than I ever expected.
I grew up with a very particular understanding of God, faith, right and wrong, suffering and salvation. I believed what I had been taught because that was the world I knew. But there were things about my own life that I could never quite reconcile with what I had been taught about a loving God.
I had experienced things in childhood that left me carrying questions I didn't even know how to ask for many years. Somewhere underneath everything was the feeling that perhaps there was something wrong with me. Why had these things happened to me? Why did I feel things so deeply? Why was I so sensitive and yet so strong? Why did I spend so much of my life taking care of everyone else? Why could I be fiercely independent and still need connection so deeply? Why did I seem to hold so many contradictions within myself?
I built a life around those questions without realizing that was what I was doing. I became a mother, a wife, a businesswoman, a leader, a caretaker, and a problem solver. I became very good at figuring things out and getting things done. I loved deeply, worked hard, survived difficult things, and kept moving forward.
But there were still parts of me I didn't understand.
Then my brother died in 2021, and something in me changed. His death caused me to question everything. Beliefs I had carried for most of my life suddenly couldn't hold the questions I was asking anymore. I began deconstructing much of what I had been taught religiously, but I wasn't trying to walk away from God. In many ways, I was trying to get closer.
I wanted to understand the Divine without fear. I wanted to understand unconditional love. I wanted to know if there was something greater than the religious framework I had inherited. And perhaps more than anything else, I needed my life to make sense.
Then I Found Astrology
I wasn't looking for horoscopes or predictions about what was going to happen to me next. What captured me was the natal chart, a map of the sky at the exact moment we are born.
At first, there was so much I didn't understand. Houses, planets, signs, aspects, elements, modalities, nodes. It was an entirely new language. But as I began learning that language and looking at my own chart, something happened that I was completely unprepared for.
For the first time in my life, I felt genuinely validated.
I felt seen in a way I don't think I had ever experienced before. But the person finally seeing me wasn't a parent, a husband, a child, a friend, a therapist, or anyone else.
It was ME!
I was seeing myself.
That realization was enormous.
For most of my life, I had looked outside myself for some confirmation that I was okay. That I wasn't too emotional, too sensitive, too intense, too independent, too much of one thing and not enough of another. I had spent years trying to understand why I was the way I was.
Suddenly I could see patterns in myself that had always felt contradictory, and instead of judging them, I became curious about them. Things I had criticized about myself began to make sense in context.
I wasn't discovering excuses for my behaviour. I was discovering language for myself.
And there is a profound difference between the two.
For perhaps the first time, the question wasn't "What is wrong with me?"
It became "Of course. Now I understand why I am like I am."
That felt like coming home.
A Map, Not a Verdict
What I love about astrology is not the idea that everything in our lives is predetermined. In fact, I don't believe that.
I don't believe a birth chart excuses harm or tells us that painful experiences were somehow required to happen. I don't believe the planets are sitting somewhere in the sky pulling strings while we obediently act out a script.
I see the chart as a map.
It can show patterns, tensions, gifts, tendencies, and places where life may continually invite us to grow. It can help us recognize the parts of ourselves that seem to pull in opposite directions. It can illuminate things we have sensed about ourselves for years but perhaps never had language for.
But a map doesn't tell you where you have to go.
You still choose.
That distinction became incredibly important to me because I don't want astrology to become another belief system that tells people who they are supposed to be. I spent too many years trying to fit myself into other people's definitions of who I should be.
I want astrology to do the opposite.
I want it to help us meet who we already are.
Held, Not Fixed
To me, being held means being seen in context. It means looking at ourselves with curiosity instead of judgment. It means understanding that there may be reasons we respond the way we do, patterns we developed, things we inherited, and parts of ourselves we learned to protect.
But understanding a pattern doesn't mean we are sentenced to repeat it.
We are not prisoners of our charts. We are participants in our lives.
That is where Applied Astrology became something more than an interesting subject for me. I began to understand how the birth chart could be used as a compassionate tool for self-awareness.
Not, "This is who you are."
More like, "Here is something you may recognize in yourself. What do you want to do with that awareness?"
For me, that is where astrology becomes useful. Awareness gives us choice.
I Am Still Becoming
One of the greatest surprises of this chapter of my life is discovering how much of myself there is still left to meet.
I am 71 years old. I am a student of astrology. I am learning new technologies. I am helping build Soul Journeys with my daughter. I am approaching the end of a professional chapter that has occupied sixteen years of my life, while beginning something completely different.
And I love that.
There seems to be an idea that we are supposed to "find ourselves" when we're young, establish who we are, and then spend the rest of our lives being that person.
I don't believe that anymore.
I think we meet ourselves over and over again.
Life changes us. Love changes us. Loss changes us. The people we encounter change us. Sometimes we change because something breaks us open, and sometimes we change simply because we finally become curious enough to look more closely.
And every once in a while, we recognize another piece of ourselves and think:
Oh....... there you are.
Why I Have Chosen to Practice Applied Astrology
I don't practice astrology because I think a birth chart has all the answers. It doesn't.
I practice it because I know what it felt like to look at my own chart and see and experience myself differently.
I know what it felt like to stop judging certain parts of myself long enough to become curious about them. I know what it felt like to recognize patterns that had been operating quietly throughout my life. And I know what it felt like to finally offer myself some of the validation I had spent years hoping to receive from somewhere else.
That may be the greatest gift astrology has given me.
I stopped waiting for someone else to tell me that I made sense.
I could see it for myself.
That is what I hope to offer when I sit with another person's chart. Not predictions. Not labels. Not answers handed to you, but understanding revealed from within yourself. And certainly not another person telling you who you are or who you should be.
I want to sit beside you and look at the map together.
Maybe you will recognize a pattern you've never had words for. Maybe something you've judged about yourself begins to look different when you understand it in context. Maybe we uncover a strength you have overlooked because it came so naturally that you never considered it a gift.
Or maybe there is simply a moment when something clicks, and you recognize yourself.
Oh........ there you are.
I think there is something sacred about that moment.
Because your chart doesn't get to decide who you are.
With love,
Cindi
Applied Astrology Practitioner
Soul Journeys Restorative Healing