After my session with Maddie of ATHENE, I could not stop thinking about one thing she said: the greatest gift of psychological astrology is not prediction—it is growth.
I think many of us approach astrology wanting answers. We want to know what is coming next. We want reassurance that something good is waiting around the corner, especially when life has taken us somewhere we never expected to be.
But my experience with psychological astrology has been different… Instead of asking me to look ahead, it has repeatedly asked me to look inward.
After my reading, I spent the next few days going back through my notes and thinking about the different pieces of my natal chart that Maddie and I had discussed. My Sun. My Moon. My Aquarius Ascendant. The planets and houses. The relationships between them.
One of the simplest things I wrote in my notebook during our conversation was that the planets represent different parts of ourselves: Mercury relates to the mind and communication, Venus to love and values, Mars to drive, Jupiter to expansion, Saturn to structure, Uranus to change, and Neptune to imagination.
The signs, as I scribbled in my notes, are the “flavors.”
I loved that.
Because suddenly a birth chart did not feel like a list of twelve personality types. It looked more like a complicated conversation between different pieces of one person. And mine had quite a lot to say.
The more I reflected on it, the less interested I became in whether astrology could predict my future. I became much more interested in what it could teach me about the life I had already lived—and the person I am still becoming. Especially now. Because grief has fundamentally changed me.
And strangely enough, it has also made me think more deeply than ever about purpose.
A Leo Sun With An Aquarius Rising
I knew before this reading that I was a Leo.
What I did not understand was how different a Sun sign is from an entire birth chart.
My Sun sits at the very beginning of Leo, while my Ascendant—the sign rising on the eastern horizon when I was born—is Aquarius.
And one of the first things I wrote in my notebook was: “Leo opposite of Aquarius.”
They literally sit opposite one another on the zodiac wheel. That tension fascinated me.
In astrology, the Sun represents our core identity and vitality. Leo is ruled by the Sun itself and is associated with creativity, self-expression, warmth, visibility, and heart.
Aquarius, meanwhile, is associated with individuality, independence, unconventionality, and looking at life differently.
Suddenly, parts of myself that sometimes seemed contradictory, did not feel quite so contradictory anymore.
There is absolutely a part of me that wants to shine. Not necessarily in the sense of wanting attention, but in wanting to create something and put it into the world.
I have done that through photography. Through My Beautiful Adventures. Through writing. Through traveling and telling stories about what I found. And now through Hi, Dad, which may be the most vulnerable thing I have ever created.
But there is also a fiercely individualistic part of me that has never been particularly interested in following the path I was “supposed” to follow.
My life has included medicine and blogging, motherhood and travel, spirituality and storytelling, entrepreneurship and photography. I have reinvented myself more times than I can count.
Maybe there was never supposed to be one box that contained all of me?
That idea alone felt freeing.
Mercury In Leo: Finding My Voice
Then I noticed something else in my chart. My Mercury is also in Leo.
In astrology, Mercury represents the mind, communication, the way we process information, and how we express our thoughts. And there it was, sitting in the same expressive sign as my Sun.
That placement made me think about how central storytelling has been to nearly every chapter of my life. Even when I was traveling, I was never satisfied simply going somewhere. I wanted to photograph it. Write about it. Remember the tiny details. Tell someone what happened. Make another person feel as though they had been there with me.
My Beautiful Adventures has existed for so many years, because I have always had this almost compulsive need to turn experience into story.
And then my dad died.
Suddenly, storytelling became something else entirely.
It became survival.
Hi, Dad began with something incredibly small: noticing beautiful moments after losing him and quietly saying those two words. A butterfly. A cardinal. Flowers blooming. An extraordinary sky. A memory appearing when I least expected it. Eventually, those moments became a story.
Something created from one of the most painful experiences of my life became a way for me to explore love, loss, remembrance, and the idea that our relationships with the people we love can continue to shape us after they are gone.
That made me wonder: What if creativity is not simply something we enjoy? What if it is one of the ways we are meant to serve others?
Maybe purpose does not always arrive as one enormous calling. Maybe sometimes it begins with telling the truth about something we have lived through.
My Virgo Moon And The Need To Be Useful
Then there is my Moon. Mine is in Virgo. The Moon in psychological astrology speaks to our emotional nature—our instincts, needs, and the private parts of ourselves that other people may not always see.
And during my reading, I kept coming back to words like grounding, useful, and acts of service.
Of all the astrology we discussed, this was one of the easiest parts of myself to recognize.
My instinct has always been: How can I help?
And very quickly after that: How can I fix this?
I became a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine. I have spent much of my life caring for people. I mother this way. I love this way. I often show up for the people in my life by doing something.
There is comfort for me in being useful.
And then I encountered something that usefulness could not touch. Grief.
I could not fix my dad’s illness. I could not stop him from dying. And I cannot love him enough to make his physical absence disappear.
For someone whose emotional instinct is to find the thing that needs doing, there is something profoundly humbling about encountering a pain that has no solution.
Grief is not a problem to solve. It is something we learn to carry. That may be one of the most important lessons my Virgo Moon has had to learn. Helping does not always mean fixing. Sometimes helping means sitting beside someone in the hard place. Sometimes it means listening. Sometimes it means simply paying attention. Sometimes it means creating something that makes another person feel understood. And sometimes it means extending that same compassion to ourselves.
The Sagittarius Part Of Me Makes So Much Sense
My Ascendant may not be Sagittarius, but Sagittarius energy is absolutely present in my chart. My Mars is in Sagittarius. Uranus is also in Sagittarius, at almost exactly the same degree, and Neptune is there as well.
When I saw that cluster, I could not help thinking about travel.
Mars represents drive and action. Uranus is associated with change, freedom, disruption, and breaking away from convention. Neptune speaks to imagination, spirituality, ideals, and the things we seek beyond what is tangible.
And Sagittarius is the archetypal seeker. The traveler. The explorer.
The part of the zodiac concerned with expanding horizons—geographically, intellectually, and spiritually. Suddenly, “I love to travel” felt wildly inadequate. I have traveled to nearly seventy countries, but travel has never simply been about seeing beautiful places. Travel has been my classroom. Every country has challenged something I thought I understood. Every culture has shown me another way to see the world. Travel introduced me to different religions, traditions, languages, foods, families, beliefs, and definitions of what makes a meaningful life. It taught me curiosity. It taught me humility. It taught me that there are countless ways to be human.
Even my spiritual life has always involved searching and questioning rather than accepting that wisdom can only come from one place.
And somewhere along the way, I realized that the greatest souvenirs I brought home were never things. They were perspectives.
Maybe the adventures were never really the point. Maybe the point was what they were teaching me.
Jupiter, Saturn, And A Different Definition Of Growth
Two more planets became important in the way I thought about purpose: Jupiter and Saturn.
In my notes from Maddie, I wrote that Jupiter expands—abundance, growth, opportunity—while Saturn represents work and structure.
My Jupiter and Saturn are both in Libra.
Libra is concerned with relationship, harmony, balance, and our experience of the other. And I love the symbolism of expansion and structure existing together there. Because growth has not looked the way I once thought it would.
There was a time when I might have measured growth through accomplishments. More countries. More readers. More opportunities. More success.
But this year has complicated that definition.
Sometimes growth looks like expansion. Sometimes it looks like discipline. Sometimes it looks like learning where you end and another person begins. Sometimes it looks like accepting that balance does not mean everything in life is equally beautiful at the same time. And sometimes growth happens because life has taken something away.
That is not the kind of growth anyone asks for. But it is still growth.
A North Node In Capricorn And The Question Of Purpose
My North Node is in Capricorn.
The lunar nodes are different from planets. In astrology, they are mathematical points associated with development and direction—patterns we are moving toward and learning to embody.
I hesitate to turn any placement into a declaration that this is exactly what I am meant to do. One of the things I appreciate about psychological astrology is that it leaves room for choice.
But I find the symbolism of my Capricorn North Node particularly interesting at this moment in my life.
Capricorn is associated with building. Commitment. Responsibility. Creating something that lasts. And lately I have been thinking constantly about what I want to build from everything I have experienced. Not because I believe my dad died so that I could discover my purpose. I do not. I would never make grief that tidy.
I would choose him over every lesson his death has taught me.
But I cannot change what happened. I can only decide what I do with the love that remains. And perhaps that is where purpose enters the story.
Finding Purpose Through Grief
I used to think purpose was something you found. Now I wonder if sometimes it is something you create. Sometimes from joy. Sometimes from curiosity. And sometimes from the pieces of a life you never wanted to break.
Losing my dad did not magically reveal some grand purpose. It hurt. It still hurts. But grief stripped away a lot of noise. It made me think about what matters to me, what I want to create, how I want to spend my time, and what I want to leave behind. It made me write. It made me look more closely. It made me want to help other people feel less alone in their own losses. And perhaps most unexpectedly, it made me realize that purpose does not have to erase pain in order to grow from it.
Both can exist. I can miss my dad and still create something beautiful. I can grieve and still laugh. I can carry sadness and still experience wonder. I can wish desperately that something had never happened while allowing it to change the way I move through the world.
Purpose does not replace grief. Maybe it simply gives some of that love somewhere to go.
The Lesson I Will Never Forget
Before this experience, I thought having my birth chart read would mostly be interesting. I expected planets, houses, signs, and personality traits.
I did not expect it to make me reconsider the story I tell myself about who I am.
My Leo Sun and Mercury helped me think about my need to create and communicate.
My Aquarius Ascendant gave me language for the part of myself that has always been comfortable building a life that does not fit neatly into one category.
My Virgo Moon reflected an emotional instinct to help, serve, and fix—even when life was teaching me that some things cannot be fixed.
The Sagittarius energy in my chart made me look at decades of travel not merely as wanderlust, but as part of my lifelong search for perspective and meaning.
Jupiter and Saturn made me reconsider what growth actually looks like.
And my North Node made me think about what I am building now.
None of those things began with my birth chart.
They were already there.
Astrology simply held up a mirror.
And maybe that is why Maddie’s original point has stayed with me. The greatest gift of psychological astrology was not prediction. It was growth. It was looking at patterns I had lived for decades and seeing them from another angle. It was recognizing the woman reflected back. A woman who creates. A woman who helps. A woman who searches. A woman who has reinvented herself again and again. A woman who loved her father enormously and therefore grieves him enormously. A woman who is learning that she cannot fix every painful thing. A woman who can carry grief and purpose at the same time. And a woman who is still becoming.
Maybe the greatest gift was not learning about my birth chart at all. Maybe it was learning to see myself with a little more compassion.
And right now, that feels like exactly the lesson I needed.
