What happened in May?

May is my birthday month.

I’m a Gemini sun and a Gemini moon, which, if you ask my astrologist, means there is a lot of duality built into the way I move through the world.

I have always felt that to be true.

I do corporate work, but in deeply creative spaces. I can be strategic, structured, and organized. At the same time, imaginative, intuitive, and spontaneous. I schedule and organize work and teams and kids and family to keep many feet on the ground, and I spend a great deal of time staring up at the stars in wonder and awe. 

I can get lost in a book alone for hours, sometimes days. I can also get lost in writing one, or helping others do the same.

For most of my life, I believed the goal was to carve off some parts and pieces until I could become one clean, coherent version of myself.

Easier for other people to understand.

But I know now: that was never the work.

The work is not becoming one clear version of ourselves. The work is learning how to meet all of them.

Of course, it’s easier for other people to keep us in the boxes they first found us in: The calm one. The responsible one. The wild one. The leader. The mother. The academic.

The stargazer. 

Those names are not wrong; they are just incomplete.

Biologically, we are not static beings. Our cells are constantly changing, shedding, repairing, regenerating at different rhythms. Some parts of us renew quickly. Some stay with us for a lifetime.

Maybe identity is like that too.

Some roles are meant to fall away. Some remain ancient and steady at the center of us. And some parts are waiting for the safety, courage, or season to finally be lived.

Changing and growing does not mean we were not ourselves the birthday before.

It means we are alive.

So, my wish for you this month is this:

May you stop carving yourself into something easier to understand, and start meeting this bright, new version of yourself with the same wonder and awe you would offer the stars.

𝓐𝓷𝓷𝓪 𝔁𝓸