When you’re a woman of God…but you’re also STREET

When I first decided to go to school to study theology, chatter began around my family and people started thinking that I wanted to become a nun.

With this chatter came a new nickname, bestowed upon me by my late uncle: Sister Aja.

I cringed at first. “Assholes” I would say under my breath every time I heard it, but it quickly became funny. I started to embrace it. I would tag my uncle and myself in pictures of Whoopi in Sister Act and whenever I came home for a visit I’d assure him that I was still out “doing the Lord’s work”…and we’d laugh, and clink our beers together in a celebratory cheers.

Often my brothers would ask my husband “Have you seen her wild out yet? Has she lost it any time lately?” They would lean in, hoping to hear something juicy.

I mean, of course he had. We’ve been married a long time and have seen the very best and very worst of each other. But he would always say “Nope.” Poker face, 0 betrayal up in here. Bless his heart, right?

“You can take Sister Aja out of the hood” they’d say “but you can’t take the hood out of Sister Aja.”

We’d all laugh really hard. Something about being in that space would bring out the “fire” in me. I’d find myself rolling down my window in the parking lot, glaring at the lady who gave me the finger. “Do we have a problem?” I’d hear myself say.

Back home, in the mountains, you’d be damned to find me acting this way, but my “old self” just seemed to…bubble…out of me in this context and during these visits.

The impossibility of ever completely removing the “hood” out of Sister Aja truly seemed like an absolute truth. Like, a Pisces truth (objective), not a Sagittarius one (subjective).

Very recently, I found myself LOSING IT when it appeared that someone was trying to mislead me. It’s been a long while since I’ve felt this type of rage well up inside of me, and before I could take a deep breath my rage was halfway down the block. I had to do some repairing following this incident. Apologize. Explain what was going on in those moments, as a gesture of reconciliation and to let the other person know that I was sincere. Take a deep and honest look at myself.

It was just a day after this that my twin brother tagged myself and my husband in a video on Facebook, and I watched it over and over and howled.

A young black woman with long braids and a leather jacket ( she looked kind of like me, which made it funnier) was talking to a judge explaining that she was a woman of God. But also, she was STREET. So when she got pissed off, it was just all so confusing because should she pray for the perpetrator? Or send someone to beat them up??

This felt like ME, just a few days earlier, going off, but trying to simultaneously cling to my values of consciousness and love.

There are a few important truths that I had to remind myself of after this incident: I am human, and learning, and I’ll make mistakes…that’s okay. As. a human, I carry an inner duality, and so it’s up to my own awareness and presence to intentionally choose the loving part of myself. Anger isn’t bad, in fact that rage was an apt expression of one of my highest values. We tend to perceive the world through the lens of our woundings.

That last one came out of nowhere and GOT ME., it was a powerful lesson and made a LOT of sense.

I mean, imagine that you got bit by a spider, and nearly died. Seeing a big spider on the wall in your house would be just as good as seeing the grim reaper after an experience like that.

Or imagine that you got attacked by a duck as a child. I wouldn’t blame you for choosing to walk 4 extra blocks each day to avoid the park with the giant geese in it.

Or, in my case, an older black woman approaches you, offering “support”. Well, because of my story, I know damn well that this is suspicious activity, and for that reason I will find and identify any holes in their story, and let them know promptly that I’m not available for such bullshit. You know, independent woman and all that.

But what if the spider was just looking to clear the insects out of your house?

Or the ducks wanted to form a V in the sky above you, in a great display of teamwork and the beautiful organization of nature?

What if that “sus” woman was genuine, inspired and full of light…and instead of opening up in gratitude I shut down in fear, not wanting to allow anything else to further disrupt the festering mother wound in my heart?

This past week was ripe with intensity (if you’re wondering, Pluto is currently opposing Mars- and conjunct my natal mars), and squaring the nodes. It’s a time of deep transformation for everyone, not just for me. I will say however, that a couple prominent placements were activated through this transit and I’ve been doing a lot of inner work in response).

That intensity- the high highs and low lows of emotional experience- puts a proverbial microscope on those parts of us that need smoothing out. By which I mean attention, to be heard, to be understood in light of the grander story, to be accepted and surrendered so that we can move on.

The fact that I help people navigate their own lives and healing does not exclude me from the healing process. In fact, in many ways it means that I have a responsibility to tend to those parts when they make themselves known, because how can I teach or advise on something that I’ve not moved through myself

The most important thing that I’ve discovered, through working with others, and especially through projecting my needs outside of myself…is that the occurrence of this “healing thing” is entirely up to us, ourselves.

When we do work to heal those hurt parts of us, we become able to mine the gold that those experiences are carrying.

We can be guided, given tools, supported, get readings, blah blah blah, all the stuff.

The healing arrives though, ONLY when we take responsibility for the forward motion of our lives. When we choose to look at those dark, dense, painful spots, and see how they’ve been creeping into our lenses, colouring the way we see life unfold around us.

When we catch a whiff of how these pain spots have been colouring our perspective, it stops being about blame and starts being about FREEDOM.

I CAN be a woman of God and also be street…and that “street” doesn’t need to express it’s unhealed parts by asking the lady in the parking lot if she would like to fight me. That “hood” in me- in it’s healing- is actually a nod to inner strength. To my insistence to stand up for what I believe in. To my inner resilience and my ability to look past the present chaos in the lives of people around me to see the brilliance of the potential that they are carrying.

If you’re interested in taking a deeper look at these pain points in your own life, and mining the gifts and treasures that you are carrying, I have some availability in the coming months. Objectify and understand your experiences in a new light using astrology and intuitive practice, understand your own life patterns, and gain tools to work through them in order to move onto freedom, holla at your girl at Info@ThatZoiLife.com

Still climbing,

and also still STREET hahaha,

XX,

-Celeste

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