(For Part I, click here)
All my life I’ve been enchanted by the mystical, mythical world. I love, even if I do not wholeheartedly believe in, the idea of fortune-telling and psychics and second-sight. (You may have gathered that from my tarot-based book series.) I’ve even joked with my friends that I collect psychic readings, from Lily Dale, to Salem, to any psychic fair that passes through town. I don’t rely on them for anything but entertainment, but they do satisfy some deep, eternal sense of wonder that I’ve both carried and contained for all of my adult life.
One of my favorite forms of divination outside of tarot is numerology. Like astrology, numerology uses things like your birthdate to determine where you’re at and where you’ve been and where you’re probably going. It’s based on an idea that humans and all things go through maturation cycles, and this rotating cycle of 9s permeates your days, weeks, months, and years. Last year was a 2 personal year for me–The High Priestess, as it relates to tarot cards–a year of inaction and solitude, of internal processing and development. I can’t argue with that description.
This year is a 3 personal year for me–The Empress. A year of abundance and expansion, of creativity and vitality, being physical and sensual, and social. I felt this year creeping in towards the end of 2014, when I started my new kick boxing class and my new writing regimen, and when all of a sudden I realized I was financially solvent for the first time since my ex moved out. And as 2014 drew to a close I began working on a project that had been escaping my grasp for almost two years. Even before 2015 rolled in, I’ve had this feeling–this knowing–that 2015 is going to be one hell of an amazing year.
2014 was long, dark, and agonizingly slow, but those slow dark moments forced me to take a hard look at the way I want to live my life versus they way I thought I *should* live my life. And in 2014, I effectively banned that word from my reasoning vocabulary. “Should,” I have decided, is the most dangerous and destructive word in the English language.
So what changed, really, from 2013 to 2015? Just this one thing: I realized, deeply and profoundly, that happiness is a choice that we have the power to make, every day. I realized that relying on circumstances and other people to dictate my emotions was the essence of powerlessness, of giving my power away. I learned that trying to be someone and create something that others wanted, that didn’t line up with what I wanted, could never bring lasting happiness. You can’t please everyone all of the time. You can’t even please a few people all of the time. And it’s not your job to please anyone but yourself, anyway.
And as selfish as that sounds, this has been a year where I’ve felt more compassion, more empathy, more patience, love, and understanding than ever before. Because if I choose not to let the actions and words of other people derail me from my choice of happiness, then I have no other choice but to love them just as they are, right where they are, regardless of how they’ve reacted to me. When you stop giving people the power to hurt and upset you, it suddenly becomes so much easier to accept them as they are.
But more importantly, with love comes forgiveness and healing–and with all of that, comes hope. And when you have hope? It’s so much easier to keep choosing happiness.
So if 2014 was, for me, the ash-phase of the Phoenix cycle…then 2015 is definitely the year I rise again. And this year I rise as something more than I was before, something powerful, in command of my own destiny: this year, I am the Empress.
So it’s a little late, but happy 2015, everyone!
PS: If you’d like to calculate your personal year for 2015, here’s how! Take you’re birth month and day, and add the numbers together until you get a single digit, like so:
(May, 17) 5+1+7=13 –> 1+3=4
Then do the same with the current year: (2015) 2+0+1+5=8
Then add the totals together until you get a single digit: 4+8=12 –> 1+2=3
Viola!
