From Poverty to Purpose: How Astrology Guides My Journey of Healing
My Journey with Divination Tools as a Woman from a Colonized, Christianized Developing Country
My journey with astrology started back in 2017 after the birth of my first child – my vibrant Leo daughter, whose radical water birth unlocked a version of myself I had never met before.
Throwback to 2017: year 21 of my life, in Tampa, Florida, when I birthed my first child
Her birth, like my second child’s birth, became a catalyst in my spiritual awakening journey. During this time in my life, I was just venturing out of the shadows of Christianity, as my only understanding of Spirit and God came from a religious background. Though I am grateful for the wealth of spiritual knowledge I received as a young Christian, I also acknowledge how much trauma and mental manipulation came with my life as a young Christian. This, I’ve come to understand, is due to a mixture of colonial history, patriarchy, and the general errors of human nature.
Still, I’ve learned that the true, pure energy of Spirit can and does show up in every religious space (I will never count out a religion or person just because… there can be purity in all spaces and evil in all spaces). During those years as a young Christian, and especially between the ages of 17-19, in small ways, Great Spirit had been nudging me to think bigger and not remain bound under the limitations of my religious upbringing.
This all accelerated in 2017 during my postpartum period. I had been freshly initiated into my role as a stay-at-home mother at only 21 and was in my first year of marriage to a man I was totally in love with – to the best of my capacity – but extremely unfamiliar with. Life was exhilarating but anxiety-ridden as I was in new territories all around. Yet, for the first time in my life, I felt so free. No parents, no church, no cultural pressures of joining the workforce. My husband, to the best of his capacity, took such good care of me by being present, being my friend, providing for me and our child’s needs in every sense – food, shelter, water, clothing, technology, etc. And yet, in the background of it all, we were still two strangers, in many ways, navigating unfamiliar territories together but fueled by this inner energy of love that compelled us to want to learn to nurture one another.
This inner energy of love, I have learned, has been instilled in all of us soulful beings, extending from divine source. But along the way of birthing into life and growing up, experiencing various situations that make us feel fear, sadness, doubt, and all other lower vibrational emotions, we become attached to these states of being and forget what love is. I think The Most High uses our life situations and relationships to catalyze our remembering of love and the reactivation of our heart space. This topic could lead into a discussion around chakras and the energies they hold, how they become blocked, and how they can become healthy and active once again. That is for another post – let me know if you would be interested in reading more on this.
What I’ve learned over the years is that, despite that inner energy of love that attracts and bonds two beings or a group of beings, it will still require willpower and persistent work to break from the intergenerational programmings that would seek to keep us in a state of fear and trauma-based living. This was what my husband and I were navigating in the first cycles of our union: still two strangers, in the logical sense, and coming to the union with our individual personal and family history.
We had to learn how to love one another in a way that was aligned with our souls’ needs, and this is what my journey became centered around – learning how to live and love consciously. This is what my entire journey has been about since the age of 21, and I am now 29.
Divination tools like astrology have served to help me gain clarity around the deeper metaphysical aspects of my journey and relationships, and this is highly important because energy precedes matter; meaning, before you are human, you are an energy form – spirit – and that energy never dies and travels with various forces attached to it. When we incarnate into a human body, it is with the intention of evolving that energy by experiencing life and making conscious decisions to fuel our growth. Each of us humans comes from unique backgrounds and has unique intergenerational energies that manifest themselves in different forms throughout the cycles of life and generations of a lineage.
A dominant issue plaguing many relationships is that individuals are stuck in repetitive situations and behaviors, and usually, these are the ones that shrink their value because they aren’t rooted in an energy of love. Our journey as a family is centered around returning to a state of pure love, but it requires confronting our state of fear, anger, depression, doubt, low self-worth, etc., and all of this is within, warped into the subconscious layers of our mind and subtly controlling our every action. The work of the conscious being is to use knowledge to elevate your life, and this is where all those psycho-spiritual tools of self-improvement become so handy.
Consciousness is simply living with awareness. It means you don’t just do something because you’re told to or expected to; you’ve reasoned it out, reflected, researched, etc., to figure out the best way forward. I became heavily invested in learning how to navigate my life consciously, and this was supported by my lifestyle as a stay-at-home mother and having access to technology. My work revolved around nurturing my family and expanding my awareness with knowledge through consistent but paced research and application of the knowledge learned. My field of study and expertise has been centered around relationships, zooming in especially on conscious romance, parenting, and family building.
throwback to 2022: postpartum with my second child and living off the grid in the Blue Mountains of St Thomas, Jamaica
Despite my immense gratitude for how much work my husband and I have done to become versions of ourselves I like and can be proud of, I must admit that we have had some really messy cycles and moments as we have fought against one another instead of navigating life with the knowing that we have united to confront our intergenerational challenges together. It took going through pain for us to break down and recognize our value to one another, and this, I recognize, is due to both our rough upbringings. Despite our immediate sexual attraction and social bond to one another, we had underlying emotional patterns that began to pop up the more time we spent together. At first, with a lack of knowledge and understanding of what was happening, while navigating our disagreements, we felt like enemies or simply two incompatible people. But a deeper look, and years of study of the metaphysical and psychological layers of our lives and relationships, have shown me that our relationship issues could be solved, and it simply demanded that we confront our subconsciously ingrained limiting habits.
This life and work isn’t always like a fairytale, but each day we choose not to default into responses that lead to defeat for the union and the family. As a couple, we make that choice daily — to choose love. And that’s what we’re teaching our children.
This is my work as a grown woman and a mother, and even deeper, one who claims to be on a path of consciousness expansion. I put a lot of effort into learning how to show up and be a good mother, wife, and human in general, and still, I accept that I am not perfect, and moments when I am simply not in the energy of giving will come. Moments of despair will come. When you live in a world that is as challenging and societies that are as restrictive for the mind, body, and soul as our own, you are bound to feel overwhelmed by that collective energy of oppression, at times, no matter how high vibrational you are working to be. This is what I navigate as a conscious Jamaican woman and mother.
Still, I think it is divinely ordained for us to be tested to our cores as humans, to break even and release the hardened state of our hearts created by intergenerational trauma and miseducation. To go through metaphorical deaths and return as a more receptive version to healing and healthy growth. It reminds me of the process of growing and witnessing the dying parts of a plant and recognizing that sometimes you have to cut away the whole plant and plant only a saved cutting to nurture and grow into a healthier form.
To me, this all was for the sake of helping us become more of the embodied highest version of ourselves, but it will not happen overnight. Still, though one may have evolved so much, the process of learning and embodying is a naturally continuous process – once there is life, there is change. Still, like a mature plant or tree, we grow stronger, reach our cycles of full bearing, and even have seeds form that we can distribute to expand our life and wisdom. And when the changes of life come that may challenge us and rock us to our cores, we are familiar with that pattern of shifts and navigate them with a natural surrender, knowing we shall be okay.
Divination tools, like astrology, I have recognized, are meant to serve as companion guides along the way in our journey. For someone like me, living a life that is so very different from the path many choose in modernity and progress, I have needed an affirming force to remind me of my purpose—one that transcends human understanding. Not many have understood my path, and that includes my family. Many doubt my journey and perhaps think how I live is backward or limiting to my children, but I see and know, both intuitively and through the confirmation of my charts, that I am simply on my own unique path. The proof is reflected in the fruits of our labor. I am proud of how we are raising our children, and I see it reflected in their behaviors. I don’t expect perfect children—there are tantrums and moments of childish behavior, which are part of the natural process of development. I don’t expect a perfect marriage or family—we are still imperfect and working on ourselves as adults. But what I see and value is the intentional care we put forth, and how we acknowledge when we have wronged one another and seek suitable solutions.
Throwback to 2023: our first year on the present rural family land we reside on, learning to grow our own food.
This is the work of conscious living, loving, parenting, and family building. The thing here is … we all know, innately, that we are meant to walk unique paths to our individual destinies. Yet, this isn’t easy. It is not easy to choose a path less traveled or never traveled at all, especially to be the first in a long time or ever in your lineage to do things. But choosing to live a life that deep down you know is out of alignment with you just because you want to please your family, friends, or avoid discomfort of any sort is not sustainable. It may work for a while, and then what? You come up to whatever you have been avoiding… and then have to confront it. The hope, always, is to be prepared to confront what comes, and perhaps at times, it was meant to work like that.
For some’s journey, there are cycles when you get ease and comfort and then the cycles come when Spirit bids you do some deep, and perhaps challenging or uncomfortable, work: like I am in a cycle presently where I must confront many family patterns around home insecurity and poverty, and I know I shouldn’t avoid this work by trying to fit into the status quo routines of life. I know I am meant to be here in the rural sides, reclaiming ancestral knowledge of nourishment, being home with my children, and partnering with my husband to grow organic food and build a homestead. This cycle is a step towards our mission of cultivating a more harmonious, happy, healthy and prosperous life. I also know that I must document my journey, pull on my skills of writing, and master self-advocacy while learning to quiet and have control over those inner demons that tell me my life, work, and mission aren’t good enough.
I am not saying astrology is a savior for mankind, but I do think it is a valuable tool for the conscious mind that is actively doing the work to improve. It offers that extra affirmation through confirming your cycles, exposing weaknesses, and reaffirming strengths. It’s like a therapist who witnesses you and provides clarity on who you are and what you are meant to do… this therapist, however, is divine and not bound to human limiting interpretations. It begs that you open your mind, reconnect to a more sacred way of living, and trust yourself.
If you’d like to dive further into how astrology can be used as a companion tool on your journey of conscious living, I have a gift for you below.
Click this link to access my free guidebook titled: Unlock Your Organic Matrix
If you would like to work with me one-on-one, I offer various astrology services on my website. You can find my link via my Linktree, on my substack profile.
If you enjoyed this week’s PsychoSpiritual post and would like access to more personal stories about my journey of using astrology as a Jamaican, coming from impoverished origins, then I invite you to become a paid subscriber.
If you enjoy my free offerings and would like to reciprocate some support, I welcome gratitude donations to my Cashapp: $MakedaofJamaica.
Additionally, I have a family fundraiser on my Ko-fi website aimed at helping us purchase water tanks for our family, empowering our journey of building our homestead from scratch, growing organic crops and sustaining our lifestyle here in rural Jamaica.
Link to my kofi page and fundraiser are also available via my linktree.
Incredible share of the beautiful journey including the messy parts. May your business grow in abundance and may the harvest be good
Beautifully written. I appreciate your authenticity while sharing your journey. As messy as life can get, we can always reflect and learn, and return to that inner place of expansive love. Maybe that is the point. 💫