On Being “A Lot” and Learning How to Hold Power Without Shrinking
If you’ve ever been characterized as “a lot,” to say I understand would be an understatement. I have been a tiny adult since I was six. Terminal illness. Addiction. Familial and Friend Deaths. Raising children. Corruption. Moving. Learning disabilities. Climbing multiple career ladders. Marriage. Divorce. Working multiple jobs. I could go on, but I won’t.
I began studying astrology after completing a Bible college program. I know, contradictory. And yet something clicked. My Black family had been quoting Hoodoo to me my entire life through a lens of Christianity…. while my Mexican family referenced ancient Indigenous practices just as fluently through Catholicism. Once I learned about syncretism I wanted to ground all of the learnings and lineages into something that had shared contexts: both lineages were connected to the stars in some way.
That curiosity led me to study Whole Sign, Placidus, and Vedic astrology, and how they intersect with Greek, Egyptian, and Roman mythology, revolutions, and governments. How they all relate to depth psychology, sociology, anthropology and our physiology, which brought me back to somatics. Everything came back to the same thing: indigenous knowledge that inherently available to every human through connecting to their lineages. New names but ancient technologies. Over time, I realized something I was perhaps meant to feel with my Sagittarius 8th house, where my North Node, Mars, and Moon all live.
Mischaracterization, narrative power, and blame profoundly shape how people understand who they are in relationship to modernity.
For example, I am often invited in for my clarity, power, and endurance. Once I am no longer needed, I am graciously and abundantly rewarded and released under the guise of: we’re choosing to lighten up now, we’re seeking another direction that doesn’t need as much accountability or rigor, your leadership style is no longer needed but here’s someone who will love you - and so it goes. I have new more aligned clients and I am always right where I am supposed to be. It’s similar with 1:1 clients as well. They will work with me as long as they need to integrate all they need to stabilize and then come and go as they need until they have another year or few that I am needed weekly.
I spent much of my younger years obsessed with healing myself, shrinking my energy, and trying to fit in. Before I accepted the way my energy runs 1:1 and in groups I thought I needed to shrink myself to belong. What I didn’t realize at the time was that my writing, created solely to survive and make sense of my own life, was universalizing truths about how power moves, shifts, distorts, or expands relationships. My writing, coaching frameworks and relationship skills are what keeps me in orbit in any community, organization or space I am invited into.
We are living through what everyone keeps calling “unprecedented” times. I’ve never hated a word more. And because we are not being given space to stabilize, predict, or feel safety, it has become our individual responsibility to define what safety actually means for us. Genuinely Curious was born during a planning retreat, when a colleague asked me, affectionately, why I ask the questions I do. Where they come from. How I formulate them. I realized the answer was simple: I’m genuinely curious. A decade later, I’ve built a flourishing life from my ability to ask questions.
An elder once warned me that I would live a life so full it might seem incomprehensible to others because I ask questions that make people clear and connected. When I asked her to explain that as if to a fifth grader, I still didn’t understand. It wasn’t until I had embodied my gifts that I understood what I needed and why to keep my center while navigating the world. Before I embodied my gifts consciously, I was over-functioning everywhere. Everyone knew I would be okay. Everyone knew I’d figure it out, so they took what they needed and came and went as needed. This is a common pattern I notice with many queer and trans siblings as well as anyone with strong scorpio, taurus, 7th/8th/12th house placements.
It wasn’t until I made space to receive, realize, and rebirth myself within each context I moved through that I became a coherent, grounded version of me. This is how I use Genuinely Curious to support others. If you’re looking for a guide who will help you integrate more of who you already feel yourself to be, and explore who you are not or cannot be, I’m around. Let’s connect.
