My Astrological Forecast

What if you could know your own future?  Would you even want to know what was in store for you?  What if you could know whether you would find the love of your life?  Or whether that love would last?  Have you ever been curious about whether you are following the right career path or if you will have financial success in the future?  These days I have a one track mind about my future - and it all revolves around the loss of our Maxie.  I need to know that Mo and our future children will live.  I need to know that Teddy will live to a ripe old age as well.  I need to know that there will be a time when life won't feel so oppressive and overwhelming.  I need to know that we will be with Max again.

Several months ago, another bereaved mother reached out to me.  She has been on this road without her daughter for ten years now.  Her daughter was two when she passed away.  This mother is one of the most healed bereaved parents I have interacted with.  She found my blog after I attended the afterlife conference in Phoenix.  I have emailed back and forth with her many times about what therapies and experiences helped her the most.  For her, it was doing an out of box therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder called EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), having a personal reading with the famous medium John Holland (which is how she found my blog - he posted a link to my post about the conference experience on his Facebook page), and having her astrological chart done by a Vedic astrologer.  I had never heard of Vedic Astrology before so I asked her a bunch of questions about how it could have possibly helped.  I have never been into Western Astrology, other than to read my horoscope in a magazine from time to time and forget it seconds later.  What she told me about this ancient Indian practice of Astrology was very interesting.

In India, Vedic Astrology is considered a science.  You can actually study it at the University level and major in it.  It is so much a part of the accepted belief system in fact that Indians will not get married or start a new business without first consulting the astrological charts.  India's independence was not declared until the stars aligned just so.  My bereaved mother friend explained to me that having charts done for her and her deceased daughter convinced her that there is a bigger picture to life that we cannot understand...that much of her life as she knew it had been predetermined.  That isn't to say that there is no belief in free will.  In fact, followers can often find out about health, financial and relationship issues from looking at their charts and astrologers will prescribe remedies to cope with the issues that might come up.  None of it is set in stone.

I felt sufficiently intrigued to set up a personal reading with Juliana Swanson, the same astrologer who did my friend's chart ten years ago.  And now you really think I've lost it.  I'll admit, the whole thing sounded incredibly far out but I am in an experimental phase.  I am seeking out unconventional practices to help me explain to myself this most unbelievable loss of mine.  What I can tell you is that my experience with Juliana was way beyond my wildest expectations.  She spent hours preparing charts for me, Maxie and Mo based on our dates, times, and locations of our births. Juliana talked about the cycles of my life, correctly designating several distinct phases I have gone through: one leading up to my parents split when I was eight or nine, one beginning at the age of 35 with my marriage to Ted and then a couple in between.  She spoke with me about my strengths and weaknesses both personally and professionally and she was right on.  I took lots of notes and read them back to Ted afterwards who kept saying, "She KNOWS you!".  She suggested that I should pursue a career in either non profit work or therapy if I was not already on either of those paths.  She believed I would focus my attention in the areas of disaster relief, death and dying, women and children issues and refugee issues (which happen to be the issues that I am most interested in).  My chart indicated that there was a strong likelihood of my losing a child and Maxie's chart indicated a strong likelihood for a short lifespan.  Mo's chart, on the other hand, had many combinations for longevity.  She told me that she saw a need for me to get acupuncture for my liver quarterly and that I need to be vigilant about doing breast exams.  She suggested that I read "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda (the founder of the Self Realization Center at Lake Shrine) as part of her prescription.  She also saw another birth coming up for us.  Likely a girl, she said, but perhaps even twins.  

I honestly still don't know what to make of it all but I believe that I will be coming back to this experience many times in my life.  Most importantly, my take away was something that she kept telling me repeatedly about Mo - that his biggest challenge would be the legacy of Maxie.  She told me over and over that it is important that we make sure he knows how loved he is and that his brother's death has nothing to do with him....that he is just as important to us and that we love all of our children equally.  That broke my heart and renewed my awareness to concentrate so much love on Mo and his life.  There is nothing that I can do to bring back my Maxie.  But there is so much I can do to ensure that my Mo is a happy and loved boy.  In the meantime, I am not going to say that the reading answered all of my questions and wrapped the case up for me in any kind of an explainable way, but I am humbled enough by Maxie's death to say that I am open to the fact that there is much in this life that doesn't make sense and that I don't understand.  I am open to learning about all of the various ways that people make sense of this world and this life.  I am open to the idea that perhaps we are all part of a bigger plan of sorts.  All I can honestly say is that I really don't know but am finding the journey to be enlightening.

This elephant photo was taken by my mom in India