It Might Be a Personal Retrograde
RetrogradeI didn't know what was happening to me. I was tired - soul exhausted. I got Covid for the third time and it just....wouldn't... let go... the cough lasted for months! I wondered if it was a sign that I wasn't in alignment. I thought about plugging into the matrix again - you know, full time job, 401K, health benefits... It sounded so.... comfortable. I thought I would find more alignment. At the same time I was having this urge to "stop." And seemingly overnight, I started working at an elementary school and spent every day with neruo-divergent kids from pre-k - grade 5.
It was a revelation. Connecting with kids with different abilities is soulful. There aren't words, but it is a chance to meet them in their own world, and see if you can be a bridge to our consensual reality. Truly magic. I was touching a place inside myself of pure presence and unconditional love.
It was so strange to have my time taken up 8-4 every day, and push toward goals and curricula while managing kids who don't have the social or emotional bandwidth to even sit still or stay in the classroom. Some days it seemed hopeless. Then I had a revelation. I was smack in the middle of a deep period of service. A Service Sabbatical. Where I was following a destiny line that I thought was long dead.
It was a personal Retrograde.
Here I was back following an old old calling to be a teacher. I majored in English Literature and I always thought I would teach in the education system somehow. I got to live an alternative lifetime in these past five months. And going back this far, this personal retrograde also provided an opportunity to revisit:
• Ancestral patterns and habits
• Old beliefs
• Previous relationships
• Forgotten junk in my (literal) closets - hello linen closet!
I took the opportunity and time to slowly - consciously - sift through the old things. I cleared OUT so many things that were cluttering my home - my energy and weighing it down. And I embraced again a deep love that I thought I had lost. Finally, I realized that the lack of energy and illness was in itself a calling.
It was a calling inward. To sift and gain even more alignment. So while I am no longer going to be teaching full time with my magical kids at the school, this retrograde has inspired another new year at Naughty Shaman - where the tribe really does work the inner work of the Medicine Wheel. Always.
If you are experiencing a personal retrograde, email me. I would love to hear about it. AND I invite you to trust. Trust that your feelings and experiences are valid. And even when it seems like you are "Out of Alignment" you are not. Trust in the slow times and do the inner exploration of who you are and sift out the old unwanted stuff.
In awe and wonder of this life,
Natalie