“Don’t sweat girl, be yourself… work what you got”
Follow me and MJB and don’t be afraid to change
There are two sayings in the recovery community that are pertinent to all of us.
The first is: “Choose your hard”. Meaning, it is hard to give up alcohol, but the effects of not removing alcohol from your life are hard, too. The second is “Why wait for rock bottom, when you can see it from where you are standing?” Both remind me of something my high school French teacher used to say to us when requesting a student to come up to the front of class for a practice dialogue, “Victime ou voluntaire”. Your choice, be a victim or a volunteer.
Pluto in Aquarius prompts us to look at the future, and how the choices we are making - actively or passively - are laying out that future. There is meant to be transformation involved in getting to any future state. Yet we are afraid of change and therefore get stuck in cycles of choosing our hard and letting our hard choose us. Now Pluto is asking us to look at this closely. What did we believe was our challenge to tackle, and who told us that was meant for us? If it didn’t feel right for us once we engaged in it (say a job, or a relationship), and we did not change course, then we likely entered the part of the cycle where the hard chooses us.
Lately, people appear to me to be at various stages of unraveling. We have bought into the duality of lack and abundance used in advertising, allowing the comparisons and trends of social media to tell us if we are part of the in crowd (abundance) or the out crowd (lacking).
But Pluto tells us not to look externally to gauge how we are doing with this precious existence. Pluto tells us “I have to change myself”, as opposed to “I have to change my future”. The difference is subtle, but important. It means we must look at our internal resources, be grateful for our unique abilities and desires, and commit to using them wisely and fully. As Pluto is also about power, it is the combination of personal power plus embracing one’s unique traits that generates the fire to transform like the Phoenix from the ashes. The process must begin within instead of without when contemplating the future.
Here are some of the ‘hards’ I chose at various times in my life based upon external beliefs instilled in me.
If I decode society’s expectations and play by those rules I will be successful.
If I succeed, I will be happy.
If I get others to accept me, I will feel I belong.
I have to be self-made, and if f I am self-made, I will be respected.
I have to find the fairytale romantic relationship. If I find this, I will be secure and have all the love I need.
My achievements make up my identity.
These beliefs I worked so hard to manifest proved untrue to my heart, leaving me to live with the feeling that I was missing the very point of my existence. And that felt so very hard, I started numbing from a young age, when it became apparent that #s 1 - 3 didn’t feel like they were proving fruitful despite my straight As and popular status at school. And sure enough, hard started choosing me, volunteering me to victimhood in a surprising turn of events that led to me being bullied severely and missing months of middle school. Throughout life, I avoided letting go of these beliefs, causing more harm to self and others.
What I didn’t realize is that we are meant to go through cycles of loss and newness, all while being deathly afraid of change. That is the transformative process, preparing us for the ultimate transformation, death. Change will come in the form of loss, illness, financial struggles, grief. Such is the human condition. The stories of transformation in recovery are dramatic. It is not simply the removal of the substance that is the change. It is the reexamination of what the individual truly values and prioritizes in life, and then taking aligned action, that leads to the greatest changes.
We humans have free will. Why not exercise it to transform ourselves and actually participate in the process?
1Title from the Mary J. Blige song “Work That”. Read her recovery story here.
Oh no! I’m completely still wedded to all six things in your list there. I clearly have a lot of work on my character to do still 😮