Bravely Embodying Brilliance

The Nodal Return – Embodying Our Brilliance

Sixteen years ago, I made a decision that would forever alter the course of my life. I didn’t realize it at the time, but today, as I sit to write on this third-quarter moon, which at the moment is exactly conjunct my North Node in Capricorn, I feel the truth and stability of this statement.

Back then, I was a fledgling learning to trust my intuition. It was a messy process, one that initiated an era of being chided every time I felt ‘guided’ to make a choice that led me to say or do things that went against the unspoken norms within our family.

What was that big decision? The decision that meant clawing my way to say “YES” to:

💛Honoring myself as a person
💛Honing my gifts as a writer
💛Trusting my way of knowing
💛Trusting that my life had value beyond being a wife, mother, and homemaker
💛Trusting that I was here to inhabit a version of myself that was yet to arrive

I started leaning into the dawning awareness that moving toward that version of myself was the very act that would bring peace to the version of me that existed then — the one drowning in a sea of expected conformity to norms my soul was made to break free from, right within the very structures that supported my life.

The ensuing eight-year long guilt-trip from my then spouse for saying yes to a writing workshop in Las Vegas (because I won a free ticket to attend - and took it as a ‘sign’) was held over my head as yet another one of those things I was ‘guided’ to do that was ‘wrong-headed.’

But astrology tells a different story. Today, sixteen years later, I am learning more about what that story is, as well as the sign that was literally in the sky at the time, letting me know I was on the right track.

The Soul’s Timing

About six months before that trip, on November 2, 2009, the transiting North Node returned to its natal position in my chart at 24° Capricorn.

A nodal return happens roughly every eighteen and a half years and marks a kind of crossroads in a person’s life. It asks a simple but profound question:

Are you willing to step more fully onto the path your soul intended?

This is more of an invitation toward an inner orientational shift than a discernible external event, perhaps in part because the nodes of the moon are sensitive points in the chart, as opposed to observable bodies in the sky.

I had no idea about any of this at that time, though looking back now I can see that the decision to attend that writing workshop was part of that turning point. In his work with the nodes of the moon, Adam Gainsburg observes that “tangible results of the nodal (contact) often take five months to appear in the native’s life.”

Moving toward our evolutionary edge requires a certain kind of bravery. The kind that asks you to trust your own way of knowing even when you don’t yet understand where it might lead.

Five months after my nodal return, I made a big decision, and one month later, I was on an airplane, coming as close to face to face as possible with my soul’s calling.

The Sky as Witness

The hours of air travel created physical space from the tension at home, but the mounting feeling that was both exhilarating and free while also sorrowful and heavy culminated in the moments as we began our descent toward the lights of Las Vegas. I looked out the airplane window and saw a crescent Moon hanging in the twilight with Venus glowing beside it. Tears fell as I felt both the beauty and ache of witnessing this moment and the sense that the Moon and Venus were also witnessing me.

At the time, it was a welcome sense that I was on the right track. And that was enough.

But years later, when I went back and traced that moment through the sky, I discovered something remarkable.

At that exact time, Venus was crossing my personal Venus Star Point in Gemini. In her book Venus Star Rising, Arielle Guttman describes the Gemini Venus Star path as a life devoted to meaningful communication, where wisdom emerges through dialogue and deep listening.

Learning about this connection was enough.

But wait…there’s more!

The Venus cycle that produced that moment had begun only months earlier with Venus and the Sun meeting on my… you guessed it… North Node!

In other words, the sky was already lighting the path that I would spend years learning to trust. Now, I recognize a key facet that connects the Venus Star Point and Nodal Story to the ways I practice, teach and live the wisdom of the natal chart. We all have to learn to trust our intuition if we are to pursue our Personal Path of Brilliance, and that can be messy, scary, and uncertain - requiring an enormous amount of bravery.

The Meaning of Bravery

Bravery, in this sense, isn’t dramatic heroism. It’s the willingness to trust the knowing that rises from within, often before any tangible evidence exists to prove it.

• To follow a calling that doesn’t yet make sense to others

• To keep moving in the direction your life is asking of you

• To continue speaking and acting from that place of inner knowing

Each of us carries an instinctual way of moving through the world, with patterns of perception and response that have helped us orient ourselves to life. In astrology, the lunar nodes describe the pathway between the known/familiar and the unknown/unfamiliar. The South Node reflects the instincts we already know how to rely on (often, to a fault), while the North Node reveals how those instincts are meant to grow and mature over time.

The journey between them is not always graceful. It is a life-long process of learning, stumbling, and refining our discernment as we begin to trust our particular way of knowing.

The moments that call for bravery are often the very places where that transformation is taking place.

Looking back now, I can see that the choices I once experienced as frightening leaps into the unknown were actually part of a larger developmental unfolding that was inviting me to embody a deeper expression of the path my life was already moving toward.

The Gift of Perspective

One of the things I love most about studying astrology is the way it allows us to look back and see the deeper patterns in our lives.

As moments that once felt uncertain begin to reveal their place in a much larger story, we can begin to hold the difficulties and disruptions as part of our path of becoming.

Sixteen years ago, on the way to a workshop that required more bravery than I realized at the time, I looked out an airplane window and saw Venus shining beside a crescent Moon.

Now I know that Venus was crossing the exact degree in my chart connected to my voice, my values, and the courage to write from the truth of my heart.

The sky was already telling the story. Had been telling the story. Is STILL telling the story.

And all these years later, I’m still learning how to live into the brilliant promise of my natal chart.