Be your whole dazzling chart

 "Follow the grain in your own wood."     Howard Thurman

Years ago while I was eating at a restaurant in Ojai, California, a guy wearing a woven poncho and a straw hat walked up to say he had an important angelic message.  Ojai being Ojai (the unofficial capital of all things new age, groovy and maybe crazy, rivaled only perhaps by Sedona), this announcement seemed like the most reasonable thing in the world. 

I invited him to sit down. 

His message was brief.  He closed his eyes and said, "You.  You're unusual.  You're half and half.  Everything about you.  Half introvert, half extrovert.  Half East, half West. Half brain, half heart.  Young, old.  Woman, man.  Everything.  Don't forget."

Then he left to go buy a burrito. 

Well, this was so accurate he didn't know the half of it.  I'd spent years trying to dissolve the innate paradoxes of my chart, until I realized one day that we might be born to embrace them.   My planets in Aquarius and Sag were the life of the party, but my strong Neptune wanted to stay home.  The Capricorn sun worked like a dog, but my Libra rising would rather lay in a tub.  

On and on.

I had to learn how to let all the different parts speak and not be ignored.  Those online tests where you're deemed a "type" drove me crazy.  Depending on my mood or the day,  the answers would shift hourly.

So I tend to attract clients fraught with contradictions also.  A few months ago I read a dynamic Leo from Los Angeles.  She has a ton of fire,  yet until recently her Scorpio moon always monopolized the show.  It filled her life with a  diet of emotional drama while her poor fire signs suffocated, longing for adventure, play and fun.    But now she's owning her Leo.  And she's aging in reverse, becoming the spontaneous spirit she repressed in her earlier days.

Another interesting woman called me recently from Europe.  She had a batch of planets in steady, grounded Taurus,  yet her Aries moon sat next to rebel Uranus.  When I suggested she might be living a more restrained life than her unconventional moon secretly wished, she laughed and vigorously agreed.  When Uranus enters Aries at the end of May and crosses her the next year, she'll probably have a blast claiming her wild side. 

A dutiful Virgo I know with practical Saturn on his sun graduated from law school to appease his family.  But within six months of passing the bar, he had ulcers.  His stellium of planets in Libra daily cried for beauty and art.  Eventually he happily opened a boutique in San Francisco.  He told me, "I was honestly the world's worst attorney.  I'd be in the middle of a deposition dreaming of giving everyone a makeover.  It was like a special rung of Brooks Brothers hell."

Sometimes I think the different planets in someone's chart are like guests at a cosmic cocktail party. 

Some aspects flow together magically, others innately clash. 

The secret is helping everyone feel included and comfortable.

Just make sure no one takes over and drinks all the punch.

For more on being your whole chart, try this article too.