Chani Nicholas - You Were Born For This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance

Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance

www.yellowkitebooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Yellow Kite

An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

First published in the US in 2020 by HarperOne

Copyright 2020 by Chani Nicholas

The right of Chani Nicholas to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Designed by Michelle Crowe

Illustrations by Karen McClellan

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

eBook ISBN 978 1 529 39162 6

Hardback ISBN 978 1 529 38923 4

Yellow Kite

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.yellowkitebooks.co.uk

This book, this life, this work does not exist without my love, my best friend, my partner in all things, my wife.

Sonya Priyam Passi.

You gather me daily. You captivate me endlessly. You inspire me to discover what is possible and what is beyond that. You are the bravest, most compassionate person I have ever met. You are my Fortuna, my greatest blessing, and my calling. I thank the heavens for you every moment of every day.

Your love is the most powerful force I have ever known. It has transformed every wound into a lesson, every heartbreak into a moment that no longer owns me, every obstacle into an opportunity. It is an indomitable force that surrounds, protects, and uplifts me. Being your partner is my greatest privilege, my honor, and my most precious gift.

I know every day that I lived before meeting you was in preparation for you. Meeting you activated my potential in ways I could never have imagined. It is no mistake that when we came together everything else in my world fell into place. Thank you for finding me, keeping me, and creating this incredible life with me.

CONTENTS

The first time I encountered astrology was the first time I remember feeling seen. I was eight years old. Living in a small town snuggled in the base of the Rockies, I was surrounded by both the immeasurable beauty of nature and the unforgiving wreckage of addiction. I spent a lot of my childhood alone. While the adults in my life partied and self-destructed with wanton abandon, I watched The Cosby Show and dreamed of a life with parents, siblings, grandparents, and a lineage to claim me. When the party came home, I felt a different kind of loneliness. An overdose, a fatal accident, a shotgun fired, a conviction. I knew what cocaine tasted like by the time I was five. I knew not to tell anyone about anything that happened in my home. I was terrified all the time. So I hid. I hid in any bathroom with a lock on the door. I hid inside a self-constructed personality that was aloof, sarcastic, and remote. I hid to protect my excruciatingly sensitive and porous being from the sharp edges of adult sorrows that swallowed my childhood.

As those around me wreaked havoc, it wasnt uncommon for me to find myself in some makeshift shack up a dirt road, with adults I did not want to be with, witnessing events that I was unable to make sense of or navigate. I was in such a situation on that fateful day I first encountered astrology. A total stranger, a skinny, white woman with unkept hair and an unloved look in her eyes, gave me a gift I have never forgotten. Armed with only my birthdate, she looked up the location of the planets on the day I was born, gazed at me with a glimmer in her eye, and said, Youre very judgmental.

Yes. Yes I am, I thought with pride.

I had no real idea what that word actually meant, but I immediately resonated with what I felt it implied. She was distinguishing me from my surroundings. She saw that I possessed the kind of discernment that others around me lacked. I had judgment, and, with it, I would find a way out of this mess.

Though I never met her again, that brief interaction gave me something to hold on to. It may have only been a thread, but when thats all youve got it feels like spun gold. In a situation that threatened to obliterate me, someone looked down at a book of symbols and numbers and used astrology to uncover a truth about me that would save my life.

Being witnessed is essential to our humanity, our growth, and our ability to move past the trauma that we have survived. If astrology does its job, it offers a mirror in which we see both our best selves and our growth edges.

When I was twelve years old, I had my first thorough natal chart reading. My father had just moved across the country to Toronto with my second stepmother, a woman I had grown up with. I had spent many weekends with her and her two children. Our childhoods were parallel. Our parents had partied, worked, and teetered on the brink of madness together. We were witnesses to some of each others most harrowing moments and we had survived. The fact that my father and their mother fled the small town we grew up in meant that they were ready to leave behind (at least some) of the violence, drugs, and self-destruction we had all been so embroiled in.