I would create a bold theory here. Retrograde planets all function a little like Chiron. They have a kind of debility around which power and talent focus. They represent a place where we were hurt, held back, or challenged, and now must grow into our full strength. And they represent places in our chart of unusual individuality. – Eric Francis
I’ve been re-reading your “Sacred Space of Self,” [subscriber edition, Oct. 22, 2010) and I have seldom been so affected by the material. No matter what I know or do not know, it is totally clear to me that Vesta holds a vital clue to understanding who i am and who i have been. Since childhood, I have loved one woman after another; I called them mentors for lack of a better model. Later I somehow turned each of these relationships (never sexual) into shameful failures of my ability to connect.
Now I realize that what i had thought of as love was really devotion. I have been devoted to these usually strong others–and devotedly served a mutually beneficial cause–often for three to five years or so, depending on what i was learning from them. Please bear in mind that it wasn’t until I was in my thirties that i finally was able to understand that my sexual desires might have something to do with these devotions. earlier, the notion that these women had sex *at all* (including my mother) used to paralyze me. my 30s began the tipping point of a lot of drinking and a good load of depression. You see, I didn’t quite fit into the lesbian scene; and while i was beginning to feel stronger in sexual relationships with men, the devotion component was never present.
I began therapy for the first time last year, and it has been a wild ride. I of course became devoted to my female therapist, and determined that I would work through this devotion, learn to love, even trust, this person without fear, without attachment and neediness. And also, and this was extremely difficult, without the continued pain of my knowing the relationship was what it was and must be: therapy–a construct designed perfectly to set me up and roast me on the sacred grill of my insecurities…oh yeah, one small detail: aside from my therapist, who figured it out anyway, I never once told any of these women how i felt. pretty wimpy, but it was never “appropriate” nor frankly practical since pretty much all were older, teachers, or otherwise attached, and who wants to be an object of devotion anyway? knowing this has kept me quiet, but therein lies a good recipe for shame and pain.