There are only four houses on Elsa St, but as my friend drives back and forth to the east over the last few years of her ancestral healing journey, she mentions always noticing her mother’s name etched on that particular street.

I look at her in wonderment: “that’s the street I first grew up on”.

☾

In instalment #4809450456890234 of practicing the Art of Asking, I asked my friend if she could pick me up for the two hour drive to visit our friend in Millowl. The Rachel that doesn’t want to bother anyone saying G’DAY MATE to the Rachel that is learning to ask for what she wants.

Yes I could have driven myself - as I mostly do - but what are the crackling possibilities if I responded to that desire to be driven like a passenger princess?

Asking makes me feel needy, as if having needs isn’t the most basic thing about being human.

A million reasons to not Ask but I am learning that people relish a direct ask, that people relish collaborating with you to play a different role to the game we’ve already been playing.

Asking as a portal into intimacy, cracking the shell of our heart to raw, real gooey yoke.

It surprised me even, how this Ask became an intimate opening into the gift of attunement and emotional availability.

I notice now when the level of presence in a connection feels deeper, fuller, easier, as we slowly allow ourselves be witnessed and known, one co-dependent love story at a time.

All weekend we marveled at the ease of our nervous systems attuning to another as we spoke about attachment, heartbreak, desire, chortling at our fucked-up-ness while mirroring the innocence of one another with heart-woven words of love.

Deciding that we are now choosing connections because we want, not because we were chosen first.

Imagine taking responsibility for what we actually want.

I mean, imagine the reverberations of what we would actually have to respond to, and you see why we would rather not touch desire at its fiercest core.

☾

With Mars slowing to a standstill at 17° in Cancer, too close to Earth for my (dis)comfort, I decided to buy a compostable wiping cloth with red chillis peppered all over it, an ode to the red hot desire Venus is amplifying while Mars licks with saltwater burning clean my open wounds.

Mars is our survival nature, our instinctual urge to protect, defend and attack, and in Cancer touching our core needs, what we’ve been wading through the last six weeks may have brought up deep developmental wounds of unmet needs: how we have not experienced safety, security, nurturance and care in ways Little Us needed.

Where we’ve been mis-attuned to, where we were met only with emotional unavailability.

And with Venus in speedy Aries (ruled by Mars) moving now at a snail’s pace: tell me we’re in the shadow of a Venus retrograde without telling me we’re in the shadows of Venus heading to the underworld… about to be stripped bare.

So on Saturday I carved out pieces of linoleum and made my first lino print of a hibiscus flower, my summer guide as I attune deeper to my sensual embodiment this Venus year.

Then yesterday I came across an old copy of Alain de Botton’s Essays in Love, a book I adored in my early twenties, when I still read many books by white men. I flipped through the book and found two hand-pressed hibiscus amongst the pages - a message from my younger self without her even knowing why.

♡

choosing because we want, not because we were chosen first

Venus in Aries as the direct ask

if aquarius is the air we’re breathing, what air are you inhaling?