My Story of Chiron

Through my readings and workshops, I've been blessed with meeting many beautiful souls. Learning about their life journeys is an honour that often puts me in awe of the resilience of the human spirit.  In awe of our ability to rise from the darkest times and travel toward the light. 

This post was first published on Laurie Benoit's site.  Laurie, a courageous and compassionate survivor, is one of those beautiful souls.  She is someone who endured many years of abuse, before embarking on a healing journey that ultimately became the journey to help others. 

Our life stories are quite different.  But, they are both about finding healing - and healing others - through connecting with our Chiron:  our deepest wound.

I publish this post just as the Sun and Chiron are about to meet in Aries, in the hopes that you will find it uplifting, and that it'll help you on your own personal journey with your Chiron.

TRIGGER WARNING:  This post mentions pregnancy loss and stillbirth. 

Two different women.  Two different lives.  Laurie and I.  And yet, there is something we share: difficult journeys transmuted into a healing gift. For those of you who know astrology, this story is about Chiron - the Wounded Healer.

That Wound…

We all have Chiron in our birth chart. It’s where we can experience our deepest wound in this lifetime. It’s also where we have the incredible ability to heal ourselves and then to take it one step further if we so choose - to heal others.

Laurie is a gifted writer who went through a lifetime of trauma and abuse, until she finally found a safe haven, connected with her manifestation powers - and began writing. Her raw and real story is beautifully told in her book “The Transformative Power of the Word”.   Laurie’s writing and her Facebook page, Once Awakened, bring both inspiration and hope.

I’m someone who went through 16 years of infertility.  Many dark days. Many negative pregnancy tests thrown into a wall in anger and despair.  Many tears shed walking past playgrounds filled with happy children and their moms. Feeling like a failure.  

Darkness: 

There were six surgeries, several challenging and expensive IVFs, and four early pregnancy losses. I was hell-bent on having a child who was the living, breathing embodiment of the love my husband and I carry for one another.  

And, one day, the gods finally smiled at me!  One of the IVFs finally worked.  I was happily humming “Twinkle twinkle little star” as I was preparing a nursery for my baby boy.  I was seven months pregnant, past the miscarriage window. I felt like I was floating on a cloud, so incredible it seemed to me that it was finally going to happen! 

A happy ending? Not so fast, my friends, not so fast…

One morning I got increasingly alarmed when I couldn’t feel my baby kicking.  I rushed to the hospital….and learned that my son’s heart had stopped.  My baby boy was dead.  I spent the next two days in a hospital being induced, getting ready to give birth to my dead son.  That excruciating pain of childbirth that so many women talk about?  Well…imagine going through that, knowing that your “reward” at the end is to plan a funeral for your baby.

A very dark stretch followed.  In truth, I don’t really remember some days. I remember sobbing and scrubbing the floors of my kitchen, to keep myself busy.  I remember downing vodka out of a water glass, to numb the pain. I remember screaming in pain when I came across the cute little baby outfit we got for him.

It all seemed like such a cruel joke. To travel a heart-breaking journey for 16 years, to think that you’ve finally succeeded - only to have it all snatched away from you in one unspeakably cruel twist of fate.

As Laurie and I would tell you, life doesn’t always feel fair….

Light:

I’m a woman who valiantly fought for many years to have a child.

I’m also an astrologer and a Tarot reader.  As I was looking at my son’s ashes, I decided to start offering pregnancy readings - for those trying to conceive. Every time I saw the word “stillborn”, I waived my fee.

Then I noticed something.  Incredibly clear messages were coming through these readings.  The month the baby would be conceived. “Don’t worry if nothing happens in the next 10 months or so”, I would tell the woman. “Don’t be too hard on yourself either.  It will all change come next April”.

I saw baby souls hovering around the women desperately trying to conceive.  I saw clear messages about healthy births.  My name was out there on IVF support boards. I stayed up late into the night doing readings. 

Sometimes a challenging first trimester would be shown. Or being on bed rest. Or delays.  

And so I put together a pregnancy manifestation spread and sent it to the women who I felt needed help. That, and sharing my story with them, so they didn’t feel alone on their journey.

This gift of being able to do amazingly clear pregnancy readings stayed with me for a few years, until it eventually started fading. (I still do readings, just not pregnancy readings).

My daughter was born by then, 13 months after I came home with my son’s ashes, but that’s a story for another day.

And just as this gift was leaving me, baby photos started coming into my inbox. All these babies, conceived and born - just as I saw in my readings. All these Moms, taking the time in those hectic months with a fresh newborn in the house, to email me and let me know that their baby had finally arrived.

“You helped me through a very challenging time”.  “It was your story that gave me the courage to keep going”.  “It was your reading that gave me hope when I felt there was none left”. 

Chiron’s Gift:

Remember Chiron? The Wounded Healer? The ability to transmute your own pain into the healing light?

In my natal chart, mine falls into my 5th House of Children.  Laurie’s falls into her 9th House of Teaching and Publishing.  “For years I felt, how could a high school dropout like me be a writer?” she told me once. Her writing is hauntingly beautiful. And powerful. And very healing. 

We ALL have Chiron in our natal chart. We ALL have the power and ability to heal. 

Trauma is a dark place.  Living through abuse is a dark place. Grief is a dark place.  And out of that darkness, a beautiful ray of healing light can be born.

It takes time to travel that road of pain and grief though, until healing can finally take place. If that’s where you are, look for those with the healing light who can support you on your journey - until you find yours. 

I still have my pregnancy manifestation spread.  If you need it, you can download a free copy here. 

And if you’re living with abuse and neglect, Laurie's page is an amazing source of support and encouragement. 

You are not alone.  

Lots of love and light to you, beautiful sisters. If your Chiron – your deepest wound – is staring you in the face, chances are, somewhere in that darkness a seedling of a beautiful gift is quietly taking root.   

Daria