06/16/2026
Hi, I’ve missed you.
The last few weeks have melted together into a grilled cheese glob of time. The daily rhythm of a work week consists of coaching my corporate clients, getting onto the trails for a run, and then into the gym for a lift. The summer breeze does her thing and lifts me through easy nights of motorcycle rides with my love and walks around the block with my old dog Blue. The grill in the backyard got new parts, and the local butcher got our business. Weekends have swept me across the Twin Cities on bike and foot and pressed me into yard work, clearing out the garage, and even down to New Orleans for a bachelorette weekend with old friends.
In the midst of all this active non-action — the joys of late-thirties homeownership and responsibilities, competing priorities and emotional support calls with my sister, peaked mileage for ultra training, squeezing my resources for clients — I got myself a zodiac charts reading.
My boss set me up with it. Said she got so much of her own understanding from a reading and wanted to share the goods with me. It was timely— I’ve been feeling somewhat flat in my work and in need of a sense of direction. There’ve been questions arguing in hushed tones in my chest and deep in my belly: “Am I still doing what I am meant to do?” and “Why do I feel so flat even when my life has everything that I worked so hard to create within it?”
I won’t begin to bore you with the particulars of where the planets were on September 14th, 1988, at 2:30 PM over Springfield, Massachusetts. But I will let you in on the astrological information I’ve plunged into, as though into ice water, shocking awake a few dormant parts of me.
There are a series of questions that the reading has offered to me and now I am marinating in them, seeing what will break down and dissolve as a result and what will become more vibrant, tastier, juicier, as a beautiful result.
What kind of meaning am I ready to let my life be organized around now? There is incredible opportunity to relinquish the pattern of “blowing s**t up” in order to feel something monumental. Instead, there is a path forward that includes deepening what I already have in my life by shifting the meaning, the value, the sacred why. It invites me to go BEYOND the performance of reaching goals and get granular, obsessed perhaps, connected to, the spiritual nature of the journey itself. Do the thing for the sake of what the thing MEANS, not for the sake of simply doing the thing. Running. Writing. Coaching. Friendship. Woof. Can someone say, You Need To Hear That, Barbara?!
What is soul movement and what is just a restless escape? One of my lifelong patterns is this desire to move, grow, do and be something, someone different. Apparently my chart supports this — I came into this timeline on this planet knowing well how to work hard, move toward a goal well, and accomplish what I set out to accomplish. With that natural tendency, I also have the itch to experience movement: spiritual, physical, creative, etc. If I am not moving or growing in some way, cue the flat feeling or the restlessness. The downside is that I might interpret the moment as one to escape from rather than deepen and grow within it. I’ve done this in relationships and work, mainly in my 20s. Now I get to wonder: what energy is true soul movement, beckoning me to grow in a new way? And what energy is simple restlessness caused by a lack of depth in the very life I have now?
Which leads to this lovely question: What truly feels aligned, even if I can’t fully explain why? I think the world gets quite loud about what one should or should not do. It presses us to have a full thought-out reason “why” supporting decisions we make. But honestly, sometimes the shift, movement, desire just feels right and no double-clicking to find a reason why will suffice. I love when my day gets to be a heartfelt, follow my whims, kind of day. I usually end up in thrift shops and wooded trails and by a body of water and sipping a great glass of wine with my cute partner or on the phone with one of my sisters or writing up a storm in my notebooks…. these whims are delightful, full of magic, and create a texture to my life that simple Virgo-loving structure could never quite scratch for me.
I love all these questions. I get to think and wonder and delight in them for as long as I wish. I can see these questions shaping the next stages of me, the evolution of my spirit and how I show up in the world.
Ah, one more thing:
According to the planetary guides, my healing work lies within the softness of being. As in, chill out, be still, allow the world to show you her magic, don’t try and force everything to be a neat little box of organized structure. Get and be messy, it says. Feel what’s here, sister. The assignment is to not push past the sensitivity or force clarity too soon. Action isn’t always the cure (as much as the coach in me wants a great action step for everyone I meet!) The secret to my healing (and my success) lies within softness and learning how to receive. (Apparently this is very Pisces energy to balance out my natural Virgo tendencies.)
And so, I sit with it. I harmonize with the questions, allowing them to thrum inside of me, rearranging parts of me that were sequestered away for another lifetime. I welcome who I could be and how I could change for the better.
I soften.
https://barbarapowellauthor.substack.com/p/returning-with-zodiac-inspo
