Wake-up Calls, Claiming our Personal Power, and Saying Sayonara to the Nice Girl Syndrome: The Fifth House in Astrology

I have had a series of vivid nightmares lately.  In one, I was sitting in a hairstylist’s chair, chatting away to a distracting, gregarious stranger sitting at my side, when to my abject horror, I finally look up at my reflection in the mirror, and all of my long hair has been chopped off in a decidedly unflattering crew cut.    In another, I put my purse down in a “hidden” corner of the shoe department in a busy store, and when I go to retrieve it, it is gone.  I search frantically for my bag, and am presented with an array of designer purses and wallets, but none of them are mine.  In all of these nightmares there was a distinct feeling that I was going to be in trouble, because I was being negligent.   What are these dreams all saying? What do they all have in common? They are shouting at me, in my unconscious state: Wake up! Pay attention! Something meaningful is being stolen from you, while you are figuratively speaking, asleep at the wheel. 

I have recently become conscious of a rather disturbing fact.  I am full of seething resentment towards certain people, and its all my fault.  Like many women, I was trained from an early age to turn the other cheek, give the benefit of the doubt, and instead of wisely picking my battles; I have erstwhile chosen not to engage in battle at all, even while my ramparts were being sieged.  We all know the feeling.  Someone says something totally inappropriate to you, and you wonder for days if she meant to hurt your feelings or if you are just being “too sensitive”.  Meanwhile, you don’t call her on it, and you file it away, knowing in your gut that it just doesn’t sit right, and you probably should have asked her what she meant by that.  Here’s another good one.  You are chatting with a friendly acquaintance over coffee, and you bring up some deliciously good ideas, and answer her seemingly innocuous questions about your work, which you find neatly presented in her blog the following morning, as though they came directly from her, and her many years of research – she - the Wisewoman herself.

This can be unbelievably frustrating.  Second guessing oneself is something many women do on a daily basis, because they are so concerned with hurting the other person’s feelings, or Goddess forbid, confrontation.  We live in a culture that calls women over-reactive if we express anger; too sensitive, if we experience sadness, and just plain out of our minds if we question the status quo.  The sad thing is, this is not just a gender inequity; women have the propensity to fight dirty with each other – and by dirty, I mean subtle, in a way that knocks us off our balance and keeps us silent, for fear of appearing anything other than nice.  Yes, even in this day and age, many of us are still prey to this un-empowering ideal of womanhood.  Some of us cloak our inner nice girl in new ways, just to keep us from the audacious act of claiming our power.  For example, we can fool ourselves into thinking we are “doing the right thing”, or “acting with integrity”, when we are being clearly taken advantage of by our employers, lovers, and friends.  We might tell ourselves that we know we are being treated unfairly, but, heck we made an agreement, and being noble (read compliant) we will fulfill our part of the bargain because we got ourselves into it in the first place, and its only the right thing to do.  I am all for keeping promises and fulfilling my end of a bargain, but I have all too often been seen with my head down, enduring unfair treatment, and building a wall of resentment one brick at a time, because I am too afraid to say, “Wait a second, this is seriously not cool!”

In astrology, self esteem and confidence is Fifth house territory.   For those new to astrology, imagine your chart as a piece of pie, divided into twelve pieces.  Each of these pieces is called a “house’, and represents a different “department”, or area in life.   For example, the seventh house is our house of partnerships, and the sign found on the cusp, or beginning of that house will influence the way we interact as or with a significant other.  Also, if there are any planets in that house when we were born, the archetypes of those planets will also say something about our partnerships of any kind: marriages, including creative or business partnerships.

3rd Chakra: Self Esteem

The Fifth house, on the other hand, rules creativity, play, children, fulfillment, self-esteem, and self-expression.  It shows us how comfortable we are (or aren’t) claiming our personal space and sticking up for ourselves.  We can tell a lot depending on what sign is on our fifth, and what, (if any) planets we have in there, about our sense of entitlement to expressing ourselves in a given situation.  

The Fifth House is also related to the 3^rd Chakra – the Solar Plexus, which is about our personal will and self-esteem.   The color yellow, or gold is associated with this area, which incidentally are the colors also associated with the sign Leo – which rules the Fifth.  The stone Citrine has a particularly 3^rd chakra/fifth house vibration, and if you are doing work on bolstering your feelings of self-worth, its not a bad idea to wear this stone, or keep a piece of it in your pocket. 

Citrine

Boudicca: Celtic Warrior Queen

As I have realized the unhealthy resentment I was carrying around with me was actually diminishing the quality of my life, over the past month, I have vowed to make inroads with changing this pattern.  I won’t lie: it has been hard.  Really hard. Even putting up small boundaries has been a challenge, and the guilt of not being “nice”, has made me feel really bad. I have even had to get support for not going back on my new boundaries, and “just this one last time” do something that everything inside of me was screaming, “No! Hold out!”  I am not used to feeling this kind of conflict.  I am, however, used to feeling resentment – and I have decided that I don’t want to feel that way anymore.  So, until I can make my clear boundaries and not look back, I’m just going to have to deal with the discomfort.  This also goes for speaking my own truth and stating my needs.  There is nothing uncommon or monstrous about my needs. They are what they are. I am just not used to saying some of them out loud, for fear of appearing needy or infringing on someone else’s worldview.  It is scary; it is uncomfortable.  But I do feel an interesting sense of freedom starting to emerge; I feel lighter not carrying the burden of resentment.  It is a strange and heady brew that is honestly, almost kind of exciting.  I still have a long way to go, but I am just going to work with it, one situation at a time, and know that I am every bit as entitled as the next person. So there.