The universe has been in a mood.

If you’ve felt it, you’re not imagining it. Seven years of pressure, upheaval, transformation, loss, and the exhaustion of being rebuilt from the inside out while still showing up for your life. The cosmos doesn’t apologize for this. Pluto doesn’t do gentle. And if you happen to be a Scorpio, you already knew this was coming, because it’s written into your bones. And anyone following astrological signs and bellwethers knows that we have just come to a peak of it all and a very cleansing chapter coming ahead, but more reminiscent of scorched earth resulting in new buds than a gentle turn of a book page to a new chapter.

I’ve always called myself a witch. I mean it without apology and without drama and a very genuine Mona Lisa smile on my face. It means that I enjoy paying attention to what many people scroll past. It means I find the threshold between worlds more interesting to me than either world on its own. The space between sleeping and waking, dawn and dusk, between what’s said and what’s meant, between who we were and who we’re becoming. Scorpio is called the sign of the shaman in many cultures for a reason. Ruled by Pluto, the planet of death and rebirth, hidden power, transformation and the unconscious mind. Unlike other signs, Scorpios are given seven totems pending the culture you are immersed in: spider, scorpion, serpent, eagle, phoenix, dove and wolf. Each one a stage of evolution. We’re not just one thing. We’re EVERYTHING, depending on how far we’ve evolved and what shape we are currently wearing. (And true to horoscope and understanding that we are all from the same core, this beautiful concept can be applied to all signs)

It is said that the Mayans knew that on the calendar Scorpio Season is the time of a portal between worlds, the thinning of the veil, the day of the dead. My Halloween birthday lives in that window and I have always felt it. The liminal. The between.

So as I read the words of stoicism to philosophers to big thinkers, including my sisters in the network, those who are doing the hard and extraordinary work of waking themselves back up, I had this on my mind as words once again flew out of my mind gates. Internal Power. Internal Flame. Flickering.

It was my sober sis friend Mary who cracked it open. She was talking about a man who’d wanted to curb her power and actually said it out loud. And I heard her cackle, actual snicker, and something in me lit straight up. Because no one is going to steal Mary’s power. She’s only just found it again and she damn well KNOWS it’s worth. You always know the value of a thing more after you’ve nearly lost it.

And as I consider this tribe of women, I see it everywhere. Women rediscovering their own flame. Protecting it. Fanning it. Honoring it. Learning how to enjoy it again without guilt or apology. And doing something even more extraordinary: being the spark for someone else’s.

That’s what this is, isn’t it? That’s what we’re doing. Together. As well as on our own, internally, as our internal voices wrestle it all into something true.

But here’s what I know about flame (at least this far into my journey) that I think needs to be stated clearly, especially as I listen to Mary’s telling of this person saying the words out loud about her power. You need to know what it feels like when someone blows on it gently and you can’t tell if they’re trying to extinguish it or feed it. That ambiguity is important. It teaches you discernment. You need to know the feeling of the ember gone almost cold, no energy, no fuel, no light, so that when it catches again you receive it like your own bed after traveling too far for too long. You need to feel the flicker. And you need to feel the moment when the air hits it just right and it RAGES back to life and there is nothing in the world quite like that feeling.

But you also need the s’mores. The laughter around the fire. The warmth that calls your inner child out from wherever she’s been hiding and says, come here, sit down, you’re safe, we’re all safe, look at this beautiful thing we’ve made. To taste and relish the sweetness. Without guilt and full release into that free feeling. To giggle and enjoy.

And sometimes you need to just sit and watch it. Let your eyes go soft. Be mesmerized. Let it show you something as it dances in color, shimmering, of another world inviting you in to dream. To get lost swimming in those beautiful colors, feeling the warm embrace as you dance with the light and not know exactly where you are headed but know that it’s something glorious and extraordinary.

This flame is our core. Our being. Our power. And ours alone.

The shaman walks between worlds. Between light and dark, conscious and unconscious, living and whatever comes next. I’ve always been drawn to that threshold, and I think many of us in this tribe have been too, whether we name it that way or not. We are the ones who went into the dark and found out what was there. And what was there wasn’t only pain. What was there was truth, and love, and a flame that no one, not even the hardest years, could finally extinguish.

And that’s exactly where the light is needed most. And we are the ones who keep being taught to bring it, to protect it with all of our might. We who have gone into the dark, more than once, and know what it’s like in its depths, but also understand that when we step into the light, our flame can brighten again as a testament to our own power and as an example to those around us.