"Do you remember what valley you ran through?" Or, seeking inspiration from water and my Scorpio moon
A meditation on discernment, astrology, and a Toni Morrison metaphor
It was sometime in July of 2017. At the time, I was living in the Heights neighborhood in Houston, Texas (a neighborhood just northwest of downtown), and my middle sister lived in Sugar Land (a suburb of the city). My parents and youngest sister were in town for the July 4th holiday, and the plan was to laze by pool, grill some hotdogs, and generally have a belated red-white-and-blue tinted day. As I began the trek from my house, Houston weather did what Houston weather does—the clouds gifted a surprise flash flood. If you’ve ever been in a Gulf Coast city during one of these storms, you understand the harrowing effect this has on even the most seasoned driver.
Houston Rain isn’t like the sweet drizzle of PNW Rain. No no no. It’s Texas, and everything is indeed much bigger (yee-friggin-haw!). This particular day boasted gushing water from the heavens, the likes of which only Poseidon on a bender would be able to conjure. After only about seven minutes on the highway and a few exits too late, I realized the 35 minute journey to the ‘burbs would be near impossible and decided to turn around.
FUN FACT: did you know the interstates in Houston are designed to bear the brunt of flash floods? The first time I heard this, I thought it sounded like a literal urban legend, but it’s actually true and theoretically pretty cool. While fascinating in theory, though, it means that the interstates turned into ACTUAL RIVERS during flash floods, tropical storms, or (worst case scenarios) hurricanes. When I was forced to exit I-10, I thought I was home free. As if to say, “LOL LAND-LOCKED DUM DUM,” Houston presented me with roadblocks of standing water, turn after turn off the closed highway. As a Texas panhandle girl, I was more accustomed to sheltering from anticipated tornadoes, not oppressive downpours of rain. My blood pressure started to rise, but at least I had on loop in my brain the lessons from my Houston-raised friends and Texas-sized billboards with local PSAs scattered about the city warning me ominously: turn around, don't drown.
I turned around and around avoiding the imminent drowning at least a dozen times. Finally, in a tear-filled panic, I called a local friend—one of the ones who grew up in Houston—asking through tears what to do. She knowingly chuckled—she had survived actual hurricanes before, so flash floods were just a mild annoyance to her. With an infuriating calm, she told me to find the highest ground possible and wait out the rain. So simple, yet so daunting—do I just Google “where is the highest ground near me?” I’m pretty sure the search would have just presented a counter question: “did you mean to search for Taylor Swift’s ‘Holy Ground’?” Honestly? Maybe.
My friend promised that eventually the water would drain after a few hours—the rain was projected to stop soon according to her local weather blog.1 I wiped my tears rather dramatically, saying “okay okay I can do that,” and pulled up Google maps. Like a beacon of caffeinated hope, there was a Starbucks on the next block. I’d like to think there was some cosmic foreshadowing (I would move to Seattle less than three years later), but in the moment, this semi-arid-climate-raised-lizard girl breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled into the parking lot. I spent five hours in that Starbucks, but eventually, as my friend so wisely predicted, the rain stopped, the water drained. I made it home emotionally exhausted, physically unharmed, and kind of pissed that I never did get that hotdog.
As a lover of metaphor and a Scorpio moon, I think about that day a lot. Much like the birds2 that have nested their way into my personal lexicon, water has also been a prominent symbol in my life. Growing up in a farming community, there was never enough of it, and spending four years in Houston, there was always too much of it. A veritable Rain Goldilocks, it wasn’t until I moved to the PNW four years ago that my relationship with water settled into something just right. I can see the Puget Sound from my bedroom window, I cross the Duwamish waterway on my commute to work, and the gentle patter of rain wakes me on many mornings year round. Water, here, has become more akin to a heartbeat echoing my own or a welcome constant companion, or perhaps a little bit of both.
What is so powerful about water as a metaphor is its range, its literal fluidity, depth, and vitalness to life. I am currently ruminating on a speech given in 1987 by Toni Morrison:
“You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. ‘Floods’ is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, that valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory—what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our ‘flooding.’”
Meditations on water, especially this one, move me to also meditate on my word for 2024—discernment. I’ve slowly realized I’m connecting to the act of discernment in my emotional memory much like water—trying to get back to where I was or at least to a place where I can channel the quiet of a languid lake hugged by evergreens on all her sides versus a roaring urban flood in a concrete jungle during hurricane season. Peace in lieu of tumult. Calm instead of TURN AROUND, DON’T DROWN.
I initially chose the word from the act itself. That is to say, at the beginning of this year, I discerned a need for enhanced discernment, specifically for a necessary life-culling and emotional reckoning. Post-pandemic, I have been saying yes to so much, giving my energy to anything and everyone that came before me. While this verve for new experiences is in many ways admirable, it’s also draining when taken too far. Discernment for me has many applications and meanings. In this context specifically, I needed a deeper understanding of my choices affecting my emotional and physical health and my relationships with my partner, friends, and family. This endeavor demands discernment: What (or who) is encroaching on my peace? What activities are giving me joy? How do I feel when I leave an event, interaction, etc.? What demands are noise without my best interest at heart versus what demands are worthwhile pursuits even if requiring work or sacrifice on my part?
I’ve been finding inspiration to answer these questions in some unusual places. First, and true to the ‘Well…Actually’ modus operandi, here’s what Merriam-Webster has to say about discernment:
1: the quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure: skill in discerning; or
2: an act of perceiving or discerning something.
Nerding out for a quick minute over a definition: my focus is pulled to the gerunds in the definitions—or, the verb functioning as a noun. Skill in discerning, act of perceiving. The “-ing” is so important—it’s the motion of the word. In order to grasp and comprehend (to discern), there must be active motion toward that which needs discerning.
I chose this word initially, not because I’m bad at discerning, grasping, comprehending, or perceiving. Quite the opposite. Since I was a teenager, I’ve struggled with generalized, and at times hyper-specific, anxiety. This means that intellectual discernment is a natural endeavor for me. The silver lining of anxiety means OVERTHINKING EVERYTHING. Remember the very thesis of this Substack—I’m the Well Actually kid.
Acknowledging my privilege of good physical health, access to healthcare and education, and disposable income, I’ve managed my anxiety successfully, at least to the outside world. But, this doesn’t mean it’s been an easy interior journey emotionally. It also doesn’t mean that it’s obvious if and when I struggle internally. The battle with anxiety, especially for my emotional makeup, means battling deep emotional tumult. I rarely feel anything lightly. In other words, sometimes it’s hard for me to discern whether an emotion is a Big Emotion With Big Meaning, a Small Emotion That Feels Big in the Moment, or—let’s be real—is it just PMS? Frankly, that’s the answer more often than I’d like to admit.
A surprising tool that helps me navigate this battle is my natal chart, which recently I had read by an extremely talented astrologer. She very gently demonstrated how my Scorpio moon plays with the rest of my chart. For those not steeped in astrology, here’s a quick primer3 on Scorpio Moons:
“A psychological detective, you reach into the depths of human experience and extract meaning from the endless subtle nuances of life. When you listen to your intuition, you have a profound capacity for interpreting life’s hidden agenda, and you have a heightened ability to identify danger and threats before they arrive. No one can accuse you of being a Pollyanna, but you can tend to turn the everyday minutiae of life into an exhausting game of precaution and self-protection.
Vulnerability is a word that may raise your hackles. Trust is a concept that may sometimes feel foreign. Because you may be more comfortable with the philosophical mysteries of emotions than their practical, daily expression, you may feel misunderstood, or feel the need to retreat when the oceanic currents of your emotional life begin to swell.
You seek constant self-development and crave intense experiences, making it difficult sometimes to feel safe. Your Scorpio moon can tend to seek power and control over circumstances as a method of keeping harm at a distance and navigating insecurities, but a key truth of life is that it is impossible to control life or predict its outcomes. There is no way to save yourself from hurt and pain, in fact it's the counterpart to pleasure, healing, and love.”
As you can imagine, over-analyzing, hyper-intellectual, anxious type meets Scorpio Moon means INTENSE, very rich inner emotional and intellectual life. My inner emotional life, however, is not always revealed or shown to the outside world, and so often, the oceanic currents of that life swell to heights that only pro surfers could conquer. I’d like to think that makes my internal emotional world look much like the salty, sun-kissed 2002 classic, Blue Crush, starring a young Kate Bosworth and Michelle Rodriguez—Cassie has some sexy emotions, right?! Maybe sometimes.
My internal emotional world actually ends up being more like that final scene in Titanic (spoiler alert) where Rose lets go of Jack’s hand, letting his hypothermic, frozen body float to the ocean floor. “I’ll never let you go, Jack,” I say, as I drop my hypothermic, frozen emotions to the ocean floor, letting my intellectual prowess (re: floating door) buoy my internal self safely on the surface.4 I’ll see you, Anger/Resentment/ Frustration/Sadness/Melancholy, 84 years from now when you’re excavated from the emotional wreckage on my brain’s ocean floor by a team of shipwreck divers and oceanographers. What a shame she’s f*cked in the head, they said. While you’re down there, I’d love that to get my hands on that necklace the old lady dropped into the ocean in the end—the Heart of the Ocean really taking on some meaning here, amirite?!
My deep well of emotional reserves are not always my friend—this pre-destined predilection paired with eldest daughter energy and an intense legal education/career path has provided me with an almost bullet proof mask to slip on when the intense emotions float to the surface. I have the sustainable ability to bottle up or mask an emotion to make another person more comfortable. Plagued with a sensitive intuition, my social savvy can sometimes get in the way of my own emotional processing. Because of this, I spent the better part of my 20s feeling as if I were An Enigma, gliding through the world sure that no one quite understands who I am to the core. Even today, situations with friends or coworkers arise where I inadvertently slip back into that practice, like trying on an old pair of UGG boots—still relatively comfortable but looking worse for wear a decade later.
In embracing my duality of a Gemini Sun (air sign! curious! effervescence!) and pairing it with the depths of a Scorpio Moon (intuition! nuance! vulnerability!), I have attracted people who accept and appreciate certain enigmatic parts of me, without categorizing me as or making me feel like An Enigma. Or, more simply, they just call bullshit. And, it’s effective. A close friend observed recently, “Cassie, you are always so surprised when your close friends and family ‘see’ you. You marvel at it. You are not that much of an enigma!” Honestly—phew! I don’t actually want to be a poet-trapped-inside-the-body-of-a-finance-guy.
Sticking with the water metaphor, perhaps I am attracted to the word discernment because water does it so effortlessly. Its perfect memory is not about fighting the enigmatic parts of itself, rather, it’s an embracing, a calling to those who understand it to its shores. Water remembering where it used to be is not about going back to how things were—water, like all of nature, is always changing and commanding respect. Rather, water remembers where it flows easily—the valley we ran through. Part of this practice, for me, is sharing (releasing) emotional memory (a flood) of where I’ve been, who I was, and what I hope to do with my life. Trusting the hydro-powered intuition, as Toni and my Scorpio moon would suggest, I’m simply getting back to where I was—where I flowed easily. There’s no need to worry because there is a quiet respect of the aquatic depth and capacity. There is a cheeky amusement in its playfulness and life-giving nature.
Like water, I am not alone. My partner and my close friends and family are swimming in the enigmatic depths with me, no turn around, don’t drown warning in sight. To those people, thank you from the bottom of my cold cold Heart of the Ocean. You are dipping toes in my cool water on a hot sunny day. You are scooping me up to rinse the sand off your legs. You are floating on my surface, laughter echoing in the canyon. You are playing in the shallow stream underneath my waterfall, just happy I’m here. You see through the façade or simply know it’s there and navigate around it, sails up—smooth waters ahead through that very valley we ran through.
This was a learning moment for me—I followed Space City Weather from that day until my final day in Houston.
We’ve progressed in birding, folks! I’ve downloaded a birding app and am currently tracking all the birdsongs of West Seattle.
I pulled this from the CHANI app. Chani Nicholas is a Canadian astrologer. We LOVE LOVE LOVE Chani. Her book is lovely, and her app is part of my daily routine. More here.
That door was definitely big enough for two!