Chani Nicholas in Conversation with Paola Mendoza

we begin in a broken world on in all kinds of distress and I'm so happy that you're here thank you so much for coming I know how busy you are and I know how hard it is to tear yourselves away from your lives and your world than to get dressed and leave your bed and stop watching the TV show and I keep talking to the mic but it's not on and I just really appreciate that you have come this far with me and there's you could probably place bets on how many times I might tear up during this speech I'm gonna say about 10 okay so you can't put a book out into the world on your own and you certainly can't celebrate it on your own and so I have only been able to do everything because of you and because of your generosity and because of your relationship with me and with the work and so I'm so incredibly grateful for you for being here and for celebrating this with me and for trusting me this far we'll see we'll see how it goes from here and for there's people in this room that have housed me and loved me and cared for me when I was whining and complaining and horrible and miserable and all the other things so it always takes a community to do anything and I'm so so so grateful for you tonight we are so blessed to have an incredible visitor with us so I wanted to go through the book I wanted I wrote a book that I wrote a book and I wanted to talk about I wanted to break down the kind of I wanted to demystify what the process is for astrologers and you can't do that in one book I don't think or I don't I think if you do it would be a little overwhelming so this is like the bare bones and the essential pieces that I start with and I believe that having a reading with a professional astrologer is really important and have somebody guide you through that process is really wonderful and I also believe that if we can deconstruct a little bit of it that we all can have these tools if the language speaks to us to start to be in relationship with our chart and I think that when we have that relationship we feel more empowered with it and it becomes ours so I wanted to kind of break it down for you and help make it yours and whatever way the book can possibly do that because I believe that when we have that we feel more agency over our life or like a deeper connection with the mark that our chart is saying that we need to live into so I wanted to do a book tour this is my first one this is my first we had a we had a party in LA on Saturday but this is my very first official event so you're also here at the inaugural event and I'm so grateful so I wanted to create a book tour that what where I was gonna be talking to people who either in that city that I was going to or in the spaces that they were that their life and their work and their art perhaps was making a kind of impact and that we could look at the impact of their body of work through the lens of the book and so there's a couple of key things in the book there's the Sun of course and the moon and the rising sign and the ruler of that rising sign and where they all are in the chart are so indicative of the places that we need to live into and I have seen time and time again that when we're given that permission that a lot starts to open up and we can just get on with the good work of living our purpose and being of service and the way that we can because the world desperately needs us to do so so I my guest is that very kind of person Paola Mendoza is a film director so you get up listen for the cues here activist author and artist working at the leading edge of human rights a co-founder of the women's March she served as its artistic director and co-authored the New York Times bestseller together we rise behind the scenes at the protest heard around the world that's all the whole title Palace most recent book sanctuary will be released by penguin in 2020 Mendoza is also critically acclaimed film is a critically acclaimed film director whose films have premiered at the most prestigious field film festivals around the world her films have thoughtfully tackled the complex issues of poverty and immigration on women and children in the United States she was named glamorous Woman of the Year in 2017 and one of filmmakers Magazine's 25 new faces of independent film she's a co-founder of the so DH söze agency and has been the creative director for campaigns fighting for immigration reform criminal justice reform incarcerated mothers and women's rights she's a co-founder of the resistance revival chorus the critically acclaimed women's chorus that believes joy is an act of resistance please welcome Wow I'm a girl night here I just lost a congratulations thank you so much thank you so much okay well I've never done this before and you've never done this before definitely have never done this before I love your video a little bit of a cold today how how do you feel about doing this thank you for taking the risk with me thank you for having me I feel really excited yeah as we were talking backstage it's not normally something that I do yeah but 2020 is a new year we're gonna win in 2020 I love it well thank you for agreeing to okay so where I usually start is with somebody's rising sign mm-hmm and there's a lot of information and just the sign and the qualities of that sign but the rising sign is so important because it literally is the degree that is rising up over the horizon the moment we take our first breath and so the Sun is in the same sign for 30 days it changes degrees but it's it's there the moon is in the same sign for every two and a half days and but the rising sign changes every like hours a couple hours depending on the sign so you didn't have your birth time when we first started talking I accepted the invitation without search diligently yeah and you have a very interesting story that we'll get to about that but the so the rising sign ism is the marker of life and that's what we're really looking at in the chart we're looking at the ways in which the life is marked and how the being the person came in and said this is my mark of life and so we can we can throw shade at all the kinds of astrology signs we want and make all the jokes and all of that but the really interesting thing about the rising sign is its qualities and whatever else is there but also is the planet that rules it because that planet is in charge of steering the direction of that person's life in way or another and that is going to become everything the nature of that planet what that planets doing who that planets hanging out with and what those what that planet is up to what it wants from us so that's one of the contexts that we're going to talk about and we could probably just stay there for the entire reading but there's so much good stuff here okay so you've Taurus rising okay so Taurus rules the throat I don't know if you're involved in anything about singing or speaking or kind of Taurus is ruled by Venus Venus loves art and culture and so I don't know if anything you do like anything to do with yeah just kind of ruled by the goddess of beauty I don't know if you you don't have any planets in the first house which would be part of the identity but there is two really important asteroids here and they're sitting together one is Chiron which is the wounded healer which is the one who's been wounded and through that wound learns how learns actually all of the herbs in the forest right so and then starts to learn all this different selves and it really does speak to that ever bleeding wound that we all have as human beings that teaches us relentlessly mm-hmm but Chiron is the teacher the one who offers that medicine and that that kind of perspective of being related to the wound so it's not trying to be above the wound or escape the wound but it's like being in relationship with it and then you also have an asteroid there Persephone and this really struck me because Persephone do you know yeah have you ever played and is it okay the bruise F&E most a lot of you know she's the she's the daughter of Demeter and Demeter is a great Earth Mother this is a greco-roman mythology but you find these mythologies everywhere these are you know global things using these names we've named asteroids and when they're in places that are really important they really jump out in the chart and so Persephone is the daughter of the great earth mother and she goes missing she's swallowed up by the underworld mm-hmm and so there is this right off the bat because there's that in your first house of self but also we find Ceres the mother in your tenth house of career right up at your career points and they're exactly in connection with each other they're exactly square but they're exactly related to each other so we have this huge right off the bat mother daughter child parent you know vulnerable one caretaker dynamic that is in your identity and also in your career so I don't know if you've ever done any work about children and so it's interesting that this would be the case yeah because so I will say that in this I'm very open about all of this but the wound that you're discussing is I would say the the most obvious thing to me is when my mother and I my brother came to the United States we emigrated from Colombia we came to be reunited with my father who arrived a few months beforehand and after we arrived a few months after we arrived he told my mom that he was going to work and then he never came back and Sue so he abandoned my mom at the time I was 24 I was three my brother was six with no family no money no education my mom didn't speak English and that marked the journey the beginning of our journey in the United States and it marked obviously a very significant relationship with my mother how we survived and how she allowed us to survive was extraordinary but also I saw a lot growing up and so that wound was with me my entire I was very angry a very passionate person I was very angry and so through it adolescence in my 20s and then I decided to make a movie yeah and that movie my first feature film was in honor and an homage to my mother and it was that story that I just told you and in making that story and in writing that filming and directing that film I was able to heal through art I was able to and I still don't talk to my father but nonetheless I was able to see him for the first time as a man yeah as a flawed weak individual instead of this very evil horrible human being I saw him just as a weak man and then I was able to also at the same time celebrate my mother so that that intersection that you're talking about has been the core of my childhood in my adult life and my artistic wife yeah because the movie that you made is called in fairness yes between us yeah and the movie is about when we first arrived it's the first three months of our time in the United States and it celebrates obviously my mother and my brother it's really the story the movie is a story about my mom and my brother and I'm I my characters in there but really it's the two of them that are at the heart of the movie yeah and so we can see you through this lens automatically and there's more to back it up here but automatically there's this that there's a what you've done with the imprint that's here is you've made art out of it and you've taken the archetypes without knowing about them and literally manifested them into film MMN into you also though I want to talk about like the work you do at the border mm-hmm because that's also very much archetypal II right aligned with us I would say that all of the work that I do as an activist is well most of it I come from an immigration background in the sense that obviously my passion my love my my instinct is to work with immigrants I'm spanish-speaking and I've been working on immigration way before Donald Trump I'm trying to pass Wow was there time before total truth all of us are less great and so my calling is to immigrants in this moment in time specifically because they are so under attack and even more specifically to be redundant is women and children mothers and children and so whether it's I'm whether I'm going to tell stories of families on the caravan which I followed the caravan for quite a few times for a very long time in Mexico and in Tijuana I believe in this beautiful extraordinary complex idea of mothers sacrificing so much for their children to come to this country for the good and the bad and I and I see this country for its possibilities and I also see this country for its lies but at the end of the day those are the stories that I choose to highlight and to celebrate as an activist and as a storyteller is women children and immigrants yes so I'm gonna switch gears usually I would go to the ruler of the ascendant next because that will tell us the direction of the life that this chart wants to go in and it's a very important one but I just want to take a little detour because you're moon okay okay your moon is in the fourth house so I'm just gonna read a little excerpt about what the book says so it's not even me [Laughter] hold on I'm miss old moon in the fourth house the fourth house is the house of home family let me just say but we're before I start wherever the moon is in the chart it's where the life purpose needs to be lived out and in every day way through our everyday actions and through our most like like common practices then where that moon the moon is the most local planet to us it is our neighbor it is about neighborhoods it's about communication it's the body and it's the body of the person that birthed us and back and back and back so it will always talk about that connection between parent and child and so your moon is in the fourth house the the moon in the fourth house the fourth house of the house of home family caretakers parents grandparents the fourth house is the foundation of our lives the beginning and endings of all things with your moon in the fourth house you need to live out your life's purpose by creating a foundation for your life the family that you come from may or may not be a place of refuge for you but creating such a space is of paramount importance since both the moon and the fourth house are interested and in an oriented toward or history and the past you may be particularly skilled at studying or understanding ancestry origin stories and history often when the moon in the fourth house often with the moon in the fourth fourth house it can speak to having an interest in working with families people's homes real estate or in the domestic realm in general would you say that was yes very very very accurate so not only is your moon in the fourth house but it's also in Leo Oh so can I read that yeah Barack Obama Xillia the most Leo he could say and I just have to say I have problems with Barack Obama but we're just putting that out there yes for those that are cloudy I know I'm a very charming handsome yet okay moon in leo the moon in leo needs attention applause appreciation and acknowledgement in its daily life and experience it needs to express itself creatively and take inspired action it might be hard to regulate your own self-esteem and early life without an audience but learning how to appreciate and applaud yourself as necessary your Leo moon needs to shine making part of a learning process about finding the best stage for your star there is a quality of being special to this moon and that is alluring to many but not every kind of celebration is good for the soul if you were shamed or made to feel that you were merely attention-seeking in early life you might have developed a complicated relationship to attention attracting it unconsciously and being unsure of what it means when you receive it you might also feel guilty or uncomfortable receiving the praise that you do as it's not something you necessarily have control over but it's something that you need some of this placement can become addicted to the sensation and emotional stimuli of being praised you may be good at garnering attention but with it without it you can feel a loss of self you live out your daily life as a confident style even if you don't feel confident you'll probably present with an emotional strength most times however you need to turn away from the audience occasionally and make sure you're being true to your own story you might have experienced parent or caregiver that is exciting glamorous celebrity like overbearing you can America does any of that resonate for you well I did get my undergraduate degree in my graduate degree in acting there's that you're a director a filmmaker and after I started like that actress and then I was like this is actually not for me like this was not the kind of attention that I wanted and I turned into directing and writing and I was like this this is my home so it definitely resonates for sure in that way right right so so again her moon is in the fourth house it's in leo so that's the style that it lives itself out and so we know that there gotta be a little drama yeah a little flare always some good gold fake I don't do filled Italy Oh as long as it's shiny it doesn't matter Billy Oh needs that shine that's like she liked my ring but it's in the fourth house of home and family and so we know that it's a combination of those things and so you have spoken in a lot of your work that we can just kind of read online and look at your work but we also spoke backstage about how important your mom is and so that rootedness and that connectedness and then how you also bring that out into the world and work with a lot of different family situations yeah your moon is sitting next to two things one is Lilith mmm do you know Lilith I do and one is Jupiter okay so the Jupiter thing is is a real whenever you see Jupiter next to a planet especially like the Sun or the moon it's a huge bonus and and we know that there's an incredible wealth there or there's that there is a wealth there and so while there's stuff we're going to talk about that we we know is like hard and the wound we started with and we talked about the loss of the whatever it was then that you work a lot with the loss of families and loss of family structure we can see how much you've you loved your mom and that you're the connection there and the wealth there that deep wealth of the family and the foundation but with Lilith there it's so I think it's so fascinating about the the story that you tell in in the movie because Lilith is the I don't go into the asteroids in the book just just sorry about that but yeah that's worth in your chart were so good I wanted to bring them in because Lilith is the Lilith is did most people know who Iliff is she's the first wife of Adam and the in the Midrash and like from way back so she was very she misbehaved a lot she wanted have sex on top she wanted to be on top during sex and Adam was like he can't and she was like why and he was like cuz you're beneath me and she was like I don't think so who made these rules and then you know her and God and Adam got into it and he you know none of the day we were like no you're below him and she was like I can't stay here this is ridiculous though she left she fled the Garden of Eden and she was like I'm gonna go live in a cave and meditate and kill everybody's babies that's just a side thing no she was mad you know she acted so rejected she was and she you know Talon feet hairy legs beat like wings like so she's the screech owl so in Hebrew Lila it's night so Lilith it's the same root word and so she is the howling Wow and she is the wind and she is the voice of the anguish that has been inflicted via the patriarchy on those that have known she has no home hmm so she's kicked out she leaves of her own accord but she can't stay there and you know this is the the what we might call the dark goddess or the goddess of the earth the garden the goddess of fertility the goddess of like that deep sonic stuff and so she becomes the repository for everybody's fear and hatred and shame and she gets blamed for everything and still she refuses to bow down and to beg she just like digs in deeper so she is she's that part of us that is wild and untamed and and cannot be she's the wind but she's also the howl and so that is right next to your moon mmm and so the wildness that you talked about in your teenage head yeah you want to talk about that but but also the characters in your story that the you know there's that image of the the mother and the children going out they've they're they've been cast out right so Lilith cast herself out I do believe it left if comes back as the snake in the tree and it's like oh hey and like it's not gonna happen in the early yeah like you need to think and get out like this is the Tree of Knowledge eat and let's go like a to feminists you know what I'm saying your sister yeah this little spare so that's there too and so it's also that there's something about work working within the realms of home and family and and and parents and caretakers and those ones that have been that have been forced and relegated to that role Lilith didn't start out that way she didn't start out killing babies right sorry but she didn't start out being a demon you know like she that's what she turns into that so they turned her meth into you and she is the one she's how they I think people made sense that that baby just died and so she is also connected to that deep sorrow of the unreasonable untenable deaths of children either by natural means or otherwise and so that's also that howling that grief that shit's all wrapped up in her myth and so that's all they're wanting to be lived out with Jupiter which gives you just this incredible it's kind of like a like a protection and and an ability to take that from what you come and do something with it in the world so if I'm understanding you correctly there's like is there there's this wildness yes that stems from wanting to do the thing that I want to do and needing to be independent yeah and meaning to like make sure that I am forging my own path yeah and something like how much do you like being told where what lines to say anything not so bad but no I I do from you I clearly remember I always wrote in my diary from the age of 10 quite literally I was writing in my diary I just want to live by myself I don't want anyone to be able to tell me what to do I want to live my own life at ten and because of my crazy wildness my mother bless her heart and she literally saved my life because my life was I would have ended up dead in jail or on drugs she sent me at the age of fourteen she told me on Friday I'm sending me back to Colombia and you're going back on Monday and at that point I was running away a lot so she took all of my shoes which was very brilliant and I highly recommend any a parent to do that to their teenager if they're running away because I had no shoes that I couldn't go anywhere and then she posted up in my bedroom on Saturday and Sunday and then took me into the airport and put me into the plane and then I was gone in Colombia for three years Wow but that totally changed my life but I know and my mom and I talked about it now she knew who I that sending me away at 14 though it was right thing for me at that time she was losing her daughter in the census when I came back whenever I came back she was not gonna be able to tell me what to do because I was now finally independent and I went to go live with the crazy wacky at in Colombia that just let me do whatever I wanted for three and a half years and it was a wild life your life got to live down but that that part of you her knowing that she was losing you and you were gonna come back different is very much that Demma door Persephone myth because Chris F&E gets abducted in post patriarchal myths and pre patriarchal she descends on her own of her own accord she goes down and she becomes the queen of the underworld and so she gains her own sense of selfhood and when she comes back she's no longer core she starts out as the her name is Cora ko REE she comes back as Persephone mm-hmm so bruh Stephanie is actually the name of her as Queen of her own domain and in that journey the mother has to go on her own journey of self-discovery and her own journey of individuation and then they can reunite and when they reunite it's the part of the myth I didn't say is that when she goes underground her mother is so grief-stricken that she's like none of you will eat and so it's winter it's a myth of winter and then when her daughter comes back it's spring and she's happy they rejoice and but they're different yeah they're grown there are both adults mm-hmm okay so maybe maybe okay I think you might be onto something maybe so let's go back to the ruler of the ascendant the so the ruler of Taurus is thank you the Venus is the the and the in when she was a Nana she was the queen of heaven and earth she is the the Great Goddess so beauty sex our culture all of the pleasures of life is what Venus is about adornments is what Venus is about you have Venus and it's in the sign opposite from what it likes to be in so it loves to be in Taurus you have Venus in Scorpio so I want you to tell me what what what did people say about you being intense again just wondering well often people think that I'm angry when I'm working and I'm not angry I'm just very intense like I'm intense I work in really difficult things and so I'm very intense when I work and item I'm not a Yeller I don't yell at people I've only yelled at one person one time ever and he deserved but yeah they think that I'm angry often and I'm that Venus and Scorpio Venus in Scorpio is famous for desiring intense connections that few can appreciate the depths of with Venus and Scorpio as ruler of your ascendant part of your life's direction might be about experiencing these kinds of emotional embroilment or learning to channel the obsessive desire this placement signifies into your creative projects and partnerships this placement doesn't do small talk and as ruler of your ascendant it steers your life towards activities that are investigative deep penetrating and transformative Venus and Scorpio can represent an experience of your gender in ways opposite to the expectations that the world has of it you may have an innate understanding of the suffering that the gender binary or gender-based violence creates and this may feature in your work and activism in the world you're good when you're just the book way near ascendant is ruled by a planet in its detriment you'll often feel like you have to try much harder to develop yourself but rigorous s but with rigorous effort all about the typo comes no but rigorous effort comes with big rewards okay if you have Venus and it's detriment notice what it has forced you to develop within yourself in all aspects of love and connection does that resonate yes very much so so your Venus is in the seventh house of partnerships I didn't pull out that section but there's also a section of like this is where your life is steered towards and so we know that the goddess of connection the planet of connection and relationships steers the ship of your life it's in the seventh house of relationships so there's the personal romantic peace but then there's also which is obviously very important but then there's also the professional partnerships that then become so important in the life and can I just say that Venus is sitting conjunct Uranus Uranus is a planet of upheaval and rebellion and change and disruption it is loud it is chaotic it does not abide by tradition if the tradition has no relevance anymore or if it's archaic or violent in some way so it's what we need in 2020 but in your life yes Venus is also you know the symbol for women and and I extend it to all kind of femme energy but have you ever been in partnership with other women that were rebellious and chaotic and wanted to disrupt things yes you know there was this time 2016 after this horrible night yeah we were supposed to have a woman president and we got a orange cheeto man it's a group of women came together and did all those things that you suggest and they are my sisters some of them are here tonight there are Sophie's here I think there she goes so so yeah and honestly organizing the women's March changed my life in so many ways but it really created this really beautiful deep deep sisterhood that the sisterhood exists in conflict and exists in in deep love and deep respect but I do know that the 25 30 women that I organized with every single day at that time and post the the women's March for me personally for about six months I can call them up at any moment in time no matter what has happened between us individually or as an organization and and they will be there for me because there is this thing that we we we helped create and we sacrifice so much for yeah yeah so the life is steered in that direction and and I think what you were alluding to before is that before your mom disrupted something else there was that you were living out that chaotic rebellious yes being in a very different way mm-hmm and so she did the Demeter and helped to release you mhm and did that did is that where did you first find activism or where did you first find your way of being an activist that's a good question that actually have been asked a lot in that I remember a very specific moment in Columbia I was 17 that as a teenager kind of made me look outside of myself hmm because I was so angry I was constantly like internalizing all of these things and there was a Columbia at that time is in the 90s was very very dangerous so this battle squad was still around and poverty was the way it was it was very extensive point is is that I was walking on to get on a bus and this mother and the grandmother were walking in the street and they were indigenous women who you don't normally see in Bogota which is where I'm from and she came up to me and her broken Spanish and she had a baby who was probably like a year old and she was crying and she was like essentially she said I need to get to a hospital but they won't accept they won't take me they won't they won't give take my baby to the hospital they don't accept my baby at the hospital I need to get to the hospital and I was 17 16 and I honestly didn't even know her hospital was and she showed me the baby and the baby most likely was dead already and I didn't know what to do so like I stuck in my pockets and I gave her all my money that I had which was probably like $25 so she could take a cab to go to the hospital that moment was the first moment that I literally thought outside of my own anger and my own pain and though I didn't I didn't start working with people in poverty at that moment it was something that I think planted the seed for me to take all this rebellious energy that was focusing on anger and internalized anger towards my father and put it towards that rage of the in Justices in the world to put myself in that space and it took a while in the sense at first I was an artist for a very long time and when I graduated from school there's all kinds of stuff that happened and I was like oh this is not right either and then I was able to collapse or intersect or in activism in my mid-20s I would say so it's so that Lillith piece that I was joking and being glib about before it was actually a an actual manifest of your experience mm-hmm yeah yeah okay obviously with ten more I just want a time check has anybody here at a time check with me it's 8:15 I'll time check with you yeah but are we okay well yeah nobody's stopping me so Holmes keep going okay so so what we do with we we we all have a story and we all have these things so what we do with it is I think what the magic of the chart is about how we give it context and how we make it into something in the world and so your journey was from that moment to now was finding that like step by step how to put your pain and your wildness and your need to disrupt into certain containers and finding relationships that would help you to do that mmhmm yeah yeah and I'll say also like the world so the reason my mom sent me away at 14 was because I was gang banging at 14 in LA so I was point is is like I said I was going to be dead you know or on drugs and society itself also didn't know what to do with me either so I was put in at the age of and when I was in the sixth grade quite literally the school to Prison Pipeline and it was only because my mother was able to pull me out because she had the luxury because we were not here undocumented so she could send me back to Colombia and I had family still in Colombia that I was able to get out of that system that society had put me into because I when they looked at my name said Paola Mendoza they saw something and thought oh this girl she's this she's that she's this we're gonna put her in this school in this self-contained classroom we're gonna give her a parole officer she's gonna go to juvie that was just a thing regardless of the fact that though I was wild and unpredictable and disrespectful to my teachers I always had straight A's the guy I was very smart for for that so my point to all of this is that there is these things that also society puts us into it takes our personality traits and puts us into specific places on top of our obviously our physical experiences our physical presentation our gender and our class and so sometimes it's just luck that allows us to break free from that and in my case and I'm very lucky I was given a space to not have to dampen who I was yeah but I was able to fund an outlet that allowed me to to celebrate who I was and do do well with the qualities that were best for me right and so if I was sitting with your parents when you were born or the parents of a child with this chart I'd be like please don't try to dampen this let's just try to find a way to channel it because exactly if you try to dampen you know livewire it's not going to goes well for you or them and so that's that's great okay so then the other piece that we want to like fold in is the Sun so in pop astrology we start with the Sun side and we put everything all the emphasis on that but in traditional astrology we want to look and see more more than just that obviously so you have Sun in Sagittarius do you realize that yes yeah yeah badges yeah freewheeling good times let's go okay the Sun is in the Sun in this mutable fire sign knows how to roam mmm Sagittarius seeks and with the Sun in this sign the personality developed is usually one that is philosophical confident and optimistic you are open to experiencing life in all of its variations with Jupiter as your son's ruling planet part of your life's purpose is lived out by going big with whatever you do and most likely you'll want to do everything at least once because if something is good for your son in Sagittarius your Sun in Sagittarius will want a lot of it most comfortable galloping towards the horizon and this fire sign is exuberant operating on faith and copious amounts of information Jupiter is the planet of wisdom symbolizing teachers scholars priestesses of all orders here your son takes on these archetypes and expresses them through the personality the symbol for sagittarius is the Centaur holding a bow and arrow aimed at the truth your son in sagittarius is that arrow fired into space aiming for the ultimate answers to life's deepest questions and on a quest to discover what you believe in and how to uplift and encourage everyone you encounter have you ever done anything that's trying to uplift and it's on the nose after a while I would say yes and it's also circumstances where I grew up the women that I saw and who was in my community I always say that they are the women that we don't see when we walk down the street they're the women we forget they're in my eyes they are the unsung heroes that's why I made the movie for my mom because to me she she is a hero and yet in the fabric of America she is completely forgotten about and in this moment in time abused and quite literally murdered just because of where they come from so so yes to everything that you're saying and then also society kind of doubles down on that to say these are these people that don't deserve this and so I do feel like this innate overwhelming it's not even a desire I think this sounds kind of corny but it's true it's a mission to to tell these stories truthfully as an artist my my aspiration since I started going to theater school was the truth mm-hmm the best art is art that gets to some sort of truth sentence a Darius moon in leo today we can also say that because having the Sun and the moon and fire signs that that enthusiasm and inspiration is going to be the fuel for life mm-hmm that's fire so when you have both luminaries in one element that has to be that's that's that that has to be lived out in some way and so through your activism there's still art there's still self-expression there's still creativity there's still all of that okay so the moon the Sun is in the eighth house so the the eighth houses it's interesting because the ruler of your ascendant is in the seventh house of relationships which is again where the life is steered the Sun is this the life purpose and how we shine and so we know you shine in a Sagittarian style which is going to be like you're gonna be excited about this with me we're gonna do this thing but it's in the 8th house um one of the there's kind of like two segments of the eighth house one of them is collaboration so we see both the relationships with those Venus and Scorpio conjunct Uranus type of people mm-hmm rabble-rousers and then we see your son being lived out in the place of collaborating with others so when I say that does that resonate you know yes like as my life as an artist I've always collaborated and I enjoy it tremendously I have one of my incredible collaborators here Genesis who's one of the cofounders of the resistance rival chorus as well as a women's March founder and but from the beginning like I've always collaborative professionally in school I just wrote a book collaboratively and people are like how the did you do that and I'm like I don't know I liked it it was fun now you can say my son isn't he no no you're not gonna do no I love it I love it I do it by choice because I love it yes yeah it's where you shine yeah yeah the other thing about the 8th house is very different than that it is about eight houses the house of death inheritances mental anguish other people's resources sharing your energy time Talon and assets with others having the Sun in the 8th house is having your son in the 8th house that deals with the psychological pain that comes from loss can make you acutely aware of suffering both your own and that of others therapist trauma specialists healers deaf doulas bereavement counselors mediums and those who help others cross the waters of our most difficult emotional states often have something significant in this house yes so I will say this I have listened to particularly in the past 2 years and it's not an exaggeration it's probably between 500 to a thousand stories of immigrants specifically and their most traumatic horrifying moments and that is my job to go and talk with someone and within the first minute ask them their most personal questions for a purpose that I think is a purpose that isn't they will help them if not in that moment then definitely eventually and a friend of mine said something to me cuz she was like we were talking about just the emotional effects and the set and I'm pretty up now but doing this work and that was a joke and she said something to me that I hold very dear that I think resonates to this and she said you know P when these people tell you these stories try not to hold on to them just let them pass through you yeah and it has been my lifesaver in in the most horrific moments which to me personally was family separation yeah in all that that we endured and family separation was to try as we might like not hold on to these very painful beautiful truthful stories that we are here to bear witness to and and put risk to as well let them pass through you to their greater purpose I think a couple things Roxane gay talks about that about not holding on to all that that she often says like I can't hold that with you like and that's you know just knowing that you can't hold all the stuff and also I just realized it's the most obvious thing but in that version of it not in any that's it's a very new story the Bible is not that old considering heaven in human history but in that story of Lilith and Adam that is that is an original family separation mmm right yeah she removes herself but that is supposed to be the original family and she it's a separation and so that mark is there with you moon and as has to be in some way given context and meaning in your life and I just want to say like there you know that what you said and I've heard you speak about that before us that your but your son is like in the your being your life purpose and in on one part to collaborate with others artistically and to inspire and all of that but it is also to witness the most horrific parts of being human and not that you have to stay there or hold any of that but that that has been such a huge part of your life experience and work it's clearly showing up in your chart mmm much more to say one other thing though that you have the goddess Juno at your Midheaven the Midheaven is a career point it's that brightest part of the sky and Juno was she's related to June and Brides and you know June Brides all that patriarchal but I was from that but before that or let me go a little further back she's the protectors of women and so you have that mark on your on your career I don't know if that resonates thank you so much that was really um it was incredibly generous of you to sit here with me know you want that thank you for really honored that you're here with me thank you I'm really really thank you thank you all for it's a lie that's a very hot seat you also wanted to ask me a question I do you want to level this class because what I wanted you were like I'm gonna turn it to I just needed to have the light on me for one minute no so my question backstage and then you started Tommy but I was like no no or you like let's talk about on stage as I was like talking to my girlfriend's oh I am gonna go it's weird astrologer public read because I got they were like oh my god can I go and I got like all these texts from all these girls friends that wanted to come and they're all they're all activists and so I said I was like I've never in this activist space had so much consensus around loving one person Wow I was quite impressed all the different text rides I was on they were like she's amazing she's amazing she's amazing so my question to you I don't want to have just verified how did you get to be in this very interesting cross section of astrology and social justice activism work and that these people love and adore you so much I when I started writing horoscopes I always say like I didn't think that anybody that was interested in astrology would also be interested in social justice like that just did not occur to me I'm talking like pre inundation of social media so we didn't really know each other as well as we do now I think we'd have so much access to everybody's inner workings and even like the in queer community those weren't for some reason it was it wasn't like until I moved to the bay and I was like oh well everyone is an astrologer it's not special it's just like breathing up there but I was in LA so I didn't know and I was like well everyone looked into astrology is really like blue and very like not necessarily tethered to the earth and the struggles and what's happening again here so I was like I can't write about astrology without writing about the human condition because that's what astrology is good for to me and the human condition is really complex and we live inside of systems that are incredibly violent and unfair and so if I'm gonna write about it I have to write about it from that and nobody is gonna like it because those people aren't gonna want to come down here and then people let her down here don't give a about astrology you want to make air you know it's like a lot of thing and I started writing and really it was the queer community I think that just like swept me [Applause] and I think that like core you know probably a San Francisco in Brooklyn real it was like it just it had its own life and I always think I don't know how you all feel you feel it's like the work is the work I me I had I engaged with the work and then the work goes out and engages with whoever it wants to engage with and so writing a book and putting it out has been an incredible blessing in terms of being able to be in more relationship with that like I'm like oh this is what you've been up to you it's like having a teenager that went out and made all these friends and I get to go to its party now because I felt really removed from it from a long time so it's been really a really big blessing in that way well we're very lucky to have you it's very like I'm you have you they love you okay so we're supposed to do like a question or two oh this is a good one are there any shows you binge watch yeah I have my outlets um so the fabulous the marvelous mrs. basil I love not a lot of fans and their house clearly I have issues with it for you yeah cuz I'm from New York Jews so I'm just like I don't know these people it's five tightening I do so I'm like oh wow there's my son cuz he is in New York J okay The Watchmen that's another one what about you oh god um what have I been washed recently do you remember anything I said yeah I do we do we like fall into rabbit holes but oh I mean I did watch mrs. nasal did you watch these until you know what I wanted to happen Ella yes season two I wanted to happen like first of all I'm like nobody was that it's so like colorblind it's just I'm just like that's not true none of that anyways and that I wanted it to transfer to the musician I want him it not to be about him I got really uncomfortable when she outed him I was a last scene of the season and I cannot watch but she got to pay for it did she I don't know I don't know you don't know oh this room Laura sorry I was supposed to say the name okay that had no name Laura is asked us how do we reckon with stallions oh goodness that's that's what you have a lot of planets in one sign I don't know it's very intense I don't have that but you you have to I don't know what it's like to live with that but you have to like everything goes so if so in my system if whole side houses so everything would be in one house and so it means that because every planet rules different parts of your life and rules like different areas of your life and different signs so everything would go back to that house so that wherever you have the stellium become such a huge important you can't get out of it you know place to live out does that make sense when I say that yeah 2020 in here and I don't want to talk about it I will say that the the events of this week have been very on-the-nose and astrologers jobs are really hard right now as everybody's job is really hard right now and that there there is some a couple of questions in here about the eclipse this weekend I do believe this and I will you know write a piece about it and put it in your inbox but and that's what I'm talking about with tourmaline on Thursday is that radical care is what we need it's where it's at I do believe that we have an incredible amount of power and that we often forget it in the face of systems that are so violent and and only seek to rob us of our power or or distance us from it and that even though the systems we live within and have a certain kind of power that is absolutely true I'm not trying to negate any of that but that we have to I think be so committed to caring about each other and and showing up for each other in whatever way possible however whenever as much as possible and that is I think the solution to the astrology of 2020 because it's very evil and it's very you know the forces that are that have been set free now our RA Eric the antithesis of that and so I think that in every possible way we can to love each other and to love ourselves and to really as radically as possible show that everywhere all the time yeah okay I think that concludes our talk thank you so much you

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 7,004

Rating: 4.8421054 out of 5

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, Chani Nicholas, paola Mendoza, you were born for this, astrology, queer feminism, feminism, LGBT

Id: G8SmN-L_frE

Length: 58min 50sec (3530 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 16 2020