Rebellion
by Kayce S. Hughlett
Typically when we think about the role of rebellion in families, it is parents describing their teenagers. In true Aquarian-style, I’m flipping that paradigm and pondering my mother’s relationship (or lack thereof) with rebellion.
Daisy Ernestine Stevens was what many called a formidable woman. She spoke with perfect elocution, wore her hair styled, and put on her “face” every day of her life. She was also an Aquarian who never appeared to claim an expansive vision for her life. From my current viewpoint, I can imagine how she may have struggled with her intellect, insight, and rebellious nature being trapped inside. It wasn’t until after she died (in my late 40s) that I began to consider and understand the toll it likely took on her to stay within those narrow confines of her conservative upbringing where expanding outside the norm was forbade and being original was a curse.
There was a brief window, after my father died in 1975 and before she remarried a few years later, that I received a glimpse into her more rebellious nature which had lain dormant most of her life. I found a photo of her from a Hawaiian adventure with bare, tanned shoulders, a floral dress (she always wore beige), and her arm around a handsome young man. She was glowing and I could almost see a bright new future in her eyes. But … the trip ended (as they do), she got back on the plane to Oklahoma, and her glow permanently faded as she drifted into an Alzheimer haze at an early age.
This memory both saddens and frightens me. One of my greatest fears, as I began to see myself through my mother’s lens, was that I, too, would become stuck in the “good girl” life we were both raised to live. So with the ingress of Aquarius, I ponder my own small rebellions and how they bring life to me and my future. Things that make me happy like buying colorful luggage instead of respectable black, putting a red roof on my city house, making art “just because,” traveling off the beaten path, wearing braids and red lipstick, drinking champagne or margaritas on a Monday, not “acting my age” whatever the heck that even means. It’s taken awhile, but in these curious times, I can see my mom nodding her approval from across the veil.
Ponder with me will you? Where could your life use a little rebellion? What do you rebel against? What do you rebel on behalf of? How does “normalcy” keep you stuck? What does your wise Aquarian elder have to say?
Click here for more Aquarian news; Listen to Lezli’s brilliant teaching on Aquarius (whether you joined us live or missed the session) and add some more context to your knowledge base … or be rebellious and make up your own lexicon. All is welcome here.