I've been feeling myself in ways I can't describe. (tw flash warning!!)
I've decided recently to clear out any patriarchal ideas about myself, femininity, relationships, and my body. It's being added to the foundation I've laid of being utterly devoted to my body and the way she wants to feel. I learned that I love candles and lighting them constantly (it's the fire stellium in me). I love oiling my scalp, oiling my body, eating and drinking food and fluids with warm spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, turmeric, ginger) and even having some of them as the base notes of my perfumes. I fell in love with Burberry Goddess and Nightcap by Orabella for this very reason because of how phenomenal they smell on me!~
I learned I really love and adore lingerie and will be investing in it to lounge in. I've been looking into silk robes that trail behind me lined with fur or feathers in deep shades of red or purple. I've also been incorporating those colors and those textures into my fashion. I need leopard print-everything and everything in warm sensuous colors. I've been dancing in the mirror and grinding, wining, and shaking my hips. I love my reflection and how my body feels and looks when I move. I'm embracing the vixen I always knew myself to be but didn't have the confidence to embody naturally. But I've since moved out of my mind and into my body where my soul licks its flames against my insides.
Everything is sensory for me. It's exquisite and feels so much like coming home. I want to look and feel delicious at all times. I've never been cold blooded, but always warm and hot. And it's who and what I only allow in my energy field. I don't do passive, maybes, on the fence, or anxious and distant--even with myself! I'm very firm nowadays in making all of my decisions aligned with who I am and what I value. If it feels strange, I don't do it or disengage. If I'm not positively raving mad about it--I unbookmark it or leave it out of my cart or awareness. If something isn't enriching for me, I let it be. And that consistent self-honesty has cleared so much out of my life.
I've learned I'm not a passive bystander. I'm in the driver's seat and at the helm. I can ride my own energy and magnetism without collapsing or short-circuiting.
I'm a star because that's how I was born. We all are when we claim it. But without performance. You are your best audience. Anything external can only compliment it~
I've always loved people who were too afraid to love someone else. Because that comes with true surrender and vulnerability. And they couldn't afford that.
When someone projects a shadow, it isn't warm. It's freezing cold. So for a long time, I thought being my own light for them was normal.
And in reality, needing equal emotional reciprocity is my super power. My wells run so deep that they can only be filled by a person so equally devotional that they pour into mine. This is where people confuse good will or lightness in a connection with depth. Or the culprit most often is time spent. Those shared experiences stitch memory and closeness and they can be beautiful.
But intimacy that's raw, quivering, and sincere can't shelter ego. It can't hold space if you're so afraid of letting down your guard that you redirect people to an ice lobby—and call it intimacy.
For all the love that was poured into me, I was raised to need approval. Ever since I was a child, I played the role of the holding space for an emotionally inconsistent person to love me. There was intensity—then blinking gas lights. Sharp drops followed by sharp spikes. So I found comfort in environments where I had to prove I was worthy of loving to someone who both valued their self preservation and the fact that I was there. It wasn't always malicious or even something they were conscious of, but I routinely was left with the distinct, hole scratching feeling that they wanted a place for me, but didn't want to let me in.
It wasn't enough. I woke up with the cold, harsh truth that chilled my bones warm that it wasn't fucking enough.
While I've been healing my co-dependency, I'm still tirelessly passionate. I'm unbridled. And I burn.
I don't believe in forming a deep, loving bond with someone only in theory, but never in practice.
Boundaries are healthy, but what's non-negotiable to me is having the heart-gouging courage to sit in front of someone you love and take your armor off piece by piece. Admit you were wrong. Show them where you're not all figured out, preened, and perfect. Show them the scars that don't seem to heal. Show them where you're a hypocrite because somewhere, deep down, we all are.
And I wasn't perfect in these connections. I was emotionally chaotic, anxious, inconsistent in my own ways, and was probably confusing or even immature at times. But I loved. Deeply, so deeply. And for all of my flaws, possessing the capacity to love so much that blood thickens and heats..is not something I'm ashamed of.
To accommodate that, I decided that I'm no longer compatible with emotionally avoidant people.
I can't swallow my instinct that someone is a lonely strategist who wants my company (or even my approval). Even if they mean well or are genuinely ignorant, I require much more courage from a person. Devotion and equal reciprocity.
You have not met the bar. You have not exceeded my requirements. You must meet my energy head-on with gutso, care, passion, and curiosity, or it simply isn't a fit. I invest in relationships for a lifetime. Not for vibes, deflecting accountability, or so someone can just be there. I also need growth to be mirrored or I will outgrow you. To be with me, you need to be able to both face and make peace with your demons. Live with them and know their names.
I am not for the general public. I'm not for random admirers, friendship tourists, or people who give me puzzles to solve or smoke signals to interpret. I don't do apathy or passive-aggression. I don't come running when you decide on Ground Hog Day to be affectionate with me, gentle, or say you love me because I said it first. I'm simply not there.
I'm all-in, even as I'm imperfect. I won't always get it right, but relationships are built on the mutual willingness to come undone together, equally nurture, learn and grow, and see each other under their skin and love everything that's there. I don't do casual because I'm not built for it. I also will not pitch a tent outside of your thick emotional walls so you can speak over them and want me to be happy with just that. If the people in my life can mature and outgrow their relationship trauma, then so can you.
But you are not courageous. Your blood is thin, your skin is cold, and you are not healed enough to be with me. Your will is frail and you are not relentless.
I am courageous and will only be loved relentlessly.
With Love and Devotion (to myself at last),
Queen Kassia 👑
Don’t let that sentence go over your head. It’s honest. There’s no judgment if it’s a ‘no.’ But it also means that while you’re in this space—this is your place to start.
You can’t be in a relationship with anyone without having an inner world. Because you know what happens? You get lost, you get stuck, and you let someone else’s inner world define who you are.
Some people are labyrinths—and you can easily make that your home. You become intimate with its walls, its twists, and its paths to nowhere. But because that complicatedness is familiar to you, you never leave. You pull them closer. Deeper.
Especially if you’re like Ariana who has natal placements which make her identity porous in love. Don’t feel ashamed of that. It just means you can’t be a spirit container to someone. Being a confidant alone isn’t a lover. Being a living pressure-release valve isn’t. Being someone’s safe space to hold and see them when the world can’t—isn’t true companionship. It’s, in most places, a thankless underpaid and institutionally underfunded job.
You’re sucking your breath in now..because you’re not needed. And maybe that scratches up against something rough. No, tender. But you probably learned very young that your worth is tied to how sturdy you can be for someone. I learned I can take a lot. And I’m hard wired for it astrologically—I endure instead of run. I’ll turn paralysis into a soothing balm because the discomfort of turning away, talking back, or standing up for myself had traumatic consequences when I was a child. So I learned, through fawning, that being palatable to who hurt me was how I survived. Even when my intuition screamed itself hoarse.
I always let people in. But I couldn’t hold myself. I was a visitor to my own insides—and that’s also, in a roundabout way, how I was treated. People looked and observed but they never fully invested in me because I wasn’t invested in me.
So I became obsessed with myself. And completely self-referential. I sat in front of my full length mirror naked, legs spread, and looked at everything through the eyes of a hungry demon. I lapped my lips and let my gaze crawl all over my curves. And everything society taught me wasn’t enough.
And I started having conversations with myself—and I learned so many things. I needed to invest in myself more. I needed to craft myself—or bloom myself—into who I wanted, not what was ‘attractive.’ The boundaries around my desirability began destabilizing. I cared less and less. And, after a time, I realized how valueless and thankless it was to only love myself to be loved.
Today, I am utterly possessive of Me and my self worth. I don’t restrict or contain my beauty, my value, my spirit, or my fucking fire I’ve had since birth to a man or any human being. And it fills me with rage to think that women are told to turn themselves into capsules for what men think are lovable enough, pretty enough, or acceptable enough to receive decency. But it’s not even decent. They’re either not vulnerable with us or they chop us up and leave us in the trunks of cars.
A former friend once asked me if I thought I was male centered. And at the time, I couldn’t admit that I was. But after I unpacked it, it burrowed much deeper. Through out my life, I thought if I had external validation, I’d bypass my identity and I could just exist as what someone needed me as. Somewhere down the line, I learned I was safest that way. The harsh, freezing truth is that I never was. Even when I shape shifted myself into the containers I was in, regardless if it was friends or lovers who needed that from me, I was never enough to get what I yearned for.
And that’s love for Who I Am. Not for who anyone wants me to be. Just me. Not parts or quarters. Tiny palatable, agreeable bits, or what they can learn from or feel nurtured by because they can’t carry themselves into their own growth. And I’ve relinquished that responsibility.
My inner world wasn’t distinctive enough. It was a shifting kaleidoscope of mirrors. I had interests but no solid, core foundations. So I went into my own woods to find them. I learned I have extremely strong values around safety, identity, integrity, authenticity, personal growth, community, and emotional honesty.
And I believe that love and sex are sacred and esoteric. Because of that, as a self-love focused coach, I’m not aligned with teaching how to manifest a partner to just give you empty validation or attention. Or to love yourself shallowly or blossom an inner world you refuse to nurture.
Self concept is not superficial to me. It is bones deep religious devotion of yourself. Building yourself without doing your shadow work or anything in a regressive way that attempts to bypass being emotionally present and honest for the human experience where real growth and depth are required—isn’t enough to me. It must be bones deep and richly somatic.
I believe in alchemy. I believe sitting in front of the mirror and not hiding from yourself. I believe in loving the sound of your own voice and the way you fucking moan with it. I believe in knowing the true nature of your power and how to wield it from root to hilt—how to ground it and hold it.
I am Plutonic. And all of the women who shaped me and helped me are. My mom, who’s a Scorpio stellium, my therapist who’s an 8th houser and a Scorpio Moon, and a phenomenal world class, only one of her kind, neurointuitive who helped structure my shadow work who’s a Scorpio Rising like I am. And the people who mentor me are very no-nonsense. They tend to have charts which hit my North Node or other sensitive identity-based points in some way.
I am not vibes-based. I am not a rescuer. I’m a leader for leaders.I’m building up a community of women who want to worship themselves because they’ve needed that unconditional love all their lives. And I’m showing them where the gaps are in their connections so the insight and data can help them pivot where necessary. I know an anxious woman’s pressure points as a person living with anxiety myself. Our blind spots are often where we’re most fearful but don’t know the right questions to ask to access. Because I learned how to talk to myself, I can help you do the same.
That’s why we nurture our inner worlds with consistent care and attention. When we have that constant feed back of knowing exactly what we want, how we feel and why, and cultivating that palpable inner intimacy, we avoid sleep walking through our lives and relationships—hoping we can get what we need when we over give. I champion a grounded approach to self love and self concept instead of one that’s larger-than-life without a strong center of gravity. It is not a gloss or a facade for a deeper truth that you do not believe who you say you are. Not here.
I say this to you, my community of courageous women—I want you to be safe instead of struggling and fighting to be so.
Here, you will learn better. And you will be better.
I teach it, live it, and breathe it. I believe deeply that anything you want comes from you first. But we’re taught from the moment we start to comprehend things that if you want something, you have to find it outside of you. You have to craft yourself into it—or even escape into it. You treat it as a landing zone or a ‘fix it’ for your life when you don’t think you’re enough.
I was born on a balsamic moon and the day before a new moon and solar eclipse. It means that I represent the inner world and incubation stage that’s ripest before birth. At thirty four, I’ve learned that I only feel at home in Me when I devote myself to Me regularly. Last summer, I started doing mirror work—but I treated it like a job for months. Nevertheless, it established a rite of dignity inside of me. And accountability I couldn’t escape.
Most people are intimidated by staring at their reflections and stopping the bullshit. But I found a sweet comfort staring into my deep brown eyes. I learned that all she needed was honesty from me. To be encouraged regularly. To hear that she’s doing well. She also needed to hear when I was afraid and how situations truly affected me. No performance, no minimizing my emotions because I learned that it was easy. I was used to just letting things slide or culling my sensitivity because it’d inconvenience someone or a connection I nurtured. I never wanted to be a problem to someone.
I kept a lot of things in until they came spilling out. In therapy, in my journals that sprawled across pages and pages. Even when it started as just reciting affirmations I liked, intimacy was planted. It was warm, familiar, and I found that I couldn’t lie to myself when I stared into my own eyes. Then I expected it. Regularly. Something felt off whenever I couldn’t do it daily or every other day or every few. I knew something was missing. And I craved it. Like the dark chocolate I pop in my mouth because I’ve been reminding myself lately that I should never avoid pleasure.
Because love isn’t a novelty. But for a while, I treated it like it’d abandon me if I didn’t show up for beneath bare minimum. When you burn as brightly as I do, you naturally attract sycophants. And the strangest part? I was devoted to them. I nurtured them and treated them with the grace and softness I should’ve always given myself. I had started caring for myself—but it was performative at best. It was shallow. I thought that just surface confidence or affirming for it was enough. Beneath it, I couldn’t bypass that I didn’t have a foundation in self love which was hearty, resilient, and could withstand my anxiety or life just hurtling the unexpected at me.
What people don’t teach about self concept is that it’s you deciding that you will-not-lie-to-yourself. Not pretending that you’re someone else when you feel like the opposite deep down, but the standard you sincerely hold yourself to. It’s who you are outside of a manifestation context. It’s the spoken and unspoken agreements you make.
I learned to not only be radically honest—but to honor my commitments to Me. I cultivate an inner relationship based on consistent follow through, not settling, speaking up, and regularly auditing and cutting out the mess regularly. It’s holding myself accountable by keeping excellent hygiene of who I’m around, what I participate in or absorb, and how lavishly I adorn, carry, and enrich myself. It’s also being self-compassionate by practicing gently telling yourself “it’s okay! :)” when you need reassurance and “No” when it’s time to stop.
I’ve learned to be as viciously protective of myself as I was to the people I shielded from their own self awareness. In practice, this means honoring my time and energy by creating my own altar of structure. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it. If someone or something gives me a weird vibe or a skin-crawling feeling (especially when it’s subtle and hard to detect), I block and cut them from my feed or my life.
If I need to set a boundary, I reassure my anxiety to calm her, then take action. I don’t let my energy get drained or pushed around and coerced into narratives which aren’t mine. I don’t allow social media or my intrusive thoughts to rage bait me into thinking the world is just a terrible place overall and there’s no point in trying. I protect the little girl inside of me who’s gentle and whimsy with an inner mama bear who makes sure she doesn’t play in the wrong gardens accidentally. So she doesn’t get hurt.
I devote myself to all the girls and women inside of me who needed to feel safe, unconditionally loved, and worshipped without apology. Months ago, I had a sudden flash of repulsion over the idea of creating a love spell that devoted itself more to a man than to Me. Today, out of the two love jars below my vanity, the one for Me weighs more, smells richer, and is covered in stickers. It’s also indulgently flanked with expensive perfume and dark chocolate.
My inner world is cultivated with Me at the center. Without compromise.
Here are my low effort ways you can jump start your self devotion if you’ve been slacking -
(but you won’t slack for a man—let’s fix that):
1. Commit to 1 niche interest and bring it into your inner world like a pet you’re feeding. When you start filling your time with happy little hobbies, your life feels richer and more satisfying. I recently decided to read and draw more consistently. I’m currently reading Carmilla. Castlevania’s depiction of her made me obsessed with her lore.
2. Set a boundary with something that’s been irritating you—and stick to it. I decided to put a time limit on my main social media plugs (twitter and tiktok) and it’s helped me learn how much time I used to waste on..nothing.
3. Start slowly ritualizing your self care. Add more time into getting ready in the morning or whenever you practice self care. Make it sensual and turn on some music on your phone or your tv. I’ve personally been listening to a lot of sensual trip hop tracks like these. If you use Youtube, get the Brave browser to avoid ads.
For those interested in being accountable by learning about why you, like me, used to jump a mile for every man in your life but yourself (or still do)—come sit in my hot seat. Every Saturday Day (aka every Saturn’s day of commitment), I help my queens and amazons find their inner clarity. 👑👑👑
With love and devotion,