Do you ever feel yourself being pulled toward something new, but you immediately question whether you can trust it?
As an entrepreneur, I’ve spent a surprising amount of my life trying to make sense of that tension.
I think that’s how Human Design, Gene Keys, and Astrology eventually all found me. Each of them has given me language for understanding myself.
Why am I so burned out when I love creating? Okay. Let’s look at how I’m using my energy.
But why am I pushing so hard in the first place? Okay. Let’s look at the pattern underneath that.
And what am I actually moving toward? Okay. Let’s zoom out and look at the larger themes of my life.
I’ve become fascinated by how much more I can trust myself when I have language for what I’m experiencing. And the more language I’ve had for my inner world, the less alone I’ve felt inside it.
I rediscovered Human Design after closing Sweet & Spark. Because when it ended, I was left with a very uncomfortable question:
Who am I when the thing I’ve built my life around is gone?
Human Design gave me somewhere to start looking.
I studied my energy type, strategy, authority, and profile (I’m a 3/5 Sacral Manifesting Generator). And then I started noticing things about myself that I hadn’t really considered before, or maybe was just ready to be honest about.
For one, I’d been spending a lot of time in my go, go, go energy — pushing, deciding, making things happen — and not enough time noticing what was actually pulling me forward.
And I was really frustrated with how slowly my new life was unfolding.
I remember having a whiteboard covered in frameworks for my new coaching business and thinking: Okay, but what am I actually building here? A platform? A school? Can someone please tell me what this is!!!
But this time I couldn’t push harder. I had to slow down and learn things from the bottom up. Let one experience lead to the next. Feel my way through my fears of writing, speaking, teaching.
And then there was my sacral authority. I’d spent so much time making decisions with my mind — weighing the options, trying to get clear before I moved — that I wasn’t paying much attention to the much smaller signals in my body. The simple uh-huh or uh-uh.
I’m still learning about this one. I’m definitely not some Human Design master who has finally figured out how to listen to her body perfectly. Sometimes the wisdom is very sophisticated. And sometimes my body is just like nope, not today…. even though my mind would very much like a 14 slide powerpoint telling me why.
My 3/5 profile has been another whole layer of this. It's made me question my relationship with experimentation, failure, and expertise.
For a long time, I thought I needed to have figured something out before I could share it. But so much of what I’ve learned has come from doing the opposite: trying something, discovering what doesn’t work, adjusting, and trying again. I’m still figuring out how to let that process (which feels so messy to me) be visible.
And now, when I feel that familiar go, go, go energy kick in, sometimes I know exactly what it means. Time to pump the brakes and take a nap. Not exactly the most glamorous Human Design revelation.
When I first learned all of this, I wanted to understand it. I wanted to know what it meant. What I should do. How to implement it immediately.
But eventually I realized the real questions were much smaller:
Am I forcing this? Do I actually have energy for this? Is this something I want to experience?
I’ve come to see that learning how to pay attention is powerful.
Around the same time, a friend introduced me to The Gene Keys, and I immediately loved the connection to Human Design.
The 64 Gene Keys directly map to the 64 gates (aka gifts) in Human Design, but the Gene Keys unlock what becomes possible when we bring light to the lower vibrations of our gifts.
I started contemplating my greatest gifts, the four Gene Keys that correspond to the gates of my Human Design incarnation cross.
To me, they paint a picture of your authentic self. The energy you’re here to embody. Almost like an archetype you’re here to grow into or the costume you’re here to wear in this lifetime.
But when we have a gift, we can also experience its distorted expression. Almost like the opposite energy. And those are often the parts of ourselves we understand the least or actively dislike.
The part that is too much. Too intense. Too sensitive. Too demanding. Too stubborn. Too emotional. Too whatever we’ve learned we aren’t supposed to be. And so we push those parts away.
But through contemplation, I’ve come to understand the shadows differently. What if the part of me I keep trying to get rid of is actually carrying a gift? What if it doesn’t need to be fixed? What if it needs to be understood?
Which are much nicer questions than, how do I get this annoying part of myself to go away?
For me, that happens mostly through radical honesty with myself.
I’ll notice something happening in my life and eventually think, Oh. There’s Gate 39. Which is not necessarily a sentence I ever imagined myself saying (or say out loud to most people). And then I’ll start exploring what that means in me.
Gate 39 — Rousing Spirit — has been a particularly interesting one. It’s about sparking creativity and can also be provocative, and I’ve had to get really curious about my relationship with making people feel something. I have a strong instinct to get underneath the surface and move what’s stagnant. And I’m learning there are different ways to do that. I can provoke someone too much, or I can create enough curiosity and openness that they want to go somewhere deeper themselves. That distinction has become huge for me. This is an energy that wants to move something, one way or another.
Gate 38 — Taking a Stand — has made me think differently about struggle. What is actually worth fighting for? What deserves my energy? I’ve had to learn to encourage myself around my creative and spiritual pursuits, especially because they haven't exactly followed a conventional path. Something being difficult doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong as long as the struggle is meaningful to me.
Gate 21 — Control of Resources — has taken me into another territory entirely: trusting my own instincts around my resources like time, money, and energy. I’m still learning the difference between what I’m actually responsible for and where I’m grasping because I don’t trust. Sometimes the lesson is loosening my grip. And sometimes it’s trusting myself enough to take the reins.
And then there’s Gate 48 — The Well of Wisdom, which has probably brought me closest to the experience of depth itself. I’ve always felt a lot happening underneath the surface, but it can be uncomfortable to sink into it. For me, this one has become an invitation into the deeper well of my own experience. I don’t have to rush to the surface and turn everything into an answer (apparently, not everything requires a conclusion). I can stay with something. There is always more there in due time…. an answer, a resource, a little more aliveness.
Actually, that’s what I love most about the Gene Keys. They don’t let me rush past myself. I don’t necessarily have to do anything about them other than stay with myself when one pops up.
During the pandemic, I bought Chani Nicholas’s book, You Were Born for This, to learn the basics of my natal chart — the houses, planets, signs, and aspects.
At first, I was overwhelmed by all the terminology and layers. But over the years, I’ve started seeing the relationship between all of these systems. They’re all rooted in astrology, and in a lot of ways, they’re speaking the same language.
Human Design has given me a way to notice how I move through the world. The Gene Keys have given me a way to go deeper into the patterns underneath that. And lately, I’ve been zooming out.
When I look at my natal chart, I’m interested in what it might reveal about who I’m becoming. I think of it almost like a curriculum. Not a prediction or a predetermined fate. More like a set of themes that keep showing up in different forms, asking to be experienced, wrestled with, refined, and eventually shared.
I can get very interested in the big vision (and surprise, surprise, want to manifest it now). I’ll find myself digging into what my soul is here to learn, what an aspect means, how this placement connects to that placement... trying to figure it all out after a full day of work.
And eventually I catch myself…. okay, reality check. You can’t solve your entire life on a random Tuesday night.
But you can take what you’re seeing and reflect on it.
Lately, I’ve been exploring my Taurus North Node (the direction you’re here to grow into) around simplicity, beauty, value, pleasure, receiving, and building a life that actually feels good to inhabit.
I’ve been journaling around: What do I actually value? What would it look like to make things simpler? Can I let something be beautiful without needing it to become productive? Can I receive instead of immediately trying to make something happen?
And then there is timing.
I’ve been following the larger transits to my chart with The Pattern App, tracking the different seasons I’m moving through, while also paying attention to the monthly new and full moons and how they relate to my natal houses and planets.
I use astrology this way almost like a calendar for my inner life. It gives me a system to pause and notice. What season am I in? What is being illuminated right now? What am I being invited to release, explore, or pay attention to?
Sometimes I look at a transit and think: Ohhh. That explains a lot. And sometimes I look at one and think: Cool. Not sure how that’s playing out. But I’ll sit on it and revisit it later. Anyway... I’m learning to let both be true.
I love using Astrology as a way to see possibilities I might not have considered. To give myself permission to take something seriously that I might otherwise dismiss. To remind me that a bigger life is possible.
These systems have become maps. Mirrors. Permission. Languages. Ways of seeing and understanding experiences that might otherwise feel confusing.
They’ve given me more context for the patterns I’ve already been living. More compassion for the parts of myself I’ve struggled to understand. More language for the things I somehow knew but couldn’t articulate.
But more than anything, they’ve given me another way to see myself — and another reason to believe in myself. A sense of guidance when I couldn’t see the whole path. A little more hope when I was afraid.
And maybe that’s why I’ve kept following this curiosity. Because I don’t think self-trust comes from finally knowing exactly who you are or where you’re going.
Sometimes it comes from having enough ways to look at yourself that you start to recognize yourself more clearly and more often. Oh hello there again, dear friend.
Human Design Chart Reading- A 75 minute birth chart reading to uncover your energetic superpowers and discover how your energy best operates in the world.
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