There is a silence that follows every shedding. I’ve lived many of them, some loud, some quiet, but all sacred. Leaving behind my family in Colombia to study what was calling me. Not to escape, too young to even know what souls scape is, but to follow something deeper that had already begun to form inside me, even if I couldn't name it yet. Years later, I left behind a what form the outside is seen as a successful career, not because I had another one lined up, but because the structure that once held me could no longer contain what was emerging. I left a city, the most exiting in the world, for love, and because I loved to create a home where a new life could grow, where family could feel like presence rather than negotiation. I left friendships that had once felt full and luminous, but which no longer offered resonance. And in all of these moments, I felt the grief of saying goodbye to a version of myself that had served its purpose.
And yet, in each shedding, there was more life. More space. A deeper breath. A pulse of becoming that I couldn’t have accessed had I clung to what was.
Identity is often thought of as the answer to the question: “Who am I?” But perhaps it’s not an answer at all. Perhaps it’s a reflection. A moving mirror that shifts with the light. The dictionary calls it “the fact of being who or what a person is.” But identity is never a fact. It’s a perception. A snapshot. A layer of the self that helps us locate ourselves in a given time and space, but never the whole.
What we like, what we dislike, what we reach for and what we avoid, these form the first layer of identity. Preferences. Aversions. But when we look closely, we see these aren't born in a vacuum. They’re shaped by memory, by conditioning, by belonging and rejection, by the people we’ve loved and the wounds we’ve protected. We start to confuse identity with safety. We build personalities around what we’ve been applauded for and what we’ve been hurt by. Beliefs become scaffolding, and we keep climbing without questioning what we're building.
Sometimes we think we're being authentic, but we’re actually being consistent. Consistent with who we've been, not who we are. And that’s where identity can trick us, because it can be driven by ego’s need to solidify and justify itself. We become passionate about our truth, but is it truly ours? Or just a repetition of what once felt good, or safe, or familiar?
Identity can anchor us, but it can also cage us. It’s a skin. And like all skins, it needs to shed in order for new growth to occur. When we mistake this skin for the self, we start resisting change. We defend it. We over-identify with roles, with preferences, with opinions, forgetting they were always meant to be temporary.
In cosmobiology, we speak of the triangle of identity, Sun, Moon, and Rising. The Sun is the core radiance, the inner light that animates us. The Moon is the emotional body, the place where memory lives and responses form. The Rising is the mask, the interface, the way we meet the world. Together, they shape the way we perceive ourselves and are perceived. But they are not fixed. The transits, the living sky, activate them, stretch them, pressure them, reward them. Identity is not static in the chart. It is mutable, evolving, constantly revealing new facets of the same jewel.
We are not meant to wear one name forever. We are meant to become many things. We are meant to allow our passions to change, our roles to shift, our truths to evolve. That doesn’t mean we’re being false. It means we are alive.
To shed an identity is not to betray it, it’s to honor what it gave, and to listen to what is now calling. Like leaving behind toys, careers, ideologies, friendships, there’s a tenderness to letting go. There is often grief. But with that grief comes room for a deeper life to breathe through us. There’s no expansion without space. No arrival without departure.
And ultimately, all identity is a way we hold onto life. We name ourselves to affirm that we are here. We declare, “This is who I am,” hoping that in doing so, we won’t be forgotten. But all names dissolve eventually. All roles fall away. The more we resist this truth, the more we suffer. The more we embrace it, the more we live.
This practice of shedding is not just spiritual, it is biological, psychological, ancestral. We live through phases. Through selves. We are not the same person year to year, even day to day. That’s not failure. That’s growth.
So I’ve learned not to fear the shedding. I’ve learned to bless each skin as it falls away, to thank the identities that held me, and to step into what’s next without needing to know its name. Because the deeper I go, the more I find that who I am… is still becoming. Siendo, to BE in Spanish is the ART of BEING. The timeless beauty of endless discoveries.
Embodied Teachings
If this reflection speaks to you and you feel the invitation to not just read, but live, this process, you’re welcome to go deeper. This entry has an accompanying downloadable PDF that guides you through an embodied integration process rooted in astrology, elemental journaling, aromatherapy, and guided meditation.
Inside the PDF, you may find:
-A prompt to locate where this cycle is active in your birth chart
-Journal reflections through the four elements | Earth, Water, Fire, Air
-A personalized essential oil synergy to support each stage
On a personal note...
The Hermit Turns the Wheel
Every Scorpio season, I begin the sacred exercise of retrospection, a quiet descent into the deep waters where my solar year begins to close.
It is the moment where I gather my own reflections, naming the textures of a life lived, validating each step, and giving gratitude for the cycle that now prepares to dissolve.
In this remembrance, I surrender to the intimate waters of Scorpio, to carve in the flesh of memory the truths my soul must carry as it prepares to incarnate again on my birthday, beneath the flames of Sagittarius.
This ritual has become my yearly confession to the Divine: a private conversation between my soul and the cosmos, between death and the promise of new life.
This year has been one of profound revelation and sacred becoming.
It was the year that Psilocybin revealed itself to me as teacher and ally, guiding me deeper into mastery through my studies in the Netherlands, where the unseen and the seen began to merge.
It was the year a beloved client, now a sister, invited me to officiate her marriage after walking together through years of healing. In that moment, the priestess within me awoke, remembering that love is the holiest reciprocity.
It was the year I returned to the Amazonian jungle, to be baptized by my tribe, to be recognized as one of them, and to receive the humbling initiation into the alchemy of the Grandmother, Natem.
There, I remembered what it means to belong to the Earth in both reverence and joy.
It was the year I learned to transmute an old thought that had long lingered in my psyche, the meaning of being a mirror.
I understood that my power is not in reflecting all things, but in discerning which reflections belong in my light.
Now I hold this mirror with reverence, contained, conscious, clear.
It was also the year I fulfilled a dream held since my son was two years old: to travel together to Japan.
In taking him there, he took me back to parts of myself I had forgotten.
On Mount Koya, through the vibration of mantras, I remembered a moment in the Shaolin Temple, an echo of devotion that filled my body with ecstasy and awakened in me the true meaning of the coiled fish: presence within motion, stillness within flow.
It was the year I returned to Colombia, to bless the youngest woman of our lineage, still cradled in the womb of my niece.
There, from my mother’s lips, I received the blessing to become the matriarch of our clan.
In that rite of passage, I was crowned not in pride but in humility, to guard and guide the treasures every woman carries within her womb.
These have been the great soul accomplishments of my year.
And for each, I bow in gratitude.
Of course, every light casts its shadow. But it is in those shadows that I find the reflection that keeps the spark alive in my eyes, the dance between decomposition and rebirth, between ending and beginning.
For this is the wisdom of Scorpio:
To die into life.
To remember through surrender.
To let gratitude become the bridge between what has been and what is yet to be lived.
And as I honor this passage, I remember: though the journey of evolution through each spiral of being is solitary, the mission is collective, a shared spiral of consciousness.
May the ripples of my becoming extend to all those who walk this path beside me, the intimate nucleus of my soul.
Because every story has a melody.
Here you can listen to mine | Suach-Yawa
