This is Part 1 of a 3-part series based on my analysis of the big “seasons” of my life that, funny enough, coincide with my progressed Ascendant moving into a new sign to begin each season.
One of the most fascinating things I’ve discovered in studying my progressed charts is how clearly each shift of the Ascendant has matched the seasons of my life. It’s downright eerie. Every time the progressed Ascendant has changed signs, I’ve felt it—not as a small detail tucked away in an ephemeris, but as a tidal change in how I experienced the world and how the world experienced me.
When my progressed Ascendant moved into Aries when I was 18, I felt like I had been launched out of a slingshot. I could not wait to get away from the small town where I grew up and always felt like a fish out of water (Pisces joke, but accurate). I couldn’t wait to explore the world! Everything in me was wired toward independence, toward proving myself, toward leaving behind what had defined me and daring the unknown. Aries is the beginning of the zodiac, and that’s exactly how it felt: the first breath of something raw and new.
That 21-year season of Aries was filled with firsts. I was leaving behind the protective cocoon of home and taking my first real steps into adulthood. Suddenly I was navigating the world without the old guardrails, testing myself to see if I could handle life on my own terms. Aries energy has that relentless quality: it pushes you forward whether or not you feel ready.
I can see now how that fire shaped me. The Aries years weren’t about refinement or mastery; they were about courage. Exploration. Finding my tribe initially at college and then trying to succeed at a writing career and an acquisition career at the same time. A relationship that started in the first degree of Aries and was ending in its last. About exploring motherhood and trying to have it all, do it all, be it all. Those years were about discovering who I was by running headfirst into challenges, by daring myself to begin even when I wasn’t sure of the outcome. I can still feel the imprint of that season whenever I start something new—it left me with the muscle memory of bravery.
Yeah, yeah, and sometimes foolhardiness.
Astrology often gets dismissed as symbolic storytelling, but in this case, the symbolism is the story. Aries Rising in my progressed chart marked the season when my identity was forged in independence and courage.
It was a time when I tried to be there 100% for my family and 100% for my work and somehow lived off 3 to 4 hours of sleep every night. It was a time when my bosses saw me as a rising superstar and considered it “almost cheating” to give me a difficult project they weren’t sure would get done otherwise. It was a time when I was willing to write brides/babies/and cowboys tropes to break into publishing suspense novels in a market that wasn’t really friendly to my writing, but I shoehorned myself into the romance genre to try to build enough book contracts in a year to justify writing full-time and being at home when the kids came home from kindergarten, something that couldn’t happen as long as I was in the relationship I was in.
My progressed Ascendant in Aries wasn’t graceful, and it wasn’t easy, but it was the necessary beginning. Without those fiery years, I wouldn’t have had the foundation to step into the next season, when Taurus would teach me how to focus, endure, and build something that would last.
This is what draws me to following the progressed Ascendant. I don’t see it as a tool for prediction so much as a mirror of recognition. It reflects the patterns of my life back to me, reminding me that my story moves within a much larger rhythm. Aries marked the season of beginnings—burning fast, burning bright, and giving me the will to stand firmly on my own feet.
Ever felt a “meant to be” moment? That’s your Vertex—the hidden point of destiny in your birth chart.
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