Dear Neighbor,

You did not elaborate, so I am not sure why this is excruciatingly difficult for you. I don’t think it would cause me a problem at all, so I’ll offer my perspective and maybe it will alter yours.

First, you are living next to two individuals. That they are a father and son is irrelevant. One of them, the son, decided to confide in you. Considering you’re a double Scorpio, I imagine he made a good decision because I don’t think you are going to betray him and you didn’t go screaming from the room when a 15 year old wanted to talk about sex. Taboo sex this is, at least in his immediate environment so I think he made a good decision in sharing this with you.

So where is the problem? Is it all this mutable energy in your chart? The mutable signs want to communicate and perhaps you think you need to pass this information along? Well, you don’t.

We have responsibility in this life to ourselves and the people around us. This kid needs support from someone he can trust. Let that be you and you’ll both be empowered. From there, just move along with the rest of your day.

Good luck.

When Ben was a boy…early teens I guess, he was keeping a journal. He was writing, drawing, or both. I don’t really know because he didn’t elaborate. And his parents were trying to have him “fixed” and stuff, remember? They were hell bent on fixing his homosexuality and then they came across his journal.

First the read it, and that is horror enough, but they didn’t stop there. They took it a psychiatrist to have it analyzed and they didn’t stop there either. They made COPIES and took it to SEVERAL psychiatrists. Apparently they were looking for one who would tell them what they wanted to hear.

And maybe some air sign doesn’t think this is a big deal. But to Scorpio…well to Ben, it was like he’d been stabbed in the chest, had the knife twisted only to be rolled over and stabbed in the back. This invasion and betrayal sent him reeling and feeling intense and immense pain at a core level and bottom line, he did not make it through it alive.

The experience killed a piece of him because here it was thirty years later and he still…he still refused to write anything down. He doesn’t draw, either. He swore “never again” and I’ll tell you something. When a Scorpio amputates, they don’t go back and try to resurrect the dead thing.

And my point in telling this story is to warn parents who may be less sensitive than their Scorpio child, to hopefully spare some kid. Because there is a loss here that is immeasurable.

My friend is a musician and a teacher who garners standing ovations for both his talent and his character. He is the teacher who walks into the gym during an assembly to have the kids stand and cheer. Yeah. And when he talks, I listen and I wonder.

I really wonder what he had to say that will not be written. Did he draw well? We are never going to know because this part of him died the day he learned that his parents took this intimate piece of himself and shopped it around. So grave the pain, well this is the reason not to betray your Scorpio child. You’ll kill them. Is that a good enough reason?

Scorpio will be betrayed at some point in their life. A wound like this is unavoidable. But as a parent you can make sure you’re not the one who inflicts it. And I have permission to tell this story, of course.

~~

“Can I write that?” I asked. “I would like to write this for parents of children like you. I know it’s personal, but someone might read it. Your story is stark and some kid could be spared.”

“Some kid could be spared? Write it. I’ve already told you can write anything you want about me. And if it helps some kid? Write! Write, write, write, little Elsa. Write until your heart is content.”

And so I have.

The End

I am going to write about these biracial artists for awhile. Because I happen to know and love four of them and their stories all intertwine. Come to think of it, my mother is a biracial artist so I guess that explains a lot, huh? ::smiles::

Anyway, I have a lot of stories about my friend, Ben and this is one of them. I’ve known Ben for about twenty years. He’s a Scorpio with an Aquarius rising. He’s a cellist and an extraordinary man. He’s enormously talented and has transformed the lives of many hundreds of children over many years in a “Mr. Holland’s Opus” kind of way but he is much better than the movie. He is more talented, more fascinating, more powerful, more charismatic and more magnetic than Mr. Holland, and he is been teaching cello long enough to have his student play alongside him in the symphony orchestra. Very simply, he’s doing a bang up job with his life and I don’t think they make any finer.

Ben is a gay man who has never known a closet. Both he and his family were aware of his homosexuality at a pre-teen age. He was caught with another boy actually, and his parents had a fit, characteristic of the era and probably too often still true today. They shamed him terribly and tried various methods of changing what was his essence, which were all fruitless of course.
Ben forgives his parents the past. He forgives them because he’s intellectually sophisticated. He allows people to hold their own views. He has thought his way out of this. If you don’t like gay people, he’s not concerned about it.

It’s very similar to how I feel about astrology. It’s a waste of time to chase validation or approval from people for who you are. ClichÆ’