Unshaming Your Chart

What if the Universe is into you?

Across 8 sessions, Unshaming Your Chart opens the way for a relationship to your birth chart that’s liberated from the shame economy.

In my career, I have become known for my work on shame. Especially for a series of workshops I’ve offered on “unshaming the signs.” Now, for the first time, I am bringing my most updated approach into a single container.

Shame is more than a shitty feeling. It’s a way of seeing the world. Shame is spectacular. Both as in, shame is a big show, and as in shame is all about sight (spectacles) and witnessing.

We see reality through the lens of shame. That we aren’t worthy. That we’re not enough. That we’re doing something wrong. That we’re failing at being here.

You can love your life and still have a lot of shame. You can be a success and have a lot of shame. Most of the time, we don’t call it shame. But anytime we think we “have to ____ more,” that’s the shame talking.

If you see your reality through the lens that you’re cursed, fucked up, or a problem, then this is what you will see reflected back to you in the chart.

Most of us were taught astrology in ways that do not account for the shame the wisdom tradition carries from being mocked and minimized for centuries.

We weren’t taught to question the language itself for the ways it’s embedded and complicit with shame.

We were told that the chart would “unlock our potential” and help us “find our purpose” in ways that may mean well, but actually participate in the same energetics that keep us from trusting ourselves and the present moment.

It’s time for a new way.

You are entering a new temple here.

At the door, you agree to explore what it would be like to surrender the oldest story you may have ever known… that you’re bad.

Most folks come to astrology with an ache. You long to connect to something bigger. To experiment with the idea that somehow you are a conduit to the intelligence of the cosmos. To believe that your being here matters.

The thing is… you may bring to this sincere desire your honestly earned fear that you aren’t worthy of such magnificent dignity.

And your sweet but painful human conditioning can block you from seeing your chart in more expansive, loving, and encouraging ways.

You may bring the fear that you’re squandering your precious time here.

You may wonder: would I even be able to receive the exquisite codes the Universe wants to give me?

Would I trust myself to be responsible to embodying them?

Unshaming Your Chart grows from my personal story of turning to this wisdom tradition for new ways of being. I relate to astrology as an animist, and I listen and respond to the planets and signs as I would in any other relationship. I don’t want to be extractive. I humbly want to learn. And in return, I found astrology relentlessly insistent with me that I engage with it as a practice for recklessly loving myself.

As I became a practitioner, I noticed with the thousands of clients and students I’ve served that shame is the thing we’re carrying. I saw how shame makes it difficult to be in relationship with our charts in ways that are radically empowering.

And I saw time and time again, class after class, that folks who enter my containers leave more open, curious, trusting, and self-compassionate than when they entered.

This outcome is related to one thing only: being witnessed in your vulnerability in a space where playfulness, feelings, and sincerity are all welcomed… this is what un-shaming looks like.

In the spring of 2023 I announced a new project called Unshaming the Signs, and dedicated a huge part of my life to creating posts and holding monthly workshops to bring folks into this point of view.

It was an incredible gift and honor to feel this devotion celebrated when Chris Brennan of The Astrology Podcast hosted me for a 4+-hour episode where we went through all the signs.

Since then, I have continued to speak on shame and astrology on various podcasts. I have visited communities in Chicago, Minneapolis, and, most recently, New York City. I also hosted a series of 12 episodes on my podcast Moon to Moon where I unshamed the houses with a different guest astrologer for each one.

I continue to hear that this project is changing the field and the public discourse around shame and astrology.

Unshaming Your Chart – this course – is my next offering. My flowering wand.

Unshaming is the practice of being willing to notice when you are perceiving your reality through shame.

Unshaming is self-confrontation. This means discomfort is sometimes present in the passage to more love. Self-shaming and self-confrontation are quite different.

Unshaming is not an excuse to continue patterns that don’t nourish you and others. Unshaming is a commitment to trusting that self-compassion will transmute the patterns in ways that self-policing never could. 

Self-shaming is a re-enactment rooted in the past. Self-confrontation is an attunement to your truth in the present moment.

Self-shaming is not alchemical. (It doesn’t change anything!) Self-confrontation is an invitation to transform.  

Self-shaming is ostensibly about betterment, but the truth is it has a kink for feeling bad. Self-confrontation sits with discomfort as a means to move toward nourishing change.

The discomfort gets metabolized and it becomes something else. Something soft. Even sweet. Unshaming is honey.

As long as we center pain in our healing path, we will choose self-shaming over self-confrontation.

If the language of unshaming is uncomfortable, a fair question to ask yourself is: do I enjoy feeling bad about myself? There’s no shame in admitting this. At least then you realize that there’s some part of you resisting change. And then that’s where you can send your compassion. 

Unshaming is a confrontation with the terrifying possibility that you’re not bad. In fact, what’s the opposite of bad? 

And if it’s true that you’re good, then… what do you want?!What becomes of this day? How do you want to participate? 

You may feel the terror of surrendering the story of my badness.

You may ask: “Without it, who even am I? And anyway, who’s going to give me permission? Who do I think I am that I can just give that to myself? How will I be ok if I am not policing this problem? How can I trust that my desires won’t turn me into a bad person?”

A brilliant community member once told me that my Unshaming work is an abolitionist project because it’s about defunding the police in our heads. (Wow.)

Unshaming Your Chart will catalyze an entirely new way of engaging with your birth chart, because it’s inviting you to transform your relationship with yourself.

What would it be like to trust that the Universe is into you?

The number one consequence of shame is lack of self-trust.

Self-trust is what intuition is. And self-trust makes possible all other forms of trust.

To unshame is to repair trust.

This repair softens our resistance to trusting connectedness: to one another, and to Mystery.

No more going it alone.

The path forward in our world today is one that will require us to surrender into deeper and deeper layers of trust.

This unshaming is a process and a practice, not a destination.

Your chart will guide you more clearly when these distortions begin to clear and offer you more ease.

We begin December 18, for 2 hours together to initiate us into this massive shift. Then you will have two weeks to metabolize the mutative effects of what comes through. Then we meet 7 more Wednesdays for 90 minutes each. Times flip-flop in order to accommodate participants all over the world.

December 18, 4-6 pm CST (5-7 EST): INITIATION

January 8, 12-1:30 pm CST (1-2:30 EST): UNSHAMING YOUR RISING SIGN

January 15, 4-5:30 pm CST (5-6:30 EST): UNSHAMING YOUR SUN

January 22, 12-1:30 pm CST (1-2:30 EST): UNSHAMING YOUR MOON

January 29, 4-5:30 pm CST (5-6:30 EST): UNSHAMING YOUR SATURN

February 5, 12-1:30 pm CST (1-2:30 EST): UNSHAMING THE SIGN YOU RESIST OR RESENT

February 12, 4-5:30 pm CST (5-6:30 EST): UNSHAMING THE “PROBLEMS” IN YOUR CHART

February 19, 12-1:30 pm CST (1-2:30 EST): CONVERSATIONS, CONCERNS, CONTINUING ON

In more than half of the meetups, there will be breakout groups based on shared placements. This will provide everyone the opportunity to share stories with other humans who get what it’s like to live as your Sun or your Rising Sign, etc.

This aspect of the course will likely be the most powerful for many of you. This is because shame operates in silence and secrecy. Giving yourself the chance to witness and be witnessed is at the heart of unshaming.

Questions? Please reach out to my assistant MaryKate at info@brittenlarue.com.