Written in the Stars
On Birth Charts, Dental Floss, and Giving Up
Back when I was self-care challenged, although not so challenged that I neglected dental visits, the dentist asked me one question that would change my life.
“Do you floss?”
She could tell. Why else would she ask?
“You should aim for three days a week,” she said with a breeziness that suggested everyone simply knew semi-regular flossing was good enough.
Was she yanking my chain? Even I believed humans were meant to floss daily. Was I bewildered? Relieved that I only had to start flossing three times weekly to keep my teeth?
“I’m not supposed to floss every day?” I asked.
Perhaps this was the question that changed my life, because the gold filling, if you will, was in the dentist’s answer.
“Well,” she said, “If I tell people to floss every day, they start out with good intentions. Then they miss a day and decide to give up.”
In other words they mess up, feel defeated, and chuck the whole project.
I had just been hanging upside down in a dental chair. Still, I understood her observation extended beyond oral hygiene.
I called a friend to debrief.
“You don’t floss?!” he said, missing the point entirely. “God, Kirsten. It’s like breathing. You just do it.”
Not long after, I started flossing. For years now, I’ve flossed daily. It has not prevented age-related tooth deterioration or vanquished gum recession. But it taught me something about giving up. How easily I can do it.
I felt like giving up a few weeks ago. Back when it was still December, two friends who support my obsession with psychics, mind-readers, and divination purchased a fancy birth chart reading for me.
The perfect gift. One I would spend weeks anticipating before the astrologer was ready to meet with me. A gift, it turns out, I wasn’t quite equipped to receive.
Someone once told me that instead of reading the Free Will Astrology horoscope corresponding to her sun sign, she reads all 12 of Rob Brezsny’s predictions each week and chooses the one she likes best.
My off-and-on tarot habit is similarly relaxed. The cards I pull don’t point to the literal truth. I read them as portals into a new way of thinking. Perhaps the Queen of Swords jogs a memory. Maybe the reversed Five of Wands helps me see a roadblock. A reversed Two of Wands soothes a fear.1
My view when it comes to horoscopes, coffee ground reads, and most divination practices is pretty chill. It’s diverting to play with. Is it the truth? There might be some truth in it, but I’m not going to hang my hat on it.
Evidentially, I bring a whole other belief system to star chart readings.
Because I was pushed into the world at the exact moment the stars and planets were in particular and predictable spots, I’ve decided their arrangement has to mean something, about me. The starry sky, in other words, is a treasure map leading to information that lies hidden in a dragon-filled sea cave that floods at high tide. To retrieve the information, the key to where I’ve been, where I’m headed, to make sense of it, I need a professional dragon tamer to wade in and grab the gold bullion.
Frankly, in the run-up to the reading, I was worried. Over the years, I’d gleaned information about my birth chart from book-wielding woo friends who could do math. About my multiple retrograde planets, the lopsided visuals of my personal sky map. The gaps which, in my imaginings, corresponded to tough times. Or, proved I was set up at the moment of birth for a lifetime of challenges.
Before our call, the astrologer asked if there were any questions I hoped to explore. As in my dealings with psychics, I decided to keep my questions to myself.
According to my scientific thinking, if the astrologer conveys the answer to at least one of my unspoken worries without prompting, the answer is written, someplace.
Which means the answer is fixed. Or is it?
As our call commenced, the astrologer came out as an evolutionary astrologer. In this astrological ecosystem, a birth chart is not deterministic—its your path to spiritual growth. So, the information is still in my chart. But I’ll use it to make informed choices, to take action.
My mind was still grappling with this concept as my moon, my rising sign, and all the houses, came flying at me over Zoom. I could see myself building a memory of our interaction in real time, using my previous knowledge to scaffold, skimming the rest.
Ninety minutes later, the call ended with the astrologer rushing off to her day job with a promise to send notes. It ended with me in tears.
The sense I made of her words was grim. Seven planets in retrograde, chugging backwards through their orbits2 at the time of my birth—meaning everything will take longer for me. I will bloom late.
Life, the reading affirmed, has felt hard for me. Life, it promised, will continue to feel hard. However, because this is evolutionary astrology, I can change things—with more hard work.
In other words, there’s no gold in the sea cave. No triumphant denouement, no resolution, no rest.
Just more grind.
For 24 hours, I wanted to give up.
As I began writing this post, on lunar day 29, the new moon was at 1.9 percent. According to my moon app:
The 29th day, fundamentally, is unhappy in everything and for everyone.…You cannot believe any promises, rumors, or forecasts. All around is sheer deception.
So you can take my fatalism with a grain of salt. And so can I.
The birth chart experience reminded me I still have a profound negative bias. It helped me reaffirm that if I had the opportunity to peer into a crystal ball and glimpse my future, I wouldn’t. Perhaps this is why I’m not out sampling psychics on the regular. Clearly, I’m too willing to believe everything I hear, if it sounds like what I want to believe.
More importantly, I’m reevaluating my longstanding contention that if you’re a grown adult living in this age of science, reason, and free choice, and you let a reading ruin your day, you need to snap out of it! I was surprised by how upset I felt. How shaky.
For the first time ever, I could imagine myself swooning at the foot of a cliff (in a negligee) after falling under the spell of a slick psychic fraud, a la The Amazing Mr. X.
The birth chart did offer up one gold doubloon. Apparently there are advantages to being born during a mercury retrograde. While everyone else is struggling with messed up travel, fraught communication, relationship breakdown, leaky emotions, tech issues—I’m not.
I am the mercury retrograde whisperer.
If you happen to believe in such things.
Tell me, do you?
This was my 2026 birthday pull. A simple past/present/future layout. Please weigh in with your own interpretation in the comments!
In fact, planets in retrograde only appear to move backwards from our perspective here on earth.
This is beautiful, than you for sharing. With the planets in retrograde and the deck stacked against us despair is the obvious outcome.
However let me make the case that this is an advantaged fate.
Everyone makes mistakes when they are young. You had the privilege of being forced by fate into the mistakes you made. Surviving the hardest fates yields the strongest souls. And obviously survival is your strength. You would not be who you are today without the blessing of hardship that was bestowed upon you. Use it to the fullest as others recognize your strength now that you are in full bloom.
I love how your trust and ‘belief’ in these woo things spiral! It’s always fascinating.