I feel a need to help this young woman

[Arena]

So, today this young woman visited me. She has been in my MBA class and obviously looks up to me, she admires me and I think she appreciates my advice, or at least she said she wanted my advice. She pours her heart out and talks for hours and cries while telling me about how she comes from a very abusive/violent family life, being terrified of her father for all her life until she decided she would leave and she came here. She has fear of attachment because she does not want to be vulnerable to any other people abusing her, so wanting to be her own independent woman. And then she meets this Scottish guy that she connects with and she is asking my advice. She even wanted me to meet him to tell her my thoughts. Well anyway, I did my best to show her my understanding and affection, encouraged her to stand on her own feet, continue on her path to become her own independent woman and that would mean she would have to make her own decisions and maybe that would mean not listening to her parents, but rather her own intuition and her own heart.

I believe in this girl and I it is strange, but I feel a kind of an obligation or urge to help her succeed. I told her that I see her as a potential manager for a position that might be coming up and if she wanted me to pass on her CV and get a chance for an interview. She does not know yet that it is my own hotel business I am thinking about hiring her, or at least give her a chance to apply.

So I wanted to look at our synastry and asked her for birthtime. So I took a look at her chart. IF born at 10AM, she would have Moon on her MC, connected with Mercury-Venus conjunction by sextile and Uranus on IC. IF she is born closer to 10.30AM she would have that Neptune on her IC connected to Mars by a trine which could maybe better explain that painful past and victimisation (but even with 10AM, this one would still be foreground). The 10.30AM birth time would put my Uranus right on her n. ASC. and her MC and Neptune is not far from my own angles. Both birth times would look so much better relocated to Edinburgh with ASC either right on the Sun, or between the Sun and Jup and that would mean my Mercury is right on her ASC and my Jupiter trines her rel. MC. Her Moon is close to my n. ASC and our Suns are close.

Am I right in believing that I will be capable of being a great help to this young woman? I feel she can accelerate quickly and have great support from me, I even feel a bit like mothering her, womaning her up, help her be the independent woman she wants to be, but to me that also means that she should not go back to India to that atmosphere she came from and I told her that.

[Jim Eshelman]

First impressions....

We, of course, don't really know the birth time but, from what you've said, if I had to guess, I'd say closer to 10:00 is better. A young woman from a traditional culture needs a significant push to leave her country and flee around the world for freedom and, without an angular Uranus, there is nothing else in her chart to suggest it.(Sun-Pluto could be the uprooting and fleeing... but, from the story you told, I get the sense of demanding freedom and independence.)

She has enough other dependency indicators in the chart, and enough indicators of troubled parent and native-home issues (but favoring maternal connection). She seems charming, engaging, even entertaining if she isn't too shy.

For a flat 10:00 AM birth time, she was born when Sun was rising in Edinburgh, which would make it a fine place for self-emergence and self-expression.

Of transit dynamics, though, the really big one right now is Neptune opposite her Mars. She's right in the middle of it. I think she's wise to seek outside advice - this is a transit under which people make bad, self-destructive choices, especially if they don't have a good track record of making good choices. With her natal Mars-Neptune partile trine, she's even more vulnerable to this. I think she should be in counselling, or a counselling type of consistent relationship so that she can have someone to bounce off her current thoughts and plans. I normally wound encourage the "you have to learn to trust yourself and stand on your own feet" advice except, right now, I actually don't think she should trust herself - without someone backstopping her.

Neptune will move on somewhere about the time that Uranus squares her Saturn. I suspect there are still strong ties (practical or just psychological) to her original family and environment that she has to outgrow when they become too narrow and stifling. Uranus' square to her Saturn will set her up to feel strangled by such restrictions and motivate her to break out of them. Again, ongoing counselling will provide a supportive environment for working through the next couple of years.

When Saturn crosses her IC, she'll be ready to start seriously building the life she'll have for the next 14 to 29 years. If she was born at 10:00. this will be December 2018; for a later time, it will be a little later. Neptune will still be around, Uranus won't have squared Saturn yet, but it's an important turning point. By the following spring (say, April 2019) she'll be through with the Neptune and in the middle of the Uranus-to-Saturn (which finishes in spring, 2020).

A quickie synastry:

Her Moon is near your Ascendant. Your Suns are conjunct. Her Jupiter touches your Moon-Mars. You want to nurture her; there are important ways that you identify with her (and are probably enacting an alchemy of helping herself by helping her); and she is likely to benefit your endeavors considerably and make you feel stronger.

PS - Unless we are to only take this ecliptically. it may be incorrect to say her Moon conjoins your Ascendant. Her Moon is circumpolar at your birthplace - it can't rise or set, so it can never conjoin the Ascendant or Descendant. However, it probably is perpetually near the horizon there. Her Moon's declination is 24N47, so it can never set above 65N13. So, come to think of it, not only is her Moon conjunct your Ascendant, it is conjunct all Ascendants it is possible for anyone to have in Iceland <vbg>.

[Arena]

Thanks for your input Jim.

Yes, I did think of that Uranus being possibly the main theme in her being able to leave to have her own independence and freedom. So 10AM means the Neptune to Mars aspect (or Neptune) is still in the foreground. You're probably right that it is closer to 10AM because we need that Uranus to be in the picture.

(but favouring maternal connection). ... I suspect there are still strong ties (practical or just psychological) to her original family and environment that she has to outgrow when they become too narrow and stifling

Indeed, she feels very close to her mother now although she has felt resentment towards her in teenage years because she felt she did not protect her from the father. But still feels like she has to try and protect her mother and brother from the father. I told her that is probably impossible and since her father is not violent to her brother, he will be fine - but her mother has made her choice and she might be more able to help her by staying elsewhere, by not going back. My thinking is that she might be able to pay for her staying with her when she has made her feet stronger to carry them both. Also, there is a chance that her father will become softer in his older years. I can see she is finding it difficult to break away from her mother and she looks for her advice, but then she does not agree with it (f.ex. that she should not be with a foreigner and that relationships with men are for life and you can not even divorce them if they are violent). She has such strong fear of being in a relationship so I nodded and asked her if those beliefs had put her mother in the best possible situation or if it might possibly be wiser to have a rethink about her own values and her own beliefs and always keep her strength to have a way out if somebody is mean to her. I feel that our conversation did stretch her mind a bit.

She seems charming, engaging, even entertaining if she isn't too shy.

She is very much so and I told her those traits would help her a lot in getting what she wants and being a good manager as well. But she said she is reinventing herself, she used to be very shy and holding back. So I guess in a way she is "shining" more over here and hopefully succeeding.

I will advise her to go to counselling, which I thought of yesterday but did not say because I know that at this point she has no money to do that. In the meantime, I will be her backup and support as far as I can stretch myself.

PS. She has an upcoming SSR in relocation with Saturn on SSR MC, but n. Jupiter is trine that so maybe that helps with her added responsibilities this might be bringing.