Hi Everybody,
Although I stated that in my next blog I would write about "The running dialogue that can flood my mind from time to time, but most especially when I am profoundly sad", I am going to respond instead to the last comment that was posted on March 9th by a woman named Roz. Because above all, I want this blog to become an interactive site where we communicate with each other, before going into anything else, I want to address something that Roz wrote about.

Roz was saying that as she gets closer to the date of her son Andrew's death that, "I seem to recall all the events and replay them in my head and think of what I might have done differently that may have saved him, and it's awful to think about when I can't do anything to change it".

I want to address this because it hits a chord in most of us if not in all of us. Especially in cases of overdose or suicide, regret can easily go hand in hand with your daily experience. I have replayed the night that Danny passed a zillion times in my mind. "If we'd only checked on him sooner...if we'd only made him go out to dinner with us that night...if...if...IF! As my late father Herman Perl used to say, "If the queen were the king she'd have balls!" How useless this word "if ", how useless and hurtful and destructive this word "if," how common for us parents to be tortured by this useless word if!

And so I have decided to share something with you that has helped me a greatly when dealing with the "should of, could of would of" kind of mentality. I didn't value astrology all that much as a younger person. I had only been exposed to it in a very general sense and had never had a reading done by a gifted astrologer who worked not only from a birthdate but also a birthtime. I therefore thought of astrology as a kind of playful game.

Enter Robert Cook, by far the best value in town! For a mere $60.00 I gave this brilliant man the birthdates and birthtimes of myself, Jerry and our 3 kids and a month later he described each of them with such complete accuracy that I was astounded! My first reading was 5 years ago when Danny was approximately 17. At the time, Bob described Danny's personality and life challenges so accurately that my first reaction was relief because it was obvious that these issues HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ME!

The following is an excerpt from my last Bob Cook reading which took place in January of 2008, 6 months before Danny died on July 1, 2008. I found the CD about a month after Dan's death while unpacking some boxes and was again shocked by it's uncanny accuracy, in this case, almost predicting what was to come. And all this derrived from nothing more than birthdates and birthtimes? It makes you think.

Astrological Reading with Robert Cook January 8, 2008

You're concerned about Daniel. His moon is in Aquarius and he's a Pisces rising. He has a very intense chart, this kid. He's a Pluto kid shich means he comes from some challenging beginnings....a bit of an abgry fellow and between Pluto which smolders and the Uranus at the top, he's a bit of a character, he's got a complicated nature about him. I am concerned about a couple of things here because he's born with so much Neptune, which is the substance abuse and he has a lackadaisical attitude that's the Neptune. It's nice later in life to make adjustments to make your life easier. Neptune has very little tolerance for dealing with discomfots so they always run to substances. The change how they feel but they don't really change anything about their life. They move towards substances. They love to get high and their judgments can be terribly flawed. They just make bad decisions. And this Uranus up at the top makes him pretty ungovernable because they have that attitude of "I'm going to do what I am going to do" and that's it. The don't seem to have any remorse for anything that they actually do so there's a problematic attitude. They meet up with a few low lifes along the way, so he's drawn to the underworld. It is very difficult to lead a legitimate life, if you will. Taking part in the world, that is very difficult to do and what I'm particularly concerned about over the next year is that Neptune is REALLY going to be coming to town. Neptune's going to be sitting on top of his moon which for somebody else would be a very inspiring, creative beautiful moment. For him it could be a time of major substance abuse. He has to be careful of becoming undone or doing something really stupid, a bad experience, or doing something that just really shoots himself in the foot. It's also possible because of the Neptune Moon, because the moon is like home, especially my family, especially my mother. She may be getting a little fed up with the whole thing and with the Neptune Moon, therfore he can end up feeling kicked out or cast adrift or cast out because sometimes with Neptune Moon we lost our hope. We lose our roots. We lose our connection. A lot of people feel rootless with Neptune Moon. There may be some adjustment in the situation next year. He might just decide to tak off and go who know where. With Neptune Moon he could be a vagabond. He hasn't even begun. It's going to get very strong over the next year and you have to be very careful to keep him from coming apart. It can also be a time when he can make some really horrible decisions and really REALLY it's like come apart at the seams. And the other stuff is the twelfth house stuff where if you don't get your stuff together there is the possibility of incarceration. Whether you jsut feel imprisoned in your life or imprisoned in your home, or literally you are in prison, it's like drifting. It's like you're jsut coming undone. He has a ways to go Sher. I think the worst is still to come. This is a Neptune Moon which is a terrible aspect of self undoing...total fragility. It can affect his health, terrible judgments...well, we'll see. That's Daniel. Good Luck.

At first after listening to the CD I thought, "If I was forewarned and was still unable to stop it, what's the good in knowing this? But I came to see that the real benefit to me was that I was able to glimpse the bigger picture of what Danny was dealing with, and that changed my perspective.

As parents we feel this overwhelming responsibility to keep our kids lives on track. It's built into the system to overidentify with our children and to feel that their shortcomings and failures reflect on us. Those of us who have challenging children often feel as if we belong in the dog house along with our wayward kids. After getting a glimpse into Danny's chart, all of that changed! I realized that he was a hero! He had to live out that chart which was laden with issues . It dawned on me that the so called "gifted children" didn't have anything over my Dan. They came into the world that way...they had it easy! Pavarotti may have worked very hard on his singing career but he was born with the gift of a golden voice! All of a sudden I realized that the picture is much bigger than what I wanted for Dan and that I must have a mighty big ego to believe that through my love and desire I could alter the course of his chart.