It Happened To Me: My Autism Became The Gift That Made Me A Completely Unique And Accurate Astrologer

I was always the best matchmaker, I saw things my siblings didn't, and after my closest friend died, I tapped into the powers I inherited from my mom. PLUS: A summer solstice reading.

Hey Summer People,

With this post, appropriately published at the time of the summer solstice (it's so rare that I time things like that properly that I have to give us credit when we do), I would like to introduce our newest regular columnist, Bee. I will let her tell you her story herself.  Actually, scratch that, not "let her." It's weird when people say stuff like “I'll let you go now" which usually means they want to passive aggressively go now themselves anyway. So I won't let her or you do anything. I don't make the rules! You can do whatever you want any time! What I will say is: Bee tells her own story in an amazing way that I won't try to encapsulate here. Let's all meet up in the comments to talk with her about that and everything else that's going on right now in this world and this universe and, of course, beyond.

Bee, thank you for taking the time to write to me and tell me you wanted to do this. It worked out better than I could have imagined! The rest of you, take the cue and send me what you would like to have published at Jane@AnotherJanePrattThing.com. Any time. I'm here.

I love you all so much and I'm so proud of our new columnist.

Love,

Jane

By Bee Britt

When I was three, my mother died. I don’t remember her voice, and man, that haunts me. All I have are fragments. A few stories. A couple of photographs. I know she believed she had a sixth sense. I know she used to cast spells with her best friend Barbara in the Florida moonlight in the ’60s. That image… two women practicing their own quiet magic… planted something in me.

I wanted to know her. I wanted to know what she touched.

Me, as baby witch, in the ‘90s before I became The Zine Witch.

I did not find astrology through trends or social media. I found it through the absence that comes after loss. As someone who is neurodivergent, emotional regulation has always been an uphill climb. (It was hard to accept that I might be autistic. For many years I was suicidal with hatred for myself and it took my entire life collapsing for me to admit my condition. I finally accepted myself and gained the will to live and help others live a more full life.)

And when someone I loved deeply, someone who knew me in that soul-contract kind of way, my friend Melissa Lynn, died in 2010, her final question to me (not literally but, it was the last heartfelt conversation that we had prior to her passing) landed like a thunderclap: “Have you ever had your birth chart read?”