MichelleSaya
Astrology gave me back a life that looked fine and felt wrong
Hi, I'm Michelle
Most people come to me for a reading because something quietly stopped working, and they've started to suspect it's the beginning of something rather than the end.
I found astrology the way most people do, at the bottom of something. I was younger, further away, and doing a decent impression of someone who was fine. My chart described a person who was never going to want the life I'd been handed, and it described her without embarrassment, which is more than anyone around me had managed. Everything since has been a beautiful unfolding of what happens when you follow your own soul map as shown by the sky.
Fast forward to today, I read birth charts, and the places on earth where they come alive. My sincerest wish is to walk people home to themselves.
The road here · seven lamps
The long way here
I didn't get here in a straight line. A few wrong turns, a lot of years, and each one taught me something I use now. Here's the road, lamp by lamp.
The first lamp
Accountant or doctor
Those were the options from my strict immigrant parents. But I wanted neither. What I wanted was distance. I left California for New York and enrolled in fashion school, because design was the one thing I loved for the craft of it.
The second lamp
What the fashion industry actually was
Fashion looked like the escape at first but soon I realized it was a trap. Drugs, exploitation, blackmail, taking advantage of unpaid interns, and being blacklisted by the industry if I didn't comply. So I left.
The third lamp
The sensible detour
I left the fashion industry and worked at a STEM university doing social media & crisis management. 2 years in, being constantly mansplained in meetings made me desire entrepreneurship.
The fourth lamp
The day everything stopped
There was a shooting at my workplace. In the months after, everything in my life started unraveling. I let go of the job, the relationship, and the self-concept I had been holding together with both hands.
The fifth lamp
A one-way ticket
I flew to Bali and let myself fall apart. Being overseas was where I discovered my first birth chart reading, in the forests of Ubud. Someone described me accurately for the first time in my life, and I had no idea what to do with it.
The sixth lamp
Locking into my entrepreneurial build era
After I took my Bali trip, I locked in and built 3 six-figure businesses the next 3 years. From marketing for seven-figure brands to my biz being featured in Harper's Bazaar, Brides, and GQ. On the outside, content. Yet, one thing was still missing.
2020-present day
Coming out of the spirit closet while grounding with earth
6 years ago I chose full expression: my online astrology practice guided by my Sagittarius North Node and Aquarius Midheaven. Between client sessions I paint, I travel around the world with my husband and 2 cats, and I also day trade to watch how market cycles rhyme with the sky.
The big three · how I actually work
Sun, moon, rising
What you're actually hiring, said plainly, in the three places a chart would look first.
Sun · Sagittarius
I'll tell you the truth and I'll tell you the whole of it. Most of what people bring me is a decision: whether to move, whether to leave, whether to keep funding something that stopped paying them back. A chart is useful for that. It'll show you what you can sustain, what you'll resent by week three, and when pushing is worth it. It works alongside your therapist, your accountant, and your own gut.
Moon · Scorpio
I go straight to the thing you've stopped telling people about. Mercury sits with Pluto in my sixth house, which in practice means I'm not squeamish and I don't get bored partway through. You can bring the unflattering version. I'll describe what's actually in the chart and stay with you while you look at it. The decision stays yours, which is the only way it sticks anyway.
Rising · Gemini
I explain things as I go. No jargon dropped on you without a translation, and by the end you'll be able to read a decent chunk of your own chart without me. That's the goal, honestly. I'd rather you leave with a skill than a dependency. I'll also say plainly that I don't think your hard year was scheduled for your personal growth. Some things just happen. What you do next is where the chart is actually useful.
Hellenistic technique gives me the mechanics: sect, chart rulers, profections, the timing of it. Evolutionary astrology gives me the language for what a person is carrying.
The familiars · both Leos, naturally
Two Leos run this office
I have two cats, both Leo suns, because the universe has a sense of humor about who holds the authority in this house.
Bubba and Yuto are my sidekicks in life and business. They sit in on most readings from just off screen, and they take full credit for everything here.
Supervises every chart from the softest seat in the room, blinks slowly at difficult transits, and approves major decisions by falling asleep on them.
Finds the one sunbeam in any room and sits in it like a stage light. Auditor of keyboards, tester of gravity, loudest opinion on deadline days.
Proud cat mama. The lion energy is not a coincidence.
傳承 · the lineage
Trained in the old ways
Astrology is a handed-down art. This is where mine comes from.
Chart techniques
I primarily use Whole Sign for natal readings and for predictive transit work, though I can adapt to Placidus for natal readings upon request.
Philosophical approach
My work is deeply informed by mythology, theology, and archetypal symbolism, which I explore in my writings and workshops, offering nuanced interpretations of transits.
Formal training
Certified in Adam Elenbaas's Nightlight Astrology School, and I completed Steven Forrest's Evolutionary Astrology program (FCEA) and Moses Siregar's Holistic Locational Astrology course.
If you've read this far
Bring me your chart
A chart shows the conditions you were born into and the cycles moving through them right now. Bring the question you've been circling with.