Shameful Behavior

shedding the shame of being yourself

It happened again.

It was a little after 2 in the afternoon, and I needed a bath.

I’ve been working hard with some deep emotional material that feels ready to see the light of day in a new way. That has led to a flurry of beautiful activity, bringing together the images I’ve created with the words I’m writing in a way that I hope will feel valuable and welcome and maybe even like a warm, loving hug to the people who read them.

And I needed a bath before I could move on to the next task on my list, which is updating my astrology reading page and booking links.

I’ve been working on that for longer than it seems like it SHOULD take. It’s still in progress, but it’s getting closer.

My partner was working from home, and he loves creating a sacred bathing temple for me.

And I knew I needed this bath.

It’s not even a question of deserving.

It was literally the next thing to do to care for myself so that I can keep caring for the work that’s coming through me.

So, I told him I wanted a bath. And then I said, “Is that okay?”

And he just looked at me and smiled.

Like… “Really, Angel???”.

Of course it’s okay.

I’ve been thinking a lot about these words lately - “shameful behavior.” It’s part of a larger body of writing that I’ve been wrestling with for years, and, just like my other ‘works in progress,’ it’s getting there too.

We all encounter shame in one way or another, but with my natal Mercury, Mars, Sun and Moon in Virgo in the 5th house, I’ve always been a “get your work done before you get to have fun” kind of girl.

And that has led to a lot of exhaustion and overwhelm and, frankly, sometimes shameful behavior.

I never even heard that phrase until about twenty years ago.

And then it kept creeping into conversations about my kids, what they were doing, what I was doing, what everyone was doing.

“Shameful behavior.”

Eventually I realized this was a deeply embedded lexicon within the family system, which led to an even more uncomfortable awareness: That I, too, was an unwitting accomplice in advancing its narrative.

But here’s the thing that feels important to me now:

When we realize that’s what’s happening, are we able to pause and ask ourselves some different questions?

What part of this is actually shameful?

Is there another way of looking at this?

Is there another way to engage with what’s surfacing here?

And there I was, sitting in the bathtub thinking about “shameful behavior”. If I wasn’t in the bathtub, I would probably have my journal open, drawing circles while asking myself what I even think I know about the idea that taking a bath in the middle of the day could somehow qualify as shameful behavior.

And as I sat there listening to Simrit asking “Who do you think you are?”, it brought me back to the origin point of this work in the first place.

My Saturn in Gemini in the 2nd house.

“Who do you think you are, kid?”

This Virgo first quarter moon is turning up the heat on the emotional emancipation process that I’ve been consciously walking since the lunar eclipse on my birthday in September 2025.

One of the things I didn’t include in my recent blog post or rising sign readings is that this first quarter moon is also connected to what I’ve been calling the Four Degrees of Emotional Freedom event happening July 19, 2026.

There’s so much more I want to say about that.

But for now, what feels most important is this:

Maybe emotional freedom begins the moment we stop automatically condemning ourselves for being human.

Maybe reclaiming joy, creativity, rest, emotional honesty, care, and self-permission is not “shameful behavior” after all.

Maybe it’s part of learning how to live well.

And maybe that’s the kind of astrology and creativity work I want to keep exploring from here forward.