I Got a Soul Animal Reading For My 40th Birthday

It's not a spirit animal. Plus, is this my year?

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I’m not sure why, when you tell some people it’s your birthday, they say, “This is your year.” Don’t get me wrong, I love that people tell me this. I, too, would like to believe that this is my year. But this year, on my 40th birthday (just two weeks ago!), multiple people said this to me.

Some were my closest friends and I genuinely believe that they believe that this is going to be my year. These are people who have been walking alongside me and supporting me through a tumultuous few years, have seen how hard I work in life and love and motherhood, and I think, see that I am in a good place and feel confident about my ability to totally fucking dominate my year. Then there were other people—some of them already in their 40s who feel like this is a kickass decade, and some of them were strangers, like my hot yoga instructor.

This is where I go woo-woo on you. I am not religious, but I am spiritual, and if I learned anything from getting a soul tattoo, it’s that I will totally bro down with a metaphysical situation any day of the week. Part of this belief in the metaphysical stems from a trust that there is something larger at work around us. Some people call it God, I call it the Universe, you can call it Fate or Jan or Vivian or whatever name feels right to you.

In short, I believe that we are subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) guided through life and introduced to people, places, and experiences that are meant for us, and if we respond in ways that are authentic to ourselves, our heart, and our truth (all of which often require some level of self awareness and/or recognition of self), then we move further down the path to our soul’s potential. Which, according to Michael Newton’s Journey of Souls, is the purpose of each soul’s physical manifestation: To be better with each lifetime. It’s just my own personal theory. You still with me? I could go on, but for our intents and purposes, I’ll cut to the chase.

One of my dearest friends, someone who clearly already knows all this about me, bought me a 1:1 Soul Animal Reading for my birthday. It was with a lovely woman named Fox. Truly a gift only a fellow mystic could dream up. Right now you’re probably asking, “But what is a soul animal?!”

Fox explains:

“A soul animal is a species-specific animal that represents your core energy signature…an animal that’s kind of like the mascot for the energetic frequency that is your soul, the energy that makes you alive…or rather, the battery power that makes you who you are.”

Wondering the difference between a soul and a spirit animal? Here’s a primer:

Curious about what all this is rooted in? It’s theoretical, of course, and Fox details a bit of her background for me.

“It’s based on intuition, it’s based on the 13 years that I’ve been working, and my theory is based on a lot of combined efforts from across the globe by a lot of different metaphysicians. The idea here is that energy cannot be destroyed, just like in physics.”

Ok, WANNA KNOW WHAT MY SOUL ANIMAL IS?

A Monarch Butterfly.

I got a little emotional as Fox was explaining this to me because it hit home in a few ways. I haven’t personally related to butterflies or ever found myself especially intrigued by them. But growing up, my mom often referred to me as her butterfly. I was never (and still am never) content to stay too long in one place. She said I would alight here and there, experiencing this and that, and move along to something else.

My daughter likes to put her jacket on upside down, making wings, and run around the house exclaiming, “I’m a butterfly!” She calls out butterflies each times she sees them. She includes them in made-up stories. This is because she studies them at school and has always loved The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I realize this is a coincidence. She is two and only knows that a handful of animals and insects exist. But when I told Fox these anecdotes, she said, “They may not know it, but perhaps they see you,” and I also like to believe that’s true.

Lastly, I have an oddly distinct memory of the first conversation I had about a Monarch butterfly. I was with one of my dearest friends, Helen, in her garden. She pointed out a Monarch to me, commenting on their beauty. I somehow had never known that that’s what this bright orange butterfly was called.

When I told this to Fox, she said, “Consider what was going on during that time in your life.” I choked up a bit because it was a depressing time in my life. A time when my marriage was thin and my self worth was low and I was desperate for transformation—the very thing my soul animal represents. Helen was a lifeline for me at that time, a necessary comfort, and perhaps this moment in her garden was the universe’s effort to remind me of who I am, to reassure me that transformation would come.

“The more aligned you are to you and your cycles, the more feedback you get.” Fox explained that, just how the Monarchs make the journey to Mexico each year, now may be the time for me to go the distance. That I may need to work a bit harder, be a bit riskier, in order to reach my full potential; that staying stagnant won’t be benefit me or those around me.

At the end of the day, she explains that this is simply another tool to use for self discovery.

“If you’re into metaphysics at all, there’s so much out there, and this is just one of the many tools… This is about getting you back to yourself, it’s a form of return-ism. If this all ends up being empowering for you, you can use this as a way to communicate with people your boundaries, your expectations, your needs, your wants, and hopefully that will just help you flourish in better ways.”

While I choose to put my cynicism aside to believe in these otherworldly exercises, I also understand that they are theories, ideas, suggestions. Like zodiac signs and enneagrams and other forms of self-discovery, there is always something we could cling to try and make sense of ourselves. As humans, we look for patterns and seek reason. It’s how our brains are built. But because I believe we sometimes intersect with people, places, and experiences at “the right time,” I’m choosing to sit with Fox’s insight. I’m choosing to believe that maybe there is a grain of truth to her reading. After all, what bad could come from me trying a little harder to reach my potential? From going the distance?

Experiences like this always prompt self-reflection, and maybe that’s what they’re good for. They make us pay attention to where we’ve been and where we’re going.

It’s not that years prior have been total shit; they’ve just been tumultuous. The personal and professional upheaval began in 2018 in Hudson, NY, threatening my relationship to my husband and myself for a full two years. In 2020, even as we drove, as a pair, as far as we could across the country to Los Angeles, I still didn’t know if our marriage would survive. Emotionally, I was spent.

As the dust settled in L.A. and the troubles in our relationship receded, the pandemic began. In a matter of months, we were financially distressed, maybe more so than we’d ever been. The rent was high, the food was pricey, and while my husband’s professional life crisis had begun to taper off, the pandemic made it so that his dreams of starting fresh in L.A., where opportunity was abundant, dried up like a well in the desert. He made due with part-time work and odd jobs; I tried my best to amp up my freelance work, but I was tired. And very pregnant.

By the end of 2021, we were faced with the reality that we couldn’t afford to stay in Los Angeles under these circumstances, so we left all the comforts and community that had kept us sane and moved again. This time to North Carolina, with a threadbare community, into a two-bedroom apartment with a 10-month-old and a 90-lb. dog. My husband found a full-time job that he hated. We spent every penny of our savings on a 1970s build during one of the worst buyers’ markets in history. He lost the job he hated. The hits, it seemed, just kept coming. “I think this is just being an adult?” I said to him once.

All this is to say: Mentally, I’ve been coasting. I’ve opted out of risk and instead clung to reliability because I needed to. I have not had the bandwidth, the energy, the desire, or focus to “go the distance” in any sort of voluntary way because two cross-country moves in two years is plenty of distance, physically and emotionally. For years now, I’ve needed to move slowly, casually grazing on what life offered me instead of barreling towards goals, visible or not. I guess I was in my caterpillar phase, if you will. Then my cocoon phase.

These days, with so few social distractions and such a predictable day-to-day routine, I’ve grown quite good at listening to what my body and mind are asking for. When Fox said, “I can tell you’ve been doing the work…but I think you’re going to have to work a little harder. You need to go the distance,” I understood what she meant.

Well, at first I thought, “Hrmph. Work harder? Geez, I feel like I’m working all the time.” But really that’s not true. We can all, almost always, find it in ourselves to work a smidge harder. Fox’s reading made me realize maybe I do have it in me.

Now that my daughter is two, I have officially transitioned into motherhood and I feel great about it. My marriage is good in that way that marriage becomes after some 14 years together and a baby: busy but easy, trustworthy, comfortable like hugs and sweatpants but with just enough spice. Like a jalapeño margarita. Work is good and I have my writing practice and I’m enjoying pilates and long walks and this 1970s house will do for now. I am comfortable navigating the ins and outs of myself, my needs, and my future. I finally feel that mentally and creatively “I’m back.”

Now that I’ve got firm footing, maybe this is the season in which I get a little uncomfortable, work a little harder, release these wings and go the distance. Maybe what Fox was trying to say was, “This is going to be your year.” Or at least that’s what I’ll choose to believe.