Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast has a brilliant post today on the need for Cindy Sheehan to get some grief counseling. I think it’s safe to say that there are few on the left who don’t respect the work that Cindy Sheehan has done in gaining recognition for the debacle that is the Iraq War, but as Jill so brilliantly puts it:

When Sheehan announced in May that she was tired of being the right’s favorite punching bag and going home, I cheered her decision. Because the point of her tribute to her son had been lost — some of it her own inadvertent doing due to her inexperience as an activist, much of it not. Whatever her mistakes may have been, the way Sheehan has been treated by the right is reprehensible, and part of a campaign of smears and lies that seems to be directed at only women who dare to speak out against this Administration. Kristen Breitweiser, a Republican voter whose husband died in the World Trade Center, has been another target of the right wing lie machine for daring to ask the necessary questions.

Yet by now it wasn’t just the right that was using Sheehan as its favorite punching bag. In this heartbreaking diary she wrote at Daily Kos, she decries those on the left who had branded her an “attention whore.” This diary encapsulates everything that has been wrong with the very activist left into whose embrace she fell. It’s impossible to read this diary and not recognize someone who not only has realized that she’s been used as a tool by some of the most counterproductive elements of the antiwar movement, but whose emotional state has gone completely off the rails. I recognize it because I’ve been there more than once, albeit for different reason. When the emotional train derails, there are a lot of boxcars lying willy-nilly across the countryside of the mind, and there’s a lot of cleanup that needs to be done.

Now, less than two months after announcing at the end of May her retreat from the Democratic Party and anti-war activism “to be a mother to [her] remaining children, Cindy has decided to run for Congress against Nancy Pelosi. Jill notes that Cindy Sheehan’s inability to find a clear focus and stick with it his hurting her ability to be a standardbearer for her message.

Cindy Sheehan is a Cancer (see chart). whose focus is taking care of her family. Cancers are sensitive and emotionally vulnerable and often find it difficult to care for themselves because their focus is typically on caring for others. Cindy’s Mercury is also in Cancer, and it conjuncts the Midheaven which is the point at which we project ourselves into public life. Mercury there suggests a great deal of change in that public arena and we have certainly seen that. It also indicates that Cindy’s public role (Midheaven) is to express herself in a caring and nurturing way (Cancer).

However, Leo is intercepted in the tenth house which is the house controlled by the Midheaven. An intercepted sign occurs when the sign on the cusp of one house is two signs from the cusp of the previous house. The missing sign shows up in the center of the house. It has been my observation that intercepted signs behave as an unconscious influence. In the example here, Cindy’s conscious projection of her public persona is the nurturing sensitivity of Cancer, but the subconscious influence is the need for public admiration of Leo. When a sign operates in the subconscious like this we often see the shadow or the more negative traits rather than the hero, with the more positive ones.

Cindy has a triple conjunction of Mars, Venus and Uranus all in the tenth house and all in Leo. Venus in Leo is quite charismatic, and in the tenth house (of public life) creates an attractive aura around her, making it easy for her to draw people to her for the sake of her cause. Venus conjunct Uranus suggests an interest in unusual people and a need for autonomy and distance in relationships. While Cindy’s Sun and Mercury in Cancer demonstrates a need to nourish her home life and family, Venus/Uranus, especially in the tenth house and in Leo, needs to be off doing something for one’s own self. The addition of Mars in Leo with Venus and Uranus just adds energy to that configuration and exacerbates the need for admiration (Leo) and to be off on one’s own doing great things.

Cindy’s rising sign or ascendant is Libra, the sign of balance and relationship, and Neptune is retrograde, sitting right on the ascendant where it becomes part of her persona. Neptune rising people can be difficult to know because the Neptune influence tends to create a cloud through which they cannot be seen. Libra rising is a mirror, able to reflect back to each individual what they want to see. The combination of Libra rising and Neptune on the ascendant suggests an individual who has a very hard time knowing who she really is.

Chiron is retrograde in Cindy’s chart, showing that she is particularly sensitive to the healing and wounding dynamics of Chiron. Those sensitive to Chiron find themselves needing to face their wounds head-on and process them over and over until the experience is devoid of impact and no longer has power over them. Chiron is also in opposition (180 degrees) to Mars and Venus in Cindy’s chart, which suggests that she has a tendency to become frustrated in satisfying her personal desires (Mars) and that her dealings with others (Venus) can be rather painful. This dynamic in Cindy’s chart is being stressed right now by the approaching return of Chiron to its place in her birthchart which is affecting the Mars/Venus conjunction as well.

Chiron transits of any kind, but particularly over a sensitive system like this tend to bring up old unresolved psychic pain that we have stuffed under the rug, often for many years. I always compare this to when you burn your skin and a blister forms over that burn to protect the sensitive damage from further pain. Later, though, an infection can grow under the blister and then the doctor has to remove the blister to expose the wound to the air so that it can heal. This is the Chiron experience; Chiron exposes the wound and brings the feelings into our conscious awareness so that we can experience them from the perspective of our present wisdom and then release them.

If we do not attend to this process in a conscious way, the emotional rollercoaster of the Chiron experience can drive us to do anything that we can to distract us from this emotional sensitivity. Perhaps this is what is driving Cindy Sheehan in and out of her activist persona as she frantically searches for some relief from her emotional pain.