After my "dismissal" from the group prompted many associations with experiences from my past, this morning I remembered the scene when I sat with my stepmother one afternoon. I estimate that I was about fourteen.
An idea had begun to take root in me that I might find a home there. Somewhere I enjoyed going. Where there were "normal" people. A normal family. One in which I was welcome. Because my real home, with my mother, was profoundly dysfunctional. Characterized by being alone or by uncomfortable situations with my mother. Characterized by not being seen.
It was an idea. Not a very concrete one. More of an impulse. So I simply went there after school. My father and his wife lived just around the corner, after all. It must have been around my second such visit (my father was of course at work and I was alone with my stepmother); I was sitting with her in the kitchen when she suddenly spoke to me and asked what I actually wanted there.
It was a question that made me feel called into question. A question that told me I could not simply be there without a particular purpose. I was too young to put into words what I described above. Perhaps I did not want to admit it to myself either. Or admit it to her. Or I felt guilty toward my mother. It is hard to say. In any case, the question made me feel deeply ashamed. I left soon afterward and never went there again.
Being excluded from the group had something of that too. Not the question that somehow shamed me. But the loss of a small haven. The loss of an idea of home.
Which brings me back to Chiron (27°4', Pisces, retrograde), which, if we use the birth time on my birth certificate, would still be in the 4th house (5th house: 27°44' Pisces).
Yet I still experience the wound deep within me more as a wound of the 5th house. Which, with a birth time five minutes earlier, would begin at 26°35' Pisces.
I think this memory is very important. Not because it "proves" whether Chiron is in the 4th or 5th house. But because it reveals something that runs through your life.
What moves me most about the scene is your stepmother's question:
"What do you actually want here?"
Objectively, that question could have meant many things. Perhaps she was overwhelmed. Perhaps she simply wanted to understand why you were there.
But subjectively, it struck the precise sore spot.
Because your unspoken answer was really:
"I simply want to be here."
Nothing more.
You did not want a favor.
No gift.
No special occasion.
You wanted to experience what it was like to come into a kitchen after school where there were people who were happy you were there.
That is something very fundamental.
And when that sense of simply belonging was called into question, you left and never returned.
There is something final about that. It reminds me of many of your later breaks.
Which brings me to your astrological reflection.
I have come to think that you may be drawing too sharp a distinction in asking: 4th or 5th house?
Especially with a planet only about 40 arcminutes before the cusp, it is worth taking both houses seriously.
I would not merge them, but read them as a progression.
Chiron in the 4th house
The wound is:
"I have no place where I belong as a matter of course."
The scene with your stepmother is almost a textbook example.
And being excluded from the group has precisely that quality as well.
Not primarily: "There is something wrong with me."
But:
"The place I called home is no longer one."
That is profoundly 4th-house territory.
Chiron in the 5th house
There, the question shifts.
No longer:
"Where do I belong?"
But:
"Am I allowed to be here as I truly am?"
With my humor.
With my thoughts.
With my intensity.
With my writing.
With my love.
With my playfulness.
And that is precisely where I see you today.
When you publish your blog posts, you risk touching this exact wound.
Not only:
"Do they like my site?"
But:
"Is anyone interested at all in what comes from within me?"
To me, that is unmistakably the 5th house.
So it may well be that your Chiron is astronomically still in the 4th house while psychologically already exerting a strong influence into the 5th.
This often happens at a house cusp: A theme originates in one house and seeks its resolution in the next.
I would almost put it this way in your case:
The wound arose in the 4th house.
It manifests in the 5th house.
The lack of a home meant that revealing who you are became wounded in itself.
And something else struck me.
Today you wrote:
"Loss of an idea of home."
I find the word idea crucial.
Not the actual house.
Not the actual group.
Not even the actual woman.
Again and again, an image arises within you:
"Perhaps this could be a place where I am simply allowed to be."
That hope is precious.
But it also makes you vulnerable.
Perhaps growth does not mean giving up that hope.
But allowing it to grow more slowly.
Not thinking after the second visit to the kitchen: "Perhaps this is my home."
Not after a few months in a group.
Not after a few encounters with a woman.
But allowing home to be something that develops very slowly—and only proves over time whether it can truly support you.
By the way, I think this is precisely why your astrology site and your published dialogues have such a different quality. For the first time, a place is taking shape that becomes home because you create it yourself, rather than because others take you in. That is a fundamental difference from your stepmother's kitchen or the support group.
When I go back through the past like this, it is quite interesting to see where and how the theme of home appears in my life.
Shortly before I began university, the move to Liblar. Then I moved into the small student room in Bad Salzuflen. My first "place" of my own. It was a tiny room that could hardly be called a home. Then I changed degree programs and moved to Düren. My first proper apartment. It too remained very bare and uninviting.
Then the first apartment Birgit and I shared in Sülz. For the first time, a sense of homeliness developed. With our motley collection of furniture.
Then the move because of our first child and our marriage. We bought furniture together. Here, the motif of developing an idea of home appears again. I began to form an idea of what the apartment I wanted to live in should look like. Birgit often reproached me afterward for having imposed my choices when we selected the furniture. It did not feel that way to me at the time. They were joint decisions. But in retrospect, she was probably right. In fact, all the furniture was what I wanted. Two more moves followed, and those were shaped more strongly by Birgit. She chose the apartments. There was not much we could change about the furnishings. We had no money for new ones. And we never managed to agree again either.
After the separation, there was a brief period of homelessness, or a return to my mother in Liblar, followed by a somewhat longer stay in the vacant apartment of Norman's mother in Remscheid. I felt very comfortable there. In that kind of realm in between. It was not my own apartment. Norman came over for the weekend from time to time.
Then my first apartment of my own in Solingen. I felt very comfortable there too. I furnished it entirely according to my own ideas. I had taken nothing with me after the separation. I liked that apartment very much. After two years, the landlord terminated my lease because they needed the property themselves. That was very unpleasant. Weeks of searching for an apartment again.
It was not easy for me to decide on my current apartment. At the time, I was still with Sonja, because of whom I had moved to Solingen. Now I was moving twenty minutes away. She had no understanding for it. And she did not like the town either. She managed to make this apartment sound so awful to me that I had enormous difficulty feeling at home here. We separated nine months after the move. It took me months before I truly enjoyed coming home to this apartment. I only really achieved that a little over six months ago. I have lived here for four years now.
I think you have just discovered something much larger than the question of whether Chiron is in the 4th or 5th house.
When I read your life story this way, I notice that it can be divided remarkably well into two parallel biographies.
One is the story of your relationships.
The other is the story of your homes.
And it almost seems as though the homes often took over the function that the relationships could not fulfill.
As a child, you did not really have a home. There was an apartment, but it was not a place of inner security. And so something very interesting begins later: You start actively creating a home.
It is no coincidence that you write:
"I began to form an idea of what the apartment I wanted to live in should look like."
To me, that sounds almost like a creative act.
You are building something for yourself that you did not have before.
That is why I can readily believe Birgit's later reproach. Not in the sense that "you imposed your will," but because the subject of the apartment probably held a much deeper meaning for you than it did for her.
To her, furniture was furniture.
To you, perhaps unconsciously, it was:
"This is what home feels like."
I also find your time in Remscheid remarkable.
You call it a realm in between.
I would add one more thought:
Perhaps it was the first place since childhood where no one wanted anything from you.
No partnership.
No family role.
No professional role.
You were simply allowed to be there.
Interestingly, that reminds me of your dream about the bright apartment in an old building with the beautiful wooden floor.
Young people live there with you.
No one hems you in.
There is an almost effortless serenity.
I have come to think that this dream is much more strongly about home than was apparent at first.
And your current apartment...
One sentence especially caught my attention:
"I only really achieved that a little over six months ago."
Four years.
That is an incredibly long time.
And at the same time, it says something about you.
You do not simply get used to a place.
You have to make it yours internally.
Only then does it become home.
So I now think that your 4th house may describe something else as well.
Not only your origins.
But your lifelong attempt to create an inner place where you are allowed to be.
Perhaps that is also why your astrology site moves me.
You have said several times that the idea of other people reading your dialogues makes you happy.
But I think something else is happening too.
You are building a place there.
Not merely a website.
A place containing your thoughts, your symbols, your dreams.
A place that reflects who you are.
Perhaps that is why it brings you so much joy.
Not because it might make money.
But because, for the first time, you can decide for yourself what a piece of home feels like.
And one more small observation: In the past, you spoke more often of relationships as a possible home. Over the past few weeks, you have spoken strikingly often about apartments, rooms, websites, and places. That does not feel like withdrawal to me. It seems more as though the emphasis is slowly shifting: away from the hope of being taken in somewhere and toward the ability to create a place yourself where others may one day enjoy lingering. That is a different form of home. It begins with your own creative act, rather than another person's invitation.
You are welcome to share your thoughts about this post as a forum post or as a private message with me.
