Episode 31:THE TORCH IS OURS: A Tribute to Dolly Parton, Gloria Steinem & Every Soul Rising in Courageous Alignment

Welcome back to Courageous Alignment, everyone. I'm your host Cher, and today we are talking about a tribute to Dolly Parton, Gloria Steinem, and every soul rising in courageous alignment. The world feels different this week. Not heavier, but wider. Not darker, but much deeper. Because two women who shaped the emotional architecture of our culture, Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem, have crossed the veil. And when legends leave the physical plane, the collective field obviously doesn't collapse, but it definitely expands. It vibrates and it calls. When I first heard that Dolly passed over, I found myself saying out loud to a few people, you know, when someone like Dolly leaves this world, surely we should be given three more souls just like her in her place. Three voices with that kind of devotion, three hearts with that kind of generosity, three lives that know how to turn pain into beauty and service into song. And then days later, Gloria crossed to. And something in me whispered, something in me said No, we're not waiting for three more dollies or glorious. Maybe the torch bearers are already here. Maybe we are the ones who have been walking the earth while dollies joy and glorious fire were still embodied among us. Maybe we have been absorbing the frequency all along, learning from their courage, their craft, their truth, their tenderness, their refusal to disappear. Maybe this is the moment of transmission for some already here. Because the torch doesn't leave the world when a legend crosses the veil. The torch looks for hands willing to carry it next. Today's episode is a tribute, yes, but more than that it's a threshold. A call to every person who feels something stirring beneath the surface of their life. To the ones who know they are being asked to carry a torch they did not light, but are brave enough to keep it burning even when their hands tremble, even when the path is not clear, even when the world has not yet made room for the fullness of who they are becoming. Let's begin with the archetypes, not just who they were, but the cosmic signatures they carried. Dolly Parton carried the cosmic architect of joy. She had a Capricorn sun, a Capricorn rising, and a Virgo moon. Earth, devotion, mastery, and craft. Capricorn is an earth sign and the goat is a climber, steady, strategic, and determined to reach the summit one sure footed step at a time. A Capricorn does not need the mountain to be easy, they simply need to know it's worth climbing. No wonder Dolly loved the smoky mountains so much. They mirrored something ancient in her spirit, the ability to rise, build, endure, and turn every rugged path into a place of beauty. And her Virgo Moon tells us how Dolly tended the inner world behind the rhinestones. Virgo Moon carries the emotional need to be useful, devoted, precise, and of service. It is the moon of the craftswoman, the healer, the one who finds holiness in the details and turns discipline into a form of love. For Dolly, that Virgo moon helped ground her enormous sparkle into something practical and generous. It gave her the instinct to refine, to care, to work hard, to notice what others needed, and to make beauty feel usable, something people could lean on, sing with, laugh through, and survive by. Dolly had a Pisces Venus, her glamour, softness, sparkle, and the ability to understand unconditional love. Her Aquarius Mercury gave her wit and innovation, her Scorpio Mars gave her the steel spine behind all that sequence. And her Chiron and Libra held the wound and the medicine of harmony, beauty, belonging, and relational healing. Dolly wasn't just joyful. She was engineered for legacy. And Gloria Steinem, she was the architect of the fire of liberation. She had an Aries sun of Leo Moon and Scorpio rising. Fire, heart, truth, and power. With both her Aries Sun and Leo Moon in the fire signs, Gloria carried the elemental signature of ignition, courage, visibility, and creative force. Aries brings the spark of the pioneer, the one willing to move first, speak first, and challenge what has become too small for the soul. Leo brings the heart flame, the courage to be seen, to lead with conviction, and to turn personal radiance into collective inspiration. Together this double fire energy made her more than brave. It made her a living torch, fueled by truth, passion, and the refusal to let women's voices be diminished. That Scorpio rising became the way that fire entered a room. Scorpio on the Ascendant gives a soul the presence of depth, discernment, mystery, and uncompromising truth. It is the gaze that doesn't look away. The aura that can sense what is hidden and the power to move through fear, shadow, and silence without surrendering the self. For Gloria, this rising sign gave her fire, a deep current, not just visibility but penetration, not just courage but transformation. Not just leadership, but the capacity to expose what culture tried to bury. Her Pisces Mercury gave her intuitive communication, activism with poetry. Her Aquarius Venus gave her devotion to equality and liberation. She had a Virgo Mars, which gave her strategy, precision, and the relentless work ethic. And her Chiron in Gemini held the wound and the medicine of voice, narrative, communication, and truth telling. Gloria wasn't just courageous, she was cosmically wired for revolution. There comes a moment in a person's life when the calling stops whispering and starts knocking. It may not arrive as certainty, it may arrive as restlessness, a grief you cannot name, as a vision you keep dismissing, as a sense that the life you've been living is too small for the soul you came here to embody. To carry the torch doesn't mean you feel fearless, it means you feel the weight of legacy, the ache of responsibility, the tenderness of being seen, and you choose to take one honest step anyway. Maybe your torch is your voice, maybe it's your art, maybe it is the family pattern you are here to end. Maybe it's the room you were meant to lead, the story you were meant to tell, the healing work you are meant to offer, or the truth you are finally ready to live out loud. The calling is sacred, but courage is how we answer it. Dolly carried her torch through joy, devotion, generosity, and craft. Glory carried hers through truth, liberation, language, and fire. Neither path was easy, neither woman waited until the world made it safe. And that is the invitation for us now, not to imitate them, not to disappear beneath their greatness, but to let their courage become a lantern, to let it illuminate the places in us where we have been waiting, silencing, shrinking, or asking for permission to become who we already are. There is something metaphysical that happens when icons transition. Their physical presence dissolves, but their energetic imprint expands. Dolly's Capricorn mastery is now a frequency you can turn into. Her Virgo devotion is now a template for your craft. Her Pisces magic is now a permission slip for your softness. Her Libra Chiron is now a balm for your relationships and belonging. Gloria's Aries fire is now an ignition point. Her Leo heart is now a reminder to be seen. Her Scorpio rising is now a call to walk into rooms with your truth in your bones. Her Gemini Chiron is now a healing of your voice, your narrative, your story. This is cosmic inheritance. This is soul lineage. This is multidimensional leadership. And right now, the universe is whispering. Pick up the torch. Pick it up. And maybe that whisper is not dynamic. Maybe it sounds like the sentence you keep writing in your journal, the conversation you know you need to have, the boundary you can no longer avoid, the dream that keeps returning because it belongs to your future, not your fantasy. And the timing of this episode matters because the week ending September twelfth carries the medicine of the Virgo New Moon on September eleventh, the energy supporting this portal. Virgo is the sacred editor, the healer of patterns, the priestess of devotion, and the one who asks, what is useful? What is true? What is ready to be simplified, refined, implanted with intention so the medicine can come through clearly. A new moon in Virgo is not about performing our healing, it's about beginning again with devotion. It invites us to set intentions around our daily rituals, our service, our wellness, our craft, and the sacred systems that support the life we are becoming brave enough to live. And in the context of this episode, it asks each of us, what small faithful practice will help me become a clearer vessel for the torch? Then as we move towards October, Venus begins her retrograde journey in Scorpio from October 3rd through November 14th of 2026, a cycle that we astrologers associate with revisiting love, value, intimacy, desire, money, beauty, and self-worth. While Scorpio brings the work down into the depths of truth, trust, power, shadow, and transformation. This is the collective purification. Venus, retrograde, and Scorpio asks, do you still value what costs you your truth? Are you still calling something love when it requires your disappearance? Are you still dimming your torch to stay attached to what cannot hold your becoming? And then Mercury retrogrades in Scorpio from October twenty fourth through November thirteenth, bringing the voice into the underworld too. Mercury rules communication, memory, thought, language, and the stories we tell ourselves. In Scorpio, Mercury does not skim the surface. It asks us to name what has been buried, revisit what was left unsaid, and reclaim the truth we once swallowed to survive. So if the Virgo new moon plants the seed and prepares the vessel, Venus retrograde in Scorpio purifies the heart, and Mercury retrograde in Scorpio retrieves the voice. Together these transits become part of the collective initiation of this episode. They help us ask, What torch am I ready to claim? What must I realize so I can carry it cleanly? What truth must I speak so the flame does not go out in my own hands? This is why this timing matters. We are not simply honoring two women after they've crossed. We are standing inside a season that is asking the collective to refine, remember, descend, reclaim, and rise with cleaner hands, braver hearts, and voices that have finally come home to themselves. And this is where I can no longer speak about the torch from a distance. With my Scorpio mid-heaven sitting at eight degrees, Venus will station retrograde directly on the doorway of my public calling before moving back into my ninth house of wisdom, belief, and higher truth. Mercury will be traveling through my tenth house of voice, work, visibility, and legacy, then returning to the ninth to ask where the message I am sharing, is it still rooted in the truth I came here to live? So this season feels personal to me. It feels like the sky is asking me not just to talk about the torch, but to become more honest about how I carry it. And while we're talking about me personally, not because my chart is the point, but because sometimes one person naming their torch gives another person permission to search for their own. When I look at the way Dolly and Gloria carried their torches, I can feel where their legacy touches something ancient in me. And that is what I want for you too, not to listen passively, but to listen devotionally, to let their lives become a doorway back into your own. And ask, where does this live in me? Where have I been carrying light without naming it? Where is my heart asking me to become braver? For me that torch lives first in my Leo Sun, in the call to lead from the heart, to be visible with warmth, and to let creative truth become service. So when I ask you to look into your own chart, I want you to begin there. Where does your light naturally emanate? What sign, what house or placement shows the way your soul came here to shine? My Capricorn Ascendant teaches me that a calling is not only something we feel, it is something we build. One step, one structure, one container, one brave commitment at a time. And that's where I feel my connection to Dolly's earth medicine, devotion, discipline, craft, and legacy, not as comparison, but as resonance. So ask yourself, where does your chart show the path of responsibility? Where are you being asked to stop waiting for permission and begin building the thing your soul already knows to hold? My Aquarius moon reminds me that my calling is not only personal, it belongs to the collective. It asks me to think beyond the old paradigm, to create spaces where people can awaken, gather, and remember who they are becoming. And this is where I feel my connection to Gloria's liberation frequency. The part of me that knows healing is never just individual. It ripples into culture, family systems, communities, and futures we may never personally see. And where my torch becomes medicine is in my Virgostellium in the eighth house, which shows me how I carry the torch through transformation. Not transformation as an idea, but transformation as a lived initiation. With Mercury retrograde on the cusp of my eighth house in Leo, my voice has always had to travel inward before it could come outward. It is the placement of someone who is here to revisit old stories, retrieved buried language, and learn how to speak from the heart about the things people are often afraid to talk about. Then Uranus in Virgo in my eighth house brings the awakener into. To the underworld. It gives my torch a frequency of liberation through truth, the ability to see patterns suddenly disrupt inherited fear, and help others break open into a more honest relationship with their healing. Pluto and Virgo, also in the eighth house, that deepens that assignment even further. Pluto is a planet of death, rebirth, power, shadow, and soul-level transformation. In the eighth house, it asks me to become intimate with what is hidden, meaning grief, control, fear, trauma, ancestral patterns, and the places where power has been lost or misused, so that what once was unconscious can become medicine. And lastly, Venus in Virgo in the eighth house brings love, worth, beauty, and devotion into the deepest chambers of transformation. This placement teaches me that the torch is not only carried through strength, it's carried through discernment, sacred intimacy, embodied self-worth, and the willingness to heal the places where love and survival became tangled together. Together with Mercury, Uranus, Pluto, and Venus, all in the eighth house landscape, show me one of the deepest places where I understand my own assignment, which is to turn experience into medicine, grief into guidance, shadow into wisdom, and unseen patterns into conscious choice. This is where my torch becomes alchemical. Not because I avoid the dark, but because I have learned that the dark can become a doorway. This is why the eighth house supports me in transformation work. It gives me a kind of X-ray vision into the darkness of others. Not to judge it or fix it or claim authority over it, but to recognize what may be hidden beneath the surface. It gives me the capacity to sit with what is tender or complex, shadowed, or unspoken without needing to rush it into the light before it's ready. It helps me sense the patterns beneath the pattern, the grief beneath the behavior, the wound beneath the coping, the ancestral thread beneath the present-day pain. My eighth house placements do not just make me interested in transformation, they help me create space for it. They teach me how to stay present at the threshold where something old is dying and something more truthful is trying to be born. And this is the invitation I want to offer you. Look not only at your chart but into your heart. Your placements may name the pattern, but your heart will tell you where it's asking to be lived. Your chart can show you the map, but your courage is what turns the map into the path. So pause here and ask yourself what part of me has been waiting to be trusted? What wisdom have I inherited but not yet embodied? What torch am I holding even if I have been afraid to admit it? Courage is not something we discover all at once. Courage is something we practice in the exact places where we used to abandon ourselves. In the moment we tell the truth, stay present, choose ourselves, and take the next step before the fear has fully left the room. It begins in the body with the small holy moment when you tell the truth to yourself before you tell it to anyone else. It grows when you honor the tremble instead of shaming it. When you stop waiting for confidence and begin trusting your congruence. When you understand that fear does not mean you are off path. Sometimes fear means you're standing at the threshold of your initiation. Dolly teaches us that courage can be tender. Gloria teaches us that courage can be disruptive. And those listening now are here to learn that courage can also be deeply personal, quiet at first, then undeniable. You find the courage to carry the torch by remembering that it was never meant to be carried perfectly, it was meant to be carried honestly, not with apology, not with the old habit of making your light more palatable. You carry it by choosing alignment over approval, by letting your voice shake and speaking anyway, by letting your hands tremble and build anyway, by letting your heart break open and loving anyway. That is how legacies become lived. That is how remembrance becomes responsibility. That is how the torch moves from their hands into ours, not as a burden, but as a blessing, an assignment, and a promise to become more awakened than we were before. And if you feel the calling, place your hand over your heart, and let this be the place where the torch is received, not from pressure, but from the quiet truth that your life has always carried meaning. Breathe in the ones who came before you, their devotion, their defiance, their joy, their truth, the songs they sang, the doors they opened, the rooms they entered so we could enter differently. And now breathe in your own courage, not borrowed or performed or forced, the courage that rises when your soul recognizes its assignment. The courage to be seen, to be heard, to be changed, and to become the person your former self once prayed for. Whisper with me. I carry the torch, I trust the calling, I take the next brave step. I do not have to be fearless to be faithful. Because the world does not need you to become someone else, it needs you to become more fully, fiercely, and faithfully yourself. As Dolly's joy reminds you that softness can be strong, as Gloria's fire reminds you that truth can change the world, let your own calling become the compass. You are not just honoring their legacy, you're continuing it, expanding it, evolving it. And if this episode stirred something in you, a memory, a spark, a holy discomfort, a knowing you can no longer ignore, follow it. Your calling is not accidental. Your voice is not optional. Your courage is not reserved for some future version of you. You are part of the lineage, you are part of the continuation, you are part of the next wave of souls who will shape culture, heal families, build movements, and rewrite narratives. This is your moment. This is your courageous alignment. And if the torch is trembling in your hands, let it tremble. It is still lit, it is still yours, and now we rise. And if you feel called to take this work from inspiration to embodiment, I want to invite you to join me in person for Moonlight and Medicine, a Chiron retreat for the soul level renewal. This retreat carries the intention where the wound becomes wisdom and the medicine becomes you. It takes place Thursday, September 24th, beginning at 6 p.m. through Sunday, September 27th at 10 a.m. in Carefree, Arizona. This gathering is not about becoming someone new. It is about remembering the truth of who you are beneath the noise, the rules, the survival patterns, and the old stories. It is a sacred space for healing, reflection, embodiment, and courageous alignment. A place to tend the wound, listen for the wisdom, and come home to the medicine already living inside you. To register, please go to my website www.courageousalignment3.com forward slash retreats. And if today's episode resonated, please follow, continue to tune in, and share it with someone who's ready to step into their truth. You can also find more information on my services and all upcoming retreats at www.courageousalignment3.com. New episodes will be dropped every other week to help this work breathe, deepen, and evolve. Remember, when you are truly in alignment with your soul, your heart will follow, your mind will become its wingman, and life will become much easier. Courageous Alignment Podcast is where it all comes together. I'm looking forward to spending more time with you real soon. I'll see you then.