was telling stories. As an editor at a daily newspaper in Aruba, she wrote articles that spotlighted the lives of everyday people. While she was drawn to their powerful tales of service and community, she felt dissatisfied with her career. If you look at her“Mercury represents writers. If you look at Mercury in my natal chart, nothing is helping my writing. … I was frustrated because I wanted to make a living out of it and couldn’t,” Gabriel tells Refinery29 Somos.
“I had a very complex upbringing,” she says. “I don’t think my story is that unique, but I also don’t think it’s that common. There was a lot I couldn’t make sense of, a lot of gaps everywhere in my identity, a lot of things you lose to immigration. And astrology really, really helped me put it together again.”. While it’s rarely an easy decision to leave a stable but unsatisfying job to start a business, she took the leap and is soaring.
But that’s only part of it. She’s also found success because she refuses to dim her light. As a Black immigrant woman, she’s aware of her social position. When she wrote stories that criticized contemporary political and social issues in Aruba, where she lives and grew up, people questioned her place. She learned then that some may agree with her words, but don’t want the message to come from her.
“Now I’m an even better writer because now my writing is not stressed out,” she says. “My writing is not for trying to pay bills. My writing can just flow out of whatever it wants to flow.”