Who I Am And How I Got Here
My name is Karen Hawkwood, though more people know me as KJ Sassypants.
I got claimed by astrology at age 15, 40 years ago, and have been studying ever since. Formally, I completed Steven Forrest’s Apprenticeship Training in 2000, and graduated from the first class at Kepler College of Astrological Arts and Sciences in 2004.
I’ve also been self-educating from the Jungian and depth-psychological vein of the astrological world, via the teachings of Liz Greene and the Centre for Psychological Astrology in London, since the mid-90s. It’s the single biggest influence on my work and forms the foundation of my relationship with astrology.
I never wanted to be “an astrologer” the way I saw people doing that – single session “readings” with little or no depth, merely information-dumping, with no chance for real conversation or deep engagement.
I knew I didn’t want to go through the degree process to become a therapist – unfortunately in the States, therapeutic training has been increasingly restrictive and deadened for at least the past 40 years.
Finally I found a viable option – Martha Beck’s coach training. Though Martha has gone in different directions since then, and I am no longer connected there, the training at the time was truly excellent. I went through 9 months of the Life Coach Training in 2012-2013 and 8 months of Master Coach training in 2015.
It was the grounding I needed in deep engagement skills to pair with the depth-psychological and archetypal insight I had already built.
I established my practice in early 2013 and have been in continuous practice since then. I started with 1:1 work, and in 2018 I developed group “courses” (I call them Adventures) in the various Archetypal figures I’d been identifying through my work.
Many people – clients, students, those who had listened to my free community calls on the archetypes – began to ask me to teach, or wonder why I wasn’t.
I didn’t think it was necessary – the world is awash in astrological education now, and I felt that there must be something very much like what I was doing that was already out there. Turns out…not so much!
What I do is NOT like anything else, so far as I’ve found. And it WORKS. It’s solidly helpful for people.
It needs to be in the world, in more hands than mine. So here we are.
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