The tale of Alex Batty who fled his mother’s hippy lifestyle in France to return after a six year absence to his grandmother in England who held legal custody is a heart-warming example of teenage determination. He said it was a life of ‘moving around. No friends, no social life. Working, working, work and not studying.’
He learned languages by himself and studied maths and computing from textbooks but didn’t attend school. His intention is to go on studying, ‘computer science or cyber security or blockchain development and catching up.’
He said his mother held anti-government beliefs and was a great person but not a good mother.
He was born 13 February 2006 and has an Aquarius Sun conjunct Neptune possibly opposition a Leo or Virgo Moon and square Mars in Taurus and Jupiter in Scorpio. His Pluto in Sagittarius is sextile his Sun and inconjunct his Mars. His Jupiter is in an adventurous trine to Uranus and sextile Venus. Fixed, enduring, stubborn, courageous, lucky.
What is intriguing is that he shares a North Node in Aries with Suzanne Heywood, who aged seven was pulled away from a normal existence by her father’s dream of sailing round the world. She overcame parental neglect of her education and safety, to self-teach herself from correspondence courses and make it through to Oxford and Cambridge. See post April 24 2023.
The karmic challenge of the Aries North Node is for the individual to learn to stand up what they truly believe and not be hoodwinked into sliding back into pleasing others.
Thanks Visitor2. I do appreciate your comments. The experience did put me on an entirely different path but forced me to be very adaptable and open – and that has given me a very interesting life. I wouldn’t say stable though. I feel that disappeared forever. I feel for Alex so much as – like it or not- he will have to choose an unusual path for himself. He won’t have shared experiences with other teenagers and they won’t understand him. He’ll have to reinvent himself. Interested that we’re both only children. I did read Hideous Kinky and was very touched by it. I wonder if the fact that there were two sisters sharing the upheaval helped them both to recover faster? But siblings often have completely different stories.
What an intriguing contrast of the Social Integration With Friendship & Tribe, vs. Social Outcast Doing Own Wandering, sides of Aquarius with its dual rulers!
Lorna, I can’t even imagine what that would have been like for you. I hope you feel peacefully at home, stable and welcomed in your life now.
This all happened during a Mercury retrograde, and I wonder what kind of reversal is in store. Or something not going as was planned. Maybe also second thoughts.
Those who live with adventures seek discipline. Those who live with discipline seek adventures.
I know a number of mums who had a hippy lifestyle and their more conventional children left home about 16, 17.
Quite amazing story albeit he is 17-18 and that is a good age for teenagers to rebel. We don’t know the exact position of the moon but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s in early Virgo and just finishing being transited by opposition from Saturn – hence causing separation from the mother.
Thanks Marjorie. I hope he has a lovely Christmas, and can adjust and enjoy his life ahead.
The story reminded me of the semi-autobiographical novel, Hideous Kinky, by Esther Freud. It describes her, and her sister Bella’s time living in Morocco with their hippie mother, Bernadine Coverley Freud. Bernadine married the artist Lucien Freud when she was just a teenager, and took the girls to Morocco in 1972 when she was about thirty.
Esther, 2 May 1963, has a fixed t-square of Mars in Leo, Sun Taurus, and Neptune in Scorpio. Like Alex, her Moon is either late Leo or early Virgo, with Uranus at 1 Virgo nearby. Cardinal nodes, this time in Cancer – sign of mother!
Here’s a quote from the film:
“Hideous Kinky,” based on an autobiographical novel by Esther Freud, whose father is the British painter Lucien Freud. I’m not sure how much of the story is based on fact, but presumably the feelings are accurately reflected, as when a child tells her hippie mother: “I don’t need another adventure, Mom! I need to go to school. I want a satchel!” (Roger Ebert website)
Both girls are successful, creative adults.
This really resonated with me. Something similar happened when I was 13. My mother was suffering from a mental breakdown (although I didn’t know this) and thought people were following us so, one day, when I was getting ready for school she told me to pack a bag and we left soon after. I didn’t know why or where we were going and it wasn’t till we were actually leaving for another country (of her birth) that I realised. We then embarked on a few months of travelling around the country looking for somewhere she felt safe but when we eventually did, she was hospitalised and spent five years in hospital while I was in boarding school in the country. I’ll never forget the fear I had of not seeing my Dad, my dog and my friends again. The town where we ended up didn’t know what to do with me and were going to put me into a vocational type school but I held fast to the idea of proper school. I was terrified I’d fall through the cracks. It was normal and loving for my mother to not abandon me but bring me with her but I think adults often don’t realise how children long for normality and are easily destabilised. I have my North Node in Capricorn and I wonder if that was a help for me at the time?
I find it interesting that his mother broke away from mainstream society and held the views she did when you see that Alex has a Moon/Black Moon Lilith conjunction. BML has a tendency to go her own way, regardless.
Good for him, and a quite sad not having your mom around – that is a heavy realization to come to at that age, though it probably happened thousands of times through human history. I hope he realizes his dreams.
You say he has Sun conjunct Neptune. And I wrote about it in some other post that it might mean a father was absent or a father felt absent. Or a father disappears during one’s lifetime. What happened to his?
I wonder what made his mother be anti-government and how in life the wound of one person takes so much hold and overwhelms someone so much that he or she spills it onto his or her children and surroundings, and it just takes over. And, most important, if that can be avoided.
It is amazing that in so many thousands of years of human history, psychology and parenting it keeps happening that an ambition of the parent takes over and he or she transmits it, consciously, unconsciously, or in combination of both, onto their children, who, often, have their lives turn difficult and unfulfilling.
It reminds me of a quote I heard years ago by Carl Jung – from memory- “The single greatest influence on the life of a child is the unlived life of the parent.”
Heart warming story but of resilience too.
I feel we’ll hear more about him in the years to come.
I’m touched.