When I had my first reading with her in 2017, astrologer Chani Nicholas was still a secret held near and dear to a community of queer astrology nerds who devoured her sermons on social justice and self-care in conjunction with planetary movements. That need to be of service to others is her most urgent calling—the foundation on which she has built her life and work. Chani doesn’t like to talk about herself. It’s not that it takes careful, calculated excavation to open her up. It’s more that Chani is the kind of person you could listen to for hours, leave full and in a daze, only later realizing that you still don’t know much about her at all. When we speak, I find that I’ve asked her a question only to end up receiving profound answers to my own various existential crises. She isn’t shy or reserved or even private. In fact, she indulges in vulnerability in a way that many of us couldn’t, even with our therapists. But as she tells me, “Ask me anything, but it’s not about me. It’s really about you. I want to talk about you. That’s what I need.”

While astrology within the context of healing isn’t exactly new, Chani’s ability to leverage her platform and communicate in a way that resonates with an audience has facilitated her immeasurable reach. A secret no more, Chani’s teachings have spread rapidly. In the last couple of years, her career has evolved tremendously. Her deeply personal, accessible, and intersectional interpretations of the stars—which bring over a million monthly readers to her website—have secured her a long-term partnership with Spotify, worldwide speaking engagements, a monthly feature in Oprah’s magazine, and a deal with Harper Collins, who will publish her forthcoming book You Were Born For This: Astrology For Radical Self-Acceptance in January 2020. “Because I’m me and I don’t want to talk about myself,” she says of her upcoming book tour, “I'm interviewing somebody in each city and I'm going to talk about their chart and their work—and astrologically, why it's significant.”

Her West L.A. home, which she shares with wife and business partner, Sonya Passi, is the headquarters of her booming business, as well as Sonya’s nonprofit, Freefrom, which works at the nexus of gender-based violence and economic justice. With walls made entirely of glass, and encased by a lush tropical garden, the house feels open and secluded, inside and outside all at once—much like Chani herself. Here in her space, she speaks candidly about how astrology heals, and how the death of a decade is crucial for embracing the next one to come.