April 13

Who you are

You break things down. Where somebody sees an impossible situation, you see a first step, and you name it in a sentence short enough to remember on the way home. This is why people leave conversations with you feeling capable rather than reassured. You are not particularly gentle about it, but you are specific, and specific is what actually helps.

You take real pleasure in somebody else getting good. Watching a person you pushed do the thing better than you ever could is not a loss to you, which separates you from most people who give advice. The directness comes naturally. The patience is something you built, mostly by getting it badly wrong with somebody early on.

Your gifts

• Breaking it down. You turn a paralysing problem into one action a person can take today.
• Honest feedback. You say what is not working while there is still time to change it.
• Genuine pleasure in others. Their success costs you nothing and you never pretend otherwise.

Your shadow

Not everything is a lesson. You coach at dinner, in arguments, at funerals, and people who wanted company get a plan instead. There is control hidden in it too: as long as you are the one advising, you never have to be the one struggling. The friends who have seen you at your worst are a very short list indeed.

Your soul work

Your soul work is being coached. Take instruction from somebody who knows more than you do, follow it without improving on it, and let a friend see the part of your life where you have no idea at all what the next step is.

Days you get along with

Your sign

The zodiac begins with fire. Aries carries the gift of the start, the courage to go first, and the lifelong lesson of learning to finish.

Someone else

Look up another birthday

Check a friend's day, or your partner's, and send it to them.