January 6

Who you are

You have an unusual tolerance for what other people write off. A friendship that ended badly, a career that stalled, a relative everyone has agreed to stop expecting anything from. You do not see the wreck, you see what is under it, and you will put in the unphotogenic years it takes to bring something back. This is not optimism. You have simply watched it work before.

You are not sentimental about it either. You know some things should be let go and you can say so plainly. But when you decide something is worth restoring you commit at a level that startles people, and you accept that most of the work will be slow and unwitnessed. Whoever received that time from you usually remembers it for the rest of their life.

Your gifts

• Long faith in people. You see the version of someone that they have stopped being able to see.
• Stamina for slow work. You keep going through the years where nothing looks different yet.
• Clear eyes. You can tell the difference between what can come back and what cannot.

Your shadow

Left unchecked you take on projects that are really people, and people with no intention of changing. You confuse potential with promise and spend years on someone because you can see what they might be. When it fails you take it as a verdict on you. And you rarely apply any of this generosity to your own history, which stays unforgiven.

Your soul work

Your work is to bring the same patience home. You have restored other people's situations while leaving your own losses exactly as you found them. Go back to one of them. The forgiveness you extend so easily outward was always meant to travel in both directions.

Days you get along with

Your sign

The tenth sign is the mountain goat with a fish tail: ambition with depth beneath it. Capricorn carries mastery, and the lesson of what summits are for.

Someone else

Look up another birthday

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