Getting Sticky with Chani Nicholas

"I'm an astrologer who happens to have a tech company," says Chani Nicholas with a laugh. She's also an activist and mother to a three-year-old daughter who imbues a sense of radical hope into everything she touches. Which is probably why over two million users have downloaded her app, which gives electric yet grounded, personalized readings that help shape people’s day-to-day lives.

She speaks to us—and we mean, speaks to us—too, on social media: wisely guiding us through thornier seasons, planetary shifts, and moons of all stripes. We're of course addicted to her all-caps, exclamation-laden monthly predictions and directions.

Not content to just help the masses weather life’s ups, downs, and mercury retrogrades, Chani is also decidedly political, dedicated to causes and movements that impact and candidates that champion marginalized communities. Chani’s employees reap the literal benefits of her ethos: everyone gets a four-day work week and seven weeks paid vacation. (Chani has also completely banned the usage of AI to build her product and within her company.) 

Below she talks about navigating queer motherhood, why prioritizing sleep is necessary, and how to parent through Leo season.  

(For Spread The Jelly readers, Chani is gifting a free, 30-day, all-access pass with the code: NEWCHANI. Perfect for getting your and your baby’s chart read.) 

Words by Emily Barasch. Images by Kate Owens. 

The decision to have kids (in a patriarchy)

At different times in my life I felt like I wanted to have kids and then I didn't want to have kids and then I did. I was very in and out. I didn’t always feel this would be inevitable for me, but there were times I honestly felt like, "Oh, this is what they mean about a biological clock." 

I'm queer, so I don't have a heterosexual way of coming to being a parent, which is to say that I am not the person that carried our daughter. My wife is the one who carried our daughter. I felt too old to carry. But I did feel overcome with a desire to have kids.

I went out with a group of friends who are also queer who also have the same setup as my wife and I; they're older and their partners are younger. I asked: "Don't you all feel like you're too old to have kids?" And they said, "no. Why would we feel too old?" 

I was struck with the fact that the older I got, the more obvious it became: that heteronormative patriarchy brainwashes you. Because, then I thought:  Wait a minute. There's no man on the face of God's green earth in the history of humankind that was 48 and wondered, ‘am I too old to have kids?’ Never has that happened. 

It was a kind of conditioning that I was up against. Having kids at a later age is definitely a thing and it's different than when you're young. Your energy is different and life is different. But I really had to come to an understanding that building a family as a queer person is always going to be different or 99 percent of the time going to be more different than not. My age is just part of that. That was something I had to confront and work through. But it didn't take me very long to work through it. It felt like, oh, there's more people than just my wife and I that want to be in this family. 

Supporting your partner through her pregnancy

My wife’s pregnancy was easy and beautiful. We were blessed. But the labor was harrowing. It was birth so it was life-altering. Postpartum, she sailed through it for the most part. We have our own company and so we were able to take the time that we needed and wanted off. We were in a good position. I think that's one of the gifts of waiting until you're ready to have kids. I couldn't stop thinking about how hard it would be if you were underresourced.

[Unfortunately] this country hates children and pregnant people and people that give birth. The U.S. is so inhospitable in so many ways to the process. But we were lucky enough to have the time, the energy, and the money to be able to do it the way we did. 

It’s hard not to think: Oh my god, people go to work a couple weeks after having a child and traditionally have physically left their child. What people have to go through and what postpartum must be for so many folks—it's an extraordinary weight to imagine.  Everybody's different but if you have the choice to do it in the way that you want, it’s important to recognize how great of a privilege it was. 

Companies and organizations have to step in where the government doesn't. We have a responsibility to each other to make sure that people that give birth have the things, the space, and the time that they need to recover. I think it's important to have time off before you give birth just to have a little bit of space. If you go into labor when you're exhausted and stressed, which I'm sure most people do, it's insane. It's the hardest thing you will ever do.

Creating life when it feels like the world is ending

The state of the world is bleak in a lot of ways but I have so much hope. I think we're in a specific predicament ecologically that I certainly feel the weight of. When we had our daughter I remember coming to New York when she was six months old. The fires in Quebec were raging and we were engulfed in smoke and I thought: Oh my god what have we done?

On her second birthday, L.A. was on fire. There's just that reality and I think all parents feel the weight of that. Then, on the other hand, I don't know if this is me being delusional and selfish but I feel like creating life is the most radical act of hope that you can do.

I don't know if my daughter will agree with me when she's my age; I don't know what the world will be like. Maybe she’ll say, "Oh, that's lovely for you to have pontificated upon when I was before I was born." But I reckon all the time with the fact that I don't know if people are going to be able to live in the neighborhood that I live in now in 30 years. We are living in such unpredictable and unstable times.

You have to grapple with that; I don't think it's good to put your head in the sand. I think we're going to have those conversations with our children their whole life. I don't know if it's selfish or not to bring a kid into this world that's always been so full of complexities and hardships, but it's what we're here to do. It's this strange human puzzle that we all have to contend with.

One Chani pep talk coming right up

When you're in your calling, inside of your talent, and letting it guide you and do its thing, there's so much energy that gets generated. I feel that more and more as I age. I feel what the possibilities are more and more. I feel like the Knicks winning was a symbol for life, you know? It just looked like they were going to lose and they just kept pulling it out at the last moment. You just have to act like that's what is possible and so no matter what the Supreme Court does and how hard things seem to get especially in this country right now, there is nothing else to do but to fight for everything that we can with everything we've got.  I believe in that principle and in that practice.

The "wild luxuries" of the childless 

Motherhood has been such an incredible journey. It's been full of so much joy and learning. I feel radically different as a human being. But I've never understood the sentiment more of: If you don't have kids, you're basically on vacation. Like I get it, you're busy, but to be able to have the capacity to think a full thought at any given moment is a wild luxury to me now. I feel like I understand so much more about people that have kids. There's such a growth that has to happen. Your bandwidth has to stretch so far.

Chani’s village

Sometimes I think: Oh my god, I don't know how to hold all of this. I feel like I don't know how to juggle all of these roles that I've got and I don't know how to make sure that I'm prioritizing all the things that I truly need to. There's a tremendous amount of overwhelm; I think parents are just overwhelmed most of the time. That has nudged me to ask for help.

It's helped me to receive help. It's helped me to love my friends in a different way. When your friends are good to your children, it's like: I loved you before I had children, but now I love you to such a degree as you show up for this little human. My daughter needs so many different people in her life. Every single person that shows up for my daughter, I just feel such an unending gratitude towards. I want her to have all of these grown-ups that she can go to. 

“I'm creating my dream childhood, but able to give it to my daughter.”

Our support system feels good. We actually moved to New York because we wanted to have a more local support system. We were living in L.A. before and it just felt really hard to see people and it felt isolated there. I just wanted my daughter to see more human beings.

We've rearranged our life so that we can all get our needs met and we can all be better supported. Plus in this political climate, I feel like organizing in New York is much easier than organizing in L.A.. My daughter gets to grow up in an idyllic situation. Her aunties and uncles are some of the brightest people I've ever met. They are leaders of movements and some of the most talented organizers and artists. We've spent so long cultivating our community and really tending to it. And now all of those people get to be at her Shabbat table. I'm creating my dream childhood, but able to give it to my daughter. I don't know if it'll be hers', but we'll see if she likes it or appreciates it.

Astrology and politics, duh 

I think because I'm an astrologer, people have their own specific ideas about who I am or what the work is about until they encounter it. I've had a lot of people who don’t ever want their astrology to be mixed with an understanding of systemic injustice and then they get mad at me. But I think it's really a compliment to upset those people.

I think everything is political. But you have a right to feel offended and like I have no right to do that. And you also have the right to move on and go find people that you resonate with. 

Get close, then chart 

When I meet new people, I don't want to know their chart. I like to just meet people and not know anything about their astrology. Then once I know them really well, I’ll say: "Let me look at your chart." I love to do it, but it's a slippery slope because I want to give my friends that gift.  I do give my friends readings, if I'm at a dinner party for example and I have that kind of energy, not feeling drained, then I will look at someone's chart and give them you know some of my hot takes. But, it depends.

How does astrology frame the experience of motherhood?

There's a lot of everything that you experience in life in your chart or you can look at your chart to see anything that you want to see in your life. So motherhood's definitely no different from that and it's personal to each person—what you're going through when you enter into parenthood. Whatever is happening in your chart will tell you about how you're experiencing it.

Some signs are known for being more maternal or more giving. But that doesn't mean that they're better parents because parenting is very specific, right? With parenting, you have to deal with all your own sh*t. Parenting, you have to deal with all of your own rejection issues and all of your own feelings of being hemmed in. It's all about freedom versus responsibility and projection versus reality. It's about how patient you are. How reflective you are.

I think the wildest thing my daughter teaches me is how hard it is to sit with shame. When she has to work through feeling bad about hitting us or yelling at us or whatever the behavior was, we say: Hey, we have to work through that. It's fundamentally hard for humans to work through conflict and to work through those feelings that come up. That is just such an essential part of being a parent.

That's what I look at when I think about people's astrology and their charts. It's about the theme that runs through their life, how that theme rolls out and finds its way, and finding a through line in every aspect of our life. Whatever the theme is in your chart, it shows up in your work, your friendships, and your parenthood. It's all about intimacy, connection, and feeling. Understanding your gifts and your challenges when it comes to being in relationships because the most intense relationship that you're going to have is with your kids or your parents.

Unwinding, Chani-style

My wife and I have Fridays off. Our company and her nonprofit have a four-day work week and we've been good about sticking to having Fridays off. So Fridays, we spend together. We try to just walk around, maybe go for a nice lunch, have me-time. I go to therapy. 

I try to work four days a week and have three days to unwind and rest and then come back online. With sleep, I don't put an alarm clock on unless I have to. So my daughter's late for school a lot. (She's only three and a half though, so it doesn't matter that much right now.) I would rather do almost anything else than lose sleep. Sleep is my baseline. And then I'm in my workout clothes and try to do that. I try to put sleep first and make sure I have enough time with our daughter and good time with my wife. 

Time on my own is harder to come by, but I do go out a lot on my own. I'll go to parties; I need a lot of social life and I give myself that. But right now I really am feeling a deep desire for new creative practices or to get back into old ones. Collaging, thrifting, I need something visual because my brain is so overworked all the time. I'm trying to get into tactile, visual, sensual things to just let my brain go offline for a minute and tap into another way of expressing.

Talking the talk + walking the walk 

Our company is totally AI free. It's humans that write your horoscopes. It's humans that create the art. It's humans that code. It's humans that are behind all of it. We deeply believe in the fact that only humans can speak to fellow humans’ soul journeys. Astrology is a language of personal potential: what you're here to do. We take it really seriously and we want to pay human beings for their intellect, talent, and knowledge.  I also think that the environmental devastation that AI brings upon the planet is one of those things as a parent, I cannot abide by. 

We're detail-oriented. I am an astrologer who happens to have a tech company. We developed an astrology app because I felt like it was the easiest way to get the work out there. Which is astrology and understanding our own potential: what we're here to create collectively.

August 2026 astrological predictions 

August is a really important month. There's an important eclipse on August 12th and then there's another eclipse on August 27th. Eclipse seasons are times where the events of our lives, our personal lives, and world events tend to speed up.

In terms of our kids, I think it's an important month to be paying attention to their raw emotional needs. Not that we're not always doing that, but there's a way in which eclipse seasons tend to bring us down to a base level and where we don't feel like we don’t have as many resources as we would like all the time. I'm not saying the whole month, but there's going to be these inflection points. 

One of the themes of Leo season and especially this Leo season is about leadership. And we must be thinking about how we are building, how we are coaching, how we are encouraging our children to be leaders in their own lives? How are we demonstrating that? What is being reflected back to me in  how my kid is showing up or through their issues of the day. How can I lead in a way that doesn't dictate to them what to do but instead trying to model a way of being curious, creative, and also able to face our fears. How are we helping them do that? How are we showing them our own courage? 

For Spread The Jelly readers, Chani is gifting us a free, 30-day, all-access pass with code NEWCHANI. Perfect for getting your and your baby’s chart read.