Celebrity Astrologer Aliza Kelly on Her PEOPLE Show and New Book, 'This Is Your Destiny' : Excerpt

Celebrity astrologer Aliza Kelly has one overarching goal: to help fans achieve their "best life" through the power of astrology.

The author and television personality's latest inspirational read, This Is Your Destiny: Using Astrology to Manifest Your Best Life, will be published by St. Martin's Essentials on Sep. 28. (See the exclusive — and deeply personal — excerpt below.)

"When I set out to write This Is Your Destiny, I wanted to create a book that focused not on what astrology is, but what astrology does: how this extraordinary practice can be used as a tool for healing, self-discovery, and manifestation," Kelly tells PEOPLE exclusively.

"Through my work as a consulting astrologer, I've been able to witness our powerful interconnectivity," she continues. "This Is Your Destiny is the synthesis of that insight so that anyone, anywhere can apply these techniques to their own reality."

"My hope is that through these narratives — intimate reflections about my own journey, as well my clients' experiences — readers can see themselves within the pages, shift their perspective, and assume an active role in their consciousness. Whether you're already deeply entrenched in the stars or are just beginning your mystic journey, This Is Your Destiny is your story."

Kelly is also the host of an upcoming new PEOPLE show, Celebrity Astrology Investigation, which provides mystical insights into top stars. Episodes range from "Prince Harry & Meghan's Perfect Compatibility" to "The Aquarius King: Harry Styles." Airing weekly on Tuesdays, Celebrity Astrology Investigation will launch Oct. 12 on PEOPLE's digital and social platforms, including YouTube and the free streaming network PeopleTV.

Kelly, who serves as the resident astrologer of Cosmopolitan, has appeared on shows like The Drew Barrymore Show and the Today show and has published two other books, The Mixology of Astrology in 2018, and Starring You in 2019.

In This Is Your Destiny, Kelly opens up like never before about her own past, shares lessons she's learned during her "thousands of one-on-one client sessions" and provides mystical knowledge to help readers can take hold of their dreams.

The astrologer's own journey has been far from easy. In her book, Kelly delves into painful moments from her childhood. In the below excerpt, Kelly is in fifth grade and her parents are divorced. She's waiting for her mother to return from a doctor's appointment. She brings home devastating news.

...the big reveal was as sharp and painful and shattering now, over twenty years later, as it was that night. Fast-forward to some hours later, my mother, finally at my grandparents' apartment, is sitting at the kitchen table and I'm splayed out sobbing on the linoleum kitchen floor. The atmosphere is tight, hot, claustrophobic—sweat on the back of your neck. The sound is industrial, like the caustic hum of an ancient generator. The tone is amber: bright and disorienting. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.

"But don't start telling people—it's not their business," my mother said in a stern, unfamiliar voice, "especially your father. He doesn't need to know."

At that moment, my ten-year-old brain—which had, in the past few years, already begun to master compartmentalization—went into hyperdrive. Honoring my mother's wishes, I kept her illness secret. I didn't tell my father about the radiation. Or the double-mastectomy. Or the plastic bags on the side of her bra that filled with blood. And I didn't tell my father about the recurrence in 2003. Or the recurrence in 2005. Or the pain medication, or the chemotherapy, or the tremendous anxiety that seeped through my subconscious like carbon dioxide. I didn't say a word.

By the time I was in high school, my mom's apartment building, including our unit, was infested with mice. She would set traps around the kitchenette, catching one occasionally, but was too sick to truly address the situation. The unspoken agreement was that each of us—my mother and myself—would stay in our respective bedrooms with the doors closed. Out of sight, out of mind.

Interestingly, my father's house (he now lived in Gowanus, Brooklyn) was infested with rodents, too—but only in my bedroom. At night, with the lights off, they would scamper up inside walls and across the ceiling. I could hear their claws and their teeth and their squeaks.

But here, too, there was nothing that could be done. You see, my bedroom at my father's house wasn't actually a bedroom—it was a hallway off the kitchen that was built as an illegal extension by the previous owner. And, because it wasn't "to code," my dad casually explained that subway rats (subway rats!) would accidentally fall into the extension, get trapped in the drywall, and eventually die. Yes, death was the sole consolation—and he was right. Every few days, the scratching was followed by silence and, soon, my hallway-bedroom would fill with the smell of putrid decomposition, which my stepmother tried to conceal with patchouli incense.

I hate the smell of patchouli.

I, too, was slipping through the cracks. Between my mother's illness and my father's disconnect, I was decaying. By the time I started high school, I had already developed a full-fledged eating disorder, was sexually active, smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, and started experimenting with drugs. Hard ones.

What happened between the ages of fourteen and seventeen I'll share in more detail later on, but by the time I was a senior in high school, let's just say I was ready for a fresh start. College was the light at the end of the tunnel. Going away to undergrad, I thought, was an opportunity to erase the past and start anew—transcending chaos and isolation and subway rats.

I was thrilled when I was accepted into my first-choice school, Carleton College, a small liberal arts school in rural Minnesota. Everything about Carleton seemed so pure; there was even a historic building on campus called Dacie Moses House where students could go to bake chocolate chip cookies. I already felt so jaded and weathered, and I hoped, perhaps, Carleton would allow me to embrace the innocence absent from my adolescence.

So, when I packed up my bags to begin a new chapter in the wholesome Midwest I only brought what seemed appropriate. My idea was to leave all of my toxic tendencies in New York and, in Minnesota, reinvent myself completely. In college, I planned to become the best version of myself. There was no need to tell my smart, well-groomed collegiate friends about my dark, destructive past. No way! I didn't want to overcomplicate my narrative—I wanted my story to be nice and neat and linear. I wanted it to make sense. I wanted to be normal.

Piece by piece, I began omitting parts of my identity that felt too divergent or contradictory or shameful—a little erasure here, a little white lie there. Thoughtful "editing" was totally fine! But over the years, all of those half-truths compounded. It became hard to keep track of what was fact, fiction, or full-on fabrication and, by the time I moved to Los Angeles in 2013, I had totally lost touch with any semblance of truth.

The next thing I knew, I was getting sucked into another black hole—only this time, I began exploring the stars.

Excerpted from This Is Your Destiny: Using Astrology To Manifest Your Best Life, copyright © 2021 by Aliza Kelly, with permission from St. Martin's Essentials.

This Is Your Destiny hits bookshelves on Sep. 28. The first season of Celebrity Astrology Investigation will air on PEOPLE's YouTube, PeopleTV and PEOPLE digital and social platforms this fall.