when hesitancy is scarcity & other saturn-uranus gems

expectation vs. reality isn’t always a disappointment. sometimes it’s a surprise.

in retrospect, I waited longer than I should have to shift from sign-based horoscope writing to making more room for my actual writing flow and desires. writing horoscopes has built the foundation of my entire practice, and I understand that kind of shift does not come easily. but there’s something about the relationship between my hesitancy and scarcity that is clearest to me now that I have decided.

part of what made deciding on this change difficult, and why I continued beyond the point I knew my body was resisting, was real and imagined scarcity. I am not yet in a place where it’s comfortable to risk losing income, and I didn’t know how my beloved readers would respond. asking for energetic exchange in the form of money comes with responsibility.

it wasn’t even just about the money (that’s rarely high on my priority list, despite my ongoing need for it lol). it is about my work, my brightest contribution, and whether that would be considered a worthwhile investment to others. I was afraid.

I had the catastrophic version of the consequences of this decision that my nervous system and experience of poverty offered up. I also had the vision of my integrity and freedom being generative, and the evidence to back it up. I chose to move deeper into praxis of my values, and wow, people meet me there over and over again.

what actually happened after I announced the change to my monthly offering was an outpouring of support, connection, encouragement, and appreciation for my work. what actually happened was not a financial decrease, but financial increase. what actually happened was the energetic space for clarity around so many future offerings that have been incubating, and the space to consider other collaborative possibilities.

Uranus, accelerator of change and unpredictability, is clearly present here. Uranus is in taurus, so there’s also the ongoing conversation about real and imagined scarcity of resources that is more often about distribution of power than actual materials. this is collective, but it’s also personal. I redistributed my power into a decision that confronted my fears around scarcity (and loss, scorpio whispers). Saturn in aquarius is present here, too. not just because they are squaring Uranus so that from the tension new structures can emerge, but because I am also in my Saturn return.

when the Sun in scorpio squared Saturn the last weekend of October, my awareness increased around where I restrict, limit, and expect more from myself than is sustainable or realistic. I felt my ancient resentments around being seen, being underestimated, being perceived by my age and not my embodied wisdom, and being so intentional about how I show up while others are out here being reckless and irresponsible. (the Sun square Saturn is angsty lol.)

but I was able to ask myself: is that actually happening? is that my only experience? is that the reality I am forced to operate in? is that all I know?

the answer is unmistakable. no.

resentment is the solidification of anger. at times I haven’t been seen. I have been underestimated. I have not been taken seriously. I have experienced ageism. I have shown up in my integrity and been betrayed or disappointed by those claiming to do the same. I have chosen the straight and narrow and been the lonelier for it.

but the reality of those angsty moments is that I am angry at myself. for all the times I underestimate myself, for not taking myself seriously, for thinking I’m not old enough or wise enough to share my embodiment, for minimizing the power and influence of my integrity based on the actions of others. in those moments, I am grieving my own inability to recognize and honor myself.

the parts of myself I have sometimes resented in the past are the same parts of myself that have you reading these words, that created an astrological practice that is nearing a decade, that enable me to pivot, that have brought me to this moment in miraculous ways.

the more I embody my clearest desires, the more room I make to be seen in the ways that are meaningful to me. but most importantly, the more I embody my clearest desires, the more I prophecy a future for myself that is rooted in the integrity of my pleasure, not loyalty to my pain.

no more crown of thorns

sometimes your crown won’t stay on because you’re already wearing one made of the ways you’ve successfully been wounded.

yes, it’s true. unthinkable harm and violation occurs. and yes, it’s true. removing each individual thorn is painstaking, excruciating work but the scarring and the bandaging is worth the alleviation of the suffering, a beautiful Bodhisattva phrasing a sweet querent recently reminded me of last week through blessing the impact of my work. 

as we know, thorns are protective asf. I walked through a rose garden last Venus day, the same rose garden I grew up around the corner from, and was reminded how unapologetically the medicine of beauty and softness must be defended. first, you must recognize there is something worth defending. secondly, you must use the thorns where they belong, which is not pierced inside of your head as a symbol of the pain of inverted power.

forgive yourself, beloved. what has become self-inflicted always has its origins in a moment of pain and powerlessness we did not choose.

it was that same house around the corner from the rose garden where my earliest memories of being violated, powerless, and wounded lived. in 2019, that childhood home was destroyed to expand on a residence for the dying. but the stories started there in my memory continued to live through my experiences, shaped by decisions I couldn’t recognize as risky because I didn’t understand what I was supposed to be protecting: me. 

removing the crown of thorns is a process of re-storying. you can restore your power through (re)writing the story. while you may not be able to change the beginning, you can change the end. you may not even be able to change or control the external circumstances of the story, but it is the stories living within us that compose most of how we experience being ourselves, in our bodies. you can change you, if you want to, in the ways you want to.

I didn’t realize just how deep the crown of thorns was embedded into my psychic body/nervous system until I’ve spent the summer intentionally removing as many thorns as made themselves known to me, and now I can feel a difference that doesn’t fade away in  the next trigger. I sat in the sun under my Sugar Maple friend today and cried at the relief. I have been thinking I am burned out but what I’ve noticed this weekend is that I feel so much more replenished and erotic after realizing I was bleeding out from old wounds I hadn’t known how to clean out and bandage yet.

in less mysterious language: there were feelings I hadn’t given a moment to feel into and truths I hadn’t let myself state, even if in the privacy of my own journal. those were the thorns; removing them meant feeling my feelings and being honest with myself, then asking questions about what belief was hiding underneath.

I don’t care how long it takes, I am removing as many thorns as I can so that my true crown of Beauty, Power, and Pleasure can stay the fuck on.

I speak more about these kinds of initiations into sovereignty on the latest episode of The Magic of the Spheres podcast. Sabrina Monarch interviewed me about The Eroticism of Saturn and Crystallizations from a Saturn Return. listen anywhere you enjoy podcasts!

writing my way out of the womb

I am in-between selves right now. I am in-between lives and worlds right now. I hope that I am in-between exhaustion and exhilaration, but all I can feel right now is the exhaustion. I feel like there is so much emptiness around me as if I am in a dark womb, not knowing that I am about to be born. or I have already been born and I am in the ICU because it was traumatic asf and I am already sick from the violations of this world. that is what actually happened when I entered this dimension, and it has not stopped happening since. I have not stopped being sick of the violations of this world and I have not stopped needing to recover. this is where I find myself now, except this time my hands are full of remedies and I am The Mother the terrified infant inside of me is crying for in this moment of (re)birth.

annual profections are an ancient astrological timing technique where upon birth, you enter the activation of your first house (area of life). on your first solar return, you enter the second house and so it continues, each solar return activating the consecutive house. the cycle repeats through the twelve houses until you die. what a beautiful, effortless way to time travel.

I am trying to just write, not work or teach here but I am bringing this up because I am currently in a house activation I haven’t been in since I was 15. it has come with a resurfacing of desires I had buried at the bottom of my oceans at that time in my life. at first it was glorious time travel, though there was grief that I had abandoned them to begin with. now, it is painful as the pathways I thought were opening towards those desires have closed. it is ultimately for my protection and I am always truly grateful to Saturn, but the grief has been immense. what do I do now, with these handfuls of crushed flowers, these temporary hopes that belonged only in springtime?

I know there are seeds here and when the land is ready I could plant them, but it is not time yet and honestly I am tired of redeeming every disappointment through my own sheer will and effort. this dying paradigm continues to take from us, sneaking into the crevices of our lovers and friends until we are barren from all the taking. I am so tired of all the taking. I am so tired of all the losses.

I can only be available to what replenishes and protects me. I vowed to myself some time ago that I would no longer live in the emergency of a wired nervous system and if that means more aloneness, then so it is. I have never decided to live in fear of that. I always walk away when I am not being served sacred reciprocity, and sometimes that means walking away from ways I am being with myself.

I have continued working and creating almost non-stop throughout the panderabread, the deaths in my family, the living losses of break-ups and friendship changes, and the recurring crisis of my health. I am feeling the impacts of the non-stopness of everything more than I realized I would, less than I should thanks to several practices of rest and healing, and just as much as would be expected after what I have been through in the last five years alone.

I realize I have not been writing just to write, which is actually a necessity for me. lately I have not often felt replenished and rested enough to be vulnerable in my writing in the ways I prefer to be and have been practicing different boundaries. I am grateful for the new boundaries that protect my psychic space and I recognize that almost everything has been about work, which I am wildly fortunate to be able to take pleasure in and am acutely aware cannot continue. I am a writer before I am an astrologer and being a writer only comes after being a bruje. my medicine, my tool, my truth has always been my writing about real ass shit. I have heard reading my work can literally feel like a cellular restructure. that is the magic I must be true to.

so I choose to share parts of myself that don’t make me seem like a mystical papifemme, write things that don’t intend to sell anything, and aren’t sexily removed from the actual life I’m living. I have not historically felt shame or hesitation to do so, but lately I have been exploring what different gestures of my work being in the world feel like, such as being more mysterious so as to be safe, and I’ve tried some fits that don’t feel good. you may not see it but I feel it and I don’t like that shit. I’m not just here to be transparent, I’m here to be raw and there is a difference. this is just facts. I even feel myself wanting to say “not raw as in messy” so that no one who has internalized the shame of being alive will judge me (aka so I will not judge me) but fuck that. I am already a mess because that is the state of constantly creating, and I am brave about it. I’m never interested in confessionals but I do sin against myself sometimes and have to ask the Father I’ve become if I will forgive me. I continue to practice deeply embodying the answer to that question: yes.

I wrote this tonight as my time lord by sect light, Mercury, brought last minute messages from Their time in cancer/my 12th house before entering leo/my 1st house. I also got my first haircut in almost 2 years today and am about to roll up some Mother Mary for the first time in months.

consider me baptized and reborn…