Saturn ... again
On tough transits, more choices and focusing on what's right in front of me
Hello Friends,
Last fall, when things went so very sideways on me, I started listening to Jessica Lanyadoo’s Ghost of a Podcast again. I used to listen religiously, because her astrology is super clear and reasonable, her readings are insightful and interesting, and I’ve learned so much about myself and my chart from listening to her over the years. She is a very bright light in this world, and I can’t recommend her podcast enough.
Somewhere along the way, though, astrology started making me feel anxious and wary, ruffling my feathers instead of smoothing them, and so I abandoned my favorite podcast in favor of being unaware of what was happening in the stars.
Back to last fall, when everything started to feel so out of control and overwhelming … I began to wonder what the hell was happening in the cosmos and how it might be affecting my own chart.
Well!
I think my inner guidance was nudging me back into awareness when I tuned into my old favorite pod again, because it turned out that the cosmos were hitting my chart from every angle and at every degree, and will continue to for the next several years. While this awareness hasn’t exactly helped with the overwhelm, it has at least put it into some kind of context.
I’ve been gazing at my own little natal wheel for months now, examining where the planets are currently transiting and seeing how they will continue to move. Trying so hard to make sense of what I’m in for, and why it felt so important to know.
And somewhere along the way, it occurred to me to look back instead of forward.
When I was last curious, I bought an ephemeris, and the first time I cracked it open, my brain started to melt. What in the world do all these numbers and symbols even mean?
And then I learned a little bit, and that was all it took. I can sit with this book for hours, staring at the numbers and visualizing angles, tracking transits and date ranges and then casting my memory back to remember where — and who — I was during those times.
Enter Saturn
I’m now entrenched in my second Saturn Opposition, which is the mid-way point between Saturn Returns. This transit kind of confirms and enforces what a person has learned in the last 14 or so years since their first Saturn Return in their late-20s, and sets the stage for the next Saturn Return sometime in their late-50s.
It felt important, perhaps even essential, that I look back at all my previous challenging Saturn transits — the squares, conjunctions and oppositions — to see if I’d learned the lessons this task master has been trying to teach me. Hoping that I have, so that the next few years of my life can go as smoothly as possible.
At first I was frustrated, only seeing that the timing of these transits coincided with some of my most intense bouts of physical illness. During my first opposition, in fact, when I was a teenager, I had a strange illness the doctors never actually defined and I was out of school for a month, most of which I was actually too sick to remember. This left me fundamentally different than I had been before, in every way possible.
My Saturn Return immediately preceded the most extreme downturn of my health, and the eventual move from my own home and independence to living with and being cared for by Mom.
And the Saturn Squares weren’t much better! During one I got really weirdly sick, was evicted from my home, moved four times, and married someone I would divorce a very short time later. During another I cared for a whole bunch of loved ones while they died and I got more and more exhausted.
I think you’ll understand why I was becoming a bit nervous as I looked and looked and looked at these dates, remembering and examining my life through the lens of Saturn!
But then it clicked. What was happening at the beginning of each of these eras of my life. What Saturn has been trying to show me my whole life.
I had a choice.
My friend Tanya and I talked a lot about choices on the most recent episode of Welcome to the Garden. If you haven’t yet, you can listen to it here, or on your favorite podcast app:
My Saturnian choices
Each and every time Saturn rolled around, there was a very specific choice I could have made. And in most of those cases, I just didn’t.
I want to be very clear: It’s not that I made the wrong choice. I just didn’t choose at all. And then life happened and it was … So. Fucking. Hard.
This spring, as things started ramping up around here and I started feeling so many intense overwhelming feelings, and with Saturn getting closer and closer to the degrees I’ve been dreading, I began to look at what I’ve been doing. And what I’ve been trying to do. And I saw how I could continue the pattern of not choosing and just see if maybe it will work out this time. But the stakes felt too high, and if history is any indication, my refusal to face reality will manifest through my body and through my health.
I still don’t want to make any choices. Ever. But I’m going to, because it feels like the lesson I’ve been trying to learn my whole entire life.
Why I’m telling you this now
I’m sharing this in case it resonates, of course, but also because it affects this space. The biggest choice I’ve made for myself right now is to step away from Substack for a bit.
Just when I was enjoying it most.
Just when I felt like I was building something really great.
Just when the podcast was becoming something I feel really, really proud of.
I think I’ll be back, in November, after garden season is done. After I’ve seen what I can do and build in the realms of my actual, physical reality. My body has been a very strict teacher — stricter even than Saturn — and the more times I’ve refused to choose, the more aggressively it makes the choices for me. I have a very limited amount of life-force, and I don’t recover when I spend more than I get. And there are things here, right in front of me, that I want to spend it on.
I’m disappointed. I felt like I entered this year with so much clarity. I wrote to you all in February about how I was going to focus on this newsletter and the podcast and see what I could really do. I made promises in this space and to this space that I’m breaking. I don’t think this choice will have any real impact on anyone outside of myself — or that even one of you out there will be like, “but you said you’d write every month, so now I hate you!”
But I’m disappointed that I couldn’t fulfill those goals that I set.
And I’m also excited.
I’m excited to see what it feels like to be almost entirely analog again. To simply live and breathe and exist for a bit without thinking about what it means or how I can distill what I’m experiencing into some kind of prose. It’s a long, long habit of mine to constantly narrate my experiences in my head, crafting sentences and trying to simplify life into clever, quippy or profound beats. I’ve been doing this for years, and with this choice made, I’ve realized I don’t have to.
The other day while I was weeding the strawberry bed and tuning into the devas, I started to do this writing-in-my-head thing. And then I stopped, and reminded myself I didn’t have to.
And everything shifted.
I was present again. I could listen with an open heart, but I didn’t have to hear anything. I could just coexist with the plant spirits and the Earth and the garden and my dog and the wind and the sunshine and the sounds of the Big Lake roaring in the background.
I don’t know who I’m going to be after Saturn is done with me this round. I don’t know what kind of writer I’ll be or what I’ll want to find words to express. I’m pretty sure I’ll be back here in the fall, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to run Notes from the Garden and Welcome to the Garden in seasons. Post in the winter, and then disappear into this real, physical life for the summer.
But it also feels important to stop making promises. Or even plans, really.
I don’t even know who I’m going to be next year, or next month, or next week, or even tomorrow, so how could I possibly know what those people are going to want do? All I know is that I’m going to spend the rest of the summer gardening and baking things to sell at our local farmers market. Activities that are so grounding and so grounded. This feels like the choice Saturn is asking me to make.
But actually, maybe it’s not about what choices I make, just making the choices, generally. Living more intentionally. Being present with and for my limitations in a way I’ve grasped mentally, but never actually put into conscious physical practice.
And actually, with each choice I’m making, I realize I’m feeling empowered. Isn’t it weird that my limitations are helping me feel more free?
Wish me luck! I’ll probably see you soon, but who even knows?!
In the meantime, I’m sending so many wishes for a happy, healthy season filled with clarity and joy,
Jodie
p.s. I mentioned the most recent episode of the podcast up above, but I also just wanted to remind everyone that my friend Tanya is raising money to film half-pint, her adorable movie about an 11-year-old dork who pretends to be a vampire to scare her neighborhood bullies. We talked a lot about the script, and why storytelling is so important in these weird and horrifying times, so if you’re curious and haven’t yet, give our episode a listen.
And there are still a couple days left to contribute, so if you want to support an independent artist and be a part of making a movie about a misfit who refuses to change who she is, here’s the link! https://fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/tanya-o-debra/campaigns/7010