NEW….available as audio file for the convenience of listening vs. reading. Unfortunately, I did it wrong and it uploaded as a video…but you can hopefully at least listen to it as though it is an audio. Sheesh. Will try again next week to get it right.
All month long I’ve been loosely gearing up to make significant changes in my life, but then I lose steam and decide to just rest and relax and allow the path to unfold. It’s not new for me to trust rather than strategize, but it doesn’t come naturally.
I will say more about this near the end of this article, but something to keep in mind right now is that in current astrology news, Jupiter was conjunct Uranus for a short while yesterday, April 20th just after sunset. The last time this happened was June 2011, almost 14 years ago, and won’t happen again until 2037.
Why this conjunction is significant is that it represents yet another unique opportunity to become aware of remnants of subconscious “patterns” that still need clearing from your life (that you likely became aware of over the last 14 years) so as not to be causing ongoing issues in your life. One chapter is closing, resulting in a new one beginning.
Are we experiencing the makings of a spiritual big bang? I sure hope so. I can only vouch for myself as evidence.
Last week had the least planetary activity for the month of April and even though the effects of all that has happened will be unfolding through the end of the year, I was still relieved there was nothing significant happening while I was going to be visiting my daughter where she has been studying abroad since the beginning of the year.
Interestingly, I had consulted my favorite Astro-Cartographer (TheExpatAstrologer) and she said we both had good lines in Malta, but that something might come up from the past that my daughter would want to resolve with me, while in Madrid.
Great.
And yes, after a big meltdown by the end of day one, we also had a big breakthrough.
I spent all day Tuesday traveling to Spain. I left to drive to Denver at 2:00 a.m. and flew to Philadelphia, where I had a 7-hour layover, then a 6.5 hour flight to Madrid. I landed at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday. Thankfully, I did get decent sleep on that last flight. I took an Uber to my daughter’s apartment where she met me and got me set up in her room before leaving to take the train to school. I showered and changed and spent the day writing a good part of last week’s blog post. She then skipped her last class and met me back at the apartment around 1:30 p.m. We walked around town and got dinner and went back to her place so I could get my bags to walk over to a near-by hostel I had rented for 2 nights.
We were trying to get in sync with one another those first few hours. In my opinion, we are both relatively introverted, but can put on a good show at appearing extroverted. I’ve said before that I used to think being an introvert was a character flaw, which I spent a good part of my life trying to overcome. But much later in life, I realized it didn’t mean I was socially inferior, but rather that I needed adequate time alone to regroup and recharge. I’d say we have a really good relationship… typically very communicative… but we absolutely require space at times.
I wanted her to feel taken care of and I knew she had a lot of things in mind to do with me, but also I really didn’t care what we did, I just wanted to see her. She has also been very stressed because 1) she is a lot like me and worries she isn’t enough and is expending a lot of time to try to do all the things to be enough. 2) she has school responsibilities but is also traveling to various countries around Europe almost every weekend. 3) in between everything else, she is trying really hard to find a paid internship for the summer in her field of study, Communication and Media Studies (Marketing) and is worried she is not going to get hired somewhere she can gain experience to put on her resume since she only has one year of school left before she looks for full-time employment. I remember a time in my life when I was worried about making the right choices as though my entire quality of life depended largely on what I did early on.
I felt like she was being very abrupt and I felt like I was an annoyance to her. I felt as though I was walking on eggshells, and that wasn’t cutting it for either of us. I ended up telling her that I thought she is always so rude but because she is my daughter, I try really hard to ignore it because I want us to spend time together and to have a good mother/daughter relationship, but that also if she weren’t my daughter, she wouldn’t be the type of person I’d choose to spend time with. She responded by telling me that was so unfair. Ugh. Of course it is, but it is also felt true for me.
I really don’t enjoy being around someone who is so stressed all the time and treating me as an emotional doormat as a result. I’ve come to know when people do this it isn’t really about me, however, because of my own traumatic childhood of having an angry father, I shift into people pleaser mode and lose any connection at all to what “I” want, and instead be whomever I need to be to keep the other person from being explosive, and it’s very draining. But it’s more than that now that I’ve been diving into and healing from the experiences of the past. No longer on autopilot, I am unwilling to do it anymore for my own peace of mind.
She and anyone else, can be any old way they want to be, but I don’t want to engage with it. My nervous system is sufficiently healing, and it just feels too bad to be exposed to aggressive or even passive aggressive behaviors. I understand people feeling as though they need to be able to express their emotions, but that is different from someone who just wants to be able to emotionally vomit at will without regard to the consequences. For me, the consequences will be not having access to me.
Of course, while I’m trying to communicate this to her, I felt very guarded and heady, and logical… not at all connected to my heart. Had I been connected to my heart, rather than talk philosophically about it, I could have tapped into the emotions of how I felt at being treated the way I felt I was being treated… which would have been regretful and sad rather than reactively annoyed.
I felt incredibly disrespected. As though she was being completely self-absorbed. But perhaps it would have been different if I had really taken into consideration what I needed on that trip, instead of making the entire trip about her. What did I even want? What didn’t I want? We hadn’t really set any expectations for the trip and I felt like I was flying by the seat of my pants.
For one thing, I wasn’t too excited to be traveling in the first place. I say more about this below, but I really just don’t enjoy traveling as much as I once thought I did. This is at least in part, due to the fact that I don’t have a lot of funds to travel, and that means accommodations that are less than ideal for what my introverted self needs to have to be in my optimal energy.
Stowing away in her room while she was at school had me feel on edge about running into one of her six roommates. I just don’t really enjoy small talk, and without knowing someone very well, that is usually what I revert to, and I find myself in situations where I’m talking about nothingness from some egoic place, while my soul is pulling me to retreat from the situation. Thankfully, I only saw one roommate when I left the bedroom to go to the bathroom one time and it was obviously fine.
I was also really dreading going to the hostel, where I was going to be sleeping in a room with 5 bunk beds, with potentially 9 other people. I had seen pictures of the hostel, and it seemed fine (and very affordable) when I booked it, but now that it was getting closer to having to go there, I was apprehensive about any social interactions I might have to engage in there.
I told her I felt the way she was acting toward me was triggering how I had felt in numerous relationships with men over the last couple decades. Doing whatever they wanted to do without regard to my own needs…my own interests…for fear of being abandoned. That I had made a commitment to myself to never do that again, even if it meant being alone forever. Yet I hadn’t considered the similarities in the situation related to her.
She is very organized and I had made an attempt to keep all my luggage tucked in the corner of her room to not make things even more overwhelming. So that she won’t be over on her luggage allowance when she returns home at the end of May, I had brought one really large suitcase for her to be able to fill up with the winter clothes she no longer needed so I can take them back to Michigan when I go there early next month. I had one small bag packed and ready to go for a side trip we were doing a couple days later to Malta which I was going to leave at her place. One carry-on roller bag, my briefcase and CPAP machine was all together for me to take over to the Airbnb. She had planned to walk with me to the Airbnb and help me get situated.
But things escalated while we went down two floors on the lift and were standing at the door to the apartment building. She ended up slamming the door in my face and telling me to enjoy the rest of my vacation alone.
I was fuming. I had put the hostel address in google maps on my phone and was trying to navigate the cobblestone streets while pulling my bag along and hugging my briefcase with my precious laptop to my side. She lives in the city center and “snatch and run” thefts are common. I was holding my phone tightly and trying to find street names sometimes written on the sides of buildings and figure out what turns to make. I was contemplating booking a flight home the next morning. Finally, I came upon the hostel after 20 minutes vs. the 10 it was supposed to take after having made a few wrong turns and having to back track.
I was trying to put in the code for the door and pull it open, but nothing was happening. I wasn’t hearing any clicks of the code registering and the door unlocking and I didn’t think it was. I was scrolling the booking to look for special instructions when all of a sudden my daughter showed up behind me and said she would try. She tried a few times and also nothing was happening. Somehow we realized the door was supposed to be pushed rather than pulled, something neither of us had considered. Based on the construction of the door, it really seemed as though it was supposed to be pulled.
We went in and congregated in the living room. There was one guy in an adjoining atrium, but no one else around. She asked if we could talk after I found my bed and stored my luggage. But instead, we sat on the sofa and talked first.
I felt so cold and distant at first. Like my mind was made up, I was going home. I wasn’t being dramatic about it, just said that it was what I thought would be best. She started crying and saying all the ways she felt, but the thing that most registered is that she said she felt unwanted.
I softened at her vulnerability. Especially since I had felt unwanted all my life.
And I realized that I was armored up and not being vulnerable at all.
I thought about when I was a child and used to cry at my dad’s angry outbursts that felt directed only at me. And I know, as a result of his mimicking and ridiculing of me for crying, while seeming repulsed by the existence of me, that I had subconsciously disconnected from my emotions. Out of protection and survival instincts my brain had replaced the primary emotion of sadness with suppressed rage over the way I was treated. I didn’t cry for many years.
I felt grateful that she was still able to cry. In fact, she calls me periodically just so she can cry and while I always feel bad I can’t fix everything with a magic wand, I can at least listen and reassure her.
This time was no different.
I told her I did love her so much and that it was because of that I would travel anywhere at all. I told her I was at a point in my life where I want to nest. To build independent security that is entirely the result of my own efforts so that I didn’t have to exchange authenticity for what felt like “co-dependent” connection, as I so often had in the past. That I was still finding my way through all of that, but that I wanted to find a way to be there for her, but also not compromise my own need for peace.
I told her when I had booked the hostel (which she had sent me the link for) that I thought it was fine, but that I should have looked into hotels where we could have been away on our own, or that I would have a place to decompress alone. Only having stayed at a hostel one other time, when she and I went to an island in Mexico a couple years before, I wasn’t sure what to expect and it was adding to my anxiety. She told me she really wanted to make sure I had a good time and was also feeling the pressure of hoping she had chosen things I would want to do. I told her I didn’t care about seeing Spain, other than wanting her to be able to share the things she had been loving about being there. That no matter what we went to see, I wouldn’t be disappointed.
In the heat of our argument, I had told her I thought she really only cared about me being a source of money and that maybe our relationship would be better if instead of attempting to spend time together, I just mailed her a check once in a while. That was particularly unfair on my part, because she never says anything like that, it’s just that I get triggered when she talks about the situations of some of her friends or roommates that pretty much have carte blanche with a parent’s credit card as though she is implying that is what a good parent would provide. She is really good with money, but stressed about it frequently, and I feel guilty for that because I think she has absorbed that from both her father and I.
OMG!
This young woman has been thee greatest source of my spiritual and emotional growth since she was born. One time an intuitive told me that in a former life she was Marie Antoinette and me and her dad were part of her kitchen staff. I don’t doubt it.
We decided the rest of the trip would be drama free and it was. She ended up pointing out that my dress was the identical color of the sofa we were sitting on and we were dying laughing as she took pictures of me. She helped me take my things to the bedroom area and showed me how to access the luggage storage since she has stayed in hostels many times. I set up my European plug adapter and CPAP machine and pulled out anything I would need that night and the next morning, in order to be less disruptive when I got up to take a shower. Then we went back in the living room and talked some more about what we wanted to do over the next two days.
I understood first-hand how it feels to be responsible for someone else’s happiness. She was so worried about me having a good time and it triggered her that I was dreading going to the hostel, as though that was her fault. But it was entirely my fault for “deciding” (killing off any other options) that because of my limited budget, that it was “fine”. In true people-pleasing, martyr fashion, I didn’t even bother to look for other possibilities. Part of the reason is I didn’t want to bother her with trying to figure out which hotels might be close to her apartment. However, that is complete bullshit because I went on 3 vacations to Europe before the internet or Google maps were even a thing and I know how to figure shit out.
Years ago, I took several years’ worth of courses with an organization called Landmark Education, including some when I was pregnant with her and even traveling to California for a course when she was an infant. I was at a weekend course out of state when I found out I was pregnant with her. When she was old enough, she took the equivalent course for teens, and later an advanced course for all ages. I always hoped my daughters would learn to communicate well far earlier in life than I did, and they have.
One of the foundational teachings of Landmark Education is that all breakdowns can be traced to one of three sources (I use their technical terms, but added my interpretation after each):
Undelivered Communications (often something that has bothered you about another person but you haven’t mentioned it for what can be a myriad of reasons… choosing connection over authenticity)
Thwarted Intentions (you intended something to land a certain way, but someone misinterpreted what you meant)
Unfulfilled Expectations (you imagined a situation turning out a certain way, but it didn’t and now you feel stupid or whatever or you worry that the other person is upset or you are upset because you expected them to do something that they didn’t)
Anything can be resolved out of the willingness for people to talk through “what happened”…i.e. the facts…and “what you made it mean” which will often start off with one or both parties really having their defenses up. It can feel like death trying to get through the part where it feels like you are being blamed or rejected.
The rest of our trip was perfectly lovely. We had one little challenging moment on the second from last day, when we were both exhausted.
I can see that I am still so triggered by anyone’s signs of anger at all. I have a very hard time being with anger. I slip so easily into freezing/fawning, that I find one of the best ways for me to sustain is to truly “check myself” in situations involving anger. It’s not that I wish I could instead be confrontational or combative (fight), but rather than either (flight) get the heck away from the person (like I wanted to do with my daughter) or pretend everything is just hunky dory while the person emotes anything that feels like anger, that I literally separate myself energetically from the person rather than feel responsible. It’s easier said than done.
Being human, is not for the faint of heart.
Hang in there.
My gut feeling is things are going to be a wild ride for the next couple of years, but the best we can do is choose peace whenever possible. Be committed to feeling at peace. To understanding that anything that is happening, will pass. That there is nothing more important at this time, then restoring your nervous system. Internal chaos wreaks havoc on your immune system. Choose peace every time. Your own peace. Other people finding peace around your choices is their own problem. It isn’t always going to feel comfortable, for all the reasons you’ve been programmed to submit or otherwise feel uncomfortable.
Picture Proof that we did, in fact, recover.
In my twenties, into my mid-thirties, I did a lot of traveling. I used to think I loved seeing new places, but in hindsight, it was more to add to my repertoire of things I did to appear to be savvier than I actually felt. I know this now because no matter what I did, it was never enough for me to feel better about myself. I thought if I accumulated all the right things, went to all the right places, and associated with all the right people, then others might think I was worthy of their time. I felt so inferior, it was as though I was grasping at any straws whatsoever just in case I might be considered of value to someone if I could say I have that, I did that, I am that, for whatever potential box they might be trying to check in evaluating me.
Because no matter what I acquired or achieved, I still felt relatively empty, I scrapped my entire life on numerous occasions to begin again in a different direction. I lived in a state of being uncomfortable because I thought that is what you did if you wanted to accomplish things. In the school of thought I entertained, comfortable was a death sentence because that meant you weren’t trying.
If I had a life I actually enjoyed… would I want to escape it even for a moment?
I remember it being absolutely exhausting to think of everything I might need and pack for a Disney vacation when my daughters were 1 and 3 years old. I remember it being absolutely exhausting to unpack from the Disney vacation….doing laundry, putting everything away, grocery shopping, etc. to get back to real life.
I remember wondering what that time and money could have potentially been invested in to make our day to day lives more satisfying, and while I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, I knew all I could really do is take a break from that which was overwhelming, because I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to connect with what wasn’t working in my life, much less change it.
What I didn’t realize at the time is that I was entering the “miserable husband syndrome” phase of my life and that sucks the lifeforce energy out of everything. A few years later, we went on a trip to visit friends out of state, and I liken it to having a led ball attached to a chain around my ankle that I had to drag around while doing anything, on top of being the only one to take care of the kids.
A couple years after that I did a similar but even more extensive trip with just my daughters, who were 5 & 7 at the time. I not only navigated them in/out of the airports, but went to various theme parks, checked in/out of hotels, rented a car, and drove 5-1/2 hours in a torrential downpour/thunderstorm while they ate dinner in the backseat before sleeping like rocks the entire drive. That was about a year before my husband asked for a divorce and in an odd way, that trip ended up being a Godsend in that it somehow made me realize I could not only do challenging things with my daughters on my own, but that it was also easier without having to drag a lead ball around with us.
I’ve since done several trips with either one or both of them.
But now that I’m older, I’m realizing where I’m most happy, is not going anywhere at all. It’s not so much isolating myself as it is enjoying the solitude of my own little world.
I love the comfort of home. Of my routine. Of not having to garner up the energy to decide where to go and what to see while I’m “on vacation”, to figure out what to take, to hope I didn’t forget anything I would regret I didn’t have, to find a way to the airport, to deal with the airport at all, to be on a plane, to get to wherever I’m staying, and especially to slog around every day looking at things. Why do I even want to see all these things? I really don’t care.
I wasn’t lying when I told my daughter I didn’t care about Spain or Malta, but that I just wanted a chance to hang out with and be supportive of her. Once we had that straightened out… that there were no expectations other than to enjoy one another’s company… everything was so much easier.
What changed over the years?
I believe it is that I finally have a life I don’t want to escape from.
Not only do I not want to escape from it, but I also don’t want to be away from it for very long at all.
I like my day-to-day meanderings… the fodder for my writing. I like making sure my needs are met. That I’m comfortable. That I’m feeling peaceful. I like contemplating what food I want to buy/prepare for the week. I like checking in with my body and feeling into what kind of movement it wants. I like being in tune with my need for rest/adequate sleep. I like having adequate time to do the things I want to do, like get my work done, write my weekly blog post, work on my book, study what’s going on in the planets and how they might affect my life, or how they have affected my life in hindsight. I like contemplating what might still be left to heal within myself and happen upon videos and books full of the perfect information to help me do so.
And I’m just starting to tune into this new way of life.
I have a few interviews scheduled this week and am anticipating going back to work full-time in the near future. There are some specific financial goals around purchasing property in a couple years, and also I will need to fund editing, etc. of my book once it is done. I also plan to keep up with my blog writing and the client I have been working part time for.
In order to pull it all off and not revert back to a life filled with anxiety, I will need to be running like a finely tuned instrument. When I travel it throws everything out of whack. It’s not very comfortable at all.
My argument with my daughter made me think about how much life can really suck when you are adult these days… especially if you don’t have a practice to put things in perspective… and to strive for inner peace.
She wishes she didn’t make some of the travel decisions she did these past few months, and that she had instead gone some places she didn’t. I could feel the lack mentality in the regrets she expressed. As though she might not ever have the opportunity to travel again. I wanted to assure her she would and then I thought about how so many jobs don’t really give you much paid time off, or even that some jobs won’t allow for additional time off, even unpaid… but also good jobs where employers really do value their employees and their quality of life do exist, and I hope she finds that path.
I could feel the slave like mentality of life in the good old USA. That adults can so easily get lost in the trappings of car payments and house payments and utility bills and stuff… like over the top weddings and work clothes and drinks with friends and manicures and hairdos and gym memberships and car insurance and property insurance and health insurance and student loan payments. And that the stuff you were so excited to experience starts to feel like you are drowning in quicksand sooner than later.
Next thing you know, you need a vacation to escape it all.
And that’s even before kids…and the programming is so strong that somehow everything is going to be just dandy after you start a family, but it’s actually even harder because you really can get neck deep in the quicksand trying to make sure they have the life you want for them… even if you are conservative by nature, its challenging when they get older and want what their peers have…and what they see in commercials or on social media… sure that those are the missing things to have them feel like they are enough… but no matter what they still struggle to find their way.
I tried to reassure my daughter that life unfolds in the way that it is supposed to… and a gift of getting older is that you can look back and see evidence of all the times you thought things were falling apart and they were really falling together.
As our trip this past week unfolded, I talked her into doing a bus trip around the city. She has an abundance of energy, and me not so much. It turned out to be very relaxing and she really enjoyed just sitting back and seeing the sites. While in Malta, we took a boat trip and laid on a beach chair for 4 hours. We both really benefited from some sun and listening to the waves of the Mediterranean Sea.
On the way back the boat was really rocking, and it turned cloudy and cold, and we could not wait to get off the long boat ride. She was sure it was going to capsize, and numerous people were puking, which thankfully we were unaware of until we were disembarking. Two Ubers cancelled and the eventual ride back to our Airbnb took forever. Never have I enjoyed a hot shower as much as the one I took as soon as we got back… and hot showers are one of my most favorite things in the world!
After having walked around Madrid and Malta the past several days, for some reason the bone of the top of my left foot was in so much pain, I was dreading the thought of going back out for dinner. She had the idea to check and see if we could have food delivered, which I had never thought of, and we snuggled in bed and ate gourmet pizza and watched a movie. The “me” decades prior would have never opted for that, FOMO because we were in this place we had traveled to, that we had to do all the things there were to possibly do, but to have done so THIS TIME would have been incredibly uncomfortable compared to the comfort we opted for instead.
I also continued my exploration of having my photo taken and I have a LOT of examples of how I appear when I feel stupid for posing for pictures vs. when I just own that I am worthy of being photographed (and everything else as well). The photo comparison below shows when I first ventured into the water to have my picture taken. On the left… awkwardly aware that I could be observed by others while posing and trying to look like I feel good about myself while actually feeling terrible about myself… resulted in me looking as awful as I felt. On the right… after deciding that “I am who I am and I really love me” and instead focused on how happy I was to finally have my feet in the sand (and also really happy that I would soon be waist deep in water so I could pee) and that I could already see some rocks I was excited to get my hands on… and the difference in my “photogenic appearance” is remarkably more relaxed… don’t you think?
By the end of the trip, I felt tremendously more comfortable in having my photo taken and the difference was mind blowing to me. How we feel about ourselves is 1000x more important than how we want others to feel about us…because the glow that comes from inside out is absolutely distinguishable.
I chose this week’s opening meme from a post that I saw and sent to my daughter, because she told me she was anxious about the upcoming two weeks and wanted to be more disciplined starting the day I left.
Anxiety is discomfort. The only remedy is to get comfortable. To get in a routine. Not one that you are trapped in or that feels crappy, but one that you enjoy. Maybe the routine isn’t a matter of what you do each and every day, but that you have a variety of activities written out that you can fall back on when you find yourself feeling unsettled. Comfort includes a job you truly enjoy, even if some other job would pay more but involve doing a myriad of things you don’t enjoy. Comfort is getting your expenses within your means. To not obsess over something out there on the horizon someday, one day that is going to make you happy later, but rather it’s this exact moment, you are living day to day that has to be comfortable.
I recently got an invitation to join a Facebook group started by an old friend back in my Landmark days, Jennifer Clarke, “For Women who are Exhausted”. The meme above was posted by one of the members. Jennifer posted something that really resonated with me,
“For years I thought self-care was a pedicure and shopping. But more so I’m learning that self-care actually means care of the self, the body, whatever relaxes your nervous system. And after 54 years of fight or flight, when my nervous system finally relaxed, I thought there was something wrong, that I had lost my spark or maybe it was just menopause. But no, it was just a frazzled system finally feeling safe enough to relax.”
I have been on over 100 airline flights in my life. During my time working at the airport, I’d gotten to experience quite a few trips in either first class or premium economy on longer flights. But one thing I’d always wanted to do was fly in a business class pod on an international flight, but for one reason or another it never worked out. Both of my daughters and even my ex-husband had experienced traveling in a pod while using my benefits.
Because of a couple things that fell miraculously in place, I was finally able to travel in one on my 8-1/2 hour flight home from Madrid. I can honestly say that it made me happier than almost anything I can think of in my entire life. Why? Because it was so incredibly comfortable.
The business class seat was extra soft and comfortable and also reclined into a gazillion positions.
Bottom right corner… me lying completely flat in my bed with my head on the cushy pillow provided, while covered by the equally comfy blanket….Soooooo happy!!!
I thought I would sleep the entire way, but the first two hours consisted of the most incredibly delicious food that I couldn’t even believe was airplane food. Then I went to sleep and slept soundly for 1.5 hours but woke up feeling so refreshed and decided it was way too cool of an experience to sleep through, so I watched a movie on the large screen instead. You can’t even see another passenger from the position of the pods. I had so many little cubbies to store and charge my phone and laptop and hold my purse and water bottle. It was truly an experience of a lifetime!
As I mentioned earlier, April 20th marked the conjunction in the galaxy of Jupiter-Uranus (within the constellation of Taurus). This means they are basically right next to (aligned with) one another in the sky. This conjunction is said to be one of the most important astrological transits of 2024. Together with the total solar eclipse, by far, April has been the most active/disruptive time amongst the planets for all of 2024. Many other long-term transits have occurred, as mentioned over the prior weeks. This is the last of the biggies. I don’t know about you, but April has kicked my ass in numerous ways, but for the most part, I’ve been committed to just riding out the storm, trusting new possibilities are on the horizon. This particular transit occurs every 14 years, so as I’ve said before, it’s worth contemplating what has happened over your life since June 2011. For me, that time marks the beginning of what became a huge transitional period in my life, and I also know I’m at the beginning of another huge transitional period in my life right now.
The following excerpt is taken from the website Today.com:
What does the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Taurus mean?
Jupiter, the planet of expansion and philosophy, aligns with Uranus, the planet of rebellion and revolution, we can anticipate a significant global and personal upheaval. This celestial union will initiate a new cycle that will shake our world by introducing a shift in perspective and sparking transformation that will force us out of our comfort zones.
Uranus feels uneasy in Taurus, as the earth sign craves stability and resists rapid changes. Nevertheless, Uranus may prompt us to grow in areas such as relationships and finances, even if we are not quite ready. Fortunately, Jupiter's presence ensures good fortune as long as we proceed at a comfortable pace and avoid impulsive actions. This could be an enchanted time, carving out new space for creativity and partnership.
This transit “is likely to have a lot of people reflecting on what they're doing with their lives and empower them to begin to shift their lives away from the daily grind mindset to a more well balanced and relaxation-based lifestyle,” Astrologer, Joshua Pingley says, “if we are not personally centered and grounded, how can our lives be?”
One door closes another door opens - it is important to take the steps needed to move toward a new vision. After all things can't stay the same forever, and we can't either. Embrace the unfamiliar and take gradual steps towards implementing significant transformations.
If you have run your astrological natal chart (where the planets were at the time you were born) it would be worthwhile to see which of the 12 houses (your chart is divided up into 12 sections, each of which has a different focus) that Taurus appears in. For me, it is in my 12th house, which is the house of spirituality and the unconscious. I’ve absolutely been seeing my shadow side, the remnants of which still pop up, like with me feeling shut down when I interpreted my daughter as being disrespectful and unappreciative of my (unspoken) efforts to come spend time (and money) with her despite my deeper desire to be a homebody and focus on my way forward at this point in my life. I absolutely experienced some huge growth as the result of our argument.
And to be honest, that is really all we can ever do. Be gentle with ourselves as we uncover things we hadn’t recognized within us before, and work to be more aligned with who we want to be rather than who we have been in the past, as the result of a lifetime of conditioning/reacting in patternistic ways developed over our lifetimes.
The most interesting thing about the astrology of late as it pertains to the argument between my daughter and I that started off of our trip together, is that if this truly is a time for cleaning up the residue of the past 10-15 years as a result of the various conjunctions, it caused me to reflect on a “Family Constellation” group event that I participated in about 11 years ago.
If you haven’t heard of this, I definitely recommend you check it out. The facilitator who led the Family Constellation session I participated in was Gary Stuart (GaryStuartHealing.com) and his website is full of information on what this methodology entails. I’m sure there are a lot of other sources to be found on the internet, as well.
His home page says the following: Whose pain are you carrying? Constellation Healing transforms long-time relationship conflict, including self-worth, money issues, romance dynamics, and chronic health ailments, and often, deeply-held, often hidden beliefs you didn’t know you or your family had.
A Family Constellation Healing Session reveals ancestral entanglements and frees your from their painful control.
In the session I attended 11 years ago, participant representatives reconstructed family structures to identify and solve fundamental issues. Gary describes the sessions as being similar to psychodrama. I observed several scenarios and was so intrigued. Then I had the opportunity to play a part in a reconstruction. I was standing in as someone’s mother. Gary asked questions of the center person and then asked me questions to answer as her mother. I was thinking thoughts and having feelings that I would have never imagined would be things a mother would think/feel/say, and I was uncomfortable reporting them back. I felt like I was somehow doing it wrong. So, I asked for guidance, rather than just saying the odd things popping into my mind. Gary told me to say exactly what was coming to me and I reluctantly did at first, and eventually relaxed into being an empty channel of what was coming in. Later the woman said the things I was saying were precisely what her mother would have said and that it made a huge difference for her. Other people came up and played different parts of her family as they popped up in the session.
When it came my turn to be the center, I wanted to address my relationship with my daughter…the one who I just went to visit in Spain. At the time she was 10 years old. I felt like I was regularly butting heads with her. I felt like she blamed me for getting divorced. A woman in her seventies volunteered to play the part of my daughter. At first she was very obstinate about me not listening to her, and in a short amount of time, she started bawling, eventually falling to the ground and curling up in the fetal position. She didn’t think I loved her. It was uncannily real, especially since she knew nothing about my daughter or our relationship in advance.
Just like I felt when we had our argument in Spain, I felt a shield up, like I was being accused of not caring, when everything I was doing on behalf of her in life, I felt was beyond indicative of caring. Everything I did was for my daughters. Nothing else mattered to me. I’d also been her biggest advocate as a child and that frustrated me back then because I felt completely unappreciated, yet at the same time, understood a 10-year-old shouldn’t have to be appreciative of her parents.
But the person playing the part of her (suppressed) energy had me open my heart to her in a way I hadn’t been able to before…because my heart had been so guarded prior. Other people stood up as asked to by Gary, to represent the matriarchal lineage prior to me. Someone represented my mother, her mother, and the mothers for each of the 3 generations before them. They let me know they were standing behind me and understood this was a generational issue. To feel resentful and alone as women and mothers, yet not know how to internally process that so as not to affect their daughters.
It was a very real and powerful re-enactment and probably especially because I had watched several re-enactments before mine, as well as participated in someone else’s, I knew they were legitimately channeling the energy of those coming through to them.
Even though I feel as though my heart has opened substantially since that time, I love that as a result of a conversation with a friend last night, who asked me if I had heard of family constellation work, a light bulb went off between the connection of now and 11 years prior.
Where was I still resentful to not be appreciated for the things I was “sacrificing” as a parent on behalf of my child?? What did I want to make sure not to carry forward into the future?
Our recent argument was absolutely an opportunity for me to see where I was still not open hearted, even though it didn’t all come together until I had returned home…the night before Jupiter-Uranus conjunction.
Feeling satisfied and growing… taken by my daughter on our last night together at the 360 Degree SkyBar having dinner and enjoying the view of Madrid from the 26th floor.
As always, I apologize for any typos and grammatical errors I may have overlooked. Thank you for being here and growing along with me! Sending you so much love!
I love your journey! 😇