I found myself in what felt like a video game simulation—navigating through the home of Saruman from The Lord of the Rings. If you know the lore of the series, Saruman’s a character who locked himself away in a cold, rigid tower, detaching from his heart to try and control his environment through logic and exterior walls. After breaking into this fortress, I saw myself performing some serious parkour moves, weaving through falling ice and frozen structures. But the lower I descended into the threshold, the warmer it became, and the ice began to melt.

Sweeping through this maze with me was a masculine presence—a shadow I couldn’t see, but a weight I continuously felt tracking my every move.

As a Virgo rising with Monday’s Scorpio New Moon on the horizon, my first instinct was to look at this dream through a self-reflective lens, wondering if I was the one building a cold fortress or emotionally freezing out my progress. Scorpio rules my third house, an area of the chart that governs our immediate surroundings, the daily data we process, and the mental chatter running through our heads. So a New Moon landing there is acting as a psychological black hole for my thoughts, causing me to dissect my conversations, replay interactions, and instinctively blame my own mindset first.

Because Scorpio operates in the dark, its energy sometimes tricks me into thinking that the underlying tension I feel in my environment must be a secret flaw in my own armor that I'm failing to see. But after pulling cards to get to the bottom of my dream, the tarot offered me a completely different perspective.

Bypassing my own psyche, a truth was being revealed: sometimes, I’m not dreaming about my own psychological blocks; I’m dreaming about the frozen fortresses of the people around me.

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Lenormand speaks in everyday images, with each one pointing to something you might recognize in your own life. Every card carries meaning for love, work, and health, and they speak to each other the way words build a sentence. So a ship beside a tower tells a different story than a ship beside a garden. That's why a Lenormand reading can feel so specific, even when it's offered to a whole collective at once.

The Goddess and the God are the two people cards in the deck, and for a collective, I read them as energies instead of as genders. The Goddess holds the receptive, intuitive, inward side of a situation, while the God holds the active, outward, decisive side. Each of us carries both in different amounts, at different times. You might see yourself in the Goddess, in the God, in both, or in neither.

In this situation, I read the month from the Goddess because she holds the question. The cards to her left show what's behind us, while the cards to her right show what's ahead. The God appears in the bottom four cards, the fate row, which are set apart because they reach a little past the month itself.

You don't have to follow every card to feel what's being said. Read this the way you'd listen to someone who cares about you, telling you what they notice in your life: take what lands and leave what doesn't. The cards show patterns and possibilities, and what you do with them stays in your own hands.

November's Grand Tableau opens with the Moon and closes its first row with the Sun, meaning there could be movement from being emotionally seen into being warmly lit up. That might be the heartbeat of the whole month ahead of us, a stretch where what's been felt privately starts to meet daylight, whether that arrives as a conversation, a decision, a gathering, or an answer that's been long-awaited.

How the month moves

The top row reads Moon, Ship, Tower, Fox, Whip, Garden, House, Sun, and it reads like a sentence. The Moon represents recognition and emotional tides, which in love can look like feelings rising at night or someone finally acknowledging how they feel. In career, it might look like being noticed for work or a reputation shifting, and in health, it could show up as sleep, hormones, or natural cycles asking for attention.

The Ship brings movement and distance, the Tower brings large institutions, authority, and sometimes isolation, and the Fox represents strategy, caution, and self-interest. Together, they could describe dealing with a big organization such as a hospital, a school, a corporation, or a government office, where it becomes noticeable who’s quietly protecting their own interests. The Whip follows as the card of repetition, friction, and discipline, and it might show up as the same argument or tension returning in a new outfit, a workplace pattern that keeps replaying, or a routine that’s pushed through without asking whether it actually still serves.

Then the row opens into the Garden, the House, and the Sun, which represent public gatherings, home/foundations, and success or truth. After a tense middle stretch, the month could close with warmth, community, and a feeling of being welcomed back into daily life.

The Goddess row: where the energy stands

The Goddess sits in the second row, and reading the month from her perspective sets the tone because she holds the question—allowing anyone to find their place in what surrounds her. The Stork, Bouquet, and Dog sit to her left, which is the past side. The Stork represents change having arrived, like a move, a new role, a pregnancy, or a new level of honesty. The Bouquet right after it is the gift or invitation that came with that change, which might look like a compliment, an offer, an invite, or a kind gesture. The Dog is loyalty, so there could’ve been a friend, partner, coworker, or family member who stayed steady while everything shifted, and recognizing that support might matter more this month than it did while it was happening.

The future side reads Mice, Star, Letter, Book. The Mice are small things nibbling away at energy, like worry, bills, a full inbox, an anxious thought loop, or a body that feels run down without an obvious reason. The Star follows with hope, guidance, and clarity, and it also picks up on visibility, like being seen online or in public. The Letter is a message, an email, a text, a contract, or test results, and the Book represents something not yet known, which could be a secret, a course, a piece of research, or information that’s been held back. Read together, they could be saying that stress might wear on things for a period of time until a message or a document arrives carrying hope, which then reveals what’s been out of view.

An email might land that finally explains why a project stalled, a text could arrive that opens the real conversation that’s been waiting, or a result might come through that gives something to work with instead of something to fear.

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Work

The Fox is the work card, and here it lands directly above the Goddess, which places a job, income, or career strategy at the front of the mind this month. The Tower sits on one side of it and the Whip on the other, so work could feel like a large structure with repeating friction built into it—like a manager who keeps changing expectations, a team where one person tends to collect the credit, or a schedule that cycles through the same pressure points every week. Fox energy often asks us to read the room and notice who says one thing while doing another. It could protect time and peace. For the self-employed, the Fox might show up as watching a competitor, rethinking an offer, or deciding who to collaborate with. With the Star and Letter on the future side, a message or some form of recognition about work could land before the month closes.

Love

The Heart, the love card, lands in the fate row, which means love might be something forming over the next eight to twelve weeks instead of something that resolves inside November alone. It sits between the God and the Bear. The God is the active, decisive, outward-facing energy, which could show up as a partner, an authority figure, or the internal drive to take action. The Bear represents strength, protection, and sometimes possessiveness or caretaking. Love could arrive through someone strong and loyal who steps up, or it might look like learning to protect the heart with firmer boundaries. For some, the Bear might manifest as a parent figure or a boss with strong opinions about relationships.

The Coffin closes that row as an ending, a rest, or a dormancy, which might look like a relationship closing, a situation going quiet, or an old story about love finishing so a different one has room to begin. The Snake, Birds, and Crossroads in the bottom row of the main table add more detail. The Snake could be a tangled attraction or a third party with their own agenda; the Birds represent a lot of conversation and nervous energy; and the Crossroads is a decision with more than one path. Someone who’s dating might be talking to two people at once and weighing both, and someone who’s partnered might finally be having the long-overdue conversation about where things are going. The Ring sits near the Fish in that same row, so a conversation about commitment or an agreement between two people could be part of it too.

Home and Family

The House is the home and family card, and it lands between the Garden and the Sun with the Letter directly beneath it, which reads as a warm, social home with news or paperwork attached. The Garden represents community and gatherings, so this could look like hosting a dinner, being invited into someone else’s home, or a family gathering that goes better than predicted. The Sun adds vitality and success, which might be a repair or renovation coming together, a family member sharing good news, or a long tension softening. The Letter below could be a lease, a mortgage document, a message from a relative, or an email about a property, so if housing has been uncertain, a document or a message might settle part of it.

Health

The Tree is the health card, and it sits between the Scythe and the Lily with the Clover above it. The Scythe is a clean cut, which in health could be asking to remove something that drains the system—like a food, a substance, a habit, a schedule, or in some situations, a medical procedure. The Lily right after it represents peace, rest, and recovery, so the cut might be followed by a calmer stretch where the body settles. The Clover above adds a small window of luck, like an appointment that goes better than expected or a symptom that finally has an explanation. The Mice and Clouds elsewhere in the table hint at stress, fatigue, brain fog, and mood dips, which could be the body carrying what the mind hasn’t processed yet, showing up as tension in the jaw or shoulders, restless sleep, or an appetite that changes with the emotions.

Money

The Fish is the money card, and it sits in the corner with the Key above it and the Ring beside it, followed by the Scythe. The Key represents access and answers, the Ring is a contract or agreement, and the Scythe is a cut or a harvest, so money could move through an agreement that gets renegotiated, trimmed, or finally paid out. This might look like a client who reduces hours, a raise that arrives with new terms, a payment plan, shared finances being divided, a subscription or expense that gets cut, or a contract that releases a payment. The first column reads Moon, Stork, Key, Fish from top to bottom, which could show an emotional shift or a change in public standing unlocking a direct channel of resources before the month ends.

Calling

The Anchor is the destined calling card, and it sits between the Cross and the Mountain with the Letter above it and the Birds below. The Cross represents a burden that carries meaning, and the Mountain is an obstacle that asks for patience, so a path could feel heavy and slow before it feels steady. This might show up as studying for a license, building a business, managing caretaking duties while pursuing personal goals, or committing to a vocation that has to hold through a hard stretch. The Letter above suggests a message or document could confirm the right road is being taken, and the Birds below point to conversations with people around about what’s being built, which might help ease any isolation.

Travel

The Ship is the travel card, and it sits between the Moon and the Tower with the Bouquet below it. The Tower could tie travel to an institution or paperwork—like an airport, a visa, a hospital, a campus, or a government office—and the Moon adds emotional weight, so a trip might carry more feeling than the plans suggest. There’s also a possibility of traveling alone or at night. The Bouquet below could be a gift or an invitation attached to the journey, like a ticket someone sends or a trip that turns out sweeter than expected.

The Fate Row

The four cards at the bottom—the God, Heart, Bear, Coffin—show what could be building over the following eight to twelve weeks, beyond November itself. An active choice leads with the heart toward something strong and protective, and something finishes so there’s room for it. The God and the Heart together could be a decision made from feeling instead of from pressure; the Bear adds the strength to hold a boundary, and the Coffin closes the chapter behind it. That ending might involve a job, a friendship, a living situation, an identity, or a belief about what’s deserved.

The Pattern Underneath

What stands out psychologically is how many cards in this table describe loops. The Whip repeats, the Mice nibble, the Clouds blur, and the Cross carries a story that might’ve been handed down instead of one that was chosen, while the Mountain can be the defense built to avoid feeling the weight of it. The Snake can be the part of the psyche that bargains and stays cautious, because it learned somewhere along the way that being direct was too risky. The mind often treats repetition as safety, since a familiar pain feels easier to predict than an unfamiliar relief, and the Clouds sitting right before the Cross could show how confusion sometimes protects against feeling a heavy thing clearly.

The Birds come right before the Crossroads in the bottom row, and that reads as saying the pivot could come through speaking things out loud, whether that’s telling a friend, writing it down, or finally saying something to the person it concerns. The Crossroads closes the whole table, and it could be the reminder that a pattern doesn’t break through effort alone; it loosens when it’s seen, named, and chosen differently once, and then once more.

If there’s one thing to take away from this reading, maybe let it be this:

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I’m being presented with a major pivot in my path forward—an opportunity to expand my borders and seemingly move into a fresh reality that comes with the promise of being completely safe, provided for, and looked after. On paper, it’s everything a more naive version of myself would’ve wanted, and technically has previously received a few times before. But it feels similar to the universe consistently handing me an order of spaghetti they keep cooking slightly wrong. Yes… it might look like everything’s there on my plate, but maybe the noodles are overcooked, or there's not enough salt to really taste the flavor.

Either way, I'm picking up on my own pattern of refusal to accept something that just isn't good enough for me anymore, and the deep internal split it creates when you’re trying to choose between your guilt and your truth.

I want the growth and the change, but I’m no longer interested in making the self-abandoning sacrifices and compromises attached to the price tag. I understand that more often than not, expansion will come paired with something uncomfortable and unfamiliar—things our egos don’t necessarily want to move toward. But I'm learning to familiarize myself with this instinct to pause before rushing to override it out of the fear that I’m simply being too picky.

I feel like we’re too often and too eagerly taught to gaslight ourselves out of standing firm on what we know to be true—to look at our own standards and patience and wonder if we're being too strict, too idealistic, or “no fun” for drawing lines in the sand just to feel safe in a certain environment or with certain people. We’re so deeply conditioned to view people’s boundaries as selfish, but sometimes a boundary is the only thing keeping a person whole.

Especially as heterosexual women who are advised not to settle while simultaneously shamed, guilted, and conditioned into viewing a predictable script or gilded cage as the ultimate goal. Coercively telling us: You’ll never get this chance again! If you walk away, you’ll end up with nothing!

It's a specialized kind of pressure that’s only intensifying as I get older. Turning 28 means my 30s are suddenly hovering on the horizon, bringing with them all the unwritten societal rules about marriage, kids, and deadlines that I once subscribed to. I wanted the picture-perfect family and to be the picture-perfect housewife. I wanted a husband who would take care of me, provide, protect, and create this place of comfort and safety for me to raise our kids, nourish everyone, and blossom in my femininity.

And this desire hasn't completely vanished… BUT it has drastically shifted as my mind has since matured and developed. I realize now that I subconsciously wanted a life of feeling chosen, not necessarily a life of fulfillment. But I’m no longer willing to shrink the map of my life and sacrifice my own expansion just to be safely contained inside someone else’s dream.

The seven planetary and celestial retrogrades occurring right now—designed to drag our unspoken, subterranean truths right out into the open—make this pressure feel incredibly intentional right now. It’s a cosmic re-evaluation regarding our relationships, our balance, and what we’re actually settling for. And tonight, that pressure reaches a boiling point.

Under the light of the Taurus Full Moon, an atmospheric pull will be created between the familiar, comfortable containers of safety we cling to and our deeper, wilder cravings for true, uncompromised freedom. It exposes the aches of where we’re terrified of losing our stability—or worse, where we’re tempted to sacrifice our ultimate expansion just to maintain someone else’s comfort or satisfaction.

As a Virgo rising with a Leo sun and a Libra moon, I’m feeling this full moon in my 9th house of expansion and the bigger horizon. My Leo sun is square the Taurus full moon, so I feel the friction: my need to be seen and respected as a whole person is going up against my craving for comfort and security. My Libra moon wants peace and harmony, which is where the guilt comes in, and since it has no direct angle to the full moon, it shows up as a quiet sense that something needs adjusting.

Rising, Sun, and Moon signs: the area of life the full moon lights up and how strongly you’re feeling it…

For me, this lunation has forced a very specific kind of mirror into my hands. It doesn’t just ask if I want to be loved and cared for—it forces a direct confrontation between the immediate comfort of material security and the true, unmapped radius of my destiny.

What I more deeply desire and value is a foundational respect for my humanity, my voice, and my bodily autonomy. I'm not looking to be a human doll who is paid for and in return expected to perform. I want true partnership where I know that I’m actually being heard and considered; someone who respects my somatic boundaries, will protect me from their own ego, does their own shadow work, takes accountability, seeks self-awareness, and treats me as a whole person—not just a fixture in their world. And if I were to say yes to the offer in front of me currently, I would be settling for a reality that does not include these things, whether they’re intentionally being withheld or not.

I’d rather dare to build my own world first, on my own terms. I’ve seen how the alternative ends too many times. I’ve watched how resentment can slowly erode the healthiest of dynamics from the inside out, often turning into chronic physical, mental, or emotional tolls and illnesses for the people who carry them. They think they got the romanticized fairytale, only to wake up years later and realize they completely forgot themselves within it.

I refuse to forget myself. The delusion of dependency has broken, and my security does not belong in someone else’s hands—a realization that’s changed the entire game.

I recently watched the Netflix adaptation of East of Eden, and the same reflections came to mind when analyzing the infamous character of Cathy, spoilers ahead… While her choices throughout the story are extreme and often indefensible, there is a distinct undercurrent in her arc that stood out to me. She explicitly tells her husband that she does not want to move to California. He ignores her, claims he knows what is best for her, and buys the land anyway—all as a grand gesture. The moment she realizes he’s incapable of respecting her "No," she shuts down and stops performatively interacting with the life she vehemently rebuked.

Her actions are by no means a blueprint for healthy behavior, but her story mimics a very real human breaking point: when a person’s voiced limits are consistently treated as a joke or inconsequential, the silent resentment of feeling unseen and disrespected will eventually fracture the entire foundation.

It feels bittersweet to look at someone who wants to choose you and realize that saying yes to them means saying no to yourself. But if you are finding yourself at this exact crossroads, how do you actually tell the difference? How do you know if you are holding a legitimate, self-protecting boundary, or if you’re just running away out of fear?

The difference depends on whether your choice protects your core well-being or simply isolates you from growth. A healthy boundary is always rooted in a deep place of self-respect. It isn't about controlling someone else; it is an internal standard that allows you to hold your own baseline clearly, without needing the other person to validate or approve it. Fear, on the other hand, is rooted in anxiety and ego. It demands urgency and moves you to reactively prevent a worst-case scenario before it even happens.

When you hold a real boundary, it brings a sense of heavy, grounded peace afterward, even if the conversation was agonizingly hard. But when fear runs the show, it only brings a fleeting moment of relief, quickly followed by a hollow, anxious ache of regret.

If you are trying to untangle these two feelings in your own life, you have to be willing to reclaim your power and authority over yourself and ask the hard questions:

• What am I actually trying to protect? Am I protecting my mental health, my time, and my somatic safety? Or am I just trying to protect my ego from the risk of looking foolish or having to pivot if things go left?

• Did I actually communicate? Did I clearly express my limits and capacity, or am I expecting someone to read my mind and failing them on a test they didn’t know they were taking?

• What happens if they respect the limit? If they look at me and say, “I understand, I won’t do that again,” do I feel a sense of relief and repair—or do I feel panicked because I was secretly looking for an excuse to leave?

• Is this a repetitive pattern? Do I pull the plug, pick a fight, or find a fatal flaw every single time a situation starts feeling stable, close, and terrifyingly real?

There is no secret checklist that makes any path forward feel perfectly smooth. But if you are recognizing a frustrating cycle of people simply not listening to your “No”—of abandoning and shrinking your desires for people who lack the self-awareness to see their own subtle manipulations—remember this:

Fear demands urgency, while truth is usually willing to wait. Maybe the work right now isn’t about forcing a final decision or trying to see over a horizon that is still miles away. Maybe it’s just about sitting in the discomfort of the unknown, loosening our grip on how we thought things should happen, and actively strengthening our resilience while being openly honest. At the end of the day, that's all that's being asked of us.

I still want the plate of spaghetti; I'm just no longer willing to waste my time and money on food that isn’t properly prepared to my liking. The most important boundary we can ever hold isn’t the one we draw against the world to stay safe—it’s the one we draw to ensure we never abandon ourselves.

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I’ve been sitting with what it might mean to grieve someone who’s still very much alive—to be loved deeply by a person and still go without. And how you can witness someone be fluent in presence, depth, and vulnerability with others, only to find that fluency feels like pretense when it’s finally your turn. Performed closeness doesn’t always come from a lie; sometimes it comes from true love and care that only reaches as far as someone’s comfort allows. For years I held both of those truths at once: I loved and I still wanted, and then perceived myself as ungracious because wanting more felt like a betrayal of what I already had.

I see that I’m in-between self-concepts right now, and there’s a particular frustration that occurs where the next identity hasn’t become fully embodied, and the old one keeps tugging at my sleeve. With the psychological, cathartic Scorpio retrogrades this month, I catch myself going back through old memories and situations like photo albums. I notice the tension I’ve often carried by nodding and saying “that’s fair” or “it’s fine” in moments where I didn’t really feel that way, because vocalizing what I actually desired, expected, or perceived would’ve meant admitting how long I’d been feeling disappointed or hurt.

For most of my life, I haven’t let myself ask more from people who could’ve always given it, but out of convenience, comfort, or circumstance, didn’t. I understood that someone can love me and still not show up for me when and how I really need them to. It just hurts to accept that someone can be moving the way they do because they’re attempting to heal the same wounds they’re now creating in you.

Understanding why absence, neglect, or misunderstandings occur is never the same as being okay with them. I think I’ve just been confusing those two for years—translating every gap into a reason, and every reason into more patience, until my patience had quietly become a passive method of asking for and accepting less. That's the kind of grief I'm talking about. Not losing someone, but losing the version of closeness I kept creating and defending—the kind that looked solid from afar and showed its cracks up close, time and time again. A love that's known and felt to be real, but hasn’t reached as far as I've needed it to. I can hold compassion for all of it and still call the gap a gap.

What I’ve been reflecting on this month is how much of this is mirrored in my own actions, exposing a double standard I didn't realize I was holding. I know I desire my own personal, tight-knit soul family to lean on and live life with, but I’m also recognizing that my capacity to be a present community member myself has been pretty low lately. For so long, I used to jump at every opportunity to support and celebrate the people I cared about without the proper discernment, boundaries, or rest. Now I’m playing catch-up with my own leaky, drained battery, trying to make do until I can consistently hold a charge.

This homecoming to self has required far more solitude and saying “no” than I initially expected. From the outside looking in, I know that can look a lot like distance, regardless of where the intention comes from. But showing up consistently often means spending money I need to save, time I must reserve for other responsibilities, and energy and focus that wane quite easily. This isn’t about the conditional nature of relationships, but a reminder that it’s okay for me to take extra pressure off of myself instead of trying to overcompensate for how long it is taking me to find my own stability.

The truth is, my yearning for closeness has often made me impatient with my own healing journey. I’ve wanted to skip the messy middle and get straight back to being available and ready. But you cannot recklessly rush to the aid and celebration of others when it too quickly becomes a distraction from your own growth or healing. I’m permitting myself to step back from the demands of showing up—to miss the birthday celebrations, the family gatherings, the trips, and the spending so I can finally secure my own oxygen mask. I’m tired of staying in survival mode, because I’m too scared to truly allow people to experience me putting myself first.

By choosing this deliberate absence, I realize I’ve been judging others the same way I’ve been judging myself. Both come from the same questions surrounding absence and presence: What is enough? What is fair? And both have been easier to answer with quick shame than with nuanced honesty. A season, or maybe even a lifetime, of showing up less isn’t necessarily evidence of less care or love. It might be a symptom of burnout, or simply a shift in priorities. This season is teaching me to pay attention to whether my own are truly aligned, or merely driven by a sense of obligation.

I’m not sure I’ve landed on an answer in every area or connection, but I’m learning that wanting more from people who are capable of giving it isn’t the same as being ungrateful. It’s recognition, acknowledgement. Giving yourself the room and time you need to re-stabilize isn’t abandonment, and it doesn’t make you unworthy of still receiving the support and love you deserve. Maybe both sides of this need the same grace: the people who give what they can and the people who withhold when they may need to. Maybe the closeness in connection we could all be looking for starts with finding people who are capable of being open and honest about their capacity to give.

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I wanted to pull a little sneak peek into what was currently moving through the collective energy, and what came out was really interesting. I see that the universe is trying to usher in a phase of genuine trust and emotional renewal, but to get there, we have to clear out old, toxic mental habits and defensive mechanisms.

All Swords indicates heavy Air sign energy: a shift in how we think, perceive, and communicate.

• Two of Swords (Rx): Indecision or avoidance that can no longer be ignored.

• Knight of Swords: The collective impulse to use sharp words, become defensive, and intellectualize our feelings, choosing to win arguments rather than make ourselves vulnerable.

• Five of Swords (Sideways to the Right): A looming obstacle and a warning that if we choose to “win” the fight through pride or ego, we ultimately lose the connection.

Makes sense, but the shape of the spread itself is what I found the most interesting. The inverted triangle in sacred geometry, alchemy, and various spiritual traditions represents water, emotion, the womb, and divine feminine energy. It also corresponds with the subconscious mind and inner intuition, rather than external observation. I’m taking this as a sign that the balance we create in our lives begins with becoming more aware of what needs to shift within us, instead of focusing on the flaws we see in others.

The Heart of the Matter: What We’re Actually Craving

Underneath this inverted triangle of Swords lies a beautiful, supportive foundation trying to establish itself in the collective consciousness: The Stork, The Moon, and The Dog.

If the Swords represent our armor, these Lenormand cards reveal the vulnerable soul beneath it, ready to heal. At our core, the collective is craving a genuine upgrade in the way we connect. We want the freedom to evolve, the safety to express our deepest and messiest feelings without judgment, and a solid, unwavering sense of loyalty and companionship. But right now, we’re in a relationship pressure cooker…

Your intuition may feel turned all the way up, but it’s possible that it’s being filtered through an overwhelming amount of nervous-system anxiety. The collective field seems flooded with messages, sudden news, and frantic back-and-forth chatter, making it easy to misinterpret the energy moving through your space. There’s a restless momentum building, and you may be mistaking a sudden urge to run away for a genuine intuitive hit. For others, this impulsive energy may show up as a frantic need to make a massive, permanent decision on the spot: firing off a reckless ultimatum, abruptly cutting someone off, or convincing yourself that you’re standing in your power when you’re actually using a defensive strike to avoid a vulnerable breaking point.

The collective is drowning in verbal noise and mental looping, mistaking relationship anxiety for deep emotional truth. The birds in our heads are chirping so loudly that every connection becomes a round-the-clock research project. We’re overanalyzing every detail, talking things to death, and sending endless texts just to feel in control. We’re weaponizing our intellect to turn our feelings into a puzzle, completely missing the reality of the commitments we keep circling around.

The heavy fog surrounding our commitments, cycles, and relationships is acting as a temporary, self-imposed buffer. We’re using uncertainty as an excuse to avoid making a definitive choice, insisting that we “don’t know what to do” while clinging to long-term cycles out of pure comfort, even when the alignment is long gone. But the blinding light of total exposure is already trying to break through the mist. The homework and data collection we’re doing right now aren’t for nothing; they’re forcing a massive, undeniable breakthrough.

The illusions are being burned away to expose the unread chapters of our connections, forcing us out of the foggy, anxious loop so we can finally see who’s genuinely loyal and standing by our side. To see how this exact pressure’s hitting the pavement in real life, look at what’s coming up for the rising signs:

(🔒 Paid Tier Expansion: Feel free to read ahead for your Sun and Moon signs too, to see how your core identity and inner emotional world are navigating the fallout of this lunation!)

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Can we actually talk about what is happening with this Venus retrograde in Scorpio right now? Because the real-time fallout of this transit is kind of terrifying but also liberating at the same time. Running from October 3rd to November 13, 2026—with a messy little detour back into Libra on October 25th just to make sure we really feel the contrast of our fractured dynamics—this isn't your cute, aesthetic little astro phase. It’s a psychological demolition derby.

Venus handles love, our self-worth, and the archetypal feminine, but when you drop her into the unyielding, radioactive waters of Scorpio? The party is officially over. Scorpio doesn't do superficiality or polite dinner-table small talk. It acts like an absolute detective, digging up every single hidden resentment, toxic power struggle, and ancient relational trauma we tried to bury.

What’s even crazier is that this specific cycle features a monumental Scorpio Venus Cazimi (when the planet meets the clarity of the Sun), which is officially wrapping up the final Scorpio retrograde of a century-long cycle. Let that sink in... we are actively closing out a massive, multi-generational chapter on how humanity handles intimacy, sex, and emotional sovereignty.

This transit is demanding a brutal, non-negotiable excavation of feminine energy—that yin, receptive, intuitive, feeling side of life—within every single one of us, no matter how you identify. It is literally screaming at us to stop over-analyzing everything from a distance, drop our survival armor, and actually feel. But because the collective shadow is terrified of losing control and we live in a patriarchal society, the scales are tipping... and we are watching the world react with this visceral, public violence.

The Headlines Are Bleeding (And So Are Our Wounds)

Right now, my soul is compelled to expose the absolute drama happening behind closed doors… We can’t talk about Venus in Scorpio without looking at the taboos breaking across our screens this week. The headlines are literally bleeding Scorpio themes: sexual and domestic violence, institutional decay, trials of power, and death.

Take the Cornell 7 situation that’s all over the news right now. Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit against the school, the Chi Phi fraternity, and seven specific men who gang-raped her for SEVEN grueling hours back in 2024. And what did Cornell do? They protected the institution and the boys, basically giving them a slap on the wrist and telling them to write an essay. An essay. As someone who has survived my own share of abuse, that level of disrespect makes my blood boil. It’s an insult to anyone who has ever had to carry the weight of being violated.

This has prompted me to look at my own ghosts—the things I subconsciously locked away because I knew the world wouldn’t protect me either. I only publicly talked about my two assaults after creating my own safe space through this blog. One was my very first experience with sex, completely stolen from me by someone I genuinely considered a friend. And the other happened inside a literal hospital—a place where I was supposed to be safe and cared for as a vulnerable mental health patient. But I didn’t tell anyone at the time, including my parents. By the time I was 18, I already believed that my voice held no weight and no power.

I didn’t eventually announce these things because I was expecting back pay of justice. I just wanted to stop carrying the pain deep down inside, alone. With a Scorpio 3rd house and Chiron sitting right in it, my voice carries a deep wound around speaking my truth. I stay quiet because it hurts too much to speak; I used to often regret expressing myself. But this retrograde won’t let us stay quiet anymore.

It’s everywhere you look. I recently saw that Rick Ross just got booked and released on bond for domestic violence battery and strangulation charges. Then you look at the absolute mess surrounding the Lindsay Clancy trial; from the very beginning, my personal perception of that case was that the trial was so completely botched and mishandled by a system that rushed to judge her based solely off her ex-husband’s account, rather than understanding the terrifying depths of postpartum mental health or even, I don’t know… actually verifying the things he claimed. Now they’re having to scramble and basically redo the entire trial because the foundation was totally warped and misconstrued.

Even the prison systems are failing under this energy. On September 30th, the state of Tennessee completely botched the execution of death row inmate Krista Pike. They spent over an hour stabbing her arms, missing her veins, and pumping lethal drugs directly into her tissue—causing severe swelling and blistering before rushing her unconscious body to a ventilator in critical condition. It was such a gruesome disaster that TDOC Commissioner Frank Strada resigned, and Governor Bill Lee had to halt all upcoming executions—including Tony Caruthers, whose execution was already postponed earlier this year for the exact same vein-access struggles.

Scorpio rules the ultimate transition of death, and right now, the universe is pulling back the curtain on the state’s dysfunctional underbelly.

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The Blueprint of the Reclaiming

All of these messy public exposures are happening for a reason. The universe is essentially staging a coup against our collective emotional numbness, forcing everyone to look at the exact parts of ourselves we were taught would make us weak.

For women, this retrograde is a visceral ultimatum to reclaim internal sovereignty. For centuries, we’ve been conditioned to perform our softness for validation or to fit neatly into societal structures and expectations that don’t actually care about or respect our safety. So now? We’re being pushed to release codependency, set unshakeable Scorpio boundaries, and honor our raw intuition over the expectations of a polite society.

But for men, this transit is a terrifying invitation to drop the rigid, hyper-masculine armor and actually look at their internal landscape—their grief, their tenderness, and their capacity for emotional honesty. True strength under Scorpio requires the vulnerability to face your own inner shadows rather than reacting with a defensive shutdown.

And this is where the collective wires are getting crossed. As feminine energy rises and demands respect, it also brings to light the subconscious patterns we may be unknowingly perpetuating—patterns that allow these harmful dynamics and systems to continue. This is directly tied to the patriarchal system we live within, and it’s difficult because both men and women often struggle to acknowledge the ways we each help sustain it.

I came across a TikTok clip from the Tonight’s Conversation podcast tour that perfectly highlighted this exact structural double standard. A woman asked the panel why society labels women as “emotional” while men are constantly praised as being more “logical,” even when both act entirely out of their feelings. The men on that panel THANKFULLY hit the nail on the head: Men are not more logical than women; they’re just better at hiding their internal landscape rather than expressing it. And we all mistake that suppression for logic.

The narrative that men are the rational gender is a complete joke. The single emotion that the patriarchy explicitly permits men to express is anger, rage, or aggression. But let’s be real... anger is a massive, volatile emotion. Rage is an emotion. There are thousands of men sitting in jail cells right now, and thousands more entangled in domestic violence situations, not because they are logical, but because they could not control their emotions.

We are both deeply emotional beings; we’ve just been conditioned to exhibit them differently. Women express it outwardly through tears or communication, which gets hyper-analyzed and dismissed as “hysteria.” Men shut down, internalize it, or channel it into aggression. In fact, a lot of men completely struggle to just listen to a woman express her feelings without trying to turn it into a problem that needs fixing. That isn’t logic; it’s an exit strategy. It’s an avoidance tactic because sitting with someone else's heavy emotions forces you to face the discomfort of your own.

It’s incredibly sad that so many men have been so severed from their own femininity and vulnerability that they have no language for grief, lack of trust, or tenderness except anger and violence. And when you take this exact emotional disconnect and layer it over generational trauma, you get the specific, painful cycle playing out inside my own community...

Black Women and the Trap of the "Cool Pose"

I saw another TikTok the other day of a Black man just living in his absolute, uncurated bliss—the definition of #BlackBoyJoy—doing a popular dance to a rap song. And yes, in public. He didn’t care who was watching; he was just being free with his body. And while it definitely pulled a laugh out of me, I knew what kind of comments would be waiting for him. It was a war zone of Black women, sadly, completely tearing him apart:

• “Accurate representation of men in 2026”

• “I’d be so mad if this was my man/my dad”

• “...he got to be gay cause ain’t no way”

And while I’m sure some of these things were said as casual jokes to laugh off, I don’t see how it’s funny. A lot of men are genuinely hurting under this wave of hate pointed at “sassy” men—men who are really just tapping into their feminine energy and trying to enjoy themselves and their lives. It honestly broke my heart a bit to see, because I rarely see this kind of policing of men’s joy or fluidity with this level of aggressive social enforcement from any other culture. I’m not saying that we’re the only ones who repeat these things, but we do need an honest look under the hood of what’s actually being expressed through these truths hidden inside of “jokes.”

Within the Black community, it feels like men and women are constantly at war, even while we are simultaneously begging to come together. This is exactly how systemic racism and patriarchy function from the inside out: keeping us hyper-focused on who is the most hurt or who is the most right as a distraction from what is actually keeping us apart. Because Black women have historically been left entirely unprotected by society, I believe we’ve subconsciously internalized the most rigid, toxic scripts of the patriarchy. And I say this with deep empathy and understanding, because when you are forced to be your own shield, you naturally adopt these kinds of survival tactics just to feel safe. And we expect our men to do the same.

We demand that Black men stay locked inside what sociologists call the “cool pose.” Back in the 90s, researchers coined this term to describe the specific defense mechanism Black men had to build just to stay alive in a world controlled by white supremacy. It’s an absolute mask of hyper-toughness, emotional detachment, and total stoicism. When the world outside is constantly targeting you, any sign of softness, vulnerability, or emotional fluidity could literally cost you your life. Survival required you to look unshakeable, hard, and entirely unbothered. It was a coping strategy built to handle extreme systemic trauma that would only continue.

For more on the cool pose, I highly recommend reading Mark Anthony Neal’s post on Nat King Cole and the Cost of the “Cool Pose”. I really enjoyed reading his application of the term in the world of media and music: “… Cole was rivaled only by his label-mate, Frank Sinatra (the two shared an arranger in Nelson Riddle). Whereas Sinatra looked forward to a career that was limitless — film, the biggest and most lucrative venues, close friendships with sitting Presidents, headlining in Las Vegas, and eventually his own record label — Cole was always challenged by the limits of his dark skin.”

“Cole strategically understood what could be lost personally, professionally and politically, if White America’s favorite Black entertainer “flipped the fuck out.”

We built this survival box to inherently keep our community safe, but now we’re also policing the exit. This is exactly why the phrase #BlackBoyJoy had to be created in the first place. It didn’t start as just a cute internet hashtag; it was birthed as a direct counter-movement to the “cool pose.” It exists because a Black man experiencing uncurated, soft, expressive joy is a radical political act. It’s a deliberate refusal to wear that heavy survival mask anymore.

But look at what happens when they actually try to take it off themselves. When a man steps out of his usual masculine character to exhibit softness, joy, or vulnerability, we penalize him. We tell him he isn’t “man enough” and possibly even gay… does no one see the issue in that??? We spend so much time demanding that men connect with their femininity so that they can respect and understand our own, but the second it actually manifests, we shut it all down. We rightfully demand protection and respect, but sometimes we refuse to give it in return, using the very tools of the patriarchy that broke us, to break them.

I know exactly where that defensive and critical wall comes from. Women in general are completely exhausted from being disrespected, neglected, abused, and even watching our basic rights get stripped away. Many are swearing off men altogether and looking hopefully, and desperately, toward a future matriarchy—but stepping into that reality requires us to drop the very walls that keep men locked out.

The patriarchy doesn’t just harm women; it harms men as well. It leaves them deeply confused. As the writer bell hooks always pointed out, boys are trained from infancy to cut off their capacity for feelings just to maintain dominance. They know the system that upholds them also causes a massive amount of internal, psychological damage, but historically, they’ve been conditioned to ignore that harm and put themselves first anyway.

Knowing this, we have to recognize that any real transition out of this broken system will most likely have to be led by women. But we cannot lead it by treating men the way we were treated, operating purely out of the resentment and bitterness that dominates so many of these internet conversations today. We’ve stopped discussing things to actually hear and understand each other. We just assume we always need to stay on the attack, because we’re terrified that the moment we drop our guard, we’ll be the ones getting attacked again.

So as we sit in the thick of this Scorpio underworld for the next few weeks, I have to ask you to look at how you are policing yourself. Where are you still choosing a comfortable cage over an uncomfortable freedom? What parts of your own raw intuition or emotional fluidity have you been locking away because you’re terrified the world won’t protect you if you let them out?

It is so easy to stay on the attack, to police each other, and to keep throwing rocks from behind our walls. But the demolition is already here, and the old masks aren’t going to save us anymore. We can either keep fighting to maintain the structures that broke us, or we can finally have the courage to drop the armor, look each other in the eye, and figure out what it actually means to heal, connect, and love on a deeper level.

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Some of the collective might be moving into this month surrounded by the aftermath of recent friction, petty conflicts that didn’t go anywhere, or social circles and connections that have felt fractured and out of sync. For others, the cards point toward a shift that exposes the harsher realities of past deceptions or mental traps, leaving us staring directly at our own unhealthy attachments, shadows, or toxic patterns.

It seems like we’re carrying the burnout and heavy burdens from September right into October, and finding ourselves standing at a crossroads where we’re forced to figure out where we go from here. I'm feeling that this is heavily tied to areas of love—not just romantic, but the love that we share with all of the people in our lives, including ourselves.

That’s why I believe the following cards are showing that the energy for the entire month ahead has the potential to feel quite surreal—it can have that bizarre, dreamlike quality, and that’s the kind of P.O.V. we might want to practice sitting with.

The overarching theme running through October is how we choose to manage our time.

People who hold true power, wealth, and influence know how to bend, arrange, and master time to serve them. You know… millionaires don’t use astrology, but billionaires do.

Powerful people treat time like an intentional investment rather than an invisible force that’s just passing them by. A massive part of making that process more efficient comes down to aligning with the cosmic transits instead of denying their influence out of ignorance. I mean, that would be comparable to fighting my own ADHD... If I ignored the blunt reality of what my individual brain requires to maintain its function, focus, and progress, I’d just be mismanaging my own power, energy, and time. So YES, this card is a prompt to explore and experiment with time more, rather than fighting and ignoring it.

Familiarize yourselves with your birth charts and the transiting sky! What planets occupy your houses of relationships, career, and money, and what are they currently asking of and triggering within you? Does your daily schedule and routine need refining? How are you planning to better invest your time and energy in October?

Fortune Cookie

When I pull from my fortune teller deck, the cards validate this kind of awareness and research even further—possibly because there’s a magical encounter on the horizon that could change lives…

With Venus going retrograde in Scorpio on the 3rd and Mercury following suit on the 23rd, any buried relationship patterns, trust issues, or financial anxieties will start flowing out of the shadows. This will force us to pause and ponder where we're letting fear, obsession, and the need for control dictate how we connect with people right before the Libra New Moon on the 10th opens up a clean slate for how we choose to relate to each other.

When looking deeper into this encounter, I see that its purpose is to pull us out of repetitive and stagnant patterns. It seems like it could occur as a sharp or sudden disruption, which aligns with Pluto finally stationing direct in Aquarius on October 15th. This transformative and secretive planet will resume innovating old structures to force us out of compliance.

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I’m not saying every single person reading this is going to lock eyes with a soulmate across a crowded room, but it could manifest as a sudden, unexpected job offer or a creative invitation that looks like a beautiful gift on the surface, but requires you to be incredibly sharp, strategic, and vigilant about how you play your cards. For others, it could look like a random, fated conversation with a stranger or an accidental discovery that drops a beautiful truth right into your lap—something that completely alters your perspective and forces a total pivot, shifting your lifestyle and direction for the better.

Now, I do sense that this sharp transition might leave a scar, but this could become a beautiful reminder of a path clearing for ourselves. Because this isn’t restricted to romance and relationships, this kind of shake-up can ripple into major shifts around physical health, wealth, travel, and pivoting careers for those catching the wave.

The Lenormand Cards

This entirely aligns with the general landscape of our month ahead. When I lay it all out, the spread breaks down chronologically from past to future, showing exactly how these hidden gears are shifting.

Looking at where we’ve been, there’s been change and transition unfolding with The Stork, but it’s tied to an underlying processing of a heavy ending or a period of genuine grief with The Coffin. Out of pure survival, it feels like this could be connected to a rigid, defensive fortress we’ve built around our lives with The Tower, just to maintain a facade of power, satisfaction, and control that isn’t completely real... and these acts of hyper-vigilance and isolation can slowly eat away at our internal peace.

That brings us into our present row, which is all about the choices we’re making right now to stabilize ourselves. We’re currently sitting with massive choices or separations with The Crossroads, trying our best to step into our personal power and maintain dominance over our own lives with The Bear. The focus here is pointing heavily to our inner foundations, childhood habits, and the early environments that shaped our current choices with The House.

Which then leads us into the future row, and honestly… it’s looking like a bit of a battleground of stress and fated lessons. We’re heading into a lot of confusion and hidden details masking the truth right now with The Clouds, making it hard to see where any of our chosen paths actually lead us. That mental fog is naturally creating a slow drain of worry, stress, and anxiety that eats away at our energy with The Mice, pointing to a fated month where the heavy burdens people have truly been carrying are finally brought to light with The Cross.

But if we pull back and look at the spread from a different angle, it reveals a completely separate story about what we actually need to know to get through this month.

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When you read it vertically, the first column shows what we want as we enter the month: we want new cycles with The Stork, but it comes through specific choices or separations that are made to happen without fully knowing the outcomes, according to The Clouds. We want that transition, but the fog is making us hesitate to move. And let’s just say, with Mars having just entered Leo for two months… this is not the time for hesitation.

Mars is in Leo until the end of November, and it prompts us to take bold, proud, unapologetic action. So sitting in the back-and-forth stall zone is only going to breed massive frustration and leak your power and energy.

This is because the ingress is actually the opening act of a much longer story. Mars is entering its retrograde shadow period in November—meaning it’ll eventually slide into Virgo, station retrograde in January of 2027, and then moonwalk right back into Leo from February 21st to May 14th, 2027. So whatever fire or friction we're initiating right now isn't a quick trend; it's a narrative we're going to be actively editing over the next seven months.

The middle column shows exactly where we are as we walk toward October: sitting in the thick of grief or a massive ending with The Coffin, trying to step into our power, leadership, and dominance with The Bear to hold it all together. But underneath that, is mental stress, worry, and anxiety with The Mice that’s acting like a thief in the night with our mental and emotional peace.

And the final column exposes exactly what’s holding us back. We’re trapped by our own self-imposed isolation, hiding out in a lonely fortress with The Tower to keep up a facade of control. We’re clinging to old foundations and survival habits with The House that keep us safe but stagnant, all because we’re terrified of the conscious sacrifices and suffering it takes to finally give those old burdens up with The Cross. The goal here isn’t to keep carrying or integrating those same wounds; it’s about acting with integrity and holding ourselves responsible for what we actually have the power to change by the end of the month. It’s time to stop settling for survival mode and start building our lives under entirely new blueprints.

This is exactly what the astrology of October is asking from us. We're dealing with heavy Scorpio, Taurus, and Libra energy—a high-stakes game of tug-of-war between our deepest desires, our rawest fears, and our need for relational peace. And the mid-to-late month transits really amplify this deep excavation.

On October 23rd, the Sun illuminates Venus in an auspicious Cazimi, giving us a massive flash of relationship clarity and rebirth right in the middle of her underworld journey. But the sky keeps the pressure on: Mercury turning around in Scorpio on October 24th turns the volume all the way up on hidden secrets and unsaid truths, while Venus slips backward and re-enters Libra on October 25th to force a hard renegotiation of our structural boundaries and dynamics of balance.

It all correlates back to personal power and what we actually choose to align with, culminating beautifully under the grounded Taurus Full Moon on October 26th, which I find to be hilarious because it’s the same day as my dad’s birthday and it triggers my 3° Taurus Saturn…

Big Daddy Saturn? The ultimate father and authority planet sitting right in my 9th house of writing, publishing, and spiritual philosophy? Sounds nothing like him at all LOL (that’s a joke). But literally, he’s a major author, poet, educator, and spiritualist, whose moon sign is my sun sign, and every day I seem to find another truth, event, or experience that connects us even more… as if I wasn’t already his twin.

So having the moon illuminate my Saturn right on his birthday is a literal astrological callout for me to own my own authority as a writer separate from his shadow! Honestly, it wasn’t something I’d thought about, until recently finding myself stuck with my own writing projects. But this will demand that I stop looking for outside validation, face my deepest fears around scarcity, and finally do the heavy lifting required to build my own sustainable security. It forces me to look at what I've actually built with my own two hands versus what I've just been leaning on for a false sense of safety.

And from there, we’ve arrived at the destination of a very long, exhausting journey…

The tarot cards show the collective is tired, a little wounded, and standing in a defensive position. We’ve all been pretending not to see what’s right in front of our faces at times, because deep down inside, it’s easier to be a little too scared to drop our guards and allow ourselves to be vulnerable. But the friction we’re experiencing in October, and with its Full Moon, can push toward an opening.

This month strips away the superficial projects, the codependent habits, and the connections we only keep around because we're terrified of standing entirely on our own two feet. It’s time to stop doubting our own capabilities, stop hoarding our potential out of fear, and let the light shine on us with optimistic faith. And we aren’t doing this naively—the spread shows us moving forward with sharp discernment, deep self-trust, and rock-solid boundaries.

So, how do we navigate this whole October landscape?

The advice cards left us with three very clear pieces of advice to consider from these celestial rhythms.

First, it helps to reflect on your own thoughts, desires, and needs in the quiet moments, because they might already be guiding you toward your most authentically aligned path. Second, you have to actually consider your options. Sometimes people get so hyper-focused on one specific, rigid path or outcome that they miss the bigger, grander opportunities the universe is trying to hand them... Drop the hyper-focus and let life surprise you with the highest possible result. And finally, be ready to study. A brand new endeavor might be upon us, and it can require learning new skills or gathering fresh knowledge. Put that intention out there, because the second you open yourself up to learn, the right teacher—and that exact magical encounter—can find you right on time.

So as we navigate this heavy October landscape, remember that the discomfort you’re feeling isn't meant to break you—it's just clearing out the old, inauthentic noise. Trust the boundaries you're setting, pay attention to the fated triggers dropping into your lap, and don't be afraid to step entirely into your own authority. The universe is ready to hand you the blueprint for total renewal, but you have to be willing to put down the old plans to build it. I'm right here walking through this transition with you, and I can't wait to see who we are by the end of the month!

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If you’re an empath or an intuitive, nobody needs to explain to you how exhausting it can be to live with a radar that never turns off. We can walk into a room and instantly catalog the weight of the air before a single word drops. We feel the exact brand of avoidance hiding behind a casual text back, or the heavy truth someone’s sitting on because they’re terrified to touch it yet. It’s a natural download, but lately I’ve been thinking more about when this divine gift can quickly morph into a trap.

Personally, a lot of patterns around optimization OCD have been coming across my social media feeds lately—the intrusive drive to make everything and everyone around you function as efficiently and perfectly as possible. It’s definitely caught my attention as a fitting lens for my own day-to-day thoughts and experiences. It’s a simple but easily overlooked, subconscious strategy in which I tend to leak my own life force and cause my own stagnation by focusing more on someone else.

I admit it: I have a hypervigilant radar. Unpredictable environments make me feel unsafe, so I move through the world with a bit of social paranoia. I overthink, overextend, and neglect myself just to create a sense of peace that no one else even realizes is missing.

At first, it's invisible. I just look caring, attentive, and nurturing. But eventually, the bill comes due. Before I know it, I’m burnt out, depressed, and deeply uninspired. My intuitive channels will feel clouded, and I turn into a confused helicopter parent over my own life—feeling entirely powerless against invisible obstacles that I subconsciously created by spending weeks obsessing over old patterns with people in my life instead of channeling that energy into the projects I currently need to be building.

That right there? That is an energetic leak.

Whether people are conscious of it or not, energy is constantly being exchanged, and energy leaks can become quite distracting when left unchecked. These are the places and faces where you’re actively bleeding your time, attention, and energy—conversations (real or imaginary), online spaces, music, and media…

They can be big; they can be small. But add them up, and you can end up subconsciously blocking or delaying all of your hopes, dreams, wishes, and prayers. You can waste so much energy on everything and everyone that you become too depleted to show up for yourself. So it’s incredibly important to be aware of where you choose to make yourself available—even in thought.

Ironically, though, protecting my mental space is where I usually crash and burn. Maybe this is a very specific and deeply annoying 12th house experience, but having my Leo Sun and Mercury sitting there means I practically live, breathe, think, and speak from the porous house of the subconscious and unseen. Which makes it very hard not to lose myself in the noise of everything and everyone around me. As a Virgo rising, my identity is naturally tied to stepping in and trying to micromanage the psychic chaos I feel.

But when you throw in my Pisces 7th house + Jupiter, it really becomes a losing battle. Jupiter expands everything it touches, and in my house of one-on-one relationships, it helps Pisces (the natural ruler of all that 12th house energy) to completely dissolve my boundaries. I don’t just connect with the people that I meet—I absorb their energy, their confusion, and their illusions. I burn through my own energy romanticizing people and stabilizing their scales, all just to feel secure in myself.

When a shared or anticipated plan suddenly falls apart, my psychological defense mechanisms immediately kick into high gear to shield me from the discomfort of the unknown. It usually starts with assumptions, like the classic, “I already know exactly where this is going.” And when you’re an intuitive, empath, or navigating life with a neurodivergent brain like me, these energy leaks are rarely just about interpersonal drama. They dictate how we navigate everything we encounter in the world, fundamentally shaping our daily lives through the invisible patterns we constantly trace and absorb.

The thing is… intuition itself isn’t the issue, and sensitivity isn’t a glitch. But both start to feel like massive burdens to the person carrying them when our nervous systems are trained to stay on permanent high alert. We get caught in these agonizing bottlenecks where we crave genuine connection, but the moment we sense even a microscopic shift in someone’s energy, we completely abandon our own center—treating their unspoken, heavy moods like a crisis we were personally hired to solve.

Let’s just say it cleanly: it’s not my job to be a caretaker for someone I did not birth! It’s not my job to decode the silence of someone avoiding their own truth! Or to play the therapist or placeholder partner just to keep a connection from collapsing! It’s also not my place to force communication or closure on my desired timeline just because my nervous system is screaming for relief while someone else might genuinely never be ready to face themselves!

Saying it feels embarrassingly simple, but executing it when you can physically feel people’s mood shifting downstairs, or sensing the coldness across an app, is a whole different sport in practice.

Plugging the Drain

The leaks in my life lately have required physical, undeniable cuts. I like to go through my camera rolls and delete photos of people who no longer exist in my space. Not coming from a place of bitterness or some dramatic outburst, but I do have to acknowledge that the ghost has officially left the building. I don’t need the digital clutter tethering me to someone I’ll eventually find myself ruminating about. I even resumed clearing out a lot of the anxious, violent, and depressing music from my playlists because sometimes my nervous system cannot tell the difference between art and an actual trigger when I am trying to wind down or uplift myself.

Then there’s the emotional distance, which is the version that actually stings but is the most necessary. You can care for someone deeply and still need to build a real, unyielding gap between you mentally. It’s not a punishment or a game of silent treatment; it’s just a necessary energetic shield when you are the one who’s more sensitive to what’s going on underneath the surface of the physical reality.

Energy leaks and their plugs look different for everyone, and enforcing these boundaries isn’t always a clean, linear process. Even with your guard up, the ghosts of old dynamics can still slip through. But you eventually have to learn how to step back and pull yourself away, no matter how right, confused, or intuitive you think you are.o

It’s easy to claim that you trust the universe when everything is smooth, but sitting in the discomfort of an unresolved situation without trying to manipulate or control it is where the real integration happens. It means leaving room for a different outcome than the one I predicted. It means accepting that being hyper-vigilant about everyone else’s unspoken feelings was never actually in my job description. But being present in my body is.

Looking back at the absolute worst periods of my mental health, the exhaustion was never just about my own life; it was the massive energetic leakage I couldn’t see that I needed to plug. Releasing other people’s opinions, emotions, and responsibilities, even if it feels disjointed, unconventional, and uncomfortable, is the exact moment the spiritual work stops fighting the mental health work and they finally start working together.

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The equinox lands on September 22nd at 8:05 pm EST, right alongside the start of Libra season—marking the literal first day of fall in our Northern hemisphere, and spring in the South. The word itself comes from the Latin roots "aequi" and "nox", meaning equal night. The day gives us a rare moment where light and night sit in perfect, fleeting symmetry across the entire planet, and it’s not just a calendar change; it’s a pivot in the entire collective consciousness from the solo grind into the realm of the interpersonal. And what I’m sensing is that this shift will reveal exactly where we need to align with our own inner truths, rather than waiting for the world—and the people in it—to recognize and align with them first.

Libra gets a reputation for being all about the softer aesthetics—romance, pleasant manners, fairness, and fitting in. But people forget that Libra is also a cardinal sign: a natural instigator, a force that demands absolute truth, systemic justice, accountability, and the courage to restore harmony where it’s been disrupted. As the Sun enters this territory, we’ll all feel a subtle urge to host more gatherings, fix broken dynamics, and obsess over the curation of our lives. This could mean visiting more museums, attending wine tastings and plays, or completely overhauling your closet, or redecorating your home.

I happily blame Libra energy for the pleasures of fall wardrobes, cozy decor, and even its lingering themes in the holiday season! Although all the holidays technically land after the season, the entire foundation for why Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas feel so significant stems directly from the interpersonal aftereffects of Libra season. Libra sets the stage for us; she styles the environment and gathers everyone together.

However, the shadow side of this transit is reaching for peace in unaligned and untruthful ways; the temptation to people-please, swallow your convictions, and sweep massive issues under the rug. These will subconsciously be at an all-time high starting Tuesday. Passive-aggressiveness is the ultimate trap this season, so watch your step. What’s fair and true to you matters just as much as what’s fair and true to others. Never forget that two truths CAN be held at the same time, but you are allowed to stop bending over backwards trying to be fair to everyone else’s truth at the expense of your own.

In the tarot deck, Virgo is represented by The Hermit—seeking wisdom and light through self-reflection—and Libra by Justice—speaking and acting on that truth for others to see and acknowledge. Justice is not a love and light card; it’s karmic in nature. It’s sharp; it cuts, and it weighs everyone’s truth because it can no longer be hidden.

In the Justice card, I see an absolute figure of authority—someone you could call a ruler. This is about becoming the sovereign ruler of your own life and making the executive decisions about who and what actually gets to stay in your orbit, including your own thoughts and actions. Sometimes that means hurting someone else with your honesty, and sometimes taking accountability and being honest will sting for you.

But one thing I noticed when thinking about the Major Arcana (the 22 cards representing major life themes and archetypes) is that between the Hermit and Justice is only one card… the Wheel of Fortune. This is the card of major shifts, pivots, and surprises. Its presence here is a sign that the collective will be faced with choices to create real change, but it requires fighting our own resistance to dropping the masks we wear, the ways we pretend, and the ways we completely exaggerate ourselves. Instead of locating our truths and hiding in isolation with them, it’s time to start living our truths out loud.

We will all be given a second chance to face something head-on. With Venus retrograde in Scorpio on our heels, it makes perfect sense why this is bubbling up right now. This isn't just about our superficial connections or keeping things pleasant in our friendships and love lives; this is about our core choices and values. Some of us are hiding our deepest desires and feelings away in the dark, and Libra season is going to force them into the light to be spoken with truth—even if it stings. Whether your honesty separates you from someone or brings you closer together, you have to say it. That’s the only way you actually open the door to the opportunities and changes waiting for you on the horizon.

Let’s be real: a job could never satisfy you if your soul isn’t actually committed to the work—no matter how fat the paycheck is. A relationship won’t feel satisfying or reciprocal if you’re hyperfocusing on what you’re capable of giving and diminishing what you desire to receive in return. And you’re probably going to stay exhausted if you’re consistently spending aimless hours scrolling and bingeing TV instead of resting and participating in rejuvenating rituals and activities when you can. If you want to receive real change, you have to be brave enough to enact it yourself this time around.

Throw those half-truths out the window!!

To align with this Equinox shift, you’ll want to bring some physical intention into your rituals this week:

• Take a sensory walk outdoors to actually watch the sun sit lower in the sky and notice the changing leaves.

• Clear out the stagnant corners of your home to give your brain a symbolic reset; maybe change your bedding and deep-clean that crowded closet or drawer.

• Write down an old habit, a lingering worry, or a toxic narrative you are finished carrying and safely burn it in a candle flame to match the way the trees are about to drop their dead weight.

• Cook something that feels like a warm hug. Personally, I’m eyeing a massive pot of pasta e fagioli or another chicken pot pie to share with the people who keep me grounded—using the kitchen table as a space to actively voice what I am grateful for before the quiet of winter sets in.

  

The real tension of the week builds in a steady staircase of aspects. It starts on Wednesday the 23rd when the Sun squares Lilith in Capricorn, pushing our shadows and hidden resentments right to the visible surface. By Friday night the 25th, the Sun-Neptune opposition finally exacts. Neptune has been slowly dissolving the illusions we carry about our identity, independence, authority, and courage—and everything we might’ve been ignoring or pretending not to see will have a raw, uncomfortable light shone on it.

With the Sun in Libra, this could come through conversations where you can no longer laugh off or tiptoe around dynamics that disrespect you. It'll be a wake-up call that could take away the comfort blankets you've been using to hide your lack of boundaries, forcing you to stop playing a character at a soul-sucking job or in a one-sided relationship. And right after that, the Sun trines Pluto retrograde in Aquarius at 1:34 am EST on the 26th—handing us the power to actually transform and reclaim our identity and authority within our connections and agreements just as we head into the weekend fireworks.

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This entire storyline hits an explosive culmination point on Saturday, September 26th, at 12:48 am EST with a volatile Full Moon in Aries. This lunation will be crammed into the early degrees of Aries and sandwiched between both Saturn and Neptune retrogrades, while a fresh Chiron retrograde hovers at the tail end of the sign. The Full Moon will make positive aspects to its ruler—Mars in Cancer—as well as Lilith in Capricorn, Pluto retrograde in Aquarius, and Uranus retrograde in Gemini. This will all force a massive, undeniable release of pent-up emotional frustration tied to a seed planted during the Aries New Moon back on April 17th.

On top of that, Pluto retrograde will square Venus in Scorpio and Chiron retrograde, while opposing Mars. Translation: the truth is coming out, and the illusions are shattering. Whatever breaks or clears out during this Aries firestorm paves the way for a total reset and new beginnings waiting for us when the October New Moon lands in Libra. A baptism of fire, if you must.

To wrap up this wild week, the entire engine behind our actions and tempers undergoes an elemental shift. For the last several weeks, our drive has been stuck in defensive, emotionally guarded territory—making us play small, overprotect our feelings, and let resentment simmer under the surface. But on Saturday night at 10:49 pm EST, that energy breaks out of its shell and moves into the bold, expressive gates of Leo.

For the following several weeks, we’ll be transitioning from tiptoeing around confrontation to acting fiercely, feeling somewhat impatient, and being ready to charge forward at full speed! This shift is going to amplify everyone's main-character energy. It’s an incredibly empowering fuel, but the shadow side is pure, unchecked ego. Be highly mindful of burnout as the heat rises, and if you cross paths with someone who is throwing a dramatic tantrum just to be seen—do yourself a massive favor and do not feed into their fire.

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To navigate these astrological transitions, I broke down the energy with my tarot cards—by element groups—to see exactly how this Libra season, Aries Full Moon, and the Mars in Leo ingress will test your foundations. Read ahead for your sun and rising signs. If you’re a pro, you can check the sign placements of your chart rulers too…

The Fire Signs (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius)

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Capricorn rules the patriarchy, the corporate ladder, and societal expectations surrounding how hard we’re meant to be working. But Lilith represents our rawest, shadow selves—the part of us that refuses to conform to the absolute competence, discipline, and expectation of looking like we have our lives completely together.

When these two meet, the internal question becomes:

Lilith in Capricorn exposes the rot underneath the hyper-independent armor we’ve been wearing and the over-functioning we perform in our lives just to avoid a fear of failure. Your natal house ruled by Capricorn will point you in the direction of where this will show up in your life—it will be a massive reality check regarding what you’ve been sacrificing just to look stable and “successful” to the outside world. The gig is up.

What do you actually believe in?

What are you only doing because you feel obligated to?

And who are you underneath this performance?

Now, let’s look at where Lilith is pulling up to your chart to snatch your favorite armor…

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The root of it all feels like a profound restructuring of our personal boundaries and real-world investments. But as always with general collective messages: take only what resonates for you personally, and leave the rest.

Identifying the Collective Shared Energy

Tapping into the collective energy, I feel that a lot of people are currently functioning in a state of exhaustion—likely holding down an environment, household, workspace, or connection where you’ve likely been functioning as a sole provider of stability, emotional labor, or financial support. There’s a distinct theme here of dealing with an individual or situation that feels like a brick wall—someone who presents an outward mask of authority or maturity, but is actually operating out of a deep sense of immaturity, stagnation, or passive-aggressive defensiveness.

You could be feeling the need to tiptoe around somebody else’s erratic or unpredictable behavior that’s causing you stress—something that’s playing out most likely socially or professionally. You’re doing all the heavy lifting, the caretaking, and the fixing behind the scenes, while this other entity acts as if everything is fine and completely ignores your real-world needs and the strain that they’re placing on you.

Some of you could be experiencing subtle, hidden forms of gaslighting and manipulation, whether it’s being done consciously or not—trying to communicate your boundaries or express a need for basic human consideration and reciprocity, but you’re being met with denial, historical revisionism (“I never did/said that”), or coldness instead of reassurance. And the worst part is, for those of you who actively point this out in real-time, I see the other person sometimes trying to appease you just enough for you to let it go and get off their backs—not truly understanding what the issue is, which causes you to feel more anxious or “crazy” than you really are.

What makes this so exhausting is the pressure to keep showing up despite all this—continuing to provide the consideration, understanding, and grace that’s always expected of you and that you naturally yearn to give, despite the toll that it inevitably takes. They still expect to receive the perks of your energy and connection while continuing to disrespect it out of their own lack of understanding or capacity. But what’s beautiful about how your spirit is operating right now is that you know you aren’t trapped in this loop. What I’m feeling is that you’re navigating a massive internal balancing act—one that’s getting some heavy cosmic assistance from Uranus stationing retrograde in Gemini last Thursday.

For the next five months, we’re all rewiring our relationships, our communication methods, and our social situations. This transit is triggering sudden, internal awakenings where we look at our everyday environments and say, “Wait… why am I tolerating this?” It’s giving us all the mental clarity we need to escape the mental prisons we’ve constructed in our own brains. Especially with Mercury in Libra making us want to play nice, keep the peace, and try to talk things through even if we are talking to a brick wall. But Venus entering deep, uncompromising Scorpio is empowering us to look past that initial, diplomatic urge, wash away the fake harmony with our own truth and accountability, and say, “I am no longer willing to accept these superficial truths in these emotionally bankrupt dynamics.” Period.

It reminds me so much of Jhené Aiko’s track, Ghost, from her new album Westside Whimsy that I’ve been L-O-V-I-N-G! She sings beautifully about trying to leave the past behind her, but feeling stuck in a loop before realizing:

This is the exact internal pivot point the cards are picking up on.

And with Lilith entering Capricorn tomorrow, September 14th, there’s a raw, instinctual rebellion already pushing us against doing any more unpaid emotional or physical labor for others. The universe is stripping away our ability to tolerate carrying anyone else’s structural weight or lack as our own, because we each have our own long-term visions to focus on and build instead.

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The Core Message and the Unraveling Mirror

When I dived into the mechanics of why this juggling act might be taking place, the first major structural shift showing up is the Six of Pentacles reversed. This is an alarm going off regarding an unbalanced financial or energetic transaction—a situation where there’s a blatant refusal to offer true reciprocity.

This means the collective could be dealing with an energetic drain—someone who’s constantly demanding your resources, needing practical or financial support, or even trying to buy your compliance and love with hollow, shallow gestures, while remaining unavailable when it comes to actually fixing the issues between you. The underlying current behind that comes from the oracle card Happiness Hater: an entity or environment that watches how hard you work to invest your focus, time, resources, and details into a space, only to offer you an almost insulting proposal in exchange that disregards your actual worth and joy. Someone is trying to keep you small, dependent, or running on empty by giving you just enough of a foundation to feel as if you can lean on them, but then leaving you with an overwhelming amount of stress to manage completely alone.

Because you’re starting to see through this illusion and hopefully refusing to participate in this unbalanced game anymore, you’re actively dodging some major bullets—escaping toxic people, blocking low-vibrational narratives both internally and externally, and realizing that their stagnant, unmoving presence can’t touch your long-term manifestation power. You’re learning that another person’s rigid, cold, or controlling behavior is a reflection of their own internal weakness and blockages, not your failure to prove yourself or accommodate them.

This heavily mirrors Jhené’s track Ceiling, where the diplomatic mask finally slips because keeping fake peace is no longer worth your silence.

This directly connects us to the message coming through from The Lovers reversed: a “same shit, different day” cycle is ready to finally be broken. You’re looking at an alliance, a contract, or a choice you keep making and realizing that your core values are completely misaligned with it. You’re tired of the mental loops, the sleepless and tear-stained nights spent over-analyzing why someone treats you with such disregard and then smiling in your face as if that’s not the case. Continuing to manage situations like this feels unsafe for your soul; please listen to it and stop convincing yourself otherwise for the sake of other people’s comfort.

Whenever you choose to drop your guard or try to ease up on your boundaries to create more comfort in a shared space, you find yourself inadvertently accepting an insulting dynamic or offer where your energy just ends up getting used and misconstrued. Drop the anxiety of managing anyone’s opinions of you—they don’t really matter right now.

What’s wild is that a lot of the collective energy feels naturally fierce, passionate, and deeply protective of your boundaries—yet this inner fire has been completely watered down. You could be muting your own inner roar in the name of being mature, learning patience, or trusting the universe, but what’s actually happened is that you’ve convinced yourself that swallowing your worries and letting an unbalanced dynamic leave you to do all the heavy lifting is somehow mature and not self-abandonment. However, this is incorrect. You’re breaking out of what looks like a mental prison of caring about a bad reputation or false narratives painting you as the bad guy: the one who doesn’t understand or isn’t being fair. But finding your comfort and filling up your own cup needs to be the only focus you hold right now.

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The Sacred Medicine: Entering the Sanctuary

The medicine for this collective is the arrival of the Ace of Cups, but it’s coming with a set of spiritual conditions: your emotional renewal, your healing, and your fresh start cannot enter your life until your hands are empty of other people’s heavy, chaotic burdens. This is a great example of how we all have destinies to fulfill, but we can also be our own biggest blocks to actually accomplishing them.

This is where the track Break could really speak to the collective—it’s the sound of the mental exhaustion finally breaking the dam open so that the healing waters can actually flow.

This medicine requires us to step into a space of emotional privacy and deep intuitive retreat. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to isolate yourself, but you do need to be discerning when it comes to recognizing the fake smiles, the superficial performances of harmony, and the insincere attempts to appease you. It means putting on your armor, creating a physical and energetic sanctuary in your private life, and treating the current situation as a temporary pit-stop rather than your final destination.

I’m seeing a major theme of walking away from the past and ending old, disappointing, and painful romantic or platonic attachments that keep us spiraling in anxiety and stress. Any hidden identities or people who are secretly watching you and waiting for you to fail are completely losing their grip on your power the moment you choose to become unreachable.

To help you visually understand this, look at the Seven of Swords reversed and Eight of Cups above. This is what the exit route looks like—it’s the realization that the only way to claim your overflowing cup of peace is to physically and emotionally pack up your belongings and leave this dry, barren ground behind. Look for the opportunity to go quiet; the shift where you stop arguing, stop explaining your boundaries to people who profit from ignoring them, and instead quietly organize your long-term exit strategy.

The universe is already turning the wheel behind the scenes; your internal lantern of intuitive guidance will show you the exact door to your new chapter the moment you stop interpreting that light as guidance to continue walking toward a dead end.

If this deep dive resonated with your current path and you feel the desire to unpack the specific details of your personal situation, resources, or timeline, my books are open! You can book a personal reading with me to explore your unique energy and chart your way forward into your own Ace of Cups💛 Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next post✨

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We’re about to enter a month that will have zero patience for pretending. September asks us to stop performing peace we don't actually feel, and start telling the truth—to ourselves first, and then to everyone else. The masks that have kept us palatable, agreeable, and easy to be around get pried off; sometimes gently, sometimes not. We have retrogrades, a few planets and points changing signs in the cosmos, and a Full Moon that'll be asking us to stop shrinking ourselves for others.

This is a month for feeling everything fully, sitting in the discomfort long enough to learn something from it, and then choosing to dance in the rain of it all anyway!

Theme of the Month: ECSTASY

Ecstasy is a buoyant state of joy—meaning that we have to actively find and create it this month, even when we feel like we could be drowning. Which makes sense, because this card states that one of the best ways to maintain a state of ecstasy is to examine the darkest aspects of ourselves—our instinctual, wild natures that we often tend to suppress so that we can show up as expected in today’s society.

The seeds of ecstasy are discovered when we stop trying to colonize, gentrify, and deny the most innate aspects of ourselves. We were all born to be free, not kept restricted and tamed as birds in a cage. But strutting with that confidence doesn’t always feel like the easiest walk in the park…

Navigating September’s Skies

We open the month on September 1st, with Mars in sensitive Cancer, clashing with Saturn retrograde in the fiery sign of Aries. This might feel similar to driving with the parking brake fully engaged. Emotionally, we’ll want to push toward more freedom, but reality will probably throw a wrench at those plans with regard to personal accountability, maturity, and making sure we’re building sustainable structures and foundations. Luckily, Mercury will be hanging out in practical Virgo, sending some mental support to Mars—meaning that a little sharp, logical thinking will help us talk through any surfacing frustration and map out a real plan instead of spinning our wheels in the mud.

By mid-month, the universe applies massive effort to force those polite, people-pleasing masks off of our faces. Starting with the heaviest day of the month, September 10th, which brings us two ingresses (sign changes), another retrograde, and an emotional reset.

Venus slips into the depths of Scorpio early in the morning, intensifying our relationships and desires and uncovering our deepest vulnerabilities and fears. Scorpio doesn’t do surface level, but it does love to trigger our insecurities around rejection. Mercury in Scorpio then squares up with rebellious Lilith in Sagittarius, forcing us to announce more raw, uncomfortable truths to ourselves and others before entering diplomatic Libra some hours later. This will help us to find more balance and fairness both verbally and mentally.

That support will be greatly needed as two hours later, Uranus turns retrograde in Gemini, sparking an internal revolution regarding how we think, perceive, and communicate. And to end the day, a New Moon in Virgo arrives to give us a grounding, practical reset—a clean slate that intuitively tells us to change a habit, clean up some kind of emotional mess, and stop waiting for a transformation to happen all on its own.

Over the following days, Mercury gets harmonious support from two planets well suited to that kind of transformation: Pluto retrograde in Aquarius and Uranus retrograde in Gemini. This points to a month of internal reflection, review, and restructuring now, so the external changes can follow. This is not the time to keep lying to yourself or keep secrets from yourself; otherwise, the Universe will simply do the same.

Spend intentional time reconnecting with your roots; listen to your body, your mind, and your heart to get a clearer, more complete picture of any given situation. Pay attention around September 14th when Black Moon Lilith stomps her way into structured Capricorn. This point represents a part of our psyche that refuses to be tamed, shamed, or forced to submit. With Capricorn representing structure, authority, career, and the rules of society, it’s easy to say Lilith feels a bit restricted here. But ironically, it’s where the rebellious archetype actually thrives!

Expect the collective focus to shift toward unapologetic ambition and resistance against restrictive power dynamics. We could see a lot of dramatic audits surrounding major institutions, governments, and corporate ladders, systemic corruption getting exposed, and exploited workers reclaiming their power and authority without permission. The integration work is realizing that you don’t need to wait for someone else’s support or structure to live your own life—you can create it yourself.

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On September 15th, Neptune and Pluto connect to push a collective spiritual awakening, while Venus in Libra clashes with Pluto to force a major crisis point in our relationships. Hidden power dynamics and secrets could become exposed to force a transformation in how we try to keep the peace with others. And to add some depth to that, on September 17th, Chiron exits Taurus and re-enters Aries, forcing us to revisit old foundational wounds regarding our identities and self-assertion. Collectively, we’ll be asking ourselves what we’re still afraid of when it comes to taking up space and existing exactly as we are.

September 22nd shifts us into Libra season and the Autumn Equinox—an energetic point of equilibrium, where our focus turns toward harmony and connection (cuffing season!!), while the length of day and night also finds its own balance. Just as farmers gather their crops, this is a beautiful window for an “inner harvest” of everything that’s been learned and accomplished since the spring. These same lessons might need to be applied in the following days, when the Sun forms harsh aspects with both Neptune and Lilith, bringing the collective some temporary confusion and illusion.

Though there’s no need to fret; our power returns to us early on September 26th when Pluto connects with the Sun to help us cut through the fog. This leads us straight into the Full Moon in Aries, which refuses to let us buy any peace with others at the expense of our own individual needs. Simply put: stop shrinking your desires and your feelings for someone else’s comfort. Expect sudden confrontations and plenty of “I’ve had enough” moments to be happening around this culmination point.

The very next night, on September 27th, Mars roars into Leo, burning away some of our previous sensitivities and flooding us with confidence, creative passion, and the willingness to be seen. This energy perfectly aligns with the month’s Ecstasy theme—the horse that’s waiting to be ridden wildly before our passage into something more expansive. Some of us will need this exact kind of Leo courage to finally act on what we’ve been desiring in our lives. Just be careful of the flip side of this transit: this sudden burst of bravado might just be a defense mechanism masking a bruised ego or fear of being rejected. This could also show up as wanting results faster than possible, so temper any impatience that surfaces toward the very end of the month.

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We wrap up it all up on September 30th when Mercury joins Venus in the investigative depths of Scorpio. After speaking our peace and overcoming some hurdles in our relationships, our minds will be ready to explore beneath surface-level appearances. The collective mental and emotional mood will shift from light and diplomatic to intense, probing, and truth-seeking. This ingress will act as a warning shot, intentionally getting us comfortable with shadow work because in October, these same two planets will throw us a major curveball when they both go retrograde.

Venus will be retrograde from October 3rd to November 13th, throwing our relationships and values into a 41-day review, while Mercury joins the reversal from October 24th until they both station direct together on November 13th. The hidden truths that we uncover at the tail end of this month will become the exact blueprints we’ll use to re-examine, re-evaluate, and rebuild our deepest vulnerabilities, issues with control, and the hidden mechanics of how we trust others throughout the heavy retrograde chaos of the fall.

Channeled Song for the Month: Timber by Pitbull ft. Kesha

Right as I was finishing this forecast, an Eastern Bluebird landed outside my window. For whatever reason, the word woodpecker popped into my mind, and at the same time, I started channeling Kesha’s lyrics:

After a little investigation, I found a connection here to September’s energy. Woodpeckers hammer away at old trees—old structures—and the message felt like a similar opportunity will be knocking on our doors. One of Pitbull’s lines in the song is, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” which matches the astrological shifts we’re seeing this month. With the retrogrades, Lilith auditing structures in Capricorn, and the Aries Full Moon pushing us to stop people-pleasing, the shallow, rigid systems, negative mindsets, and limitations we’ve been operating under are ready to collapse!

This brings us right back to our theme of Ecstasy. As I mentioned at the very beginning, maintaining a state of ecstasy requires us to examine our darkest aspects, find joy even when we feel like we could drown in them. We have to refuse to stay restricted like birds in cages, and Timber is the energetic embodiment of that choice. It isn’t a heavy, serious track; it’s a party song rooted in fun, play, music, and dance.

When the universe starts yelling “Timber!” and the old structures begin to fall, our invitation is to create that buoyant state of joy. And even though it wasn’t a woodpecker that I saw, the Bluebird still held its own meaning here—a spiritual messenger announcing joy, good news, or the end to a difficult chapter of life. Instead of stressing yourself out, being hard on yourself, or panicking when the shadow work gets messy and intense—choose to ground yourself through singing, dancing, and playing your way into the absolute freedom waiting for you on the other side.

Inside September’s Celtic Cross Reading

Below, I pulled a comprehensive Celtic Cross spread to map out the spiritual blueprint for the collective month ahead. This will help us to channel September’s intense undercurrents into a vehicle for our liberation!

We’ll explore the hidden challenges and obstacles that might be standing in our way collectively, what we’ll be leaving behind, the near future, external and internal influences shaping our experiences, and the highest advice for reaching the final outcome expected for the month. Let’s get into it!

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And if you know your birth chart, locate the house ruled by Virgo—that area of your life is getting heavily illuminated this week! ✨

This week is going to pull us through the messy middle of a very real transition, and it’s going to feel intense because it’s all backed by the energy of the current Eclipse portal. We’re all going to be managing a push and pull between our logical minds and whatever emotional truths we’ve been hiding underneath them.

All times are listed in EDT/EST

It all starts on Monday, August 24 at 02:17 AM when Mercury in Leo makes a harmonious aspect to Lilith in Sagittarius. This will be our permission slip to say the thing everyone else in the room is trying to keep quiet. Unfiltered—no apology necessary for being the realest🤷🏽‍♀️

That sets the stage for Mercury to move into Virgo the next morning, Tuesday, August 25th at 07:04 AM. At this time, the collective mental and communicative focus shifts from performing to processing, analyzing the details, and being of service.

This energy intensifies even more at 2:56 PM when Mercury trines Chiron retrograde in Taurus. If an old wound around your body, worth, or security starts to sting, it just means that the underlying facts require deeper reflection. That is where you’ll find the medicine.

The peak hits on Thursday, August 27 at 1:03 PM, when Mercury meets the Sun at 4° of Virgo—creating a crystal-clear Mercury cazimi! Because Mercury rules Virgo, this isn’t just a brief alignment; it is a blinding, high-voltage spotlight illuminating your mind. Think of it as a cosmic system upgrade and be sure to expect a hyper-focused mental download around this day. You’ll want to pay extra close attention to every single thought and conversation that passes, because whatever clarity lands here, you’ll need it less than twelve hours later.

On Friday, August 28th at 12:14 AM and 12:18 AM, we finally hit the Full Moon and Lunar Eclipse at 4° of Pisces—opposite where Mercury would have just gone Cazimi. That’s not a coincidence either—it means that whatever clarity started showing up around Tuesday, this eclipse is going to test it or ask you to let go of something so that the clarity has room to actually land.

Eclipses are extremely karmic, and this one feels exceptionally potent. Because Pisces rules the 12th house of the subconscious, isolation, and what’s hidden, your energy might feel completely drained right now. Personally, my battery has been running on fumes all week. But there’s a purpose to this exhaustion: the cosmos wants us to slow down and pay attention. This eclipse is cracking open the illusions we’ve all been holding onto, especially where we’ve been over-functioning or handing over our power just to keep the peace.

Pay close attention to the fact that both the Eclipse and the Cazimi occur at the 4th degree on the Virgo-Pisces axis. In degree theory, 4° is both a Cancerian degree and a critical degree for the mutable signs, of which both Virgo and Pisces are two. This means that even though we’re dealing with a mix of logical Virgo, intellectual Gemini, and spiritual Pisces, this entire purge tracks straight back to our hearts, our emotional roots, and core sense of comfort.

The universe is shaking up our external foundations to show us exactly where our true emotional safety lives.

Then just hours later, on Friday, the 28th at 3:24 AM and 6:18 PM EDT, both Mercury and the Sun square Uranus in Gemini. Expect lots of mental static, unexpected news, and plans going left without warning. Try not to force a straight path forward through all of this. We need to surrender to the messiness while the old foundations clear out.

This is where my readings come in to provide clarity! Through the clarity I’ve already been receiving with this specific Eclipse landing in my 12th and 6th houses, I’ve realized something profound: My gift to my collective is to guide people through their own subconscious patterns and pivots, as I had to learn to do for myself.

The cards can pinpoint what this eclipse is asking you to dissolve, clarify if Thursday’s insights are ready to be trusted, and guide you through Friday’s sudden disruptions without making a reactive choice. So if you’re looking to book a personal reading with me, look no further!

book a personal reading with me💛

But for my paid subscribers, keep scrolling because I already pulled a three-card spread for what this week actually requires from you👇

That’s what I got for you guys this week! I’m wishing everyone the grace to take it easy on yourselves. Sit still for a moment if you need to. Let yourself actually look at what’s asking to be looked at instead of rushing past it. Catch you next week💛

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I sat with my breakfast this morning, reflecting heavily on a connection I recently closed the door on. I logically understood that this wasn’t a bad person; they just weren’t the right fit for the position they held in my life. But knowing that didn’t stop the innate urge to go back and try again anyway.

I convince myself that if I apply more pressure, more effort, or more explanation to certain situations, I can find the outcome or closure I’m looking for—that things would go better if I just tried harder. But as someone who is not just analytical, but also strongly intuitive, that’s exactly where I get stuck: the gap between knowing something isn’t right for me and not having enough physical evidence to match what I already feel.

I’d get indecisive with partners, friends, and family, because the love and care between us would be real, but so was the sense that I felt unknown, unheard, unfulfilled, and sometimes dismissed. I couldn’t tell if I was just bad at relationships, or if these just weren’t the relationships for me.

But let’s be completely honest with ourselves; in my own life, and in my work with clients, I see this same cycle repeat constantly. We drag ourselves through seasons of frustration, complaining about feeling stuck and confused. But that stagnation doesn’t fully come about by accident. Sometimes it’s just the result of ignoring the wisdom we already paid for in tears and experience. We choose to return, we choose to repeat, and we choose to stay stuck because we’re too afraid of missing out on what something could give us, rather than what it’s continuing to cost us.

So this morning, sitting with that, I asked spirit the real questions. Am I missing this person, or am I missing what their presence provided me? Is it possible things could work out if I actually tried again with more effort? What was the real issue in the first place, and was I even perceiving things correctly? And what is going on with me right now that all of this is surfacing at once??

The Ten of Pentacles came through, pointing to long-term abundance and stability still present in the connection’s potential. The King of Wands named the blockage as leadership and drive, looking back at something shiny instead of building forward. And The Chariot answered my question directly: a dichotomous card of a charioteer holding two opposing forces and choosing to steer rather than be dragged.

This spread showed me that the potential was never really the question here. The real question was whether that’s even the kind of future I want to build. Because what immediately came to mind was how there’s a difference—in my perspective of the tarot cards— between a Ten of Pentacles connection and a Ten of Cups one. The first can offer everything you think you desire: evidential wealth and stability, a secure foundation that you can see and hold.

But what if you’re yearning to feel fulfilled and not just look like you are? To feel recharged at family reunions instead of drained. To look forward to another day at work instead of dragging yourself through it. To have a partner who deeply moves you and is genuinely aligned with how you desire to live and be treated—not just someone who can cook, clean, and pay the bills.

The point is that the Ten of Cups is the kind of fulfillment that maybe isn’t always seen, but it is always felt. It’s long-lasting joy, peace, and emotional alignment, and in retrospect, I can see how I’ve been trading my Ten of Cups for a Ten of Pentacles that never feels like it’s enough.

As a Virgo rising, my brain loves a practical blueprint. I’m wired to look for order, obsess over minor details, and organize a tangible plan for the future. Combine that with my Libra moon sitting in the second house of finances and security, and it translates into a subconscious lack that drives me toward material safety. When financial resources are scarce, my ego convinces me that emotional peace can be bought, or at least anchored, by a partner who represents a solid foundation. Hence why I’m always picking partners who provide but might not fulfill.

But astrology always exposes the truth of what we need versus what we settle for. My seventh house of partnership is in Pisces—the sign of boundless, spiritual, and unconditional love. My Venus and Mars are both in Cancer, nestled in my tenth house of public destiny. I am literally built to desire a love that is deeply feeling, fiercely protective, and radically tender. Someone who values quiet domestic peace, nurtures my vulnerability, and shares my dream of a soulful bond rather than just material or social success.

My soul doesn't just want a business merger; it wants a sanctuary, especially as current Saturn and Neptune retrogrades in my seventh and eighth houses push me to build my own financial stability first. And you could ask anyone in my life; it’s not that I go around only dating people with money. It’s just interesting how my chart reflects this exact tug-of-war of using romance to solve a financial anxiety, only to realize it never touched the deeper spiritual or emotional hunger underneath it.

One thing I realize is that this habit of letting FOMO drag me backward is a pattern that has to be disrupted. Maybe my constant pivot away from connections like that isn’t avoidance or lack of effort at all. Maybe it’s faith. Faith that what I truly desire and require can still be found. Maybe my intuition simply gets louder than my ego, turning my head back forward every time I try to regress.

FOMO can trick you into thinking you're about to lose something, when really, it might just be proof that you're moving forward. Chasing the fear of missing out keeps you circling backward, trying to recreate or hold onto something that’s already served its purpose. And isn't it ironic how that exact cycle is often what causes us to miss the very opportunities that were actually meant for us?

Because I do believe in destiny, and I do believe that you can miss out on what’s meant for you if you keep making choices that take you off that path. It’s always easier to catch in retrospect though, so the next time FOMO shows up, I’ll be asking a different question. Instead of “What am I about to lose?” I want to know: “What am I in the middle of becoming?”

Growth is uncomfortable by nature. But that discomfort isn’t always a warning sign. Sometimes, it’s just what moving forward feels like before it becomes your new norm—before you finally reach your highest potential.

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The Buildup: The Court Finds Their Seats

It starts quietly. Tomorrow, Wednesday the 3rd, Chiron stations retrograde in Taurus, turning the wound inward for a minute. This retrograde asks us to actually sit with what hurts around security, worth, the body, money, instead of just running from it. It’s the soil getting turned before anything gets planted.

This is what I was going into a personal rant about in my post yesterday. Because as a natal Saturn in Taurus in my 8th house ruled by Aries—which is where this transit will be hitting me—this Chiron retrograde, in combination with the current Saturn retrograde in Aries, will be warming up that placement of mine before I officially encounter my own Saturn return when Saturn first dips into Taurus in 2029. Most people experience their full-course Saturn returns at the age I’m at now, but LUCKY ME, I just get an appetizer.

Then Venus slides into her home of Libra on Thursday, the 6th. Venus in her own sign is the planet remembering what she actually likes, not what she’s been settling for. Relationships, beauty, fairness, the parts of you that want ease instead of struggle; she’ll be quietly asking you what balance would look like right now, before things get even louder.

On Saturday, the 8th (8/8), we get the Lion’s Gate Portal! In numerology, double eights symbolize an influx of abundance, power, and good fortune. It’s also connected to the infinity symbol, which represents limitless potential and spiritual evolution.

This is the day Sirius—the brightest star in our sky and the “spiritual sun” many ancient traditions referred to—reappears on the eastern horizon and aligns with Earth and the Sun in Leo. Historically, people have felt this event and the surrounding days as a window when manifestations emerge quicker, and our intentions carry more energetic charge than usual. Many use the window as a mindful reset to clear old emotional baggage, meditate, and visualize personal or professional goals. Especially because a lot of astrologers believe that if you act while Sirius is aligned, you're supported by the “luck of Jupiter and the courage of Mars,” which have both been long associated with the star.

Mercury moves into Leo on Sunday, the 9th, and this is where the story starts to pick up the pace. Mercury in Leo doesn’t whisper; he ROARS with pride! And since this is my Mercury return, let me tell you how this transit actually translates into someone’s actual nature.

As a Leo Mercury, I can say that we felines naturally speak from the heart with enthusiastic flair. But because mine is tucked away in the privacy of my 12th house, I have this paradoxical tendency to broadcast things that others would probably keep quiet. However, this is a mental and verbal process that’s actually healing for me.

Those closest to me know that I can’t help but to be loud sometimes. Through my words and the way that I mentally process situations, I often shine a light into my own shadows—and without meaning to, I often illuminate the shadows of others, too. This is an incredibly claircognizant placement—meaning that I subconsciously pick up on the truths of hidden information instantly without needing proof. However, trying to relay these truths to others is usually a difficult experience for me when they aren’t ready to accept them or perceive them clearly for what they are.

But back to it… collectively, this transit is warming up all of our minds for something bigger, bolder, and undeniably louder. We’re all about to find something we can no longer keep quiet about, so don’t be afraid to pick up that mic!

Then, Mars enters Cancer on Tuesday, the 11th, one day before the eclipse. This is another planet coming home for me—haha, the cosmos is truly pulling out all the stops for my birthday season! Mars in Cancer is protective, deeply instinctual, and operates from emotional intuition rather than logic. It’s the last piece of the cosmic puzzle clicking into place. We stop fighting over abstract ideas and start fighting for the things we love.

Think of this transit as the ultimate backstage manager: the stage will now be set, the emotional stakes will be at an all-time high, and the universe will be patiently waiting behind the velvet curtain right before it goes up.

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The Turn: A Solar Eclipse in Leo

We finally arrive at the first main event! On Wednesday, August 12th, a total solar eclipse and New Moon at 20 degrees Leo, peaking at 1:46 PM EDT. And this isn’t just any eclipse; it’s the very first eclipse on the new Aquarius-Leo nodal axis! So we’re embarking on a new 18-month karmic cycle that’s redefining our personal identities, how we creatively express ourselves, our sense of leadership, and also helping us to shed any actions driven purely by external validation or applause.

With this lunation supported by both luminaries, this will not be a subtle beginning. Where an ordinary New Moon emotionally nudges us forward, a Solar Eclipse tends to do so by clearing things out for us. And with the Sun eclipsed in its own sign—this goes straight for our egos and life paths. Our subconsciousness surfaces to help us break old habits and change our direction. And the effects tend to unfold over the following six months, not all at once on the day of.

If you know your chart, look at which house 20 degrees Leo falls in for you. That’s the area of your life where this eclipse is purging another layer of your subconscious. For me, this occurs in my 12th house, which means that I’m experiencing a massive cosmic reset in the most private areas of my life. This backs up why I’ve been experiencing a sudden collapse of old mental patterns where I hid my light out of fear, while at the same time feeling called to isolate and integrate my shadow work. I’ve also been experiencing an increase in vivid dreams and sudden channeled downloads, clearing the stage for a completely new relationship with my own divinity, intuition, and unseen guides.

If this is happening in your tenth house, it’s touching your career and how the world sees you. Fifth house, it’s romance, creativity, kids, the things that light you up. Seventh house, it’s partnership, who’s standing across from you or beside you. But wherever it lands, you’re getting a jolt of new-beginning energy, whether you asked for it or not!

Want to know how to work with this energy more personally? Book a personal reading with me below!

Solar Eclipse: Tarot only Reading

Solar Eclipse: Astrology + Tarot Reading

The Middle Stretch: Sharpening Before the Release

Three days later, on Saturday the 15th, Mercury conjuncts Jupiter in Leo. This is our minds and mouths expanding; bigger ideas, louder talk, and the kind of optimism that can genuinely open doors if you actively apply it instead of just riding the high. Whatever gets activated by the eclipse, this is where you start actually thinking and speaking bolder about it.

Then on Saturday the 22nd, we cross into Virgo season, and the whole tone of the month shifts. Leo wanted to be seen, but Virgo wants to refine, to get precise, and to actually do something useful with all that got stirred up. Mercury follows right behind the Sun on Tuesday the 25th, moving into its home sign, and on Thursday, the 27th, we get a Mercury cazimi in Virgo.

This is some HEAVY Virgo energy. A cazimi is Mercury at the literal center of the sun’s light, and in its own sign no less, so this is about as clear-headed as our minds will get all year. If the eclipse gives you a jolt of insight or pushes forward a choice that needs deciding on, then this is the day your thinking gets sharp enough to actually land on it.

The Ending: A Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Pisces

And then, on Friday, August 28th, just after midnight EDT, the month closes with a Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Pisces at almost 5 degrees, opposing the Sun in Virgo. This is the quiet second act, where the eclipse acts as an exit interview for an 18-month karmic cycle of spiritual surrender and egoic dissolution that began back in January of 2025.

But Pisces doesn’t close this chapter with a door slamming; it’s closing out in a very gradual way—just like water slowly finding its level. You might not realize this is happening until you start looking back. That’s because this eclipse is the ultimate test of surrender; learning to let go of the steering wheel and trusting in the current of your life rather than trying to force a specific outcome. If you’ve been clinging to a situation, a job, or a relationship based purely on "potential" or wishful thinking, this eclipse (squared by the erratic Uranus in Gemini) will snap that fantastical illusion to force a clean break.

This cycle’s been pulling us out of the “poor me” narrative—that shadow side of Pisces martyrdom where you start feeling like a helpless victim of circumstance instead of someone with real power. So what comes up could land as a sudden, almost shocking catalyst that’s designed to show you that you’re not actually trapped. It’s demanding real accountability for your own emotional boundaries, asking you to stop absorbing everyone else’s toxic energy like it’s yours to carry, and pushing you toward actual spiritual sovereignty instead of just talking about it.

Want to know how to work with this energy more personally? Book a personal reading with me below!

Lunar Eclipse: Tarot only Reading

Lunar Eclipse: Astrology + Tarot Reading

Together, the two eclipses form one complete gesture. Leo asks us what we’re brave enough to start, and Pisces asks us what we’re wise enough to release. Ignition, then integration. And there’s nothing else as major occurring for the rest of the month, so it really does feel as if the sky wrote itself the perfect ending!

For a little sneak peek, here’s what each rising sign can expect when it comes to the story that’s being rewritten by these eclipses:

Aries Rising:

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What they explained is basically what I’ve tried to overexplain to people my entire life, and I’ve recently decided that it’s time to stop because it doesn’t need to be understood. But still, this validation was so sweet.

Rion talked about how people love to say Capricorns—who are traditionally ruled by Saturn—are the hard workers of the zodiac, but Saturn in Taurus carries a different flavor of that same Cap energy, one that seldom gets named. Capricorn works to be seen working. They’re ambition-driven. They want the money, money and the cars, cars and the clothes…

A channeled song came through for them as I was typing that out lol, but back to the point—Capricorns love the recognition of the climb, but Saturn in Taurus placements work quietly, motivated by security and survival instead of status. This is exactly why so much of the work we do goes unseen. It doesn’t always look like climbing, so nobody clocks it as hard work. Just like Leo, Taurus is a fixed modality sign, meaning that it stabilizes. Its work looks like someone quietly doing what needs to get done.

That distinction explains so much of my life previously, and honestly even today. When people tell me to work harder to reach some kind of status symbol—a symbol of wealth, of success, or of proof of being self-sufficient—I feel myself disconnect from it almost immediately. And it’s not that I don’t see the value in status or “proof of success”; I’ve just never cared for fame or an extreme amount of fortune. I do have a Libra moon in the 2nd house, so my taste slightly runs a bit bougie, I will say. But that’s just my nature, not my goal.

Given the choice, I’d prefer a one-bedroom apartment I can actually afford and make homey over a mansion I’m constantly stressing about maintaining. All I’ve ever wanted is to be able to pay my bills without worry. That’s my whole ambition. And the lesson for us Taurus Saturns is to realize that we CAN build consistency, security, and comfort without overworking ourselves. That’s not what works for us… it never has been.

Growing up, I thought it was the opposite. I thought I had to do more because I felt lazy—that I rested too much and wasn’t productive enough. So I spent most of my twenties trying to make up for that, even after learning my truth. Which is that I burn out easily. It’s very easy for me to work myself basically to death; to slide into hustle mode the second someone implies I’m not doing enough until I’m physically withering away and emotionally explosive. This mindset has even pushed me mentally into psychosis. And because so much of my work, whether it was at old jobs or the intuitive work I do now, was never fully seen or appreciated by the people around me, no one could tell how much I was actually carrying or how close to burnout I already was when they’d want me to take on more.

It feels like people always want me to open up and be honest with my needs, but those needs weren’t taken very seriously when they were stated. And it was always because of reality and needing to be realistic, but according to my chart, those exact rules don’t fully apply here. The root of this Taurus Saturn wound is having always lived from scarcity instead of comfort. And what do you do with something that feels scarce in your life? You tend to chase it down until you get it. That’s the whole pattern that needs to be broken in one sentence.

Saturn in Taurus also deals with how we hold money, and specifically with overspending because we’re chasing a sense of peace and tranquility we’ve never fully let ourselves feel. You’d think the healing here would be to do the opposite and hoard everything, but it’s actually the reverse. The healing is learning how to consistently enjoy small, luxurious experiences, letting rest and comfort become normal instead of something you have to earn first. It’s balancing productivity with ease, instead of treating rest as something you only collapse into once you’ve already pushed yourself too far.

In practice, that could look like allowing yourself one guilty pleasure a day, a fancy latte, something small and consistent, or blocking out two hours of rest every Sunday no matter how busy you are. Not because it’s indulgent, but because it’s what keeps you from emotionally dropping $400 on a shopping spree later, or hitting a breaking point because you never let yourself take a nap.

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The timing of this eureka moment makes so much sense too, because Chiron, the wounded healer, recently entered Taurus and stations retrograde at 0° this Wednesday. By January of 2027, it will have walked itself back into 26° of Aries.

This retrograde is going to bring that same feeling of scarcity right back to the surface for anyone with Saturn in Taurus, whether you’ve done the work around it or not. And for me, this is all occurring in my 8th house of shared resources and what we do with what isn’t fully in our control. That’s where my natal Saturn placement sits at home. So it’s not just triggering the dynamic I’m in with my partner as we merge resources under one roof; it’s also triggering the financial wounds coming up as I continue building my own self-sufficiency through my business and now this added part time job.

Up until now, I’ve been heavily focused on the structure I need to maintain in my life. But with Chiron here, it becomes an invitation to actually heal the bruise underneath all of my worries, not just manage the stress I feel around it.

This past week alone, I was suggested twice to try to pick up more hours at my part-time job that I want to keep part-time. And I did reconsider for a slight second that maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to say no to more money... but that’s where I end up getting caught up. These are the little moments where I’m meant to practice saying no or at least taking more time to think, and I recognize that now.

Like clockwork, my brain starts handing back the reasons I already know are true: I’m not meant to hustle the way this world tells everyone to hustle. The part-time job on top of my business is enough right now. It’s not pushing me to a breaking point, and it’s not too little either. I know exactly where I could make more if I wanted to. But right now, doing what I’m capable of doing is the whole assignment. Just like Rion said, my lesson is learning the difficulty of the slow climb, of “less is better.”

I know what that can look like from the outside looking in. It can seem like I’m not being ambitious or driven enough, or that I’m stuck, or moving too slowly. But maybe I’m just in metamorphosis. Instead of treating these moments as critiques, I’ve started treating them as invitations to come back to myself, to know what’s true for my own capacity and pace. I think the lesson under this Chiron retrograde is realizing that I can attract what I’m worthy and deserving of financially without pushing myself past the edge to get there.

Long term, this placement also suggests I’m not meant to live in financial struggle forever. It’s actually predictive of a pretty luxurious life later in adulthood, which confirms a gut feeling I’ve always had that I was meant to live well, and that for some reason it wasn’t meant to come through simply hustling for it. I know to some people that just sounds like an excuse to do nothing, but that isn’t what I’m saying. The lessons showing up right now are teaching me how to actually sustain the incoming wealth later. Work smart, not hard is what my mom always said, and I think I understand now what that actually means for me.

So I’m done overexplaining this part of myself. Every single time I’ve pushed past my limit chasing money instead of trusting what I already have in motion, I’ve ended up back in crisis. And every single time I’ve chosen to slow down instead, to find the emotional balance my Libra Moon also requires, the evidence has always shown up fairly quickly: a high-paying client, a post that goes viral, a door that swings open without me kicking it in. So yeah, I believe the pattern because I’ve watched it repeat.

People can be confused by how I live and work. That’s allowed. But I’m not going to keep feeling the need to defend it. And I’m looking forward to enjoying even more rest with this Chiron Retrograde!

Book a reading with me if you want to know where the wounded healer will be retrograding for you, and how to best navigate the transit💛

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Which makes sense because this month is asking us to move with a lot more intention. It’s not meant to be passive—August wants us to choose, to act, and to actually show up for ourselves in the ways we have maybe been putting off. Buckle in, because this forecast is a long one!!!

Collective Theme of the Month: Courage

As I entered the energy of August with the Power Deck, the ultimate invitation that came through was to step into real, actionable power with COURAGE. This upcoming month, we’re being pushed to take brave steps toward situations that might make us feel like "fish out of water"—disconnected, exposed, and entirely out of our comfort zone—but of course it’s all with a higher plan in mind!

The painting on the back of the card, Where Heart and Spirit Travel, illustrates “an idea beyond what we usually experience.” It depicts two fish swimming through a bamboo forest, with the Himalayas in the distance. And just like these fish, we are fully capable of adapting and learning to swim in a completely new atmosphere; moving forward with a renewed sense of purpose.

Grounding Our Higher Consciousness

As I was looking intuitively at the art, there was a profound layer to the fish leaving the cold Himalayan peaks behind them. While high mountaintops tend to represent an elevated state of consciousness, they can also become an isolating, detached place to live. It’s easy to stay stuck in a “higher ground” mentality that separates us from the connection of reality. But this can create a colder dynamic where the routine habitually becomes one preferring to look down on others, or to hide in logical or spiritual isolation.

True power doesn’t live in the clouds where nothing bothers you. The fish are actively swimming away from the frozen mountains and heading back down to earth, and they’re bringing their accumulated wisdom down with them. There’s something about coming back down to Earth this month, but gently—with it being a Fire Horse year and all, we have to be extra careful of not crashing and burning.

Breaking the Cycles of Addiction and Clinging

To live our power with courage, we must look at what we’re being asked to leave behind as we embark on this descent. We tend to cling to what’s familiar, even when it’s toxic, barren, or no longer serves our growth. But this month, the horizon is clearing!

August’s theme focuses intensely on discovering our own power and meaning by having the courage to give up our addictions. We’re being asked to stop limiting ourselves with outdated beliefs and to face the specific things we cling to for false comfort, including:

• Literal dependencies: Substance use, sex, or alcohol.

• Behavioral patterns: Relentlessly isolating ourselves to avoid vulnerability or losing our structure or freedom, or conversely drowning out our inner voice by constantly needing company to depend on.

• Quiet emotional traps: The paralyzing fear of failure, the addictive need for outside approval and validation, the anxiety of being left behind.

The Invitation: Live Your Power

This month, the horizon is clearing, but possibly in unexpected ways. Something that might look like an immediate loss or impossible shift from where you’re standing is actually the space and opportunity required for genuine clarity and progress to break through.

It takes immense bravery to drop what you’ve been tightly clutching, crossing the boundary of your own self-imposed limitations, and walking directly into the unknown. Trust that the strength you need is already alive within you, and take the step anyway.

What's Moving In This Month

The energy, opportunities, and shifts entering this month come through as the Three of Swords reversed, with the Hierophant at the top of my deck and the Four of Pentacles reversed at the bottom. I find this to be a really beautiful and positive alignment to begin our month with. There’s a collective loosening of a tight mental and emotional grip that has held us back for far too long. We’re finally being supported to learn, integrate, and move forward!

The Core Shift: Mental and Emotional Healing

The Three of Swords reversed brings a long-awaited wave of mental and emotional relief. If you’ve felt stuck on something or unable to move past a painful situation, August introduces a much less “sticky” energy. There’s relief coming, even if it doesn’t arrive all at once.

The Crowning Support: Co-Regulation and Wisdom

With The Hierophant presiding over the top of the deck, our Collective healing is heavily supported this month by wisdom that we've already gained, a fresh look at the traditions and structures that we’re building, and support systems that show us we don't have to walk our paths alone. August is a month of finding healing through community, therapy, mentorship, spiritual guidance, and co-regulation with trusted peers who can genuinely hold space for your emotional needs.

Use this month to learn from the collective mirrors and structures around you. What do they reflect to you about the life you intend to build for yourself?

For me, I think I’m seeing more clearly how I want to choose love and connection from a place of clear intention, rather than just circumstance or dependency. I definitely feel like this month is going to push me to build true self-sufficiency that allows me to choose my circle out of genuine fulfillment and alignment, not just because I need their support to get by.

The Grounding Release: Softening the Grip

The Four of Pentacles reversed at the bottom of the deck signals a major shift in our contracts, agreements, and interpersonal dynamics, urging us to release what no longer serves our growth—whether that's a career or educational path, a relationship, a business structure or way of managing money; something needs to be let go of here. Even if it’s your own guardedness.

As a result, the lingering fear and hesitation around speaking up, taking up space, or pivoting toward new opportunities is beginning to dissolve. This isn't happening in a fully conscious way for most people; it reads more like a subconscious pattern that we should gently notice rather than feel guilty about. That inner softening opens up a hidden opportunity to revisit past plans and connections with fresh eyes, filtering our reflections through empathy and emotional understanding rather than coldness or bitterness. It feels like a time when two opposing things can be true at once, prompting some of us to check in with people we once quietly told ourselves we were done reaching out to.

Ultimately, some relationships that have gone cold may start to warm again this month simply because someone finds the courage to reach back out, proving again that this mental and emotional healing could bring A WHOLE LOT of physical and external change.

What's Moving Out This Month

Through the Eight of Cups and the Seven of Wands reversed at the top of the deck, I see that there's a final breaking point arriving where the overwhelm and tension felt in certain circumstances are actually pushing the collective in the right direction. We’re finally being supported to drop our guards, name our patterns, and stop choosing emotional self-abandonment out of love for others.

The Core Shift: Stepping Out of the Fight

The Seven of Wands reversed carries the energy of exhaustion, giving in, and walking away out of disappointment rather than defeat. If you've been spending time fiercely defending your position or staying hyper vigilant in a situation that continuously drains you, August introduces a much-needed opportunity for surrender. For some, this shift looks like a long-standing pattern of self-abandonment finally being seen for what it is. It's going to look like actively walking away from environments, dynamics, and battles that you're tired of being overwhelmed by.

And your choice to do so might ruffle some feathers—but that's OKAY. Being unapologetically yourself this month might trigger other people's shadows, but that isn't an automatic sign that you're doing something wrong… unless you're also disregarding and disrespecting the boundaries and respect that others deserve as well. This is actually a supportive, cosmic nudge steering us away from things we desperately need to continue avoiding.

August is the month of looking at where you've been fighting for people that don't fight for you, or for things that don’t align with you. What is this tension actually trying to push you away from?

The Grounding Release: Walking Away with Grief

The Eight of Cups at the heart of this clearing signals a major shift in our emotional landscapes as we pack up and choose to leave. There's real, valid grief in walking away from something, even when you know that deep down it's the right choice for yourself.

This month, we’re cutting off connections and agreements that feel controlling, clingy, or completely unable to let us simply be who we are. As a result, the lingering dependencies on toxic comfort zones are beginning to dissolve. This walk, whether it's literal or emotional, might feel incredibly disorienting and sad in the moment, but it reads more like a soul-level rescue mission than a loss.

This departure opens up a hidden opportunity to take your most valuable lessons with you, filtering your next steps through emotional maturity rather than bitterness. It feels like a final straw situation where old structures must collapse so a more authentic life can take its place.

What You Need to Know to Navigate This Month

What we need to know to navigate the month of August comes through as the heavy, responsible energy of the Ten of Wands, with The World reversed at the top of the deck, and the Three of Wands at the bottom of the deck. Lining up with the first full month of Saturn and Neptune retrograde in Aries, this feels like a final exam where you can't skip the lesson or rush through it. Saturn is handing us a major structural reality check about our real responsibilities, while Neptune is completely pulling back the curtain on our delusions, addictions, and the fantasy versions of situations we’ve clung to out of fear.

Rushing through this mess just leads to even messier mistakes that could be avoided by slowing down and paying attention—wisdom my mom used to share that feels extremely relevant right now.

The Three of Wands at the bottom of the deck reminds us that taking the longer, harder route is often where the real growth, luck, and alignment are waiting for us. It's about looking at the bigger picture, showing up for the identity you're trying to grow into rather than just how you feel in the moment, and focusing on the long-term output instead of today's immediate comfort.

A lot of these lessons are ones we've already faced, failed, or learned from before, and while we can look back and see exactly what we would've done differently before, this month those same familiar lessons are circling back for us to actually follow through on the awareness we previously gained.

Where to Focus Your Energy

This one comes through as the Magician reversed, with the Ten of Swords at the top of the deck and the Page of Wands at the bottom. There’s an opportunity here to look at the places where you feel like you have no control, and to question whether that is actually true, shifting your mindset from frustration to pure resourcefulness. With so many choices in front of you right now, the real work is grounding yourself enough to pick the right path instead of anxiously grabbing at whatever is closest.

Some of this heavy weight comes from trying to force something out of nothing, which clouds your vision and ties back into Saturn retrograde's demand to look at your resources differently. Underneath it all, this isn't about you being prideful, arrogant, or stubborn—even if it feels that way on the surface, it's just fear. It's the fear of abandoning someone or something else, when the reality is that the only real abandonment happening is the one you're doing to yourself.

Turning a situation around for your own good might mean being cast as the difficult one in someone else’s story, but that usually happens when you've been more focused on their needs and more terrified of letting them down than letting yourself down. If that resonates, you likely already know exactly how you feel and where those feelings are asking you to go. The block isn't a lack of clarity; it's that you're waiting for a green light or an approval you don't actually need from anyone else.

Spirit is asking you to choose yourself here—not because others don't matter, but because continuing to abandon yourself is only recreating the exact dissatisfaction you're trying to move away from.

Guidance

Overall guidance and closing energy for the month of August comes through the advice card Boundless Possibilities, reminding us that we’re standing at the edge of limitless potential and shouldn’t limit our dreams based on past experiences.

Spirit is warning us not to rush out of impulsivity, anger, or frustration into any of our choices because August carries heavy karmic weight as a numerological 8 month. The past is bound to show up again—not always as people, but as the way we respond to old triggers and the patterns we default to when we feel pressured or triggered. This month is less about anyone else and more about how you want to show up in the world, how you want to go after what you actually want, and how you can motivate and encourage yourself instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you.

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Astrological Overview

Opening August with the North Node in Aquarius and the South Node in Leo keeps our focus on innovation and what it means to be better for the collective, but almost in reverse this time. Because the South Node is in Leo, it represents the ego-driven validation, isolation, and performance patterns we’re actively draining and outgrowing.

With a massive lineup of transit hitting Leo this month, including Mercury entering Leo and a powerful Solar Eclipse on the 12th, the cosmos is intentionally making the old way of doing things feel incredibly loud and exhausting. The universe is pushing us to a breaking point with our own pride and people-pleasing tendencies, forcing us to ask ourselves whether we're being authentic or just looking for applause and validation. So at the end of the day, the real question becomes how we can be better for ourselves first, so that our offerings to others actually comes from a full place instead of an empty one.

For a lot of people, this is a chance to look back at the ways we limited ourselves in the name of not being selfish, prideful, or "too much", and asking what a healthier relationship with ego and pride could actually look like. There’s an incredible amount of opportunity ahead of us, but we have to slow down enough to actually see it clearly.

As an 8 month in a 10/1 universal year, the numerology amplifies a potent combination of material power and ultimate rebirth, reminding us that we're navigating a major collective turning point while warning us not to move so fast and so fiery that we burn ourselves out. Some of us are going to want to move quickly based on how we feel, and that’s not a bad thing. It's not about ignoring how you feel; it’s just about not letting your feelings rush you into the wrong response.

Here are a few of the bigger astrological events to keep on your radar this month. I’ll be breaking each of these down in more depth as the weeks unfold, but here’s a quick chronological overview of what’s coming and how they apply.

• We open the month still in the post-shadow phase of the Mercury retrograde that just wrapped up in sensitive Cancer: tie up loose ends, give yourself extra grace, and process any lingering family or emotional patterns that surfaced.

• Chiron stations retrograde in grounded Taurus on August 3rd: witness old wounds around money, security, and your true self-worth.

• Venus moves into her home sign of harmonious Libra on August 6th: brings balance, aesthetic clarity, and peaceful collaboration to your relationships.

• Mercury struts into bold Leo on August 9th: (My Mercury return!) shed the summer’s heavy nostalgia, speak with main-character confidence, and express your authentic truth.

• Mars enters protective Cancer on August 11th: (My Mars return!) guard your emotional energy, nurture your home space, and make moves directly from the heart.

• The New Moon and Solar Eclipse land in fiery Leo on August 12th: expect accelerated new beginnings, a massive clean-out of old roles, and major shifts around identity.

• Mercury conjuncts Jupiter in theatrical Leo on August 15th: embrace expansive, lucky thinking, pitch big ideas, and let your voice confidently take up the space it deserves.

• Virgo season begins on August 22nd! Slow down to integrate the eclipse season and focus on grounding your daily routines.

• Mercury enters his home sign of analytical Virgo on August 25th: sharpens your mental clarity; make sure to double-check your plans and look at the fine details.

• We get a clarifying Mercury cazimi in Virgo on August 27th: receive divine mental downloads and breakthrough structural insights.

• The month closes with a dreamy Lunar Eclipse and Full Moon in intuitive Pisces on August 28th: surrender to absolute emotional release, dissolve your rigid boundaries, and trust your intuition.

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August Horoscopes: What Each Sign Needs to Know

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But lately, I’ve started to wonder if it’s not really a coincidence. I know, I know—everything doesn’t have to have a spiritual meaning behind it. BUT it doesn’t hurt to just check, and when I look at my natal chart, Leo rules my 12th house—the house of the unseen, the undone, and private processing. This is where my analytical mind hides, because it holds my natal Mercury alongside my Virgo North Node. But my Leo Sun shines warmly on my community, visibility, and long-term goals in the 11th house. That’s what I think some of the birthday blues are really about: this quiet, over-analytical habit of burrowing into my 12th house, contrasted against a deep desire to be seen and celebrated every year.

I naturally tend to downplay my own needs and wants, keeping them safely locked away in my mind. But if I’m being completely honest, I want it all. I want the gifts, the surprise parties, the out-of-country trips, and the romantic dinners with bouquets of flowers. I want the balloon-decorated rooms, the shopping sprees, and people publicly celebrating me on social media. I want to feel like a little girl at her own birthday party again, one that she doesn’t have to plan herself.

And more than anything, I want to not feel selfish for admitting that. I want the people in my life to want to do things for me without me having to ask. It’s not that I’ve gone through life without ever receiving this kind of love; I’ve been blessed with some very fulfilling moments in the past where I allowed people to show up for me exactly the way I wanted. But the truth is, people don’t always show up, and that consistency hasn’t always been there. I think this is just a space for me to practice stating my desires directly and realizing that it doesn’t make me a bad person—it’s just good old-fashioned human ego.

Because it’s never really about the extravagance; it’s about the thoughtfulness and consideration. I’m a Leo whose favorite love language is acts of service. When people actively go out of their way to show me they’re thinking of me, or how much I truly mean to them, it makes me feel good in a deeply sentimental way.

But I also know that the magic only happens when I bridge the gap. If I don’t set a clear expectation out loud, it usually doesn’t get met. On the flip side, if I do express my needs and they still aren’t met, it becomes much easier to pick myself up, pivot, and spend the day solo—celebrating myself exactly how I best know how.

So this year, I’m not pretending that the sadness isn’t part of the story. But I also can’t ignore what the stars are doing, because as far as I can tell, they’ll never align on my special day quite like this ever again…

The Cazimi: Crowning the Hero

Globally, astrologers are calling this Wednesday the “Day of Miracles” and one of the luckiest days of the year. Collectively, the atmosphere will be charged with a sudden, radiant burst of optimism, creative rebirth, and a demand to stop playing small. And because it’s happening in bold, expressive Leo, the collective theme is a profound heart-centered reset. It’s an energetic wave pushing everyone to reconnect with their inner child, reclaim their playfulness, and find the courage to reject any learned patterns of hiding their true selves from the world.

The universe is essentially giving us all a collective green light to take up space, launch bold ideas, and speak our desires into existence!

But on a hyper-personal level, this alignment gets incredibly loud for me because this cosmic union takes place less than an hour before my actual time of birth—effectively supercharging my Solar Return. Jupiter, the planet of expansion, luck, and generosity, is cazimi-ing within 11 arcminutes of my natal Sun placement in the 11th house of community, visibility, and dreams. So for the non-astrology boys and girls out there, that means it’ll basically be exact.

“Crown yourself the hero of your own story,” they say. “Take the leap of faith and believe in the best possible outcome.” But what does that leap actually look like for me? In the 11th house, it could be something public, or something that affects my long-term plans. It means stepping out of my own shadow and testing the reality of my relationships by directly asking for what I want, and trusting that the people in my sphere will gladly rise to the occasion if I clear the path for them.

So maybe this is the year I actually let myself receive that spotlight, or take another grand leap of faith, instead of just writing and wondering about it.

The Full Moon: The Homework Assignment

A little over two hours later, at 10:36 AM EST, we get the Full Moon in Aquarius, opposite this cazimi, with Pluto retrograde close by. For the collective, this Full Moon is about translating our mushy feelings into something innovative and useful. Aquarius wants data, clarity, and a plan you can actually act on—not just a vibe. And with it sitting directly across from a Sun-Jupiter cazimi, whatever’s culminating right now is doing it under some pretty generous, expansive light… so the ask isn’t to shrink the feeling down; it’s to actually use it.

Figure out what you’re building, and who you’re building it with. With Pluto retrograde in the mix, there’s also an undertow of “what are you ready to actually transform, not just talk about?”

Want to know what area of life these transits and events are happening for you?

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For me specifically, the Pluto-influenced Full Moon is landing at the tail end of my natal 5th house ruled by Capricorn, both of them lighting up my natal Neptune and Uranus placements, also in Aquarius, in that same house.

The 5th house covers creativity, romance, and self-expression. My natal Neptune there means I tend to fall in love with potential. I see what something could become before I’ve fully looked at what it actually is, and that haze is very comfortable until it isn’t. My natal Uranus is in its ruling sign in that same house, which makes it a core part of me rather than a passing phase, and it means I need real freedom inside of love, not just excitement—actual room to be unpredictable and not boxed into someone else’s structure for me.

With Pluto retrograde and this Full Moon activating both of those points directly, and opposing the cazimi in my house of long-term vision, I’m being asked to look honestly at whether I’ve been loving what’s possible instead of what’s real, and whether the kind of freedom I actually need has room to exist in the life I’m currently building. I honestly don’t have that fully answered yet, but I’ve definitely been feeling the pressure here. Maybe spending another birthday alone is what I need to gain that clarity.

But also… maybe not. The South Node in Leo sitting almost exactly on top of my natal Mercury in my 12th house is my instinct to dramatically disappear and process this alone, in my head, before I include the opinions and feelings of others. That’s the oldest habit I have, and choosing another quiet birthday entertaining myself would just be me handing in the same assignment one more time, saying it’s “good enough”, right as the stars are closing the grade book on it.

The North Node in Aquarius in my 6th is asking for something almost boring by comparison—an actual daily structure that includes society. Not a dramatic reveal, just me letting the ordinary parts of my life include other people instead of defaulting to solo survival mode. So there’s something a little funny about reaching for solitude as the safe move on the exact day my chart is telling me solitude isn’t the assignment anymore. So I guess that’s why I still asked my mom to make me my favorite dinner for us and my sister to enjoy the night of, besides that… I’m still winging it.

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The Numerology of 28

So here’s where I think I land with all of this, at least for now. This year doesn’t feel like it’s asking me to perform some big ending or beginning for anyone. It feels more like it’s asking me to let the private clarity of my 12th house finally stop hiding and catch up to the public Sun of my 11th house. To stop silencing the parts of myself that already know what they need, and let that knowing change how I show up in reality, instead of just being something I carry quietly as a performative burden.

And of course, the numerology of my age had to catch my eye as well. 28 collapses down to a 10—and a 10 simplifies further to a 1. A 1 is new beginnings. But a 10 is completion first... the closing of a cycle before a new one can really start. And as a life path 9, I know that process a little too well. I don’t think you get much of a fresh start without finishing what came before it first, and these days that mindset helps to me to accept a lot of endings much more easily.

So that’s the birthday, I guess. Crowned and a little tender at the same time, which feels about right for a Leo who’s spent the last year slowly learning that taking up space and being honest with herself might not be two different things after all. And maybe the smallest way I can practice that this year is just saying, out loud, that I want to be celebrated... instead of waiting around for someone to guess.

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And I’m not trying to say this maliciously—like people deserve to be abandoned the second their needs become too heavy for someone else to carry. But what I mean is: why do we keep telling people to love unconditionally, which literally means without terms, exceptions, or limits?

We all agree on that definition, right? So do we actually hear what we’re promoting when we tell people to love in that manner? With that mindset?

Because key aspects of practicing unconditional love include giving absolute freedom, having no hidden rules, and providing total support…. While beautiful in theory, throwing this concept around so casually diminishes the complex responsibilities required to actually practice it.

With the Mercury Retrograde in Cancer finally over, I’ve been reflecting on the fact that loving someone will always come with conditions—as they damn well should. The illusive astrological transit really stirred up some questions within me surrounding how I truly receive love, affection, and care—because personally, I would never blindly give anyone absolute freedom to act or treat me in ways that would only please them. Because what if it doesn’t please me?

The Mirror, The Move, and The Cosmic Blueprint

A decade ago, I met a literal mirror of my current boyfriend, and the triggers and wounds from that past connection have reappeared in incredibly loud ways these past few weeks.

Moving into my boyfriend’s house so early into us meeting—especially after facing the jarring transition of leaving my mother’s home—stirred up some deeply rooted survival wounds. And if you look at the synastry of our charts, the cosmic blueprint explains exactly why this transition hit us both so hard. His Sun, Moon, Mercury, and North Node all land directly in my 4th house of home and foundations. His literal existence in my life acts as a massive spotlight and mirror on my inner child’s grief and need for both physical and emotional security.

At the same time, this situation is directly affected by my Saturn in Taurus in the 8th house, while my own Sun, Venus, and Mars placements are all occupying his 8th house. Because this house rules shared resources, deep intimacy, shadow work, and merged lives, the cross-activation is intense. Our connection and this specific move were always going to trigger growing pains, forcing us both to mature and establish firm, self-respecting boundaries. I see now that this is an opportunity for growth, rather than proof that something is inherently wrong. The real frustration lately wasn’t the boundaries themselves—it was the painful process of shedding an old identity that believed it wasn’t safe to set them.

As a Leo Sun in the 11th house and a Leo Mercury in the 12th house, I am naturally built to shine, speak my truth, and stand in my power. However, the 12th house rules the subconscious and self-undoing. For a long time, I operated from the unevolved expression of these placements by sacrificing my own needs to avoid friction. My early relationship habits left me with a distorted blueprint: required me to shrink into a structured box I already didn't fit. I learned that it was safe to be a safe harbor for others, but unsafe to ask for that same care in return—because asking was routinely met with deflection and conflict instead of being honored.

But when I look at my current relationship’s Progressed Composite Chart (an astrological technique that predicts the evolution of a connection over time), a lot of things started to make sense because the identity of our relationship has shifted entirely into the realm of Scorpio.

Scorpio commands its power from the depths of our raw, vulnerable truths, choosing the grit of real shadow work over the comfort of fake harmony. For us, this required confronting how our respective neurodivergent minds create a disconnect in how we perceive, communicate through conflict, and empathize with one another. And what’s funny is that this friction is literally written in our astrology as well: my Libra Moon squares his Uranus and Neptune in Capricorn, while my Cancer Venus and Mars oppose the same two planets—signaling two entirely different lenses for intimacy.

My Cancer placements process conflict through deep, protective, emotional waves that crave nearness, reassurance, and being felt. And that makes total sense for a woman with ADHD who deals with a lot of anxiety from previously suppressed emotions. On the flip side, his Capricorn outer planets—and even his Aquarius Venus—pull the opposite way, toward space, self-containment, and logical structure rather than emotional immediacy. This also aligns heavily with his AuDHD.

So for a while there, we were completely crossing wires. No matter how much we tried to communicate through it, it didn’t seem like either of us actually felt understood.

During this retrograde, I felt constantly deflected, while he felt overwhelmed by my emotionally chaotic rhythm and physical needs—demands that pushed past the edges of his already incredibly structured way of living. It instantly triggered an echo from ten years ago, when those exact patterns surfaced right after moving in with my ex. Back then, that dynamic drove me to prioritize my partner’s desires for the future over my own, resulting in my eventual departure from the sheer burnout of caretaking and never feeling truly taken care of.

But this time? I refused to let myself continue simmering in silence. With transiting Jupiter now in Leo expanding my Sun, my Mercury, and my twelfth house, it’s magnifying my need for radical self-expression and visibility. It’s the energetic pressure behind why I can no longer repeat that old and suffocating pattern, even if shrinking used to be the only route I knew how to take. This transit is turning up the volume on my worth and demanding that I take up space instead of hiding to keep a fake peace.

And what’s even more funny about the situation is that the day Mercury stationed direct—and right after one of our bigger tiffs—my boyfriend sent me this YouTube video to kind of break the silence after the storm. It was something that had helped him realize what I was truly asking from him every time he thought I was just incessantly trying to bring up issues he thought he had already resolved.

Looking back, it also helped me understand more of how and why our honeymoon period felt so cut short to me. It wasn't just because life forced our timeline to move faster than we wanted… it's because we'd put each other on these lofty pedestals. We were trapped in this mindset of, "this person completely gets me, I finally found what I was looking for, and I'm finally gonna be nurtured exactly how I desire. They're my ultimate safe space now, so there's no need to talk about how this move is gonna go because it's gonna be PERFECT!" We didn't realize we hadn't even fully learned each other's actual boundaries yet, let alone tried to communicate them as openly and directly as we should've.

So for all of Mercury Retrograde, that was the backtracking we were doing!!🙂 Our neurodivergence made it so easy and natural for us to dive into the deep end together and feel completely comfortable there. But the second any natural friction happened, I instantly treated it like a massive red flag of incompatibility that I must've missed… instead of realizing that's just what happens when you're actually still getting to know someone you've been playing house with.

Cultivating the Right Seeds

Relationships force us to grow so much, and let's be real… the growing pains can be quite uncomfortable to experience. They force us to realize that these generalized, cliché phrases we're given regarding love don't always serve us—they just end up promoting submissiveness, silent resentment, and disillusionment.

Two unique individuals are never going to blend their lives together without a little friction. It isn’t natural. So instead of treating that friction like a red flag, I’ve started seeing it as an opportunity to grow in ways I wouldn’t have achieved on my own. This relationship acts as a mirror that triggers that necessary development.

And when I really think about it, showing up authentically as ourselves, daring to take up space, and refusing to silence our voices is exactly how we move toward that idealized unconditional love. That’s how we heal the quiet parts of ourselves that whisper back our fears of never being able to receive that type of true devotion.

Because the truth is, you can find someone who actually wants to help you carry whatever weight it is that you’re holding onto. Someone out there wants to learn your boundaries and standards just as much as your dreams and desires, and how to respect all of the above. How to respect you. All you have to do is be brave and open enough to ask, and then remain open and patient enough to receive it. Which is something I think really aligns with the message of The Sun card that I pulled earlier, and its corresponding affirmation:

You don’t have to change who you are to receive what you want to manifest… you just have to be determined enough to align with where it's actually available to you. To recognize the opportunity for what it really is, just like the Magic Mushroom’s affirmation suggests:

It made me realize that we can have the fairytale; it just doesn’t realistically come wrapped in the same version of “unconditional love” that I heard someone say yesterday is really only reserved for our pets and plants. And I think that makes a whole lot of sense because when you think about it, it doesn't matter who the person is in your life—I do believe that everyone has a limit when it comes to what you're willing to receive from someone that you love, whether it's a parent, a sibling, a friend, or a partner.

Real magic requires us to be completely transparent and incredibly intentional about our terms. It comes wrapped with the messy middle most movies cut short for us humans.

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Building a life with someone isn’t just about finding your similarities and enjoying them. It’s the unglamorous process of figuring out your differences, your communication styles, and how you handle conflict. It’s your private shadow work expanding into a spotlight, because once you’re together, you know you have at least one singular person in the audience watching your every move… and every single one of your flaws.

That's what honestly makes it all so hard, because now you’ve got a mirror showing you exactly where you’re still bleeding.

Being fiercely independent means you’re used to always getting and having your way. And romanticizing unconditional love while settling for your own self-abandonment means you never have to deal with the pressure of finding true fulfillment… the kind of satisfaction that only comes when you are truly witnessed and upheld as you are, not as what makes you convenient and digestible for someone else.

The real magic of love isn’t that it’s unconditional; it’s that the conditions are fully embraced. It’s true compromise, and being respected as an individual while still being part of a team—patient enough to honor each other’s growing pains. Sometimes part of the magic is accepting that you don’t always know what seed you’re being handed until you give it the proper time and space to actually sprout. It means sitting with someone through the colder seasons and actively practicing the kind of patience, empathy, kindness, grace, and surrender that love requires.

Tapping Into Your Own Alignment✨

This message of reclaiming our boundaries and standing firm in our conditions came through incredibly loud during my latest collective reading for Venus Day. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch the video below and read the caption where I break down why the distance or breaking points the collective could’ve been experiencing lately were actually a divine clearing, making room for true intimacy.

If any of your relationships are currently going through their own heavy growing pains, or if you’re navigating the aftermath of this recent Mercury retrograde, let’s look at your personal cosmic blueprint together!

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We can dive into the cards or into your chart to uncover your unique communication style and find the clarity you need to cultivate a love that fully respects your conditions💛✨

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When major shifts line up perfectly like this, the universe is forcing us to pay attention. This isn’t just a fleeting daily vibe; it’s a total reorientation of our collective energy and personal paths. We’re moving away from the watery, boundless themes of the Pisces North Node and stepping into a far more innovative, intellectual, and community-focused era.

But the universe isn’t just straight dropping us into this cold. The runway leading up to the 26th is incredibly intentional. The sky’s actively giving us the breakthroughs, confidence, and voice we need so we can actually stand our ground with determination while the big shifts land.

The Runway: The Cosmic Build Up (July 18 – July 25)

Before we even reach the 26th, we have to cross a major astrological bridge. That journey starts right now with a rare geometric alignment in the sky known as the Barbault Basket, which reaches exact perfection between July 19th and July 22nd. A basket alignment happens when all five of our slower-moving outer planets group together in one section of the sky, linking up through a series of harmonious trines and sextiles to form a literal geometric safety net.

This specific basket is anchored by a massive opposition between Jupiter in Leo and Pluto in Aquarius, which is beautifully cradled by supportive links from Uranus in Gemini, Neptune in Aries, and Saturn in Aries acting as the heavy anchor. Think of it as a massive container for high-vibrational air energy.

On a social level, it’s sparking sudden epiphanies, major technological upgrades, and fast-moving shifts in how we connect globally. On a personal level, it acts like a cosmic safety valve—holding space for you to receive sudden downloads and brilliant flashes of clarity without feeling overwhelmed. If you’ve been waiting to map out your next big project, business launch, or spiritual offering, this is your green light. The ideas are hitting fast, the answers are flowing, and the cosmic runway is officially clear!

I’m feeling this high-voltage air net in my own life right now, especially when it comes to finding a deeper sense of clarity and stability. For me, this energy is showing up as a quiet reassurance to trust the hidden pace of my creative projects—like the book I’ve been slowly working on behind the scenes—and allowing the inspiration to cook without rushing it.

It’s also acting as a massive grounding wire in my personal life. Merging paths and living with someone so early into a new relationship requires a lot of raw maturity, and this alignment has given me the exact courage I’ve needed to show up with more confidence. It’s helped me break old habits of staying silent and shrinking my own values and desires just to avoid conflict with others, while also opening my heart to hear the critiques I’ve needed to hear myself.

Navigating those boundaries hasn’t been easy, but handling things with honesty and checking our egos is exactly how we’re building a rock-solid foundation for the future instead of rushing the process.

Next, on July 22nd, the Sun enters Leo, kicking off my birthday… I mean Leo season! Collectively, this injects a burst of confidence, passion, and the desire to be seen. But because this happens just days before the South Node enters Leo, it’s going to immediately highlight where our swelling egos or desires for personal glory need to be checked by reality. It’s a bright spotlight revealing exactly what parts of our “main character energy” we’re preparing to shed.

I’m seeing this theme show up clearly in my own chart right now. Because of how my houses line up, my Leo planets bridge my house of community and my house of the subconscious. It basically forces me to act as a mirror, channeling and speaking on the deeper, hidden shifts we're all experiencing. Right as Leo season kicks off, I’ve got transiting Jupiter sitting right on top of my natal Sun, multiplying my views and business growth, while the transiting Sun directly opposes my natal Neptune. It’s a huge cosmic reminder for me to stay grounded, and to remember that true empowerment isn't about feeding a loud ego or chasing an individual spotlight—it’s about having the quiet integrity to align our inner motivations with our actual long-term reality.

Let’s look at what each modality can expect this season. Check the readings below for your Sun, Moon, and Rising signs to see how this energy is playing out for you with some tarot!✨

Cardinal Signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn)

Page of Cups Reversed, guided by Strength

You’re walking into Leo season with your emotional world already feeling a bit clogged or hard to access, and that’s likely to deepen once the south node moves into Leo on the 26th. Feelings that usually move through you pretty easily might get stuck instead, and you could catch yourself holding back what you actually feel or being more reactive than usual about something that really just needs a grounded response. As the south node settles into Leo, this can start looking like avoidance dressed up as “I’m fine.” The move isn’t to force your way through it though. It’s to meet whatever’s coming up with quiet steadiness, taming what’s wild in you with compassion instead of control. You don’t need to shut your feelings down or perform having it together. You just need some patience with yourself while you work through it.

Fixed Signs (Leo, Taurus, Scorpio, Aquarius)

The Emperor Reversed, guided by the Seven of Cups

You’re the modality that’s going to feel this seasonal shift the most directly, especially once the south node lands in Leo on the 26th and really turns up the heat. Structures, control, or authority you’ve been leaning on could start to feel shaky, whether that’s your own sense of power getting questioned or you butting up against a rigidity—yours or someone else’s—that used to feel safe and now just feels confining. As the south node settles in, that swelling ego energy is going to need to get checked by reality in a pretty direct way. Your job right now, and even more so as the season goes on, is discernment. There’s a lot on the table; a lot of options and fantasies and versions of yourself you could chase, but not all of it is real or worth your energy. Slow down before you commit to a direction and get honest about what’s actual ambition versus what’s just ego wanting to feel important. Clarity is the win here, not speed.

Mutable Signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces)

Three of Pentacles Reversed, guided by the High Priestess and Six of Wands

You might start feeling a little out of sync with the people or systems around you as this season unfolds, like your effort isn’t landing the way you want it to, or you’re working solo when you’d rather be collaborating. That’s likely to sharpen once the south node moves into Leo on the 26th and puts more pressure on how you’re being seen and credited. There could be a mismatch between what you’re putting in and how it’s being recognized, and that can feel isolating if you’re not careful. What you need to do is trust what you already know quietly, before you need anyone else to confirm it for you. Tune into your own inner knowing instead of looking outward for validation. And once you’ve done that inner work, the recognition does come. You get to step into being seen for what you’ve actually built, not just what’s loud.

The ultimate relief happens on July 23rd when Mercury finally stations direct in Cancer. The cosmic green light turns back on, and the heavy, protective emotional fog we’ve been wading through starts to clear.

We immediately roll into the post-retrograde shadow period, which will linger until the shadow officially clears on August 7, 2026. Because this happens in the sensitive and intuitive sign of Cancer, it gives us the courage to finally speak up about the deep, vulnerable emotional truths we’ve been sitting on. This moment takes the throat-chakra restrictions off just in time for the heavy restructuring of the 26th…

The Big Shifts: The Nodes and Saturn Retrograde (July 26)

Once the runway clears, we hit the main event on July 26th. The Lunar Nodes officially shift into the Aquarius and Leo axis at 8:50 PM EST, where they’ll stay until February 18th, 2028. For the last 18 months, the North Node in Pisces had us swimming in deep spiritual loops, surrender, and heavier emotional processing. We were navigating a lot of blurry boundaries and escaping into our feelings. Now, the North Node’s entering Aquarius while the South Node moves into Leo, which is a massive flip in perspective.

Socially and collectively, the South Node in Leo will demand that we shed our attachment to ego-driven spotlights and main character syndrome. We’re going to see a massive collective pushback against people who do things purely for their own validation, applause, or selfish gain. The universe is putting an end to the superficial clout-chasing era while the North Node in Aquarius pulls us toward our true soul tribes, collective progress, and humanitarian efforts.

It’s a loud call to figure out how our unique gifts can serve the greater community—meaning we have to transition from asking “what’s in it for me?” to asking “how can we all win together?”

Hours later, at 3:56 PM EST, Saturn stations retrograde at 14 degrees of Aries, and will continue its retreat until December 11, 2026. Saturn’s the planet of boundaries, rules, structures, and reality checks. In fiery, impulsive Aries, Saturn acts as a strict cosmic brake pedal. Aries wants to rush forward, fight, dominate, and pioneer blindly, but this retrograde says absolutely not.

Over the next few months, trying to force outcomes, dominate conversations, or throwing tantrums when things don’t go your way will hit a literal brick wall. Saturn retrograde here is going to force us to review our personal anger, our leadership styles, and how we handle impatience. It’s giving us the opportunity to rewire ourselves with maturity so that we can further stabilize the development of our long-term goals, rather than burning ourselves out on impulsive desires trying to get to them.

How This Shift Affects Your Path (Based on Your Rising Sign)

Here’s how to look out for this energy based on your rising sign. Because we’re using Placidus, remember these transits’ll likely bleed into the houses right before or after the main ones mentioned.

The North Node is our compass toward destiny—it’s the new, unfamiliar territory the universe is pushing us to master so we can grow. The South Node is our comfort zone, which means it’s the exact area where we tend to overindulge, play small, or repeat old karmic loops. This shift means the universe is draining the juice from your comfort zone so you have no choice but to build fresh muscles where the North Node’s calling you.

Aries Rising

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