A Reflection During Saturn’s Final Return.

Memories of 2017-2019 have revisited, flashing quickly across my mind’s eye, seemingly from nowhere.

I’m pretty sure I only have one month left in my Saturn return. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been revisiting old energies. I cycled through the neighborhood from when I first moved here the other day. I was genuinely tired and heading for a last beach day somewhere on the way home from my usual prospect point loop and I ended up at the edge of Highway 1. But on my way back I cycled up and down the streets of my old home- when I was truly “going through it”- remembering the middle of my Saturn return.

Is it crazy to say I will miss it’s energy? I will miss the bittersweet mix of absolute chaos and destruction with no absolutely no mercy, but also the order and discipline it demanded of me to rebuild a whole new life in it’s rubble.

Saturn makes you resilient and then gives you shade to build. It feeds whatever rhythm you give it- chaos and unawareness or curiosity and self-improvement.

Saturn moved me down to the south of the city once I started to work with it’s energy in East Vancouver- finding ritual and my first taste of independence and structure. It nestled me between bike lanes, gardens and greenways.

To take care of oneself fully is no easy chore. Deeply nourishing lifestyles are built brick by intentional brick- building habits, routines and rhythms to keep them in place.

It never stops being a balancing act. That’s why support is helpful. It’s also why it’s nice to have some sort of order of operations, logic, or roadmap. Coaching can even be helpful here- with the right person.

This is something that I was not meant to have- somewhere before incarnation I chose the intuition and introspection only option. And with Saturn- I started to come into it fully. Now each act of service and love for myself is nothing less than an offering of energy or soulful ritual.

I remember the days of my awareness shifting more and more, beginning to take responsibility more and more, and having psychological insights into the protective patterns or adaptations I was living through that I no longer needed.

It’s one thing to break a pattern or a habit. But to even see it in the first place is a near-miracle. We are so eluded by our own patterns and the ways we feed into subconscious beliefs and manifest similar realities.

I see now how I didn’t have my needs met as a child, emotionally. Because I still don’t as an adult- should I show up to my parents with bigger emotions. I know better than to bring big emotions to people who have repeatedly shown that they don’t have the capacity for- but this provided me a very human realization that these are my parents, and we should be able to be vulnerable with them, and it is human to turn to our parents when we are overwhelmed. And if it isn’t necessarily the smartest or safest thing to do now- what was happening when I was a child, before I could remember? Where were my challenging emotions going? The same place. My father is defensive when faced with challenging emotion- moving into shutdown and avoidance bit by bit. Completely unaware of this- he continues to ride the avoidant to shut down to anger pipeline when faced with anyone’s emotions (and his own- because all external states reflect internal.)

My mother- also unaware to this and her own patterns- becomes increasingly more attached in the anxious-avoidant dynamic with my father, anxiously attaching to everything around her to keep afloat and meet her needs in the absence of my father’s emotional availability- and having all of the expectations, lack of emotional regulation and excess emotional reactivity to go with it.

So we have an unaware and passive (and therefore imbalanced) masculine- detached and avoidant. And we have an emotionally unregulated, anxiously attachment mother who is subconsciously narcissistic and manipulative (an adaptation to get her needs met).

The classic angry avoidant father and emotionally unregulated and unknowing mother. This is a common pattern and I’ve realized more and more how most marriages and relationships are actually just trauma bonds. True and intentional connection with emotional awareness, regulation and healthy communication sounds like a purple unicorn compared to what I see.

But I’m not settling for anything less. I’m open to someone who has awareness and practices it. Someone who questions their own intentions and has a strong system of ethics and values. Someone awakened and rooted in love, who is already showing up as a strong masculine everyday.

Someone who knows that when the feminine and the masculine in the body are balanced- everything is easy. Intuition is clear. Life is rich and comfortable. Playfulness and curiosity become readily available.

Someone who knows the potential held by unlocking this within a relationship of strong feminine and masculine energies.

Someone with a deep devotion and purpose on this planet who can collaborate with and root for the success of my dreams and aspirations.

Someone who deeply sees me- in everything.

And someone I can do the same for, who I can safely embody my whole divine feminine next to and shower in golden light, love, and nourishment.

I am ready.

I’ve thought I was ready and I’ve written many lists of qualities I want in a partner before. But I was standing in the shade, just around the corner from imperative insights regarding my relationship patterns.

I’d spent years challenging and analyzing people, places and things, developing more insight and pattern recognition. I could really “solve” anyone or anything.

In itself, this is an adaptation purely in response to the aforementioned parent situation. I’ve been unknowingly fixing people as a result. This had me showing up in relationships that distracted me with the things I was “really good at” while feeding into subconscious beliefs surrounding my self worth.

Having shown up my to my parents countless times with a challenging emotion and been met with unconscious fear and confusion that manifested as invalidation and isolation- I was becoming a master of proving to myself- “see, your needs don’t matter.” “Your emotions are excessive and bad.”

This pathologized greatly in my formative youth and young adult years as I was in and out of invasive psychiatric assessments and being inoculated by the unconscious practices of western medicine- all to correct things that were never wrong. The things that I’ve been through as a result of my parent’s lack of ability to recognize their internal states- and a result, mine and my own- have been beyond traumatizing and catastrophic and it wasn’t until recently- having already gotten out the woods, did I REALLY put it all together.

The journey to get to this place of insight has tested and transformed me greatly and I think at a certain level of challenges faced we have no choice but to surrender absolutely everything over to universal love. The small moments of insight of what it’s all really about and why we’re here are the flashes of light that fill us with just enough energy and hope to keep going through everything. Perseverance is really just blind faith and optimism at the root of it.

I built a beautiful life in Saturn’s energy, away from the pain, suffering, and panic attacks of my early and mid twenties. I learned how to recognize my emotions, communicate better, I found resources, and I ignited deep levels of passion for holistic wellness, my natural healing and intuitive ability, and spirituality.

It’s now my life.

I look around now and see how in the same place as when I first arrived, flesh and bone filled with trauma- how I have transformed into an unstoppably wise, resilient, and passionate phoenix and a pioneer in ending a long line of generational trauma.

I love you Saturn. I love you. I love you. Thank you.

I see now how my future is wide open and things can come to me- handmade, packaged and delivered for me by the universe. And I don’t have to accept anything less. It is my duty not to.

I see how in freeing myself, I have effectively begun to free my parents and ancestors before me.  I see how this is the highest act of love to myself and others- no matter how uncomfortable the conflict resolution, awareness and honestly can be on the way here. It is so worth it to step back and see our relationships as pattern versus pattern instead of person versus person- creating the distance needed and applying the intention to work through it above all else.

I see now how I never gave up on my family- but in doing this I was actually forced to give up on myself. It does not serve my family or any of my relationships for me to perform within them how I think they would want me to or to  constantly serve, clarify, and comfort everyone at the sake of myself.

It is a disservice to ourselves and others to be inauthentic. It’s so clear, now.

The journey to clarity was no joke though. You have to do it without any sense of vision at all.

And above all, the way we are inherently seen, loved, and protected by what has created us is more clear than ever.

But first it is only felt. First in glimmers, small dashes of elation, love, ease and joy. Then, it builds. It builds alongside you, if you let it. Just as Saturn did for me- and does for everyone- whether they know it or not.

The deeply fated and divine connection between the human experience, the stars and the warm glow and constant state of universal love is a marvel that can’t be explained in words. It can’t be explained or justified to anyone who is not open to seeing their own magic.

From the years of pursuing intention, value, and structure in Saturn’s energy I find myself in solemn gratitude as it begins to come home and so do I, after so many years in transit together- to a deeply liberated life of inner vision, paradise, reciprocation and purpose.

And I see now that we are only ever really liberating from ourselves. Once we are cleared of all the things we didn’t know better but to pick up and call our own- it is up to us not pick these things up anymore. Shame, fear and regret are too heavy and make it too hard to hold all the joy, love, ease, gratitude and prosperity that we came through all the fire and construction for.

It’s up to us. And once we show up and decide- the entire universe will conspire to provide.