For those who believe in astrology, one’s Saturn Return is the period somewhere between the ages of 29-32 where Saturn is in the same place it was when you were born, and is said to shake up your shit in a serious way — or like, “teach you lessons,” or whatever. It’s a time of transition and growth, often painful growth, the kind that involves moving on from things you’re ready to let go of: people, jobs, habits, beliefs, cities, countries, haircuts, whatever. Those members of the team who have reached or passed through their Saturn Return are here to share the good, bad and the ugly about getting through it.
Heather, Managing Editor
This is the first time I’ve ever heard of a Saturn Return and so I looked it up and: Hahahahaha! For my Saturn return, I quit my steady office job in the only field I was qualified to work in (accounting), came out to everyone I’d been too afraid to tell I’m gay, left church forever in a righteous huff, flew to London, backpacked around the entirety of Europe, came home, became a writer and a professional lesbian. Astrology, you are so bananas! How do you know?
Erin, Writer
I remember reading someone describe an element of one’s Saturn Return as the crystallization of all the mistakes one made in the three decades leading up to it and I thought: yikes. No thanks! I think I’m still technically experiencing my Saturn Return as it lasts from around 29 to 32 and having gone (mostly) through it, I think the best way to describe it is like getting a chemical peel. It’s incredibly painful, its side effects last for what feels like forever, you look like you’re melting, you are melting as you’re losing actual bits of yourself day-by-day, and it’s all of your own doing! No one made you get the chemical peel but you! But what finally reveals itself is you, but better. In my Saturn Return I have ended a five-year relationship, started a new one, moved four times, made a jump in careers, and experienced more than one loss that ruined me permanently! Anyway, where am I?
Rachel, Managing Editor
So far I’ve gotten divorced, lived with my mother for six months, and moved to a different state where I restarted most of my life. I bought a giant palm from Ikea and killed it in a month and a half. I went back to therapy and decided I believed in astrology. I saw Mitski live. I read a lot of crime fiction. I really locked down a system for cutting my own hair in my bathroom. Excited to see what, according to Erin, the next year and a half brings!
Carrie, Contributor
I write you from the thick of my Saturn return, which has thus far been defined by a cross-country move and career overhaul. In a lot of ways I’ve leveled up; I’m on a clearer and more exciting professional path than before and I appreciate the value of living in a new place. Most of the previous upheaval in my life came from medical events; this past year marked the first time something huge changed because I wanted it to. And it’s been affirming to learn I can handle that. I’ve solved problems, witnessed history (for good and ill), and met many different definitions of success. On the whole, I’m glad I came.
That being said, I do feel like I’m on sabbatical from my real life. It took me a while to realize (and even longer to articulate aloud) that I don’t actually like it here very much. I’m learning things I never could have at home — but I’m mostly excited to bring those things back, rather than use them to put down roots here. It’s been weirdly liberating to acknowledge that I don’t belong here and don’t necessarily have to try to. But it’s also disorienting, and I’m both grateful and mildly anxious that another big change is essentially imminent within the next year. So the return marches on. Stay tuned?
Valerie Anne, Writer
After Googling a bit I’m still not I fully understand when a Saturn Return is supposed to happen but I think I’m fully in it?I just turned 32 and between 29 and now my life has changed a lot. I started working for Autostraddle and have been surrounded my truly inspiring people. Wynonna Earp began and being involved in that community has turned my world upside down in the best way. Plus I’ve decided 2019 is the year I make changes. Big changes. Scary changes. Writing a script scary. Quitting my day job and applying for my dream job scary. So maybe my Saturn Return will go out with a bang. (I don’t even know if that’s how you use that phrase in a sentence, grammatically, but hopefully you know what I mean.)
Riese, Editor-in-Chief
I only knew about Saturn Return at the time ‘cause my then-best friend Haviland was like “it’s your Saturn Return!” all the time. I was mostly impressed with myself for still being alive. Anyhow, for my Saturn Return I moved from New York City to California and started dating someone new and began slowly to piece together Autostraddle in such a way that it could one day resemble a real business. I hate most of the pictures of me taken during this time period, but I think the way I feel about them are often how new Moms feel about pics from early motherhood? I was so focused on Autostraddle that I barely had time to look at myself, which for me, a Libra, is … honestly baffling in retrospect. I’d say that in the beginning of my Saturn Return, I definitely drank too much, but I saw the sunshine a lot more, my relationship felt really healthy and nourishing during its earliest months/years, and I started eating meals that might actually nourish my body rather than actively kill me. We rode bikes a lot. Some things got better and some got worse, but by the end of it all, I think I had a better idea of how to be an adult. To be honest right now — my late 30s — feel the most transformational of all. I feel like I’ve learned more about myself in the past year than I did in the previous ten combined. What can we call this? What kind of return is this.
KaeLyn, Writer
Wow, there’s a name for this phenomenon, huh? OK, let’s see, in my late 20s and early 30s, I moved from always entertaining the idea of running away to nurturing the idea of staying and growing where I’m planted. I got married (ack!). I bought a house (what?!). I got a new job. I finished grad school. My already long-term relationship moved into a new phase of kinder, less chaotic, softer companionship and I stopped looking for the exit door at every turn. I tried out being a professional speaker and sexuality educator and traveled all over the continental U.S. presenting at colleges. I tried to reinvent my signature bisexual bob (inverted with a stack in the back). I got bangs. I got highlights. I got lowlights. I attempted grey streaks. I ditched the bangs and the highlights and got an undercut on one side. I expanded the undercut all the way around. I decided I was ready to reconsider my moratorium about having children. I started calling myself “a writer,” in earnest for the first time. I sought out the communities I wanted in my life and put boundaries on toxic friendships. I lost a mentor and loved one who meant a lot to me. Waffle and I got really, really deep into an obsession and fandom together, which was a first for us as partners and added an unanticipated new level of intimacy to our relationship. To cap it all off, I got knocked up. At the end of it all, I’m more open and also more clear about my future by being open about not being too clear about my future. Myself at 26 wouldn’t even recognize me at 36, but I think 26-year-old me would be happy (and puzzled) about how things turned out…and would really like the new version of my signature bisexual bob. OMG now I’m super excited about my next Saturn Return in approximately 25 years. BRING IT ON, UNIVERSE!
Reneice, Writer
THAT BITCH IS OVER! I MADE IT THROUGH THE FIRE! Gooooooooodness gracious. My saturn return ended last near. She did not come to play. I wouldn’t go through that again for anything less than half a mill. My relationships fell apart, I failed at completing more tasks than I succeeded in which totally ruined my mental health. My finances were a mess. I was just a depressed ass bitch going through the most and literally the only thing that got me through was all my astrologically knowledgeable friends promising me it would end. They were right. It did and now i’m already afraid to turn 59. Sure, I was learning. Sure, I’m stronger now. But for real, that shit was unnecessarily difficult. I feel like black women should be exempt from saturn returns. In these conditions? SERIOUSLY.
Laneia, Executive Editor
My Saturn return started with my dad dying and dragged mercilessly through a breakup and a spectacular breakdown that lasted about a year. At the very bottommost place a girl could find her sweet self, I realized, for the very first time in my life, that I’m the only fucking person who’s ever going to be able to save me, which sounds dramatic and reader, I assure you, it was. I made a doctor put me on antidepressants after she told me I probably just needed more soy in my diet, I got a very good tattoo of a fawn looking over its shoulder before walking back into the forest, and I started treating myself like something worth paying attention to. The whole thing felt like trying to turn a wooden table inside out and then ending up with a platter of fresh fruit, if that makes any sense.
Stef, Vapid Fluff Editor
I don’t think I thought about my Saturn Return very much when it was happening, but hmm, now that you mention it… the depression I’ve grappled with all my life came to a serious head, during which I scared away a lot of friends and family. After years of adamant resistance, I had to start taking medication to stay alive. Shortly thereafter, I watched my grandmother die, I quit my job, I moved out of my favorite apartment I’ve ever had and moved to LA, promptly fell in love with someone in New York, broke up, moved back, went through Some Shit. Mostly it was pretty traumatic and destroyed a lot of ideas I had about my own identity and ability to survive on my own. I scraped my way out of it and ended up more or less okay, but can’t help feeling like I knocked down a lot of progress I’d been making only to start over from scratch… again. I’m not sure I’ll ever be really able to talk freely about how fucked up that time was for me. I’m having a great time!
Molly, Writer
Hoooooo boy, I only learned about Saturn returns while I was in the middle of mine, and they are no joke. Mine happened from 2016 through 2018, when my entire life changed and I got a divorce and moved to a new town and had to grapple with a lot things, like who am I if I’m not with my partner and did I really just waste a decade with someone who doesn’t even like me? There was a lot of questioning my self-worth, whether I was worth fighting for or should I just give in and let my life totally go to shit. Luckily, I’m stubborn by nature and managed to hang on to my job and sanity long enough to ride out the horrible feelings of rejection and betrayal. They still exist, they’re just quieter now. I just feel like I’m getting my feet back under me, and that not all of my energy is going to merely keeping my head above water anymore. Now I can direct it at stuff like being a better me. Which I think is the point of the Saturn thing, right?
Carolyn, NSFW Consultant
My Saturn return was apocalyptic and my life now looks nothing like I thought it would before it started. It looks so much better. I moved and thought it would be temporary, I did too much distance running and SoulCycle and distance running to and from SoulCycle and destroyed my knees while trying to cope with what I didn’t yet know would be a divorce, I got asked for the divorce by email, I missed deadlines, I could drink five martinis without blinking for a hot second there, I left a position I hoped would be forever, and I got ghosted by seven people I care about incredibly deeply. Lots of other fucked up things happened, too. I spent a lot of time being very, very, very sad. The weird thing is, my Saturn return felt like a sometimes-non-consensual course correction. The person I was would have been so happy living in the life that I was living in with the people I was sharing it with forever. And I wake up every single day (okay, at least more days than not) glad I’m not that person or in that life anymore.
Vanessa, Community Editor
My Saturn Return is currently still happening and even though it’s A Lot, I weirdly love it? My Saturn is in Capricorn and I have five planets total in Capricorn so uh, maybe this is typical of me. I like getting shit done, you know? So okay, what’s happening in my Saturn Return? Major break up? Check. Cross country move? Check. Started grad school? Check. Taking my writing and my career more seriously even though it’s scary? Check. Realized I’m probably not monogamous, probably never going to get married and settle down with one single human, probably honestly going to be a single mom by choice within the next five years, and got myself an engagement ring to celebrate the whole situation? Check, check, check, CHECK! There’s a cultural narrative around Saturn Returns that make them seem horrifying, I think, but I don’t think they have to be viewed that way. Saturn is the planet of Adulting, of Getting Your Shit Together, of Making You Take Yourself Seriously. That can be really painful and hard and alarming, yes, but ultimately it’s a gift.
Also, heads up: Saturn returns every 30ish years or so, so most humans have at least two, sometimes three Saturn Returns in a life! Your next one is coming up when you turn 60, approximately. (Go see an astrologer if you want the exact dates for your Saturn Returns.) And rumor has it, if you don’t deal with the shit Saturn wants you to deal with in your first Saturn Return… IT COMES BACK AROUND IN YOUR SECOND ONE. Do you want to be dealing with this stuff when you’re 60? No you sure fucking don’t! So lean into your Saturn Return when it happens for the first time so you can be ready for that bitch the second time! You’re welcome for the hot tip.🎈
