Satellite of Love

As we move through 2021 many of us are realizing that the crises that marked 2020 are far from over. Not only are we still in a global pandemic, we are also in the midst of transformative and unsettling times. Astrologically, socially, politically, and ecologically, shit is intense and it’s not about to ease up. Which is why we need to find places to rest and restore ourselves, because we’re in it for the long haul. This month (after a slightly crunchy first week) offers us just that. But we need to remember how to find home base, as it were. What unsticks us from the patterns of tension and anxiety we’re all kind of low-key stuck in all the time?

This isn’t a rhetorical question — do you know? Can you answer this? If you’re reading this alone right now, stop reading and make a quick list. If you’re reading this with friends, ask each other. Take a survey. See how you can support each other in this. Because our relationships, as imperfect and messy and in-process as they often are, can be a beautiful source of healing and refuge this month and every month. As we’re working with Leo energy (especially close to the Leo New Moon on the 8th), we’re remembering the importance and the life-changing power of intimacy. Not just partnership, but any kind of love relationship that opens your heart. That helps you laugh. That inspires you. That reminds you of all the light in this world, of the sparks you can rekindle, of what warms you when you’ve gotten too cold.

Culturally, Leo asks us what it means to belong. Belonging isn’t about ownership or privilege (though both can confer a false sense of belonging). It’s about love. I belong with the people who love me. I belong to the places I love, and I enact that love by being responsible to them. That means I fight against gentrification and evictions in my neighborhood, or I fight to protect my local wetlands, or I fight for Native sovereignty in my country. Belonging is something created through mutual relationship, through acting out of love. It’s not something you can buy or claim outside of relationship.

So many of us, coming out of (or still in) Covid isolation and dispersed on so many screens where people find it so easy to enact their worst selves — so many of us are hungry for this belonging right now. As an astrologer, I have to keep reminding you all of how dangerous the conspirituality movement is, and how movements like this offer a sense of belonging. Acknowledge your need for love, relationship, and belonging. And seek these out with those whose values you know, understand, and trust. Let relationships take time. Be kind to your loneliness. Learn what it means to love and be loved in healthy ways.

I wish you all a sweet, restful, celebratory month. My books will open for new clients later this month, so sometime after August 15th feel free to hit me up for a reading. And for more astro insights (as well as my monthly podcast) support me on Patreon and follow me on Instagram.

Aries

Find peace within the chaos: Maybe it’s already obvious to you, maybe it’s not, but all the changes and upheaval in your world over the past two years mean that your relationships have become much clearer. This isn’t to say easier or more compatible, if they weren’t already, but that what’s happening under the surface between you and the ones you love has been surfacing. It’s easier to see who gets triggered by what and why. It’s easier to name it when there are conflicting needs. It’s easier to let go instead of holding on to something that’s become intolerable. And in all this tumult, especially if you’ve had to do a lot of letting go lately, what you may not notice is that you are moving toward more loving, healthy, sustainable relationships. You may already be in them. Look around. Who’s surprisingly on your team right now in a low-drama and consistent way? This month, these committed relationships—romantic, platonic, non-sexual life partners, best friend ex-partners—these are what’s offering you the capacity to slow down, relax, and be patient.

Taurus

Find peace within the chaos: Your default is to restore yourself and achieve some peace and balance by withdrawing, but this month challenges you to explore a different path. Specifically, there’s some sweetness available for you right now in direct proportion to how hard you work for it. This might mean you need to call up some long-lost friends, pay someone a heartfelt compliment, cook a sick friend a meal—the more generous you are with your time and energy right now, the more you’ll feel love and generosity coming right back at you. Of course, you can’t do this cynically as some kind of love-and-attention transaction. It should feel genuinely good to you to reach out, even if you don’t get a compliment or a home-cooked meal in return. What you’re remembering this month is that connection can be a place of restoration, that you don’t need to be alone to be fully relaxed.

Gemini

Find peace within the chaos: Who are you? Who are you becoming? It’s all pretty chaotic right now. But at some point this month, preferably close to the Leo New Moon on the 8th, your assignment is to reach out to someone who loves you and ask them for about half an hour of their time. In this time, you are to ask them to remind you of everything they love about you. You can do this with a few friends, even. You can call up exes that you’re still on good terms with (but no one still pining for you, that would be cruel). You can ask family members who actually see and know you. And then your job is just to receive their love and their visions of you. Some might see you more clearly than others, some might be more eloquent. Any vision of you that you don’t share you are free to discard. But collect the ones that resonate, and let them be part of your blueprint for a way forward right now.

Cancer

Find peace within the chaos: I hope you have a really sweet home. Like I want a bedroom for you that is absolutely to your taste—maybe full of plants and smelling like beeswax candles. Maybe full of gay art in neon colors. Maybe you’ve got a loom or something. Whatever it is, may it be your refuge. Because this month, your desire to periodically hole up in your room and say no to any and all invitations can be a really good idea. I don’t mean wallowing in isolation and brooding on your misery—I mean actually being able to relax and feel held by a place that reflects back to you exactly what you need it to. Moving from the literal to the metaphorical, this is also a good time to surround yourself with your chosen family. Get curious about what makes you feel actually comfortable, safe, and held. Practice prioritizing this.

Leo

Find peace within the chaos: Whatever you do this month, don’t keep your thoughts and feelings bottled up. You may be tempted to distract yourself, play it cool, or otherwise step into the comfortable role known as “I have my shit together” but this isn’t going to get you what you really need right now. One of the lessons for any planet in Leo is how to be really seen in all you vulnerability and charming awkwardness. That requires finding people you trust, and letting them behind the curtains of the show you put on for the wider world. This doesn’t mean getting on social and curating your pain for status points, this means finding your actual people—the ones that care about you, that check in on you, that have seen you all your various ways of being—and letting them know: “Hey, I’m worried about something, can you reassure me?” or “I’m just sad all the time and I don’t know why” or “I don’t know what I’m feeling, would you listen while I try to talk it out?” This is your medicine this month: remembering that with the right people, when you share what you’re scared of sharing, it loses its power to scare you.

Virgo

Find peace within the chaos: With all your restless energy for changing, fixing, and improving whatever situation you find yourself in, these last few months might have you fairly tightly wound. There’s so much creative potential, healing potential, and also disaster potential in the potent astrology of these times. Virgo is a little like a perpetual motion machine as long as there’s a problem to be solved, and right now all the problems are suddenly visible. Calm yourself, my squirrelly friend. There is time for it all. And if you find rather frantic these days and breaking things while you’re trying to fix other things, find some refuge in what is continuing, what is growing, what is abundantly good in your life right now. The slowness of old friendships, the steadiness of daily rituals, the shoulder-dropping and jaw-unclenching reassurance that your value comes from being, not doing.

Libra

Find peace within the chaos: As someone with tendencies to team up and rely on other people for feedback and reflection, you have a choice to make this month. On the one hand, Venus in Libra can increase this tendency, pushing you more and more into extroversion and conversation to understand who you are and what you want. On the other hand, this month also offers you a very simple and sweet refuge: your own perspective and needs. You have them, you get to have them, and they can hold you like no one else can. Take some time to be with the parts of yourself that only surface when you’re alone. Get to know them a little better. Take yourself out on a date and interview yourself (aka, do some deep journaling with romantic music on). It’s okay to understand yourself through being reflected by others, but there are parts of yourself that you can only see clearly alone. It’s worth getting to know them.

Scorpio

Find peace within the chaos: Whatever is happening externally in your life right now, even if it takes all your energy and focus during your waking hours, know that you get to let it go when you go to sleep. Maybe it’s a good obsession or maybe it’s grief or fear—maybe you feel like you don’t have the power to turn it off. But you can, momentarily at least, if you try. And this month you’re going to want to save some of your energy for dreaming, fantasizing, and being in retreat mode whenever you can. Your relational energy is a little more pulled inward right now, so only make dates with people who don’t mind cuddling in bed with you watching TV instead of trying to stay up all night partying or talking or boning. There’s a place you’re trying to reach that’s inside you, that’s a little elusive, and that you will find when you stop trying so hard. Give yourself the gift of making that effort to stop efforting.

Sagittarius

Find peace within the chaos: Let’s talk about your idealism. This isn’t the same thing as optimism—Sagittarius energy is good at a kind of instinctive picking-yourself-up, brushing-yourself-off, and being ready for the next thing. That’s optimism. Idealism is what you wanted the world to be like when you were a kid—people being kind to each other. Clean air and water. Fairness, justice. The capacity to grow into your own unique way of being, to discover what moves you and what you can create. Time enough to explore it all. As we age, as the world disappoints us and hurts us and overwhelms us, idealism can feel childish. But there’s something healing in it, if you let yourself connect with it. That spark of wanting something that you believe is right and good, even if it seems highly unlikely that the world will change to make it real. The trick to keeping your ideals intact—which means keeping your heart open and your vision clear—is to stay small and local. In this moment, in this place, in these relationships, what can be done to move things closer to this vision of kindness, justice, and repair?

Capricorn

Find peace within the chaos: Oh Capricorn. You know how I’m always advising you to soften that hard shell of yours, to make room for vulnerability and having needs and not always being the tough guy in charge of everything and getting shit done? Well this month, at long last, you have earned the right to do exactly what you’re already good at: handling your business. In a chaotic world, it’s fine to have some small area of your life where you get to exert ultimate control. I just invite you to make it something you actually can control—like how you dress or write or train for a marathon or whatnot—not something you can’t, like your needs and feelings or other people’s needs and feelings (we’re still going to talk about those things, so sorry). So give yourself a constructive task to throw yourself into, and give yourself permission to relax by making elaborate and detailed plans—as long as you know those plans probably won’t be how things pan out.

Aquarius

Find peace within the chaos: Your safe space right now is in the future. Which doesn’t mean you’re doomed to feel unsafe in this present moment, and it doesn’t mean just wait and things will get better. It means a piece of you is going to keep feeling unsettled, anxious, and unable to focus if you aren’t working toward a future you actually want to live in. What’s stopping you from doing that right now? Cynicism? Overwhelm? Fear that you don’t have enough power to change all the terrible things already in motion? Those are legit, and I’m not here to dismiss how powerful all those things can be. And yet—what are the first small steps you can take to be dreaming up and moving toward something better than this? I invite you to consider that the first step, and possibly the hardest, is believing you can have an impact. Start there.

Pisces

Find peace within the chaos: You are wonderful at managing stress by being somewhere else. You might turn your thoughts elsewhere, move your body elsewhere, or disassociate and leave your thoughts and body entirely. It’s not the worst coping mechanism, but it also shouldn’t be your only tool for managing the chaos of these times. This month, you’re invited to lean into a different mode, which takes a little more practice: Notice the stress. Notice how uncomfortable it is. Stay with it a little longer than you’d like to. Notice that you haven’t died. Give yourself a break and go somewhere else. Then come back a little later, and go a little farther into the problem. Again, ease up just a little bit after it gets so uncomfortable you want to stop right away. Learning to tolerate these feelings of discomfort takes practice, and can be powerfully transformational. And remember, discomfort is not the same as trauma. If you can’t tell the difference, don’t try this out yet! For those of you in trauma patterns, spend this month letting your pain be held however you can—by a therapist, by yourself, by your favorite animals and environments. Let things move through you at their own speed, and trust that movement is happening.

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