Satellite of Love

Hello my exhausted friends, my grieving friends, my optimistic friends, my lonely friends, my friends who have gotten so used to these unusual times that they’ve sealed over their feelings under a thick callus of “life must go on.” After many months of tumultuous, high-pressured astrology, March brings us an opportunity to rest and recover. This month brings a whopper of a Pisces season with the Sun in Pisces till the 20th, a New Moon in Pisces on the 13th, and several conjunctions to Neptune, ruler of Pisces. We are swimming in a veritable ocean of Pisces energy most of the month, which means it’s a beautiful time to hit the snooze button, sleep a little longer, and write down your dreams when you wake up. And then instead of reading your email or the news, take an hour just to sip a hot beverage and daydream or make some art, letting the deeper layers of your experience as a human rise to the surface and help you remember your connection to the past and the future, the actual and the possible, embodiment and being a creature who leaves your body every night to have wild adventures.

For some of you, this is a welcome energy. For others, the pull to slow down and explore your hopes, dreams, and deeper feelings may feel unsettling. Pisces is the energy of dissolving boundaries, of feeling more intimately connected to the whole. For those of you who are already highly sensitive, empathic, or who struggle to set and hold boundaries, this much Pisces energy can challenge your capacity to stay grounded and centered. For those of you who have lost loved ones recently, or relationships, or are feeling deep fear about your own beautiful queer life, this energy can bring up powerful grief and should be dipped into lightly and tenderly. And for those who are already struggling with addiction, or any compulsion to not be here in this present moment, this influence can make it harder to have good boundaries with your escapist tendencies.

Ultimately, though, working with Pisces energy means working with healing. This happens when we slow down and let our real feelings surface, without urgency or any agenda about how they should look. The best use of this time is to create a daily ritual of doing nothing. Turn off all your screens for at least an hour. Let yourself be bored. Brush your hair. Take a bath. Take a nap. Do anything non-productive where you don’t need to be thinking about anything in particular. And if you find certain thoughts or feelings coming up, let them come. Make room for them. Notice what stories they’re telling you, even if those stories feel alarming or untrue. You don’t have to believe the stories, or fight against them. Just keep brushing your hair, or stretching, or soaking. Let them move through your body. And remember that you are loved.

Recovery after crisis is a skill many of us have unlearned, especially as certain crises are ongoing: racialized violence, climate change, this particular pandemic. Remember that taking time to attune inward, to rest and restore yourself, is not a selfish or foolish turning away from these ongoing crises. When we’re in it for the long haul, we need time to rest and recover wherever we can take it. As this month also brings a lot of communicative energy, it’s worth writing down what’s changing for you as you slow down and start listening to all these buried stories in your body. Just remember your words may be more poetic than factual — and that any kind of conversations you have with others about your needs, feelings, and perceptions may also be less clear than you’d wish. Be patient with yourself and your loved ones if you struggle to find the right words but still feel the need to reach out right now. If you can, connect non-verbally. Write your best friend a song. Make a collage for your sweetheart. Hug those it’s safe to hug. Remember your connections run deep, even if you’re feeling disconnected.

If you want more personal support this month, get in touch for a reading. And for more in-depth astrology this month and every month, you can join my Patreon or check out my new podcast, The Hum and the Holler. Go get some good rest! You deserve it!

Aries

Restore yourself:

Let’s be real, you don’t really love slowing down. The first few weeks of this month may feel hard this Pisces influence pushes you to rest and recover—if you ignore its messages, you may find yourself slowed down through exhaustion or illness anyway. So take the time to sleep more, say no to more projects or plans, and live a little more quietly while the Sun is in Pisces. As it shifts to Aries on the 20th, you’ll be able to get started on something new with a fresh perspective. As you slow down this month, try to make friends with your anxieties and also shush them a little bit, like noisy dinner guests that you’d rather feed than listen to. Pisces is the sign of letting go of all the stress and complication of the past in preparation for a big new push; Aries is the energy for that big new push. Let yourself have the time you need now so you’ll be better able to meet the future.

Taurus

Restore yourself:

Self-reliance is your comfort zone, and both a strength and a weakness for you. It’s often easier to do things yourself than work with people who might let you down, and then to turn inward when you’re exhausted instead of asking for support from people who might not do it right. In the short term, you’re good at doing what you need for yourself. Over the long haul, though, these practices can disconnect you from others and lead to deeper loneliness, isolation, and exhaustion. This month, you need to reach out to be restored. Let a friend know you’re lonely. Go on a socially distanced walk. Take a nap with someone in your germ pod. Remember that you’re connected to a larger world of creative, inspiring, surprising humans. Remember that whatever you value and want to see more of the world, there are people who are working on that with you. If your world has felt very small lately, take some time this month to expand it in nourishing ways.

Gemini

Restore yourself:

For many people, the pandemic has created a crisis of purpose. When the world as you’ve known it is shaken up and remains so a year later, how do you plan your future? What are you supposed to become, learn, or create in this uncertain world? What is your work, and how do you do it? This month you may feel internal pressure to know the answers to these questions. The stars and I, however, invite you to rest in the uncertainty just a little longer. Make time to be curious about the answers, rather than needing to be sure of them. Make time to be inspired about possibilities, even if they seem unlikely. Make time to get lost in daydreams, to consider multiple paths, to be open to change. You have a lot of motivation to act, do, and decide right now, but you still need a wider perspective (and a little more experience) before settling on a decision.

Cancer

Restore yourself:

Cancer energy is on a lifelong quest to be as open as possible to love and experience without harm to the self. Accordingly, Cancer is very good at sensing when it’s time for Shields Up and when it can melt down its defenses and be merged with the world. Sometimes this intuition gets skewed, but the cyclical nature of Cancer means there are always opportunities to reassess and repair— unless you get caught in a trauma pattern (oh like, say, a global pandemic in the midst of a world in crisis). Then, you may feel stuck on Shields Up indefinitely. Which makes it hard to feel connected to that flow of love and experience. Which makes it hard to trust that it will ever feel safe to drop your guard. This month brings some healing to that guardedness, but I recommend you approach it slowly and gently. Something is breaking through your shields and reminding you there is still love and beauty in this world, and in the future. Let it in, as much as feels safe for you right now. Remember that the trauma story isn’t the whole story.

Leo

Restore yourself:

The healing this month offers you is profound, but might require more effort on your part to access it. There’s something painful you’ve been putting off feeling that needs your attention before you can deeply relax. Are you holding a grudge? Are you still stinging from a betrayal? Is there grief you haven’t been ready to face? Whatever it is, this month is coaxing you to move through it cleanly instead of letting that pain fester. It may hurt to feel it, but on the other side is a profound capacity to love and be loved. Watch out for the tendency to get lost in distractions right now (internet drama, other people’s problems). Make room for doing your inner work. Reach out to the ones who can hold you as you do. None of us need to be doing this alone right now.

Virgo

Restore yourself:

Pisces season has a tendency to pull you out of your comfort zone. You’re most comfortable feeling like you have a handle on things: you can analyze the situation, see what needs fixing, make a plan, make a list. Pisces season spills water on your to-do lists and tugs on your hand to stop working and go outside to play. And Virgo needs Pisces to disrupt the tightness, the worry, the feeling of “if I could only identify every problem I could solve them all, so there’s no time to relax.” Pisces whispers in Virgo’s ear: “What if this were a mystery to enjoy, and not a problem to solve?” Uncomfortable, unsettling, and yet it can be deeply healing to listen to this voice. This month asks you to lean into the discomfort of letting yourself rest in the midst of the messiness. It’s an especially good time to pay attention to partnership, too—to ask for and accept love without feeling you need to earn it, to justify it, or to worry about losing it.

Libra

Restore yourself:

Hello, beautiful struggling being that is always seeking some kind of balance and rarely gets to stay there. In this struggle for homeostasis, what would it mean to listen more deeply to the cues your body gives you? What would you learn about the disconnect between what your body asks for and what you actually do? In what ways has control of your body become a way of feeling control over your whole life? This month invites you to relax into collaboration with your body, to feel tenderness and acceptance for however you’re showing up right now. You may feel tired all the time, you may have gained or lost weight, you maybe starting or going off of hormones, you may have a totally different experience of how the difficulty of the past year has landed in your body. Nevertheless, here you are. Your body tells the story of what has happened so you can survive. Moving toward acceptance doesn’t mean giving up on feeling better, it means acknowledging how your body protects you and how you can protect it. And yes, your desire to control is also a part of you that deserves tenderness and acceptance. Don’t feel shame about what’s helped you survive, even if it’s hurting you now. Let this Pisces season teach you to slow down and deepen your empathy with all the rhythms of being in a body in time, in culture, in healing, in transition.

Scorpio

Restore yourself:

What do you do when it’s time to stop focusing on the crisis? Can you shift your focus? Can you give yourself permission to rest, to play, to giggle, to lie on the ground and watch the clouds? Scorpio energy can tend toward hyper-vigilance—a price to pay for being so attuned to what needs healing in this world. Attune to your own healing this month by making room for laughter, silliness, and even romantic love letters. Get corny. Be open to compliments that make you blush. Ask for attention in ways you normally wouldn’t. Let healing come to you from the circle of loved ones and lovers—those who adore you even when you’re at your worst. Keep all the emergencies at bay for awhile, as best you can. Whenever possible, return to what heals your heart.

Sagittarius

Restore yourself:

Your longing to live as many lives as you can in this lifetime, to never fully close any doors, means that sometimes you get spread so thin it’s hard to remember what it feels like to wake up in the morning with nothing in particular to do and see what the day brings. Whether it’s an abundance of work opportunities, educational opportunities, social events, or self-generated schemes and projects, your cup runneth over fairly regularly. In relationships, you may have too many people you check in with briefly rather than a few loved ones you make time to go deep with. After a full year of pandemic, you may be restless for travel and adventure, for new horizons, for that next big learning opportunity that will help you synthesize all the strange and hard and sometimes beautiful experiences of the past year. I’m sorry, my friend, but this month is asking you to drop down deep into exactly where you are. Find your feet. Find the ground. Find your feet on the ground. Take a few deep breaths. You’re motivated to connect right now, but choose depth over breadth. Challenge yourself to focus on the nearest and dearest to you.

Capricorn

Restore yourself:

The floating, dreamy quality of these times is decidedly not your favorite energy. Where you want to be clear and focused, you may find yourself confused and unfocused. Or, from another perspective, inspired and expanded. This shift in perspective is important. You may not know exactly the right answers right now, but making room to imagine wild possibilities can help you get back on track. Resist the urge to narrow your focus just yet. Let inspiration come from unexpected sources. Dare bringing a little more poetry into your daily conversations. You’re getting in touch with what is irrational, beautiful, and impossible. These kinds of ideas don’t fit into a to-do list. Where do you need to put them?

Aquarius

Restore yourself:

Moving from the crackling Aquarian visionary energy of last month, this month brings a necessary pause to assess your visions and plans from a less intellectual angle. What are the feelings lurking beneath the big ideas? What needs tending in your soul, in your relationship to your dream world, in your capacity to love the unknown? The stakes feel high right now, but this month reminds you that urgency isn’t your only setting, and that the future is always built on the buried dreams and nightmares of the past. Get right with yourself and your world by making more room for silence. Resist your resistance to what comes up from the depths. Know that you can find safety when you need it. Above all, be gentle with yourself right now, and let your vision be clear while your pace remains slow.

Pisces

Restore yourself:

Repeat after me, dear fishes: I am connected to the entire universe, but I am always the center of my own. Give yourself permission this month to disengage with the outer world, to discharge all kinds of stress and pent-up feelings, to not make sense, to ugly cry, to make ambitious and confusing performance art, to not say the right thing, to say too much or too little, to be whatever kind of mess you need to be as you find your way back toward center. The Gemini influence of the month may pull you toward sharing things that you’re not ready to share, so be wise about your audience—reach out to those who adore you first, before posting something for the whole damn world to critique. Above all, remember that your feelings matter, even if they don’t make sense. Don’t feel the need to justify what you feel, but do question the beliefs about the world that come with the feelings. The feelings are always true—the stories they tell might not be.

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