Make Space for Grief

What a day.

The last few months have been hard. Whatever is bad, feels like it is getting worse. The tool that I have found most supportive through it, in addition to mindfulness tools and my supportive spirit guides, is astrology. It clues me in to the bigger processes at hand, letting me let go of my control response, and letting me sink to the earth, to honor my body's needs, and continue on my path. I am here on Earth at this moment for a reason. And so are all of you.

So, whenever there is news about another school shooting, another ‘natural disaster’, oil spill, or terrible government decision, I remind myself of the astrology of the moment. After screaming or crying or rage walking, I remember that we are in a process of collective transformation. I remember that before things can heal and change, they have to die, fall apart, let go.

I’m doing that again today. Today is a little extra hard. As someone raised in a home where abortion was considered the greatest crime and sin of the modern age, and then had 2 of her own abortions, one after being raped, I am very prone to feeling defensive of reproductive rights.

We’re smack in the middle of the United States of America’s Pluto return. This is the moment where Pluto is at the exact spot where it was when the Declaration of Independence was signed (27 degrees of Capricorn). Pluto’s transits are long. Its cycle is the longest of all the planets. It takes 249 years for Pluto to orbit the sun. That makes Pluto the teacher of evolutionary power and processes. 

When individuals and communities go through Pluto transits, they experience deep transformation. Transformation is the process of becoming other then what you are. It is not just change. Its metamorphosis. It's life to death. Water being to air being, or earth. When we transform, we die. The caterpillar doesn't just grow wings and fly off into the sunset. He loses all he is. His color, his stripes, his mouth, his feet. He dissolves in his cocoon into mush, dying to the being he was. As this happens, he is unaware of the fact that he will become a butterfly. Death is a final door, and so is transformation. There is no turning back.

In order to facilitate transformation, Pluto brings everything into its realm, the underworld. In modern psychological terms, we call this the unconscious, and neuroscience calls it long-term memory. All that we have rejected in ourselves, whether because of self-preservation, social rules, or family dynamics, arises. Compulsions, manipulative behavior, toxic hate, rage, jealousy, shame, the list goes on. The content of the unconscious becomes the world we walk through. We walk past our buried secrets and forgotten hate and ignored rage.

The same is true for collectives. Right now, everything that has been denied in the USA’s story about itself, about who it is, is coming up to the surface. If the US thinks it’s about freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it’s going to discover the ways that it’s about control, manipulation, and coercion. It is discovering that. We are discovering it.

    Right now, Pluto is going retrograde, which means that from our position on the earth, it appears to be going backwards. The US was formed during a Pluto retrograde. Retrogrades are periods of inaction where things literally go backwards. It makes sense that during a period of retrogrades, legislation might be repealed. Anything that begins with “re” falls under the retrograde. Reflection, rethinking, and revolution, but also regression and reaction. This is an opportunity for people who are witnessing this with consciousness to see the USA for what it is.
    At this moment, Saturn is also retrograde. Saturn is our structure, rules, laws, and our experience of authority, which is identified with fathers in our patriarchal system. Saturn is going retrograde conjunct America’s moon (at 27 degrees of Aquarius). Saturn is aspecting our moon. With this retrograde, we see a repealing of laws (Saturn) that protect mothers and people who can bear children (Moon). This could be a time of greater support for that community. But, as tends to happen in patriarchy, Saturns more toxic side is expressed, in cutting off (Saturn) communities of mothers, parents, children, and all people with Uteruses (Moon) from support (Saturn) around reproductive rights (moon). In patriarchy, Saturn is the big angry white father in the sky who says “NO”. “NO” to nourishment. “NO” to safety. “NO” to community care. 

At this moment, it feels like we’re going backwards in time, which is very much a moment of Saturn’s retrograde and Saturn’s energy in general. But that is not all Saturn is. Saturn can be boundaries, support, engagement with healthy reality, incarnation of our dreams, birth of our projects. In a healthy expression of Saturn, we turn towards the past to bring back wisdom. What is the wisdom of this moment for all people with uteruses, for all people who identify as women, and their allies? We are seeing the USA and its patriarchy for what it is. The correct response is heartbreak. What wisdom is arising?

On the day when Roe v. Wade was struck down, the sun was conjunct the US’s Venus at 3 degrees of cancer. We are seeing clearly what it is that the US values, and that is hard. We’re seeing the value for subjugation, value for control, and the value for hierarchical visions of moral purity. We are halfway through the Pluto return. We are in the thick of it with three years left to go. This is an opportunity for us as individuals to come into truth and to reject illusions. Just because the government makes these decisions doesn’t mean that we must act out the most toxic aspects of this situation. We can choose to release hierarchies of power and to embrace mutuality and solidarity. 

    We are mush right now. Toxic sludge, compiled of all we are, all we’ve rejected (like community and interelatedness.) all we’ve lied about (like genocide and enslavement) all we hate (like people with uteruses and losing control). We are all that we are. And what a mess.

As Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” That's Pluto. Shadow work is the process of learning to integrate content from the unconscious, so that you can work with it, and it doesn't secretly rule your life. It's learning to hold your rage, shame, jealousy, fragility, nasty habits, icky humanness, your smelly body, your hate of what scares you, or makes you feel small.

And the way we begin, is by agreeing to feel that which we have previously rejected. As Buddhism, depth psychology, astrology, and many mystical traditions teach us, suffering is a product of our resistance to experience pain. Saturn represents this dynamic in the chart. We confuse it with pain itself, but as astrologer Liz Greene says, Saturn symbolizes our relationship to pain. Here in the USA we deal with pain through gaining control. We cut ourselves off from whatever we can’t control, like relationships, love, the earth, our bodies, our hearts, and focus on what we can. Controlling people's actions, behaviors, beliefs, social standing, bank accounts etc, etc etc. And then we pretend we do the opposite.

When Europeans signed the declaration of independence 250 years ago, they did so on the foundation of genocide. They did so on stolen land they had no relationship with or understanding of. They did it at the price of community with this land and its peoples. 

They did so with nervous systems destroyed by the oppression they and their ancestors had experienced. We should not be surprised the supreme court says reproductive rights are unconstitutional. That document was built on control, fear, and a refusal to be with what is. It was built on narcissistic delusion, the psychic capacity to protect oneself from pain and build a defense nothing can get around. Narcissists are miserable and insecure and refuse to see it. They only see how beautiful and perfect they are. So their darker habits and shadow self controls them.

The so called founders of so called America had a choice. To create a new path, based on freedom and equality, or to lie to themselves, pretend to take that path, and actually just perpetuate the toxic hierarchies they came from. They chose to perpetuate that trauma. Not consciously. Unconsciously. They did an all too human thing, they chose to look away from the destruction violence and hierarchy had wreaked on their lives. We all do this. Thats why there are whole religions based on the practice of mindfulness and prayer. Because humans are 90 percent blind spots.

Pluto shows us that what we ignore becomes more real. It is pushed and pressured and heated until its true form is revealed. What we ignore comes back with a vengeance. 

 A new cycle is beginning.  We have the opportunity to be with the truth. I do not say this lightly. But surely today, if not all days this year and the last 2 if not two years makes us see that to not do so is much worse. Freud told us, though he was not the first to know, but he was a white man so he was listened to, that whatever is not dealt with will become pain. Cancer, mental illness (which I differentiate from neurodivergence. Neurodivergence is having a brain that functions differently from typical or average brains,and cannot be changed, mental illness is a healthy response to utterly toxic situations and experience, which distorts individuals' access to their wholeness. It is a result of a psychic attempt to protect the self from harm.), school shootings, violence against Blacks, indigenous folks and people of color, against queers, against ourselves, against the earth, etc etc. Eastern medicine has loong taught that illness is an expression of imbalance, in the individual or collective. The path out of that is presence. It's slowing down. It's saying no to self abandonment, or abandoning of those we love.

The violence, the heartache. We have the opportunity to be with, and not perpetuate. We do that through compassion. Through mindfulness. Through kindness, to ourselves and others. Eventually we do that through action, protest, revolution.

But first its letting ourselves feel. Feel our natural, deep, soulful response to the world. Not to get overwhelmed, make boundaries! Not to take on more then is good for you, please bracket! Bring out all your tools, text your closest friends, do whatever you need to take care of yourself, but let yourself grieve. Let yourself cry. Allies, let your loved ones cry. Release judgment on tears. They are signs of our wholeness.

Tor today, we must grieve. Tomorrow, and the next day and the next week, and as long as we damn well please we can just grieve, because if we don’t, if we rush into a trauma response, if we shut down our throbbing hearts, we will simply continue the violence, the oppression. We will do so because all that we stuff into the unconscious, all we stuff away (intentionally or otherwise, and most of that process is unintentional, which we need to be aware of) is going to back back, with a vengeance.

How do you do this?

Listen to your body.

I was up all night last night, tossing and turning, having nightmares, then thinking angrily about abusive exes and family members and I couldn’t understand why until I walked into the living room and my partner told me the news.

My body knew.

Let your body lead you. 

Connect with your community. 

The key to change is refusing the pattern of separateness, and embracing our collectiveness. Our unity. Text a friend. Tell someone you're hurting. Ask how they are. Help your neighbor. Share medicine or knowledge. Write a rambling astrological newsletter.

Grieve.

Cry. Rest. Make art. Scream. Go for a walk. Talk to friends. Cry again. Binge watch netflix. DO whatever you need to to get that grief out of your body, so that it can transform, heal, and become the fuel for dreaming a new world into being. One where we honor all beings, one where we live in mutuality, one where bodies are loved and valued, and autonomy and sovereignty is bestowed upon all beings. Where the dream of what the USA thinks it is, but obviously isn’t, can actually be realized. So we can heal the wounds of all those whose lives and heritages have been destroyed in the pursuit of the American dream.

We need a new dream.

Grieve so you can dream it.