hiiiiiii

I never sent a newsletter last week because I couldn’t figure out how to say what I wanted to say.

The short version is: It’s eclipse season, take note. The long version is: Tomorrow, we have a new moon solar eclipse at exactly the same degree as my sun, 20 degrees of Leo, set to happen one day before my birthday, and I have been in it. I’m serving existential crisis lately! And for that reason I feel like I can’t say much of anything until I know the fullness of what this eclipse wants to tell me, and I won’t until at least August 12.

What I do know is that eclipse season is always energetically intense. Historically, for me, eclipses have been hinge points in my life: breakups, job changes, therapeutic breakthroughs, the start of important new relationships, new visions for my life. And what I also know is that these things didn’t come from me, but rather through me, and that’s what eclipse season is about: Eclipse season isn’t for manifesting; it’s about being open. It teaches us to pay attention to what life is asking of us, or offering to us, or creating through us.

This particular eclipse in Leo is happening at the south node of the moon, a place where we shed old skins. It asks us to put our egos in check. It wants us to think about where and how we lead, how and why we dim our light, if the stories we’re telling about ourselves and other people and God are true.

You’re likely feeling this already. We entered eclipse season when we had the full moon in Aquarius nearly two weeks ago. Since then, I feel myself rearranging. Maybe you do, too.

And I know it’s easy, in such an energetically charged moment, to be scared. This fear of eclipses is an ancient feeling — imagine the sun going out in the middle of the day with no explanation. Freaky!

But ultimately, in my life, I have a lot of evidence that eclipses are exciting, curious, special portals, and my only advice is to ride the wave. Cry when you need to cry, write when you need to write, sleep when you need to sleep, move when you need to move. You can also use a prayer I employ a lot which is Please let me learn my lessons in gentle ways. I like that one.

Our next eclipse — the other end of this portal — is the full moon in Pisces on August 28. We’ll see what’s on the other side!

OK! For now, I’m going to leave it there. Keep me updated. Good luck. I love you all!

XO,
A

On the last day of Mercury retrograde, I went and saw my acupuncturist.

The acute issue, I told him, was my ankle. I sprained it a couple months ago jumping around in flip flops celebrating the Knicks game two victory in the Finals (yes, seriously), and then reinjured it playing pickle ball, and then reinjured it again dragging a suitcase up a hill in Mexico.

I finally went to the doctor, just a few days into the retrograde, and they put me in a boot for a month. It has been, for the last three and a half weeks, lowkey ruining my life.

In that vein, I told the acupuncturist, the general issue was that my whole entire vibe was off. The ankle was just a manifestation of an extended creative crisis I’ve been having since my book was released, which I’ve recently found sort of intertwined with an extended crisis I’ve been on about aging brought on by turning 30, and also my family dog died suddenly and sort of tragically and I’m really sad about it.

This was, he told me, “the perfect thing to treat,” and the gist of his advice before we poked me with a bunch of needles and left me to lucid dream for 45 minutes, was, 1) that you just have to get weirder and weirder as you get older, and 2) that resistance was futile, and I felt that. As I come out of this intense Mercury retrograde, that’s the lesson I’ve learned — resistance is futile — and in that moment, I felt something in me unhook.

Now, let me say that I have absolutely not fully surrendered, haven’t let Jesus take the wheel. We went camping this weekend and I panicked when we didn’t have a good spot the first night, cried when I tweaked my ankle and again when a giant thunderstorm erupted over our camp on the last night, freaked out over a sweatshirt.

But when I got out of the tent every morning and was immediately in nature, in cooler, cleaner air, when I dove into a cold lake, when I watched a moose, when I watched the moonrise over the edge of the mountains, I felt myself surrender, for just a moment, to What Is, and it felt like good practice.

Still, as we emerge from this Mercury retrograde, I feel myself wanting to say some sort of “good work girls, it’s all up from here!” regarding the astrology of the moment, but I can’t. The reality is that as our retrograde ends, we enter one of the most intense and chaotic weeks of the astro calendar:

Today, Tuesday July 28, Mars squares Venus, a masculine versus feminine tension that can grate on us, but can also help us move forward into powerful new places in our relationships.

Over the weekend, Jupiter and Pluto opposed from Leo to Aquarius, and the nodes of the moon moved into the same pair of signs, setting us up for questions about power dynamics, leadership, what’s hidden from us, how we hide. At the same time, the sun and Jupiter conjoined, forcing us to ask questions about what we believe and how we live, what happens when we are forced to burn off the excess of our lives.

And then, tomorrow, Wednesday morning, the full moon in Aquarius comes through, shining a light on all of this, a cresting wave of energy. It is the last lunation before eclipse season. It is going to be inevitably intense on both the personal and collective levels.

This is just what life is. It doesn’t stop. There is no finish line while we are alive, and we can’t just pat ourselves on the back for making it to the end of a retrograde period. But and also, on the other side of that retrograde period, I know a little more. I have a little more practice under my belt. I am 1% more comfortable surrendering.

I offer the same thing to all of you: Think about the last three to four weeks. What themes have emerged? What have you learned from the frustrations and delays and misconceptions and reconsiderations? What have you let go of? And then, as we enter this intense end-of-summer astro period, put those lessons into action.

And at the same time, my challenge for all of us is to try to move through this with as little friction as possible, as little resistance to What Is, and with a background sense of trust that life is happening for us, not to us.

Grounding deeply into that feeling requires us to do a little less, and to trust a little more: Years ago, a yoga teacher taught me about a Daoist idea that we should only ever give 70% effort at anything, and we should leave the other 30% as space for the universe to do its work, because when we give 100% effort, there’s no space for life itself to maneuver. As we come out of Merc retro and into eclipse season, I’m keeping that teaching close.

More on everything later. For now, I love you all so much. Resistance is futile! Let me know how it’s all going, and let me know if you want a reading!

XO,
A

my friends… <3

Can you feel it? Do you hear the call from the cosmos to let your hair down, lay in the sun, dance all night, treat your friends, kiss your lover, kiss yourself, go out in your sexiest outfit on a Tuesday, post a thirst trap, try something new with blind confidence, give a rousing speech, address your daddy issues? I sure do. Leo season is finally, finally here.

I started this newsletter during Virgo season last year, which is kind of a hilarious joke I played on myself because I, a Leo, had to wait a full year to finally write about LEO. I couldn’t be more thrilled that it’s finally time.

I know what you’re thinking — oh, classic Leo behavior, Leos think everything revolves around them — and let’s start there: Everything does revolve around us. Literally. Leo is the only sign in the zodiac ruled by the sun. It’s the center of the solar system! The gravitational heart that gives life to everything on the planet and structure to our cosmic neighborhood!

So it’s true. Leos think highly of themselves, and they should. I am not afraid to say it: I love myself deeply. I am smart, I am beautiful, I am kind, I am talented and skilled and sweet and funny. I work hard, I do the best I can with what I have available to me in every situation. Why shouldn’t I love myself?

And that’s how I feel whenever people talk shit about Leos for loving themselves. Why don’t you love yourself? Why don’t you think so highly of yourself? There is just as much ego in constantly being down on yourself as there is in narcissism. You don’t get a gold star for suffering.

What is often overlooked about Leos is the fact that our love for ourselves extends to the people in our lives, too. Leos are incredibly generous. Nothing makes us happier than seeing our friends succeed, and a healthy Leo has an abundant mindset. We understand that love begets love, success begets success, beauty begets beauty. I don’t think I’m better than anyone else; I think we’re all gorgeous and trying and worthy of care.

There is something natural to me, as a Leo sun and Venus, about this big, beautiful Leo love, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve also had to train it, and one of the very first things I did when I started taking my spirituality seriously was to retrain my internal monologue. Today, with very, very few exceptions, I speak to myself only with deep, earnest love.

Sometimes that sounds like rooting myself on, forgiving myself quickly, gassing myself up, but just as often it looks like meeting myself deeply with the truth, watching how I project my insecurities onto other people, apologizing earnestly and often to myself and others, because that’s love, too.

I don’t call myself names. I no longer allow any story or thought not rooted in care for myself and others to live within me — and I’m not perfect. I fail. But when I do, I tell myself a story of resilience, of power, of leadership, of getting up and learning a new lesson, and of not forgetting who I am.

This truth of the Leo archetype is also revealed via the Tarot. In it, Leo is associated with the Strength card, number eight in the major arcana, and in Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (the Bible), Rachel Pollack writes that the card speaks to bringing out the mysteries of our subconscious because we know we have the strength to face them.

“The lion signifies all the feelings, fears, desires, and confusions suppressed by the ego in its attempt to control life,” she writes. “Strength opens up the personality like Pandora opening her box. It does so, however, with a sense of peace, a love of life itself, and a great confidence in the final result.”

She adds, in one of my favorite lines in the entire book, “Unless we truly believe that the process of self-discovery is a joyous one we will never follow it through.”

This is what Leos are amazing at. It’s not just blind ego. It’s a confidence that we can go beyond the ego and meet ourselves, trust ourselves, and that the process will be a joyous one, because life is joyous. Essence is joyous. Divinity is joyous, and we’re all part of that.

What I want all of you to understand is that every single one of us has Leo in our charts. Whether you have planets or placements in Leo or not, there is a part of everyone’s chart that contains Leo, because our birth charts contain the fullness of the sky. It may not be a part of yourself that you’re deeply in touch with, but it’s there, and it’s important that you come home to it, let it warm you, let it nourish you.

So for the next 30 days, from July 22 through August 22, I want you to just see what happens if you speak to yourself only with love. See what happens if you start telling a story about yourself rooted deeply in sweetness and confidence and generosity. Watch the ways it spreads into the fullness of your life, makes you kinder, helps you see others in the same way.

And then go have fun. Life is short. Summer is already on the wane. Go dancing, go hiking, go swimming. Eat good food, take pictures of everything, tell people you love them. That’s the Leo way.

I love you all so much. I hope you tap into this thread of Leo energy and that it buoys you the way it’s buoying me. If nothing else, go be in the sun.

Reach out if you’re interested in scheduling a reading. I’ve so enjoyed tapping back into reading after some time off for book promo. Astrology is awesome.

XO,
A

Hi friends,

If you’ve spent any time on astrology Instagram the last few weeks, you’ve probably heard: This week contains some of the most anticipated and interesting astrology of the year, peaking from July 19 to 21.

The astrology in question is known as “Barbault’s Basket,” referring to a prediction made by the late French astrologer André Barbault, who zeroed in on the alignment of four of the slow-moving outer planets coming this week, with Jupiter at 4 degrees of Leo, Uranus at 4 degrees of Gemini, Neptune at 4 degrees of Aries and Pluto at 4 degrees of Aquarius. (It’s called the basket because of the way the angles these planets make to each other look on the zodiacal wheel, like a bowl with a handle.)

The outer planets take a long time to move through the signs, and when they line up they can speak to major energetic shifts in our culture. Barbault has zeroed in on this before: He is often credited with predicting the fall of the USSR and the COVID-19 pandemic, after he published a paper in 2011 called “A Survey of Pandemics.”

“We may well be at serious risk of a new pandemic around 2020-2021,” he wrote at the time, noting that a Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto conjunction was “particularly, even specifically, amenable to the ‘fabric’ of this imbalance.”

He was, obviously, exactly right, which has made everyone really interested in a prediction he made about the alignment of these outer planets coming up this week. It will be, he said, “a splendid relaunch of civilization” that will lead to “a promotion of the lower strata of the world population, a significant rise in the standard of living of the poor, a victory over misery won in unprecedented solidarity.” Tea!

Barbault — like all astrologers — dealt in cycles, and he saw July 2026 a turning point, but what exactly that means has been the subject of much debate. (I’ve seen several astrologers imply it will = d***h of T***p, but there’s a whole astrological ecosystem around that that has yet, obviously, to come true.) But I want to be clear: I don’t think July 19 will be the day everything changes, but I do think it could be a moment we look back at and see as vital. (This, for what it’s worth, is often my experience with major astrological transits.)

What I do think is that it’s more valuable to think about this alignment as a seeding point, a moment when the question of our collective power and collective care becomes really important, amplified by the fact that today, Tuesday July 14, is the new moon in Cancer.

This new moon, similarly, also asks us to consider how we care for our communities and ourselves, our relationships to women and mothers and babies and families and bodies and feelings, and gives us an opportunity to sit down and think about our intentions for the coming weeks and months, which will be particularly important as this major planetary alignment comes together late in the week.

We are also, obviously, in the midst of Mercury retrograde, with about ten days left. I have had the most Merc retro time the last few weeks with flight delays and scheduling issues and sickness and communication mishaps. I can feel how deeply I need a moment to reset, and I’m so thankful for this moon for that.

I’m going to be doing this tarot spread, writing out some clear intentions and manifestations and putting them under my platter of crystals, stretching, taking a bath, kissing my boyfriend, seeing family and going to bed as early as I can, because when civilization relaunches this week, I want to be well resourced and well rested.

I wish the same for all of you. Stay patient. Stay in touch, and reach out if you’re interested in a chart reading. (After several weeks hiatus for book stuff, I’m finally ready to tap back into reading for people. <3)

Love you.

XO,
A

Friends —

This is a Mercury retrograde wellness check. We are really in it over here.

In recent days, my partner and I have both lost our house keys, mine down an elevator shaft and his mysteriously. I decided to finally address a repeatedly injured ankle and find myself in a brace on forced rest. I’ve missed important emails, slept poorly but had weird, vivid dreams. It’s been parking tickets and stomach aches and travel delays. I am sure I’m not the only one.

Let me begin with the practical: Mercury retrograde happens three to four times a year, for three to four weeks. This time around, it began June 29 and runs through July 23.

Astronomically, obviously, the planet isn’t actually moving backwards, it just looks like that because Mercury travels around the sun faster than the Earth does. Astrologically, this takes on symbolic significance. Mercury, the planet of communication, is falling backward in the sky. Communication breaks down. Emails don’t send. Traffic doesn’t move.

My advice on this is simple and evergreen: Give yourself an additional 20 minutes to get anywhere you need to go. Double check your texts and emails and credit card statements. Contracts you sign now may need to be renegotiated later. Technology glitches, breaks down. Be prepared. Be patient.

On a grander scale, this Mercury retrograde has me thinking about something I recently spent several weeks exploring in therapy: building my capacity to endure discomfort. Rather than immediately jumping to fix whatever situation I find myself in, we wondered what would happen if I just tried to stay calm.

I played with this for a few weeks. I was at the time doing a daily kundalini practice that included holding my arms up, at right angles, for 11 minutes without stopping. It was a training ground for me. Could I feel the burn in my shoulders and breathe through it? Could I stay in an uncomfortable conversation, listening deeply, without panicking? Could I feel my rage, my sadness, my grief without letting it settle into my body as unprocessed tension?

After several weeks of this, I saw my meditation teacher, and she said something about how we all know that while it’s important to work on our ability to feel sadness and grief and anger, etc., the more difficult task for the spiritual practitioner is actually to build our capacity for joy and abundance and pleasure.

I told her about my experiment with enduring uncomfortable states, trying to strengthen my nervous system’s ability to stay calm under pressure. Was it possible, I asked her, that this practice might also help me to build the capacity to feel everything more, whether difficult or pleasurable, and she was quick to respond: They require each other.

I had been doing good, valuable work, she said, but I was limiting my scope of consciousness. What, she asked, would it look like for me to train myself to notice pleasure, to build my capacity to stay with it?

And I started to notice something in my practice: After holding my arms up for 11 minutes, the energetic rush when I set them down was better than coffee, better than 15 extra minutes of sleep. My nervous system was rewiring itself, getting stronger under pressure, and responding in kind. The act of sitting with my hands in my lap was no longer unconscious, taken for granted. It was a pleasure.

Mercury retrograde is often meme-ified astrology. I think this is because it happens often, and also because we feel its impact in tangible, uncomfortable corners of our lives. As I’ve noted several times now, my astrology teacher Adam Elenbaas says that the point of learning astrology is to reflect on our experiences as they happen to us, but it took me a long time to view the practice in that way.

For many years, Mercury retrograde was a lens I turned on the world, preparing myself endlessly for delays and mishaps, making myself anxious and putting myself on edge bracing myself for difficulties.

But this time around, I’m trying to play with expanding the lens, using my ability to notice the very Mercury retrograde happenings as a chance to awaken. I am remembering that joy and pleasure do not exist without discomfort, and vice versa. They require each other, and I welcome them equally. Or, at least, I try to.

Alright, that’s where I’m at now. Next week we have a special little pocket of clarity, but more on that next week.

In the meantime, a few updates, things to listen to, read, watch, etc., if you’re interested:

• I am giving a book talk and signing this Sunday at the Yogi Berra Museum! My New York-area friends, I’d love to see you there.

• I also just signed a new order of books at Central Book Exchange here in Sugarhouse. For my SLC friends, go get your signed copy of THE MAGICAL GAME!

• I was on City Cast Salt Lake this week talking about the Charlie Kirk case, Mercury retrograde and my book. (Yes, you read that right.) Listen wherever you get your podcasts. I really enjoyed the conversation.

• I made a short film with one of our excellent Tribune videographers about a mythical river in Utah history that I’ve been obsessed with for months. I think it’s lovely. Please watch!

• I am currently reading the ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME series. It’s a series of seven books, four of which have been translated into English so far. It’s about a woman stuck in time. I am obsessed, and mad I don’t speak Danish.

• I also just finished I LOVE YOU BUT I’VE CHOSEN DARKNESS. A beautiful and dark meditation on womanhood and motherhood and marriage and the American West. Five stars.

• Also also, I just finished listening to MAGPIE MURDERS as my nighttime book, and I also really enjoyed it. I love a whodunit for bedtime and this one was particularly good, and a fun love letter to the genre.

• We recently re-watched MARE OF EASTTOWN. It was even better than I remembered, and lovely in conversation with ILYBICD, both of which paint a picture of the opioid crisis and motherhood in America that moved me.

• I also really enjoyed watching my friend Liz Lvov’s webseries BOIKA. It’s a BOIKA summer, thank god.

Alright, I love you all.

XO,
A

Friends —

I hope you all enjoyed the solstice. Mine was a sunset on the beach followed by the best ceviche I’ve ever had. I felt in my body, I felt connected with nature and my partner and my community. I felt grateful and sweet and present. Tea! Thank you God!

After several weeks of very sweet astrology, this week marks a sort of energetic turn — not necessarily for the worse, but for the different. The transition from Gemini to Cancer season alone is an emotional one, amplified by the fact that our next Mercury retrograde starts in four days, on the same day as the full moon in Capricorn, and the very next day Jupiter moves into Leo.

Soon after, Mars and Uranus conjoin in Gemini on the 4th of July, a signature with intense implications in U.S. history, including: The Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II and the development of the atomic bomb. And then: Jupiter and Pluto oppose each other (intense) and soon after that, we have our next series of eclipses. OK!

This is a patch of the year astrologers have been thinking about for months, and it’s given me some anxiety when I’ve looked at the year ahead. But as it approaches, I’ve felt strangely totally open to it.

After some weeks of celebration and travel and book launches and championships and takeout and skipping my meditation practice, I feel a call back to a quieter place. I feel the itch to start making some new moves, to anchor into myself. What do I want to write next? Where do I want to live next? What is my relationship to my daily practice? What is my relationship to my finances? What do I need to do to heal my relationship to my body in a deeper way? I can tell that the chance to explore these questions is coming with this astrology, and I welcome that.

As we approach it, I’ve been thinking about manifesting. It’s something I get asked about often, and I’ve found it very possible and powerful and I truly believe we have the ability to bend the will of the universe. I manifested my book, my boyfriend, a whole series of apartments, jobs, promotions, a Knicks championship. Our ability to attract anything and everything we want is one of the most generous, beautiful things about this universe, and I am a product of it.

But every time I get asked about manifestation I hear my meditation teacher in my mind: “Manifesting is totally possible, but it’s for the ego.” Do it, she said. Don’t shy away. Manifest money, manifest moving, manifest love, all of it, there’s nothing wrong with it — and it’s for the ego.

Manifesting showed me that the universe is responsive, alive, within us. It allowed me to start to trust that energy at the heart of everything, but the other side of the coin is surrender, and it forces us beyond the ego. It’s sense of getting in touch with life, it’s a willingness to really believe that it’s not what happens to me, it’s how I react to it, how I prescribe a little less story to it, predict a little less. Because the truth is I don’t even know what I want. Every breakup, every book delay, every change I’ve resisted has ultimately brought me to this beautiful place, so why resist anything at all?

I can settle into this feeling best when I’m really in my practice, and I think I’ve been feeling it lately because I’ve been making my practice a priority. For even just the last couple weeks, I’ve been on the yoga mat, on the meditation cushion, I’m pumping my breath, I’m flexing my spine, I’m getting still, closing my eyes, listening to the quiet. The effect is immediate.

And I’m trying not to be a perfectionist about it. I’m not being prescriptive and dogmatic. I’m fitting it into my day where I can, I’m sitting out the ab blast section of the Zoom yoga class, I’m playing an old ten minute body scan recording, I’m laying in bed just listening to my breath.

And honestly, I’m paying a little bit less attention to the astrology. I’ll always be tapped in, and I’ll always write this newsletter, but I haven’t been as attached to the daily sun-square-Neptune, moon-opposing-Saturn, something to watch, something to grit my teeth about, something to anticipate. I’m using my practice to keep me closer to how I feel, to what life seems to be asking of me in that moment, to what it’s offering me to learn and grow from. I’m building the space between stimulus and reaction, building the space for more choice.

So that’s where I’m at, and, in its own special way, I think that’s actually what the astrology is asking of me. I commit to meeting whatever happens with curiosity before judgement, as much as I possibly can.

That’s all I’ve got this week. Let me know how you’re all feeling! Let me know if you need yoga and meditation and breathwork recommendations! And I’ll say this much: I do think Mercury retrograde is going to wreak havoc on the Love Island Villas (!).

XOXO,
A

My friends —

I hope you all enjoyed the really nice astrology last week. It was one of the best weeks of my life. Watching the Knicks win it all with Sam as we celebrated his birthday is a memory I will cherish for as long as I live. 

This week also contains some really incredible astrology: On Sunday, we have the summer solstice. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, this is the longest day of the year. It’s the first official day of summer and the first day of Cancer season, and it’s always one of my favorite days of the year.

Cancer, as I wrote last week, is ruled by the moon, our most local heavenly body. It also rules our bodies, and recently I’ve been really in my head about my body. I’ve been injured, I’ve gained weight, I haven’t been in a chapter of my life where working out is my number one priority, and even as everything else has been beautiful, hating my body has really sucked up a lot of my energy.

As I write this, I’m waiting to board a flight to Mexico and I’ve been all worked up about being in a bathing suit and how I’ll look and how I’ll feel and how I’ll judge myself, and finally I just thought: What if I went on this trip and just loved my body, exactly as it is? What if I went and wore a skimpy bikini and had fun? 

That is really what the energy of the solstice asks of us, to be deeply in our bodies and to be really sweet to them even and especially when it’s hard, to eat good food, to be outside, to appreciate nature, to recognize the ways we are a part of it, to be with community. The solstice is sort of the energetic full moon of the year and it will feel like it — a big burst of energy that can, if we let it, expand us so beautifully.

My challenge to all of you is the same challenge I have for myself right now: What if you loved your body exactly as it is right now, no weight loss, no spray tan, no filler or filter or shame? Our bodies are our vessels for experiencing life, they are the physical manifestation of our souls in this plane, and they are the best tool we have for being present in this exceptional dimension of reality.

As you read this right now, feel into the palms of your hands. Put your mind into your fingers, one at a time. Notice what your skin feels like, where it touches air, touches your clothes, touches whatever you’re sitting or standing on. Notice the way you can feel inside your body, the shape of your organs even if you have no idea where exactly they are or what they look like. Feel your skeleton. Notice your spine, at first one vertebrae and then all of them together. Feel your whole body, all at once. This is presence. Stay here, as long as you can. You will lose it. Come back. This practice will change your life.

Enjoy the solstice. I love you all bad.

A

My sweet friends —

First of all, thank you. I’ve heard from so many of you over the last week about the book launch and I feel so thankful and blessed.

My book was published last Tuesday and it’s been such a remarkable experience. Writing and publishing a book has been the thing I’ve wanted the most in my life, for as long as I can remember, and it still feels surreal to have done it.

I’ve wanted to write a newsletter about the astrology of the book for a while, both the book’s birth chart and what’s been happening in mine over the course of working on it. It’s been so fun to watch the way the transits of the last half decade have led to this moment and I’ve learned so much about astrology because of it, but writing that requires a lot of energy I just don’t have right now.

I began working on my book proposal in 2023. I spent about a year writing it, and I made myself so fucking miserable in the process. For an entire year, I anguished 24/7 about whether the book would sell, and when I actually finished the proposal, I felt sort of empty. I realized I missed working on it.

After the book sold, I told myself I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. I didn’t want to get to the end of the process of writing the book and realize I had missed it, that I’d spent the entire time anxious, and for three years, I kept that promise to myself.

I absolutely spent portions of that time so anxious, but I was present for that feeling, too. I was really, really there for all of it, in the joy of a serendipitous interview, in the thrill of a research rabbit hole, in the ecstasy of a good archive find, in the pleasure of writing, in the pain of writing, in the routine of it, in the balance of it. It was, in its own bizarre way, a three-year flow state. As I’ve shifted to this new stage of the book, I’ve felt that flow shifting, too, and I keep reminding myself that being in this part of the process is part of what I promised myself, too.

I’m seeing all of this big energy reflected in the astrology right now, and I wanted to be sure to write this newsletter today to flag it for all of you: This week, the week of June 7, is the single best astrological week of the year, as Venus and Jupiter meet up in Cancer.

Venus and Jupiter are our two “benefic” planets. Venus is the planet of love, relationships, women, femmes, art, luxury, pleasure, and Jupiter is the great expander, the planet of divine purpose, luck, abundance. Jupiter is also exalted in Cancer, meaning it’s superpowered. The two coming together make for the best astrology of the year, exact on Tuesday but reverberating through the whole week.

This conjunction is special in any sign, but it takes on especially gorgeous energy in Cancer. It the only sign ruled by the moon, the closest astrological body to the earth, and it speaks to our local environment in that way. Cancer isn’t about going far and wide in pursuit of pleasure, it’s about being right here, right now, and noticing how good it is.

I think many of us have a relationship to astrology where we’re essentially working to stave off scary things and being aware of foreboding astrology makes us feel like we have some element of control over whatever it is we’re afraid of. But, as my teacher Adam Elenbaas says, astrology is about being able to reflect on our experiences as they happen to us, and that goes for both scary astrology and wonderful astrology.

So I want everyone to know that this week has such lovely energy, and I want all of you to soak it up as much as possible. It’s giving seeing friends, it’s giving good food, it’s giving long sunset walks through your neighborhood, it’s giving dinner with the love of your life on a patio. It’s giving The New York Knicks win the fucking NBA championship. I want you to all go have the loveliest, sweetest week of your life.

This is not to say nothing uncomfortable or bad might happen this week. Sometimes, I’ve found, benefic transits bring up difficult stuff, but in a way that offers us a beautiful, surprising, cool way to address my own shit. Difficult conversations go well. Strangers surprise me. Therapy breakthroughs.

So there’s nothing you have to do this week except notice. Be present. Be aware. Be thankful. Listen. We’re so lucky to be here and learn and grow and eat and write and hang out together and go to the park and look at the moon and listen to music.

Enjoy it. Love you all.

XO,
A

Hi friends,

On Sunday, May 31, we have the full moon in Sagittarius.

This is a calendar blue moon, meaning we have the rare experience of a second full moon in a calendar month (there are also astrological blue moons, meaning you have two full moons in the same sign), and as I wrote a couple weeks ago, this month being sandwiched by two full moons makes it a powerful portal as we head toward the summer solstice in just a few weeks.

This second full moon being in Sagittarius is extra fun. The great Demetra George describes the Sagittarius as “good, just, great-souled, critical, generous, fond of brothers and friends,” someone who is likely to “lose and require possessions, prevail over enemies.” Sagittariuses are “lovers of reputation, versatile, noble,” people who “weave matters in a riddling fashion” with a “kingly” nature.

Sagittarius season itself comes in the depths of winter, a fire season in the darkest part of the year. It is a moment, as my Sag-heavy friend Liz put it at the time, to find the eternal summer within us. Now, with summer on the horizon, this full moon invites us to find it all around us.

If you set intentions during the Sag new moon or the winter solstice, now is a great time to check in with them, and looking back at my own notes from that time made me tear up a bit. I was reckoning with physical and mental illness, jealousy, fear, pain, anxiety, aging, and I wrote about feeling called to alchemize the energy of all of that into something more valuable for me.

That work, I wrote, “is karma, fate, God’s plan,” and to do it, I needed to “trust the universe and give back to it, work with it consciously, unclench a bit.” I needed to embody what I desired: “love, sensuality, beauty, success, security.”

At the time, I felt the strange rightness of everything I was feeling and exploring, even as I felt sort of miserable. It was so Sagittarius in that way. In writing that note to myself, I saw clearly that everything I was moving through was my curriculum for that bit of life. Now, on the other side of the zodiacal wheel, I feel that even more deeply.

I am different now. I have more space, more trust, more love, more beauty, more kindness, more health, more divinity, more ability, more resilience. I am sleeping better, I am practicing more, I am living with my partner in a home we love so much. Those are all seeds I planted back in Sag season. Now, with the full moon, I get to celebrate that.

I think this is a beautiful weekend for journaling, tarot pulls, charging crystals, but in general my approach to full moons is simply to go along for the ride. Tap into the Sag energy. It’s fun, it’s playful, it’s dramatic, it’s spontaneous. Go out dancing, call an old friend, wear something sexy, take a last-minute trip.

The most powerful way to manifest anything is simply to go be it, and that’s what this moon asks of us. Go be whatever you want to be. Pursue pleasure without shame. That’s the Sagittarius way.

The first few days of June are the best astrology of the entire year. Things are so good and gorgeous in the skies right now, and sometimes when that’s happening I have this instinct to say “don’t miss it!” But you won’t. It will meet you right where you are. It’s lucky and sweet and magical. Go make the most of it.

I love you all so much. My book comes out June 2, in the midst of the best astrological stretch of the entire year. I didn’t pick the pub date, and I would say I can’t believe that’s how it shook out, but I actually can. I feel blessed and guided and thankful and happy, and next week I’ll tell you guys all about the astrology of my book (yes, I did the birth chart of my book). But first, I’m going to enjoy this moon.

XO,
A

hi friends!

Today marks the end of the Taurus season and the beginning of Gemini season, which runs from May 20 to June 21. It’s a time of year that always feels for me like a portal to the summertime — the final day of Gemini season marks the summer solstice — and it’s got an extra bit of oomph to it this year with Uranus having just entered the sign.

I wrote last December about the way the Gemini archetype has been often misrepresented. So often in modern pop astrology I see Geminis boiled down to being two-faced and it annoys me. Gemini is Mercury ruled, and people with Gemini placements are so smart. They’re great communicators, they’re great thinkers, they’re great gossips. (Our collective moralizing of gossip is part of where I think Geminis get a reputation as being two-faced, but gossip is a moral good!)

On a more esoteric level, Gemini, as the sign of the twins, represents the relationship between duality and nonduality/onenesss and manyness — a tension at the heart of every spiritual tradition I’ve ever encountered.

Lately I’ve been learning about Qabalah, and I love the way the tradition talks about unity versus separateness. God, they teach, is a non-binary oneness, but the divine is so powerful that in order to experience God in a way that wouldn’t just completely tear us apart, it has to be broken down: masculine/feminine, light/dark, high/low.

There’s nothing wrong with duality. It’s necessary in order for us to understand the oneness, but at the same time, duality also takes us away from the oneness in some ultimate but necessary way. And, anyway, that’s the point: Oneness is what we are, but forgetting that and finding our way back to it is the point of this whole trip.

It is as Hanuman told God when God asked who he was: “When I forget who I am, I worship you. When I remember who I am, I am you.”

In the Tarot, Gemini is associated with the card The Lovers, a powerful relationship card and a beautiful signature of that divine relationship to duality and the path of finding the oneness through bringing together separate pieces, both relationally and within ourselves. In the case of The Lovers, the mediator of that oneness is “sexual love,” Laura Pollack writes in 78 Degrees of Wisdom.

“When we surrender to it, we experience a glimpse of something greater than ourselves,” she writes. “Only a glimpse, and only for a moment; true liberation requires a great deal more than passion. But love can help us to see the path, and know a little of the joy that waits for us at the end of it.”

This Gemini season, that’s what we’re called to explore. What helps us to glimpse the path? It is, of course, love. It is, for me, also great art, a great meal, writing in my journal, walking before sunset, late night conversations with my boyfriend, cleaning the house with the windows open, a good therapy session, a chat with my neighbor about the garden, meditating, reading a novel on the porch.

And if I could offer one challenge for you this Gemini season it’s that: to read, and to read a paper book. (Might I suggest The Magical Game by debut author Addy Baird?) I love audiobooks and ebooks as much as the next girl, but I’ve been locked in on reading paper books lately and it’s fundamentally transforming my life and brain. Gemini season will reward that intellectual devotion.

My wonderful Gemini sun and Mercury boyfriend set me down that path with a series of amazing book recommendations (Wild Seed by Octavia Butler followed by The Three Stigmata of Palmer Erdrich by PKD (I’m doing religious themes in sci-fi right now)), and naturally for this season’s phone a friend, I went to my favorite Gemini on earth for advice:

He gets it. I love him so much.

I love you all. Enjoy Gemini season — and go Knicks!

XO,
A

In most given calendar months, we have one new moon and one full moon, with the moon being in the sign the sun is currently in (i.e. the moon in Taurus during Taurus season) and the full moon being in the sign opposite the sun (i.e. the moon in Scorpio during Taurus season).

This month is special because we have three full moons in May. The magic starts with that simple fact: Three moons!

I write in my book about the inherent magic of the number three in the context of baseball’s game structure:

There is something just so right about three; it’s long been considered a perfect number. Pythagoras believed three was the number of harmony, and it’s central to our fairy tales and religious traditions: three fates, three witches, three suitors, three trials, the holy trinity, the cycle of birth-life-death. So it’s no wonder why the number three is central to many forms of magical practice, as magicians don robes and wield wands at their altars, chant their spells three times. Baseball, really, is just the same: a special uniform, a magic wand in the form of a wooden bat, the altar of the baseball diamond. To play baseball is to perform a great spell.

That’s why the idea of three moons is exciting to me: As we move through the month of May, we’re living out a great spell.

The first moon was May 1, the full moon in Scorpio. This full moon felt so full moon-y to me, frenetic and exhausted and funny, with the added spooky witchy vibes of Scorpio. I had a great therapy session on the day of the full moon, and during it my amazing therapist blew my mind: Feeling safe, she said, is an important and valuable goal, but it’s not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to know ourselves, to be free, and she was so right.

When I get anxious, worried about the book launch, scared about the future, she said, what if I saw that as a little clue to my own consciousness, a chance to know myself better if I lean in, rather than immediately reaching for how to soothe the feeling? (Gail’s so good at this.) It was such a full moon in Scorpio exploration, and it’s given me so much to feel through and think through and notice in the week+ since.

This Saturday, we have the new moon in Taurus. New moons, as many of you have surely heard me say, are seeding points. They’re (generally) moments to manifest, start new things, get clear on our intentions, and this is an especially beautiful new moon for that type of work. The moon is exalted in Taurus, meaning it loves to be there and does its work easefully in the sign.

I’m a Taurus rising, and I feel like this new moon has been building for me even more palpably than they usually do. In the lead-up to it, I’ve felt my entire life taking on a soft, feminine, Taurus quality. I write every day with incense burning. I eat home cooked meals. I make out with my boyfriend. I vacuum. I buy a 6-foot bird of paradise plant on Facebook marketplace. I sleep deeply and have vivid, funny, sad, revelatory dreams. And while the lessons of this new moon are still just coming online (curious to see what comes through on Saturday), I feel like there’s an important teaching in this moon about the importance of pleasure and the value of beauty and the lushness of presence.

Exploring all of those things is going to be a good part of the Taurus new moon curriculum for all of us, and as I’ve been sitting with them, a little prayer from my teacher Ally keeps coming to mind: May I learn my lessons gently. There’s something so beautiful and blooming in this moon, and that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have something important to teach us. Use the weekend to plant new seeds, write your intentions in your journal, meditate in the bath, touch grass for real.

And then on March 31 we have our third moon of the month: The full moon in Sagittarius. I love the full moon in Sag as a portal to summertime. It’s giving spontaneous trip, it’s giving weird movie, it’s giving drinks outside, it’s giving the start of an embodied integration of any intentions you set on the Taurus new moon.

This three-moon cycle gives us this little trip through May that feels to me like a springboard to how we want to live the rest of the year, and it couldn’t come at a better time. We had an intense astrological start to the year, and we have an intense stretch coming in late July/early August (Mercury retrograde! Eclipses! Jupiter changing signs!). I think it will be fun but it will 100% be chaos, so this stretch of nice, gentler astrology will be a real balm.

I hope you’re all feeling good, and would love to hear how this fun series of moons lands for you. Be good to yourself, be good to your neighbors, call your sister, water your plants, plant your garden, smoke something, stretch, count your blessings, contribute to charity, cook at home, read a paper book, light a candle, pre-order The Magical Game :).

Love you all.

XO,

A

hi friends,

I hope you all had a beautiful full moon in Scorpio. This week, we have some interesting little flashes of astrology as Mars squares Jupiter and Mercury squares Pluto. It’s a burst of motivation, it’s investigative journalism, it’s deep conversations, but in general it’s kind of a quiet week.

Next week, we have the new moon in Taurus, which is an important moment for moon freaks like me, but what I wanted to do in the in between is offer a little astrology lesson on a topic that I hear people get mixed up about often: the rising sign.

In modern pop astrology, the rising sign sometimes gets described as “the mask you wear for the world” and I could not disagree more with this description. The rising sign, in fact, is the most personal part of our birth charts and more important to me as an astrologer than the sun sign.

The rising sign is literally the sign that’s rising over the eastern horizon at the moment of your birth, and this sign is important because it sets the first house of your birth chart.

The best way I’ve found to describe the houses to people is that while the planets in the signs are about where the heavenly bodies are at the moment of your birth, the houses are about where the earth is.

The first house, again, is the rising sign, coming up over the eastern horizon, and each sign from there forward makes up the rest of the houses in order. (There are other ways to do the houses, but in traditional astrology, we do whole sign houses, meaning all 30 degrees of each sign make up an individual house, but that’s a conversation for another day. I mention it in case you’re looking at, for example, Co-Star, and see the houses splitting signs, that’s why. (Delete Co-Star, by the way. They use AI to write your horoscopes.))

The houses themselves represent parts of our lives. In the simplest terms, the first house is you, the self, the body, the identity. That is why the rising sign is so important. It is our relationship with ourselves, and when planets move through our first house, they’re hitting us directly. It is the rising sign that describes us most specifically as individuals, and unless your sun and rising are the same, your sun sign is pointing to something else.

Knowing the rising sign and thus the first house is also so important because then we can see the fullness of the birth chart unfold: The second house is resources, the third is your local environment and neighborhood, the fourth is family and private life, the fifth is creativity and pleasure and children, the sixth is daily life and work, the seventh is relationships and marriage, the eighth is death, taxes, contracts and exchanges, the ninth is religion, spirituality, studentship and international travel, the tenth is public life and career, the eleventh is community, and the twelfth is the unseen, the unknown, the subconscious, the unconscious, the dreamspace.

Getting to know the houses is how astrology starts to get truly personal. The outer planets, for example, spend years in each sign. Anyone born within a few years of me is going to have Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto all in the same signs I do, but unless they have the same rising sign I do, they’re going to have those planets in different houses, meaning those big energies are going to throw their weight around in different areas of life.

Similarly, someone born the exact same day as you could have every planet in the same sign you do, with, for example, the sun in Cancer, the moon in Aquarius, and Venus in Leo, for example. If you’re a Taurus rising, that would mean you have your sun in the third, your moon in the tenth and your Venus in the fourth.

Someone born a few hours later as a Scorpio rising, however, could have the same placements in the signs but would have the sun in Cancer in the ninth, the moon in Aquarius in the fourth and Venus in Leo in the tenth, meaning all those planets would present in totally different realms of their lives even though they’re born on the exact same day you were.

This is why the rising sign is so, so vital, and why it’s so key to understanding how astrology works in your day-to-day life. I know it’s all a bit weedsy, but getting into the weeds is why having a reading from a good astrologer can really unlock the picture of your chart, and if there’s one thing I want you to take away from all of this it’s to please, please reject the description of your rising sign as a “mask” you wear. It’s who you are, and if you haven’t explored that part of yourself, it’s time to start.

OK, I hope this little astrology lesson helped something about this wonderful practice click into place for all of you. It’s a great week for going deep on anything you want to research and learn about, so I figured it was a good week to dive into this rabbit hole with all of you. You know how to find me if you want to dig in with a reading.

I hope you all are doing well. I got to take a special little interdimensional trip last weekend and my big takeaway was we’re all on the right track, as strange as it seems. God loves us and our ancestors are watching over us, and there’s nothing we need to do to earn it. We’re part of this whole big alive thing, and astrology helps me, at least, stay close to that. I’m thankful for the practice and thankful for all of you.

XO,
A

hi friends!!

This week, we have the full moon in Scorpio, exact on Friday morning. I love this full moon, and as I was reflecting on it, I remembered the newsletter I wrote during Scorpio season for the Taurus full moon, when I talked about the wisdom of opposites that resonates throughout the Tao Te Ching. As the Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English translation puts it:

“Therefore having and not having arise together;
Difficult and easy complement each other;
Long and short contrast each other;
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow each other.”

This is to say that opposites require each other. Or, as Ram Dass puts it in his iconic debut book Be Here Now:

“Hippies create police. Police create hippies. If you’re in polarity you’re creating polar opposites. You can only protest effectively when you love the person whose ideas you are protesting against as much as you love yourself.”

These are complicated (and controversial!) spiritual teachings, but I have found them to be fundamental. They are the yin/yang symbol put into words: Opposites contain each other.

I think about this sort of dualistic, opposites-necessitate-each-other thing with every full moon, as the full moons always highlight one certain axis of the zodiacal wheel. In Scorpio season, I wrote about how the full moon in Taurus was a moment of spring in the midst of a dying season. Now, six months later and on the other side of the wheel of the zodiac, the full moon in Scorpio reminds us of the opposite, and of the same: In the midst of spring, as life abounds, this moon calls on us to remember death.

It’s a moment that reminds me of a teaching my meditation teacher often talks about, an intense shamanic practice wherein the shamans practice living as if death were always right there on the left shoulder, a constant reminder that this life is finite, forcing them radically into the present. It reminds me also of the Buddha’s five remembrances, which he teaches we should consciously sit with every day. They are:

1. This body is of the nature to age.

2. This body is of the nature to get sick.

3. This body is of the nature to die.

4. Everyone and everything I have ever loved will change, die, and I will be separated from them.

5. In the face of these truths, the only things I truly have are my actions. I cannot escape the consequences of them. My actions are the ground on which I stand.

If this sounds morbid, well, welcome to the Scorpio full moon. But I don’t mean it as a morbid thing, really. When I really sit with these practices, they don’t make me fearful, they make me present. They make me feel alive. They make me see life with a strange sort of clarity. That’s the way these strange nondual teachings work.

This is not to say there’s anything to fear about this moon (though I do think on a mundane collective level we might see a fall from grace or get a peek at the underbelly of power). Instead, I think the Scorpio full moon is a gorgeous taste of a witchy, Halloween-y, spooky moment at the height of spring, which is fun. It’s a moment for tarot cards and candles and baths and spells and gathering herbs and looking sexy and contemplating the wisdom of spiders and thinking about death.

What could make a girl feel more alive?

Enjoy the moon, my angels. And if you love this Tao Te Ching exploration, you might enjoy this lovely talk about Uranus moving into Gemini through the Taoist perspective from the great Adam Elenbaas.

On other fronts, I’m open for readings through the end of May. I’ll be closing my schedule again in June for a stretch as MY BOOK COMES OUT JUNE 2 (!), so let me know if you’d like to get in before then. I’m available for full birth chart readings, as well as more targeted hour-long and mini readings.

Love you all.
XO,
A

My beautiful friends —

I hope you’re all holding up after last week’s wild pileup in Aries. I heard from a lot of you that it was really kicking your ass, and although our Aries education is far from over, this week we are offered a balm: Taurus season has officially arrived.

We can think about spring as having two distinct energetic parts. The first is that Aries-Mars energy I wrote about last week, that violent, vital part of early spring, where plants force their way up through cold ground, animals give birth. The second is Taurus-Venus. Having broken through the hard earth, plants soak up the sun. Having cut the cord, animals nurse their young. We, in turn, are offered a chance to embrace this slower, softer energy during this stretch with the Sun in Taurus.

I am a Taurus rising, and when I first began to study astrology, learning about the archetype of the Taurus really helped me embrace a part of myself that was never captured by the Leo archetype: the part of me that moves a lot slower, that loves to sleep until noon, that needs soft clothes and fresh sheets and a beautiful meal and a 90 minute massage and a long time to emotionally process. It is that part of me that’s running the show this season, as the astrology invites us to take long, leisurely walks, to sleep in, to cook a gorgeous meal, to sit on the porch with your lover and listen to music and hold hands.

As a fixed sign, Taurus often gets a rap for being bad with change, and yet Taurus season, to me, always reminds me of the grace of change. Spring always comes after winter. Life always comes after death. The flowers return. The mood lightens. Change is a gift.

What I think a lot of people get right about Taurus is that it is deeply sensual, both in the sense of being soft, luxurious, sexy, but also in the sense of being grounded in the physical 3D reality. It is a time when our senses come deeply online, as we move, touch, smell our way through a world reborn, and in that way this season calls us deeply into our bodies.

This is divine timing, as ever. I’ve written and talked a bit about my relationship to my body in recent months, as I’ve felt overwhelmed by the ozempic culture and am at the same time wrestling with settling into movement routines that work for me after a period of change. This is all compounded by the usual seasonal overwhelm thing of coming out of winter into warmer weather, but, lest we forget, our bodies are not blunt weapons for us to force to do our bidding.

Our bodies, Taurus season reminds us, are the very manifestation of our soul into this plane of reality. They are vessels for presence and pleasure and wisdom in both scientific and spiritual ways. There are tens of thousands of neurons in our hearts, and millions in our guts! There is heart tissue in our wombs!! There is a deep, ancient knowingness in our DNA!!! This body is a guide if we take the time to listen to it.

That can, of course, be easier said than done, and this Taurus season, I think it would be beautiful for all of us to do the conscious work of deep, deep embodiment. Body scan meditations have been extremely powerful for me in this regard, as has the exercise of writing a letter to my body and then writing a letter from my body in response. Movement, too, is so powerful for getting into my body, but only when it’s done from a place of love and a desire to cultivate a relationship with my body and not some sort of exercise regimen designed to punish and shrink.

As a Venus-ruled sign, Taurus season is ultimately a love affair, and that’s exactly how I intend to live it, as a love affair with myself, my body, my partner, my friends, my home, my heart, my practice. This is a great privilege, and my intention is to enjoy it. I hope you enjoy it, too.

As ever, I phoned an expert friend this week for advice on how we can embrace this season to its fullest, and my wonderful Taurus friend Sara offered some beautiful guidance on how to do exactly that:

This idea of lingering on the things that feel good really resonated with me. It’s such wonderful, practical advice, and also if we pay attention, it offers us amazing information about how, exactly, we want to live our lives. As Sara added, “Taurus season can be a lifestyle if you want it to be,” and I couldn’t agree more. May we all have a month of beauty and pleasure and presence that helps us build a whole lifetime of it.

XO,
A

Hi friends,

How’s everyone feeling? Angsty? So are the cosmos: The sun, Mercury, Mars, Neptune and Saturn are all together in Aries, and soon the moon will come to join them.

Astrologers have been talking about this particular week for a while. It’s remarkable to see such a pileup in any sign, but in Aries it takes on a particular fiery energy, and I’ve seen a fair bit of Instagram fearmongering about it being a week when everyone will be fighting and talking shit and setting the world on fire.

I have felt this buildup. I have my moon in Aries, so all these planets coming through the sign have hit my moon in the early degrees, and last week in particular I was crying and tired and agitated and annoyed. I’ve been moving, and it’s stressful. Living and working and paying taxes is exhausting and expensive. My book comes out in two months and I’ve been sort of living my life with a lowkey constant background anxiety about that (even though it’s great! Exciting! But it’s just!! Intense!).

I was stewing about all of this last week, and I sat down to tell my therapist about it, and at one point while rambling to her I said, “I feel like I’m in the process of, like, being born,” and I caught myself there.

Mars is a planet that cuts, separates, and in this way Mars rules birth. Birth is a gnarly process that requires a splitting open, a cutting of the cord, and we see this in the natural cycles of Aries season — which Mars rules — as we meet this moment in early spring when animals give birth, when plants are forced up from the earth.

Birth is a sacred experience, but it’s also a violent one, and this thought I had about being in a moment of being born, or of birthing the next chapter of my life, stopped me in my tracks. That’s not an experience I want to miss, even if it’s uncomfortable.

This is why I reject the fearmongering about the astrology of this week, and astrological fearmongering generally — because astrology exists not to scare us but to give us an opportunity to reflect on our experiences as they happen to us. Birth, I thought, is a portal I want to go through, and ever since I had that moment, I’ve been better able to notice my agitation, reflect on it, move through it, to ask what it has for me to learn from it. I am trying to be a better communicator. I am trying to be more patient. I am more present.

And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I truly believe that the cosmos are always conspiring for our highest good, to teach us lessons and help us grow, to bring us to places of more love and more truth and more oneness.

This week is undeniably an intense one. We might be asked to take on hard things, to look at our patterns and whether they serve us, to push ourselves to be better to our minds and our bodies and our loved ones and our world. This might be psychological, spiritual, physical, financial, relational. This might look like getting lots of sleep. This might look like the last difficult stretch of a project, or a good therapy session, or an honest look at what’s serving you and what’s not. But however it presents itself, know that it’s not here to hurt you, it’s here to level you up.

There is, by the way, an interesting cosmic counter balance to all of this that I haven’t seen enough people talking about: Venus in Taurus. The planet of love and art and women and femmes and luxury and pleasure is in her home sign and although it sounds like too much crazy Aries energy for one little planet to overcome, if anyone can do it, it’s her.

I know it because I’ve felt her just luxuriating in the background of all this. I’ve felt Venus in Taurus as these beautiful pockets of pleasure — meditating in a pool of sunlight, cooking with the back door open, an afternoon at the rug gallery. I catch these moments where Venus in Taurus reminds me to slow the fuck down. Taste my food. Enjoy my shower. Call my mom. So few things are truly emergencies.

Remembering that is my goal this week, and it’s probably a good one for all of us. Stay focused, stay hydrated, keep breathing, touch grass and relax your jaw!!!

I love you all so much. My books are open for readings now that I have wifi and an office set up. :) Reach out to me to schedule.

XO,
A

A few months ago, I had a vivid dream. I woke up and wrote what I remembered of it in the notes app on my phone: “i dreamt last night that i was downloading instructions from uranus,” i wrote. “i was floating out there like. communing with the planet. … it was giving me downloads for uranus in taurus for this last final stretch.”

I took this note on the morning of November 20, 2025, just about two weeks after Uranus had retrograded back into Taurus and the day of the new moon in Scorpio sitting opposite Uranus in Taurus. I had no conscious recollection of what exactly the planet had told me, but I felt this clear sense that it had imprinted this calling on me to be as honest and odd and open and strange as I possibly could be. I have thought about it almost every day since.

Uranus initially entered Taurus in May of 2018, where it stayed until July of 2025 before briefly dipping into Gemini and then retrograding back. As I write this, the planet sits at the 29th degree of Taurus, the final, anaretic degree of the sign before it enters Gemini April 20. It will be there until May of 2033.

Astrologers are funny anytime we talk about Uranus. It is the planet of weirdness, strangeness, unexpected happenings, revolution. It’s hard to predict what it spells for us, because its most inherent quality is unpredictability.

Astronomically, this feels exactly right, because the planet itself is bizarre: Uranus is the only planet in our solar system that rotates on its side, rolling like a ball in its orbit around the sun rather than spinning like a top like the rest of the planets.

Astrologically, as astrologer Liz Greene writes in her book The Art of Stealing Fire, it is a planet associated with Prometheus, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Enlightenment, the Hebrew Yahveh, the Pythagorean numbers, Plato’s ideal forms, ritual magic, the Egyptian goddess Nut (who ruled over the sky, stars, the cosmos and mothers), the Tower card in the tarot, the emanation of divine light or “Chokmah” in Kabbalah, the Hindu Brahma (the god of creation) and, among other things, the American, French and Bolshevik revolutions. You see the vibe?

Uranus is pure creation — and the suffering associated with it (think birth, think building a house, think writing a book). It is divine and all-seeing in a way that is often uncomfortable, in human form, to come face to face with. It’s a planet of revelations and revolutions and reorganizations.

“Uranus doesn’t recognize the value and nature of time, or the importance of slow growth and compromise. Nor does it recognize the reality of individual human feeling,” Greene writes. “The vision of the future must happen now, and anything standing in the way must be annihilated or, at best, reformed. This can result in enormous suffering, for individuals as well as the collective. The basic philosophy of Uranus is that, to make an omelette, one has to break eggs. The problem is that the eggs are the emotional and instinctual needs of individual human beings. Revolutions always have a way of going out of control.”

I am a Taurus rising, which means for the last seven years, Uranus has been in my first house of self, identity, body, and I can say this definitively: I have loved it.

In May of 2018, right as Uranus entered my first house, I took a job at BuzzFeed News covering Congress. It was a role that challenged and expanded me, and I spent the first year getting dress coded in the Speaker’s Lobby (for a faux fur coat, for Air Force 1s, for denim). I was entrenched in power and chaos in a way previously unparalleled in my life, covering two impeachments and writing a series of stories about Congressional corruption, witnessing a country coming apart at the seams.

I was, meanwhile, in eating disorder therapy, completely rewiring my relationship to my body and food. I stopped wearing a bra. I got really into my newsroom union, became our chair, bargained our contract and healed my fear of conflict in the process. I embraced my natural curls, got burnt out and bought out, and lived through a pandemic and gained and lost and gained weight and did psychedelics for the first time and smoked a ton of weed and then stopped smoking weed and made a career pivot and ended a long relationship and moved across the country and made another career pivot and wrote a book about magic and got a bunch of tattoos and piercings and stopped dying my hair and fell in love.

And all the while, I was having a spiritual awakening: I met my guru, I started to meditate seriously. I started to read, and study, and meet myself in a new way. I learned to hone my intuition, learned to relate to my ego and my anxiety and my heart in a new way. I watched hundreds and hundreds of hours of Ram Dass talks. I learned from great teachers, I tried mindfulness meditation and kundalini and katonah and iyengar. I did breathwork and saw other dimensions. I cried. I got really, really into astrology. I started to pray, for real, for the first time, and I started to feel the presence of God in my life.

In all of these ways, the last seven years have been the strangest and most interesting of my life. I have gotten weirder and weirder with each passing day, and, in the process, I have become more and more myself. I am so, so thankful for Uranus.

When the outer planets move, they give us this opportunity to reflect. Think about the last seven years of your life: What kind of revolutions and strange unfoldings and general weirdness have you experienced? What surprised you? What did you learn from it? What have you learned about finding flow amidst chaos?

These questions are likely particularly salient for the fixed rising signs — Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. And as Uranus enters an angular house for the mutable rising signs — Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces — these questions will become inevitable. For cardinal signs — Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn — these revolutions might feel somewhat more subtle, but no less worth exploring.

For all of us, Greene describes a healthy relationship to Uranus as learning to “travel light.”

“This doesn’t necessarily mean eschewing material security,” she writes. “It has to do with an attitude toward life. If you are prepared to allow fluidity, and can accept changes in plans with equanimity rather than a ferocious determination to exercise control, you may not have to be uprooted all the time on a concrete level. This is learning to carry a light psychological suitcase.”

Beautiful.

I am imperfect: I am still anxious, perfectionistic, obsessive, neurotic. But when I think about what the last seven years have taught me, it was that. I carry a much lighter psychological suitcase than I once did. A new part of me has come online — a part of me that gets excited when things go off track, a part of me that wants to talk to the things that go bump in the night rather than hide from them, a part of me that knows that the heart of any plot is problems. I have a looser grip on the whole thing.

There is much to be said about Uranus in Gemini. This is where the planet was during the Civil War, and I expect the next seven years will be intense for the collective, disturbing for the world. I expect great technological advancement, for better or for worse. I expect crazy electronic music and flying cars and the unexpected. But we can discuss that more another day. Today, I’m just thankful for the lessons of the last seven years, and thankful for this weird, wonderful planet, and I hope you all can feel that, too.

Call me (or email me (addysbaird@gmail.com) or DM me) if you want to set up a reading, whether Uranus-specific or otherwise. I’m open for booking through mid-May. I love you all so much. Stay weird!!!!

XO,
A

hi friendssssss

I’m taking a sort of hiatus this week as I’m moving! So this week is just some brief astro thoughts and a bunch of my favorite resources:

This Wednesday is the Libra full moon. I wrote a little bit about the energetics of Libra last fall during the new moon, and here is my guide from the Taurus full moon with full moon rituals.

The astrology of April is intense. It’s extremely Aries-heavy and thus extremely Mars-y. Harness the power where you need it — use it to get shit done but be careful not to burn out. If you’re feeling antsy, it’s a great time to sweat, move, plant seeds for new things.

But at least for me, the start to Aries season has been kind of foggy. I’ve been low energy, in part, I think, because Aries is my 12th house (the unseen, the unknown, the subconscious, the dreamspace), but also because Neptune and Saturn are there in the early degrees of Aries, which adds a heavy layer to this fiery sign.

The benefit, I’ve been finding, has been that nothing lasts for long. Feelings move quickly, energy changes quickly, nothing gets stuck for more than an hour or two. I’ve been leaning into riding that wave and it’s been working for me. Change is such a blessing.

Okay! Time to pack my bathroom. I love you all, and I leave you with some recommendations (I listen to most of these on spotify, but I’ll give you youtube links for ease of access) <3

My number one — my teacher Adam Elenbaas. Adam does a daily astrology show, and I can’t say enough good things about what a thoughtful teacher and spiritual guide he is, and how much I love his approach to astrology. This recent episode on how to track lunar cycles was great and I think readers of this newsletter will appreciate it. I’m currently a student in Adam’s school, which I highly recommend. If you’re interested in it, lmk!

The Queen — CHANI. My recent mission in life has been getting everyone to delete Co-Star and get the CHANI app instead. Co-Star uses AI to write your daily horoscopes! Ew. CHANI is AI-free, and she’s a fantastic traditional astrologer with a great weekly forecast podcast, as well as weekly readings tailored to your rising sign if you have an app membership.

A modern taste — I don’t do a ton of modern astrology but I really like Initiations by Jules Ferrari. I love her approach and learn a lot from her. I also really like Pam Gregory, whose new and full moon talks are prophetic.

The Astrology Podcast — This is my go-to for mundane astrology (the astrology of politics, current events, etc.). Their monthly overviews are a vital resource for me!

A few books — Liz Greene’s Saturn: A New Look At The Old Devil (I love this book; my only gripe is that she conflates the signs and the houses, but I got a lot out of it). The Twelve Houses by Howard Sasportas (great if you want to start to really understand the houses, which was a total astrological breakthrough for me). Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice by Demetra George (THE Hellenistic astrology textbook if you are ready to really dive in). I’m also currently listening to Demetra’s Mysteries of the Dark Moon and it’s really speaking to me.

Have a great week my angels!

Hi friends,

I hope you’re all having a beautiful start to spring and to Aries season. I always love the transition from water seasons to fire seasons, but I love the switch from Pisces to Aries perhaps most of all. It’s a moment of total rebirth after the depths of winter, and it brings with it such an important burst of energy.

Every entrance to a fire season reminds me of how Liz Green described the way each group of signs (fire, water, air and earth) finds meaning and confidence in her excellent book on Saturn. (I’ve quoted this before and I’ll quote it again, because nothing captures the fire temperament so well.)

“Earth expresses confidence when it has acquired mastery over matter, and water expresses confidence when it has established meaningful emotional bonds,” she writes. “Air expresses confidence through the exchange and development of ideas. But the fiery temperament needs no further justification than its existence for the innate belief that life is essentially meaningful and that man deserves the best from it.”

The fire element is unmitigated being, unfiltered and essential, and Aries is the most unfiltered of all the fire signs. The Aries is the warrior. It craves individuality, and doesn’t question its right to it. It does not people please. It is a sign willing to fight and sure of its own success. It is spontaneous, it feels deeply and purely without story, it is so totally here.

We see this energy in the earth itself as Aries season arrives. It is a season ushered in with spring, coming as plants force themselves up through the earth, as animals give birth, as we emerge from our winter shelters and into the sun, light outpacing darkness for the first time since the fall. It is a sign and a season of change, and change is the most inherent quality of life.

The early days of Aries season are interesting this year. On Sunday, the sun met up with Neptune, amplifying our big dreams and visions. If you had some fantastical idea on Sunday, make note of it, because tomorrow, Wednesday, March 25, the sun meets up with Saturn. With this configuration, we’re asked to give structure to those dreams.

Saturn and the sun together, as my teacher Adam Elenbaas said this morning, can be “startlingly profound when it comes to our spiritual growth and development.” It’s an astrological signature that shows us our limits and our boundaries and the places where our egos have taken center stage, and if we are willing to meet those revelations with compassion and awareness, we have a chance to grow in a remarkable way.

“Confrontation with limits doesn’t extinguish who we are,” Adam said. “It doesn’t extinguish that fire inside of us, but it refines it.”

In the lead-up to this transit, I’ve felt this in my relationship with my body. I’ve been doing a lot of body shaming and feeling overwhelmed by the cultural swing back to thinness and obsessing about aging, and I was so lost in this headspace while at a social event recently that I broke down crying to my very wise, sweet boyfriend. He held my hand and kindly pointed out to me that in this body shaming spiral, I was completely missing the chance to be with people I love, and it really struck me.

And it hit me this morning as I was listening to Adam’s talk what a Sun-Saturn moment that was. Often, Adam said, when he’s working with clients in their 70s and 80s, they ask about how to fill their lives with meaning, how to be as present in their lives as possible, because they know they don’t have a lot of time left. It’s not a question, he said, that he usually hears from people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.

“But the thing is that spiritual life means being aware that you’re on the last stretch of a highway with an off ramp early in life, the earlier the better, because we’re on a trajectory across many lifetimes, and that trajectory takes us home spiritually,” Adam said. “The closer we get to the present right now, the less that we need death as the hinge toward which we become more present.”

And the more present we become, he added, the closer we come to enlightenment: “Lifetime after lifetime of presence liberates us.”

This spoke to me. Here I am, having a crisis about my aging face, letting it take me out of the moment, instead of letting that awareness of aging bring me into the sacred, fleeting present. Aries season gives us this chance to be reborn, this sun-Saturn transit in the sign this week asks to be present as much as we possibly can. To be here as much as we possibly can. It’s the only place where anything real is ever happening.

For our usual phone a friend segment this season, I reached out to my friend Mallory, an Aries sun and easily one of my favorite people alive, and her advice on how we can embrace Aries season made me cry:

Take it all in, you know? Be here now. I love you all.

XO,
A

hiiiii !

What a lovely astrological week we have ahead of us.

Tomorrow, Wednesday March 18, we have the new moon in Pisces. This is a powerful button on Pisces season, and our first moon since eclipse season, coming at the end of Mercury retrograde in Pisces and just after Saturn and Neptune have completed their years-long stays in the sign.

Then, on Friday March 20, we have both the spring equinox — the astrological new year — and Mercury stationing direct. This is such a gorgeous reset moment and it is a special, kind of rare alignment to have the equinox and Mercury going direct at the same moment. It’s really nice astrology after a period of such intensity.

I thought it would be fun this week to do a tarot reading and ask the universe for some guidance and thoughts for these nice alignments using one of my favorite three-card tarot spreads.

It looks like this:

Card 1: What’s the invitation of the moment?
Card 2: What’s underneath the moment/what’s the root energy?
Card 3: What’s the lesson?

This is my most frequently used spread, and I have found it to be one of the most powerful and effective ways to use my cards. Today, I pulled it twice, first asking about the Pisces new moon and then about the equinox + the end of Mercury retrograde. I hope it resonates for all of you and gives you something to work with this week. Let me know how it lands. <3

A pull for the new moon in Pisces:

What is the invitation of the moment? Page of Pentacles reversed

Upright, the page of pentacles is a card of studentship and scholarship, the work of school literally as well as the work of bettering ourselves and learning outside of the classroom. Reversed, this page shirks off the strictures of schooling and gives way to a sort of wildness, takes moment of relaxation after a difficult task. With the new moon in Pisces, I think the invitation of the moment is to relax, lean into rest, take a nice bath, get good sleep, and use this as a moment to recharge.

What’s underneath the moment? The King of Wands reversed

Wands symbolize fire, and there is absolutely a lot of fire under this moment — Saturn, Neptune and Venus are all in fiery Aries, and we are about to enter Aries season — and this reversed king speaks to a blockage of that fire energy, as Rachel Pollack writes in her beautiful tarot guide Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom.

“Reversed, we see that natural fire after it has encountered obstacles and defeats that might make a less forceful person cynical or frightened,” she says of the king. “Because he is the king of Wands, he does not lose his force but becomes instead tempered, more understanding of others and at the same time harsher in his attitude to life, which no longer appears such an easy contest.”

This feels like an honest assessment of the last few weeks. Mercury retrograde and eclipse season have posed obstacles, the world has given us much reason to be cynical, taught us some hard lessons, but this moon reminds us that we don’t have to give up hope. At our best, we are both realistic, refusing to gaslight and bypass our way through the world, and also thoughtful, compassionate, and forgiving. That energy underlies this lunation.

What’s the lesson? The Sun

I laughed a little when I pulled this card, because it felt sort of ironic to pull the sun in a spread about the moon, but, as I thought about it, I realized it’s very apt. The new moon happens because the sun and the moon are conjoined, and this card — one of my favorites — is one of optimism and light.

The card also speaks to the awareness of oneness, which is a deeply Piscean awareness, and indeed, I think, the lesson of this new moon is exactly that: We are all connected — people, animals, plants, the earth itself, the sky and the clouds and the planets and the stars — and this moon asks us not to forget that, and to allow that knowing to buoy us. It’s an invitation to be optimistic, despite it all, to be stewards of pleasure and beauty in service of our collective awakening.

A pull for the spring equinox and Mercury stationing direct:

What’s the invitation of the moment? The Eight of Wands

This card is the ultimate: YES, GO. The wands flying through the sky speak so powerfully to that energy of the spring equinox, as we officially enter the spring season and the astrological new year, giving us a boost of energy to recommit to our intentions for the year.

The wands, though in motion, point toward the ground, which speaks to the value of earthy, grounded energy supporting our intentions. It’s not enough just to let the fire of desire and enthusiasm burn; we have to build the structures for success in real, actionable ways. We can find this balance in the equinox itself, a moment of equal light and dark, and we’re invited to explore that in our own lives this week. What’s working? What’s out of whack? Where do we need to turn up the heat? Where do we need to add support?

What’s underneath the moment? The Seven of Cups reversed

Pollack’s writeup on this is perfect: “This card reversed means a determination to make something from dreams. This does not mean rejecting fantasies, but rather doing something with them.” Period!

This Mercury retrograde period of the last few weeks has a moment of going back over old projects and visions and stories and feelings, and in Pisces it’s taken on a really dreamy quality. All those dreamy ideas are floating underneath this moment. Now, with Mercury going direct and the equinox incoming, we have that burst of energy of the Eight of Wands to actually do something with them.

What’s the lesson? The Six of Wands reversed

Upright, this card is a powerful symbol of victory, though a victory in battle — not of winning the war. Though his journey is not over, he assumes success. Reversed, it doesn’t mean loss, but rather questions our posture.

“True optimism creates victory,” Pollack writes. “False optimism, covering our doubts with bluster and illusion, leads to fear and weakness. The attitude shown in the card right side up cannot be faked, for when it does not work it becomes the opposite: defeatism, a sense that enemies will overwhelm us, or that life or specific people will betray us in some way. This attitude too often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, for suspicion can produce betrayal.”

I was taught that reversed cards ask us to look at a situation differently. In the case of this Six of Wands, I think our lesson is about thinking of success in a new way. So much of this Mercury retrograde period and the Virgo eclipse in the middle of it was about questioning perfectionism, and as I’ve been approaching the end of the retrograde and the start of the astro new year, I’ve felt some of that perfectionism creeping in.

I have not been as dedicated to some of my goals lately, and I’ve found myself imagining that come Friday, I’ll be suddenly perfect at chess and swimming and cleaning and dancing and communicating and creating and and and. And I won’t. This card reminded me to think about what success might look like in a real, optimal way, rather than a fake, perfect, delusional way — to actually integrate the lessons of the last few weeks rather than think of it as a time to simply move on from.

For me, that means prioritizing balance, flexibility, mobility, resilience, flow as the new moon comes through. It means concentrating on the feeling rather than the outcome. It means being kind to myself and my body and my mind and my people. It means drinking enough water, getting enough sleep, meditating daily, journaling, touching grass. And, yes, I know I say that every week, but I really think it’s the recipe every single week.

And then, as we reach the end of the week, it means starting to earnestly build the structures of magic in my life: cleaning the house, packing the boxes, getting in the pool, asking good questions. Not because I need to be perfect, but because I get to be alive and make art and be in love and live on earth and be in this body. What could be better?

Happy spring, everyone. I love you all. Have a beautiful week.

Hi friends <3

Over the weekend, we had our mid-retrograde Mercury cazimi. This is a moment that happens during every Mercury retrograde where the planet of communication and storytelling and marketplaces and technology meets up with the sun, and, as the sun burns off its haze, offers us a moment of clarity amidst the retrograde fog.

I’ve said this before and will surely say it again, but at this point I have a pretty good sense of my usual Merc retro rollercoaster: The first week and a half/couple weeks are confusing and feel like a big void of answers and ideas and reason. Old stories come up, old wounds flare, old patterns reemerge, and it doesn’t make sense to me why. Then the cazimi comes and acts as a sort of turning point: I get some clarity, and the last half of the retrograde is about integrating that clarity before I can truly move forward again.

I’ve felt like I was in a better place leading up to this retrograde than the last one, but the last two weeks — and the Virgo eclipse in particular — have brought up insecurities, self-hatred, too much-ness, not enough-ness, ‘everyone will leave me,’ need to do it right energies in my field.

It was easy for me, at first, to feel like I was not in as good a place as I thought I was because these things were coming up. But I’ve started to see that these things can emerge because I’m doing well. It’s not actually backsliding; it’s excavating a new level.

My teacher Adam Elenbaas gave a beautiful talk about last week’s Virgo eclipse where he talked about his addiction to opioids as a young man. He often thought of his addiction, he said, of coming from this “bad” part of himself — but as he came to see it more clearly, he realized it was much more connected to the part of him that judged some part of him as bad.

This Mercury cazimi brought me some of that same clarity in my own psyche. I sometimes think of these deep insecurities and fears I have as coming from some part of me that’s bad or wrong or broken and I’m having a moment of seeing how much of the suffering actually comes from this part of me judging something as wrong to begin with. When I reckon with that part of me, I can start to unravel the insecurities and fears in a real way.

This is not the first time I’ve had this realization, but spiritual work, in my experience, requires rediscovering these sorts of awarenesses again and again in new ways and from new angles. Part of this, I think, is because ridding ourselves of any sort of self-hatred is probably impossible in this lifetime. My great teacher Ally Bogard talks about how the insecurities and the judgements never really go away entirely, but with this work they start to feel less grippy, like old velcro losing its cling.

This time, the realization — and the slight release of the grip — came to me via the Strength tarot card, which I pulled last week: In her beautiful book Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel Pollack writes of the Strength card symbolizing as “different kind of power, not the ego’s will but the inner Strength to confront yourself calmly and without fear.”

It’s a card that asks us to look at our fears and our shadows and our addictions and our dark scary bits with love, without judgement, and to in turn begin to heal them, to better ourselves not through shame and discipline but gentle devotion.

“The mysteries can be brought out because we have found the Strength to face them,” Pollack writes. “Strength opens up the personality like Pandora opening her box. It does so, however, with a sense of peace, a love of life itself, and a great confidence in the final result. Unless we truly believe that the process of self-discovery is a joyous one we will never follow it through.” (Emphasis mine.)

I laughed when I got to that last line, because despite the fact that I treat Seventy-Eight Degrees like the Bible, it is the only line in the entire book I have highlighted, but when I went to read her entry about Strength, I had forgotten that was where the line came from. In perfect Mercury retrograde fashion, there I was again, taking it in as if it were the first time.

And I felt the truth of it again: This retrograde process, though sometimes difficult, is a joyous one, because if we’re willing to engage with it in an open and honest way, we will come to know ourselves more deeply.

We have ten days left of Mercury retrograde, and this post-cazimi bit of it always starts to feel a little lighter to me, but it can also be tricky to integrate and tie up threads and sit with new ideas and feelings and sensibilities. I can know intellectually that I’m all good, that I’m safe, that I’m engaging in a joyous process, but integrating that knowing into my body is another question.

Some of what I need at this point is to go to really body-based work — stretching, qigong, sauna, dancing. Some of it is talking, muddling through the difficulties of communicating these things, and some of it is listening, taking in earnestly what my loved ones and teachers are experiencing and finding in their own processes.

This week, on Friday, Mercury retrograde will conjoin with Mars in Pisces. On the collective level, I think we’re inevitably going to see escalations of violent rhetoric globally. On the personal level, I think it’s a moment where we’re going to be asked to integrate some of our Mercury retrograde lessons: In a heated moment, can we communicate with love? Our task is to respond rather than react.

OK, I love you all. I hope this peek into my retrograde process is helpful in yours. I’d love to hear how you’re all doing and what you’re finding out there. Be kind, stay playful, drink enough water. The spring equinox is just around the corner!

XO,
A