Is Astrology Real, or Am I Just Looking for a Blueprint?

What the last two years, my child, and a whole lot of eclipses taught me about trusting what I can’t always explain.

Is astrology real?

Or am I just looking for something to believe in?

Am I begging for some sort of blueprint for how to live this experience?

These are questions I have asked myself many times.

I consider myself a critical thinker. I believe we should question everything; including the things we desperately want to believe. And yet, astrology has been woven through my life for as long as I can remember.

I was the kid who went straight to the horoscopes in the Sunday Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

My parents only subscribed to the Sunday edition at our house in Bono, Texas, a tiny unincorporated community outside of Cleburne. Every Sunday, I would run down our long driveway to find the fat roll of newspaper, usually tossed somewhere into the bar ditch by the paper route delivery person.

I would drag it back to the house, unroll the enormous thing, and head straight for the Life & Style section.

There they were: the weekly horoscopes for each Sun sign.

I was hooked.

In my twenties, I discovered Susan Miller's astrology blog and religiously read it every month. Later, when I began reading Tarot, I discovered that the cards are rich with astrological references. My relationship with astrology deepened as my relationship with Tarot deepened.

But nothing has made me take astrology more seriously than my relationship with my child.

Enter: The Saturn Return

When I was 29, I entered my Saturn Return.

If you're unfamiliar with astrology, a Saturn Return happens roughly every 27-29 years, when Saturn returns to the same place in the sky that it occupied when you were born. Astrologically, it's considered a major period of maturation, reckoning, responsibility, and restructuring.

I entered mine almost eight months pregnant with my first, and only, child.

The following week, there was a lunar eclipse in Pisces. An important era was initiated in my life with this eclipse: Saturn Return and parenthood. Parenthood, for me, was life changing because it made me less of a selfish asshole. I had been floating through my twenties with no anchor, and this was the anchor that my human experience required. Pisces eclipse might sound familiar, currently, as that is what we have been cycling through for the past two years.. more on that shortly.

Stay with me.

Because this is where things start getting weird.

My child and I share the same Moon sign: Libra.

In astrology, the Moon is connected to our emotional world, our instincts, our sense of safety, and the way we process our inner experience.

And let me tell you: this one tracks.

We both want things to be fair. And Lord help anyone who talks down to us or uses a shitty tone: we will let you know about it immediately.

We both love a cool, usually retro aesthetic. We question authority. We are not afraid to raise an activist flag when something feels fundamentally wrong.

Then there is Venus.

We both have Venus in Virgo.

Venus is associated with love, relationships, beauty, pleasure, values, and the way we give and receive affection. Virgo brings a discerning, analytical quality to those things.

Translation?

We can both be a little critical.

But we're also creatures who crave an intimate partner in crime. We want someone who gets it. Someone we can build a life with, share our weirdness with, and trust enough to let into our inner world.

And then there are the Nodes.

The Astrology of Becoming

My North Node is in Virgo and my South Node is in Pisces.

Kingsley's are flipped.

If you have been following astrology over the last couple of years, you probably know that the lunar nodes, and therefore the eclipse cycle, have been moving through Virgo and Pisces.

The North Node is often associated with the direction we're growing toward: the qualities and experiences we're being invited to develop. The South Node represents familiar patterns, tendencies, and ways of being that can become comfortable even when they've outlived their usefulness.

Every 18-ish years, we experience a nodal return; a kind of astrological checkpoint.

Kingsley experienced theirs around the ages of 17-18.

I experienced my nodal opposition.

And I couldn't help but notice the timing.

Is it a coincidence that a nodal return happens around the age when a young person is becoming an adult, leaving home, discovering who they are, and beginning to make decisions that will shape the next chapter of their life?

Maybe.

But I don't think so.

Watching Kingsley unfold into a young adult over these last two years has been one of the most difficult, beautiful, expansive experiences of my life.

And not just because I was watching my child grow up.

I was watching them become themselves.

When You Can't Protect Someone From Their Own Becoming

The world is harsh right now.

And as I watch teenagers and young adults, both my own child and the young people I teach, I see how much pressure there is to define ourselves, categorize ourselves, pick a side, stay inside the lines.

But so many of us are discovering that life isn't actually that binary.

Identity isn't always fixed.

Healing isn't linear.

We aren't meant to fit neatly into the boxes we've inherited.

And sometimes becoming who you are requires dismantling who you thought you were supposed to be.

Over the last couple of years, Kingsley struggled with their mental health.

Watching your beautiful kid struggle is one of the most human experiences I have ever known.

There is a particular kind of helplessness that comes from loving someone so deeply and realizing you cannot do the work of living for them.

You can guide.

You can listen.

You can hold space.

You can love.

But you cannot control another person's journey.

And because the energetic and emotional bonds between parent and child can feel so intrinsically intertwined, I felt every bit of it.

The stakes felt incredibly high.

Had I taught them enough?

Had I guided them enough?

Had I prepared them?

What if I hadn't?

And meanwhile, time was moving.

Junior year.

Senior year.

Graduation.

College.

The hourglass seemed to be emptying faster every day.

I felt the cold plunge of realizing that I had absolutely no control over anything I loved most.

The Eclipse Years

Last year, during eclipse season, I knew I was in an era of struggle.

There was depression.

There was instability.

There was a shaky foundation underneath almost everything.

And yet, underneath all of it was this strange knowing:

This is changing me.

I didn't necessarily know where I was going.

I didn't know what the outcome would be.

But I had faith that this period was expanding my perspective. Increasing my depth. Increasing my bandwidth. Asking me to become a person who could hold more complexity, more uncertainty, more truth.

And maybe that is what astrology has given me all along.

Not a blueprint.

Not a guarantee.

A language.

A way to look at the cycles of my life and ask better questions.

What is this season asking of me?

What am I being asked to release?

Where am I growing?

What am I resisting?

What might this experience be teaching me?

And Then, Suddenly, We Were on the Other Side

It has been two years of an insanely expansive, heart-wrenchingly beautiful, emotional, and difficult journey.

And somehow, we made it through.

I made it through.

My kid made it through.

We are two weeks out of eclipse season.

One week ago, we drove Kingsley to Massachusetts and dropped them off at Mount Holyoke College.

And now we're home.

Empty nesters.

The house is quieter.

The routines are different.

And Kingsley?

They are clearly in their element.

And I have stepped into mine.

I think.

Which brings me to another question:

Can I call myself a crone now?

Because if so, I would like to formally identify as a sexy baddie crone.

A sexy baddie crone who thought she was walking through darkness, only to discover that maybe it was just a really bumpy road.

Maybe all of those bumps were preparing me for a smoother takeoff when the path finally opened.

Maybe the last two years weren't about losing control.

Maybe they were about learning how to release it.

So… Is Astrology Real?

After all of this, am I still critically questioning astrology?

Absolutely.

I don't think critical thinking and spirituality have to be enemies.

In fact, I think questioning is part of the practice.

But after living through enough cycles, watching enough patterns repeat, and experiencing the uncanny timing of certain astrological transits in my own life, I've stopped asking whether astrology is real in the way I once did.

I don't know if I need to prove that the planets are causing things to happen.

I know that astrology has given me a framework for noticing.

For reflecting.

For finding meaning.

For understanding myself and the people I love with a little more compassion.

And maybe that is enough.

Maybe the magic isn't that the stars dictate our lives.

Maybe the magic is that we are willing to look up at them and ask:

What is this moment trying to show me?

The power of eclipses is not something I take lightly anymore.

Different eclipses will activate different areas of our charts, and the experience can be wildly different from person to person.

But if these last two years have taught me anything, it's that some seasons are meant to change us.

And sometimes you don't realize you're standing at the end of one chapter until you're already driving home from dropping your kid off at college.

There is more I want to say about eclipse seasons, too.

I've been thinking about the trail of significant deaths and endings that seem to emerge during eclipse seasons and why so many of us are talking about the cultural icons we've recently lost.

And then there are the signs.

Oh, the signs.

Because the road trip to Massachusetts gave me plenty to think about.

But that's another story.

Stay curious. Stay questioning. And trust the process. You’re doing great, babe!