This is a funny old game. I was trying to write a short, pithy astro-post for our social media schedule to celebrate (??!) Saturn moving into Pisces, but those words just wouldn’t be tied down, and whichever way I approached them they came across as simplistic and somewhat banal. I had started out from the perspective of compassion fatigue, as in, how to bring some kind of structure and focus to our empathy so we’re not exhausted by the constant barrage of worthy causes we’re currently being bombarded by. As some wise person told me many years back, you can’t pour water out of an empty jug. So how do we keep the jug topped up? Try pinning that down in 30 or so words suitable for a snappy social media post. It wasn’t going to happen.

I also thought about the fact that it’s 30 years since Saturn was last in Pisces and although there’s currently a lot of discussion from the mundane perspective, I got around to wondering what was happening to me personally in 1993/94 when Saturn was last playing ‘Hokey-Cokey’ between Aquarius and Pisces. A lot, as it turns out; I was concentrating on surviving a tsunami of grief at the loss of both parents whilst at the same time struggling to care for a newborn and a toddler. Oh yeah, and a house move. With the gift of hindsight – and astrology – I can see that my coping mechanism, and what definitely helped to keep me sane, was building a structure (that will be Saturn) for our growing family as we moved from a place of sadness and mourning down to a new life by the sea (the Pisces bit). And with little ones to care for, you just have to keep on getting up every day. You keep on keeping on even when you don’t want to, until the habit of doing so keeps you going with a bit less thought and effort, and then suddenly you realise that some months have elapsed and you are on the way to surviving a very dark time. However, although I survived, I also became very ill soon afterwards because I was completely burnt out. There was nothing left to give.

These were strangely dark and unbidden thoughts for what had started out as a peaceful Sunday morning opportunity to prepare social media posts for the week ahead. I soon realised that a blog rather than a simple post was needed, so headed out in a thoughtful fashion for our morning puppy walk. As I write now it’s late afternoon, as I hadn’t bargained on said puppy rolling in fox poo and needing an unscheduled wash and blow dry, along with her car blanket and the back seat protector. As you can imagine, not an awful lot of constructive thinking about Saturn in Pisces has been going on, but in a way that’s good because an event that happens every 30 or so years isn’t one to be taken lightly.

Below the surface, below the busy-ness and reality of bathing a smelly puppy, there has been a quiet and almost undetectable rumination on different possibilities and perspectives. On the person I once was and who I am now. On life as it was and life as it is today, and what I’ve learnt in the intervening years. And what I’ve come to see is that one aspect of Saturn in Pisces – the one that resonates most strongly with me amongst so many other possibilities – is about self-preservation and survival. It’s about boundaries – taking the time and effort to keep ourselves healthy and energetically strong so that we can be present for others – and in these challenging times we need to be more vigilant than ever before.

See you on the other side!