Once, in a lengthy astrology reading, I was told: “You are death.” The planet of death and rebirth, Pluto, rules my chart and is in my first house- which means its a defining aspect of my self identity. It means the transformation, the alchemy through excavation, never stops. I am always in the ashes, yet simultaneously and persistently the Phoenix. Sometimes I don’t know how to hold both.

This cycle never truly stops for any of us, for change is the essence of life.

When I was a little girl, I was terrified of going to sleep because I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up. I have always feared death, in a sense. Often, I feel like that little girl. Death’s existence hangs on my breath and my shoulders and in my energy, even if I try to constantly remember my devotion to being ALIVE while I’m alive.

Right now, energetic life has been challenging for me. Pressurizing, confusing, uninspiring, and all of this comes wrapped in a shabby wrapping of shame. Shame is what I need to release, for the self obsession and fear that is shame keeps an invisible wall between me, those that I love, and the life I want to live.

However, let’s take the shame away for a moment and come back to the intensity of the times.

Pluto has been in the sign of Capricorn for 16 years. Capricorn governs systems and foundations within the self and within society. Capricorn is on the parental axis, the raising of us by our family, our schooling, the world. It is what built us into the mountain we are now and Pluto, who excavates and reveals the unseen for opportunity of betterment, has been dismantling all of that. We see it in the crumbling of systems, the work to unravel the patriarchy. We see it in the unlearning so many of us are committed to, the dedication to the healing of trauma.

And here we are, with Pluto starting a whole new life cycle. Pluto, the planet that rules generations and the collective, is dying and being reborn. So we feel this death in each of us. This goes out into our communities and the cycle feeds itself - us in the world, us creating the world we are in.

Everyone I talk to is at a threshold point, pressured by some limit in some way. Everyone I talk to feels liminal-someone they once were no longer here and yet who they are soon to be has not yet arrived. There is even resistance laced in. We have left the systems that have always “worked,” and it is terrifying and courageous to create a whole new way of being. Especially if we don’t know how. Especially when the planet that rules our cellular makeup, that rules repressed anger, shame, is so active and palpably tangible in our bones.

Pluto is stepping into Aquarius. The sign of individuation. The sign of claiming the unique frequency of our soul WITHIN the collective. It is the highest potential of creative, loving, healing communities because the witnessing, respect, and courage to step into our truest self is honored. The collective is at its most beautiful because each is allowed, encouraged, and able to be free.

Aquarius is an air sign. On this precipice, it is terrifying to take flight and to know how to do so on these strong winds of change. It is terrifying to leave the nest of your past and see where your wings want to take you.

This is all made more intense by the fact that we are approaching a Leo full moon. Leo is opposite Aquarius and the two create the authenticity axis. Leo the heart and divine spark within, Aquarius the spreading of it outwards- the two making an infinity loop between the soul of us and the soul of all. It is the asking of us to come back home to ourselves to better honor the home we share on this planet.

Leo rules the inner child, the cosmic spark we came in with before Plutonian power dynamics got to us. Before society and subliminal messaging and being subjected to circumstances we didn’t sign up for, yet somehow on a soul level agreed to. Leo is the loudness of uninhibited love, the expressiveness of our inner world when it feels completely safe. Leo is the willingness to be seen in all this, the re-centering to our heart and our spine and our inner sun so that we can.

As full moon’s are about release, we are releasing all that stands between us and our leonine love. Between us and our roaring radiance, our most fulfilling and inspired resonance. As this full moon represented by the sign of raw life opposes the movement of the planet of death, we have globular goddesses pulling us apart so we may crack open into who we are next. So if you feel like you are breaking, you are. But not because you are broken, because you are so brave to let it happen. To trust fall into the calluses of the cosmos and let their gracefully rugged wisdom show you the way. It will come.

If you feel like you don’t know who you are now, it’s because who you are becoming hasn’t arrived yet. Like the planets, we are suspended in the abyss. If you feel like systems are still breaking within and you don’t have footing underneath, or within community, or your job, or daily life, let us remember we just leapt from the mountain into the sky. We are not supposed to know yet what will catch us. All we know is we have a power inside, one beyond all the things and people and places that took it away.

It is time to call it back. Time to release whatever dampens it.

I still feel a residue of the past without quite knowing how to release it. Beginnings take time. New cycles are not definitive. There is a merging between old and new until they, too, start to break apart. Let us give ourselves the patience of not knowing where to direct the power in this beginning, in this ending. Let us focus on remembering we have it. The wind will whisper the way when it is time.