During the Saturn return—which lasts 2.5 to 3 years —you will come face to face with your own blocks and be forced to push through them. All the “mistakes” you made in the 28 years leading up to this seem to crystallize. Rather than repeating them on autopilot, you have a chance to turn lemons into lemonade. And if you refuse to heed those lessons, Saturn will bring a drill sergeant style smackdown. Indeed, the Saturn return starts off feeling a bit like boot camp for a lot of people. But drop and give him twenty instead of rebelling against those barking orders.  Three years later, you’ll be General Awesome or Captain Fantastic of your own kick-ass army—at the very least, you’ll be decorated with a star or two.  ~ Astrostyle.com

I’m 56, about to turn 57, which means my second Saturn return is upon me.

Yikes.

How cow, it’s hot in this here kitchen.

Astrologically speaking, I am like the frog that is about to realize it better jump out of this pot heating on the stove, or it will be cooked. Plain and simple.

Reaching a crossroad. Now what?

The Second Saturn Return is a time of life review and soul searching. How did you get here? Is this really where you want to be? Often it represents a cross roads of sorts, and an opportunity to deal at last with unfinished business. Sometimes this means getting rid of people, jobs and situations that no longer fit who you are or want to be. There is a taking stock that can culminate in a kind of purging and reordering of your life. This death of the old way of doing things can be painful, but subsequently there is often a feeling of relief and gratitude that you are no longer stuck in circumstances that no longer served you. ~ Judy Tsafrir, MD, Holistic Adult and Child Psychiatrist

The past couple of weeks has been brutal and frightening. My mom and I both fell ill on the same day. She had a systemic infection. I had bacterial conjunctivitis and ear infections. I found my mom vomiting on the floor of her bathroom, shaking uncontrollably. It’s the second time in six months we’ve had to call EMTs to our house. (Last August I fell and broke my right wrist during a terrible thunderstorm that knocked out cell phone service. Our neighbors had to call 911 for us.) We took an ambulance to the hospital and Mom stayed in the hospital for 3 days recovering from a UTI. I staggered to Urgent Care with a kind friend at my side and got drops for my ears and eyes and then went home and collapsed.

What didn’t I want to see and hear?

Everything overwhelmed me for a few days. My world cracked open.

In reality, I experienced what Dr. Tsafrir refers to (in the above-mentioned quote) as a ‘life review’.

It is time to shit or get off the pot.

I’ve been getting whisperings of this for several years now, but at this point, it’s become something akin to a tornado horn blaring. It can be heard for miles. Like a car alarm that won’t ever shut off, it says, ‘the time to listen, to take all this in and act upon what you hear, is now.’

NOW.

For a week, we recovered. Then, we started the process of setting up our estates, organizing paperwork, and writing down our wishes about what should be done at the end our lives.

My mom’s 82. She’s known for a while that she needs to do this. And for that matter, so have I. After I bought my house, I knew I needed to organize my financial house and put things in place to protect my assets and care for my pets if something were to happen to me.

I want to have another 30 years – and I hope I do. I hope I live to see a third Saturn return. But in the meantime, I need to assess and review and do the soul searching I need to do to ready myself for this return.

It is time to make this life, my true life. In all ways.

So, I will need to shift my focus, make plans, work on my books and poems, and use my time wisely.

I need to take care of this body and listen to it more acutely so I can experience true well-being and health.

I need to feed it solace and stars and the sounds of birds. I need to watch the sky change color. I need to look into my mother’s face and enjoy her company while she’s still here.

It’s painful to face all this. It hurts. I find myself crying in my sleep over the things that I know are coming. Losses march ever closer each day. They pile up just outside my door.

We are ephemeral beings. We never know what tomorrow holds. We are always surprised by how quickly the days shuttle past.

The time to live is now.

There is no other place to be.

Be here. Present. Counted. Alive. Awake.

Whatever is going on ‘out there’ cannot disturb our inner work.

For me, that means it is time to pick up my pen and write. It is time to walk through the gate that leads to my life as a writer, as a change-agent, as a scribe, and as an even deeper teacher.

I am scared of all this change but I know I have no choice. This is what I have to embrace and learn at this time in my life.

The time to live, my dears, is now.

For more information on Saturn Return, try these: thesaturnreturns.com and Elizabeth Spring’s site.

 

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© 2017  Shavawn M. Berry All rights reserved

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