By Amanda Moreno

Mars Retrograde, what have you meant to me? You’re stationing direct right in my most tender parts, the parts that feel infinite aloneness, always on the verge of shattering. I’ve the presence of mind to be with that now after so much pressure and tumult in that space over the past several years, but oh how you are making my desires crystal clear, and oh how much longing and doubt reign there.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

You began ten lifetimes ago (or, more accurately, a few months ago), moments before I left home to hold space for and learn from so many souls daring to plumb their own depths and heal their own karma. And of course I was therefore brought face to face with my own.

Resistance to becoming a “healer” was brought full-force to the frontlines of my being, along with the knowing that this work is my love, my heart, my joy and my path — and that it is not enough to sustain me.

You helped me question my priorities. You tested every boundary; you forced me in on myself; and you helped me to get a better understanding of who I am in that work and in the world, and of all the fears I have to face to make it work.

Mars Retrograde, the force of your passion was dispersed somewhat through Neptune’s wily gaze, which dissolved so much of who I am along with any tendency to dive in or dig deep. You took me through death anniversaries, gave me little time to pause and reclaim; or maybe you just showed me that if I’m to obtain what I desire I have to understand more astutely how my energy systems ebb and flow.

You brought me gifts of Sophia, of Raven, of Maitreya and of song. The desire to sing — as joy, as sorrow, and as absolutely imperative medicine for my soul — rang clear.

You brought the potential for big love to me again, forced some space, made me commit to investing in what I long for, and in that process helped me to realize once again my acute, deep, intensely vulnerable desire for family and home and all the doubts and sorrow that come with it. You continued to bring in others who are attempting to navigate that territory — new models of family, home and love — giving the potential of reprieve from that sense of isolation.

Saturn’s squaring with your home in my own chart has made me push, helped me struggle, and at its best times just helped me to understand how you function through me naturally, so inward and so constructive — and destructive. Bringing up self-doubt, self-loathing, self-criticism in ways I’ve never experienced before.

Mars Retrograde, in the past few weeks you’ve accompanied me through shock and grief as I’ve watched one of my beloved families attacked and shattered. Out of the grip of Neptune’s narcotic haze in the region you now incinerate with Your molten ways, you’ve forced presence and forced the issues, prompting me again to commit and to claim my queerness, my community and my desire to do more.

You’ve brought out the mama bear in me as I witnessed protesters spitting religious venom at our celebrations of pride. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t stand outside the ring and pass by, I had to stop, feel the anger flood amidst the fear and impulse to evacuate. You brought intense protectiveness to the surface, which spiraled together with my healer’s ability to hold space, for the first time plunging me into an updated knowledge of what my whole being is capable of in that role — and what my boundaries are. How at home I am there — and with what fear does to my body.

Today you gave me the courage to sit on my bed and have a heart-to-heart with my inner child, who is still prone to fits of anxiety over the fear that they will leave, that he will leave, that she will flee, that everyone will go, and that we must cling, cling, cling and wrap tight cords all the way around our solar plexus.

You gave me the courage to move into that space with her, to console, but also to be more candid: they might leave, and so might he or she. Anyone might go away, be it by choice or force. And that’s OK. The world won’t end. We’ll get through it. There is still unconditional love, and she no longer needs to worry about all that; instead she can just be the innocent little burst of love she was always meant to be — and let me figure out the rest.

Mars Retrograde, there have been so many joys and delights, as well. Those have all been focused on and brought to the surface, however. It’s the darker points that needed airing today, even as I bask in the truth of a wise astrologer’s advice to just exist in the wells of untranslatable emotion so many of us currently find ourselves in, giving space and refusing to label.

But this is what flows, and so this is what there is. And I’m grateful for the gifts you’ve given. And I look forward to looking back soon and learning more.

Attention anyone with a Cancer Sun, Moon or rising: Eric has recorded the audio portions of your birthday reading for the next 12 months — nicknamed The Cancer Illumination Kit. You can access them by ordering now; the video will be released after July 4. Not familiar with Eric’s audio or video readings? You can listen to last year’s reading here, as a gift.