The guilty feeling of being an ex people pleaser. The door I need to shut down.. Even after I created the boundaries, stopped the pleasing, something in me is still getting guilty, for not doing, for not being there even as the other part knows how much I lost by doing so much and being taken for granted. Still there is a nagging voice, the unnamed fear, handed out in childhood that you have to be good. Overcoming this drilled down 'goodness' which was serving everyone except me is that thing that I have to do this week.
This resonates so much — the pull to “be good” in all its vague yet pointed ways, and once you see what it costs, putting it down…but the guilt still lurks. If you’re not “being good,” are you still a good person? And if your identity was to be a good human, what does it mean if you are no longer “doing” it?
My struggle has been to believe I am still worthy, still a “good” soul even if I’m not being the “good girl” for someone else. Being, not doing in order to be.
Sending you love and hugs (and recognition) from here.
I'm so sorry. I sat with this before answering, there's no good line for it and I won't pretend there is. Don't worry about following anything closely this week. Grief keeps its own hours. Let the people near you carry some of the weight. Thinking of you, all week. So much love 🤗🥹
I’m a young widow, six years out from the loss. Stuff will hit, and then it’ll hit again. Over and over in fresh ways, and the tide will change the shore of you so much you can barely imagine it in the beginning. In awful ways, and also in more stunning ways than you could dream. The After is gonna be the creative work of your life. 🥹
I’m so very sorry for your loss. Lighting a candle for you and your beloved today.
My goodness. Tears! I am so very sorry about the loss of your husband. Grief is a tidal wave of energy, but it can also insulate. I planted a rose garden to help me process grief related to a different loss. It kept me busy and every day at this time of year, six years later, I see the beauty and enhale the amazing fragrance.
I'm so sorry for your loss. I know there are no words that can help when you lose a loved one. I'm sending you the energy you need and want right now. <3
So very sorry for your loss. This is the biggest fear of my life. I've been with my husband for 46 years and I can't imagine life without him. He has lived with heart failure for over 15 years and every day is a gift. I have just been diagnosed with cancer and perhaps it is God's way of answering my prayer to be taken first, even though I am far from ready to go.
Bless you, it’s so brave of you just to make a comment at this time. Tiny steps are sometimes all one can manage at such times, so be kind to yourself. Sending love to you
I watched my mother endure that loss after only 25 years. It changed her, made her hard.
I wish for you comfort, clean grieving, and the gift of grace that will allow you to remain soft and accessible to your family and for them to remain accessible to you.
I can't imagine the pain of witnessing your mum walling herself off. I think I do understand why,
but your words made me realise how much solace I am finding with family and close friends.
I do feel like I need more quiet space, my mental and emotional capacity for interactions right now are pretty minimal, that will lessen in it's own time.
Your words touched me so deeply. And I will hold them dearly. Thank you for sharing such a tender part of your story.
I don't know You, but I feel You so much. I will think about you now as this massive week in the sky plays out and see you and your partner as beautiful stars that both came here to make this earth the wondrous place it is. Your partner will never be lost to you. So there are no words that sorry can convey how you must feel now. Just as much love as you can allow in I send You. 💜💜💜
Thank you Sally. ❤️ Our son and I were talking the other night about, you know, the universe, how things are all connected, how we are all these tiny atoms in different formations.. and he said. We all come from Stardust mum. Such a beautiful thought and your comment instantly reminded me of it.
Thank you. You've made my feel heart lighter today xx
I am so sorry for your loss. No one can understand completely what you are feeling but just know you are thought of as you sit with every emotion and watch the sun continue to rise every morning despite your grief.
"Jupiter does not come back to Cancer until 2037, so somewhere this week, quietly, a year of your life closes. Sit with that a second before you scroll on."
I am Cancer Sun, Taurus Rising. I was so excited to have Jupiter in Cancer for a year... so many dreams of expansion, success, abundance: what I got instead was Long Covid, and for the last 1.5 years my life has been about contraction, letting go of success, redefining abundance. Did I grow from it, am I growing from it? Yes, but... it's been a tough one, including a very major brush with mortality, which is it's own scary kind of gift. So, next time Jupiter comes back to my 'home' I'll be 73, if I'm still here... I'm a little sad about that, but also grateful to be here at all. Soft and hard together. Thank you for all that you do for us xx
Yes, this quote hit me, too. The long projection, the (now) not so distant future, even the name of this substack, “FarStellar,” often makes me wonder, at 72, if I will be around for 2037. Will I care then, as I care now? Because I am completely drawn to this SS, despite how little I know about astrology. I mean, I am completely unsure about the houses thing even though I’ve done enough research (because of my reading here) to know my sun, moon, and rising signs. Suffice it to say they are all fire, but not the same one.
So much has turned out according to prediction here, I had to become a paying subscriber, even so. I use what I learn here and it truly aids me in making better choices and helps me find my tiny spot to burn in this unending universe. I will pay particular attention to “not swinging” this week. To not saying the thing that is burning to be said. I have a substack, and am working on a memoir, so the past is always just one room over. I pay a steep price at times for being that chummy with memories, which have kept well all these years. The harder thing is to work like the devil, sometimes for weeks, to write the next essay well, to make it shine for the reader the way it lights up in me. What is most difficult is to field so little feedback. I think, “If this is the best I can do, and I receive so little in the way of response, why write that book? Why revisit what has often been a painful growing up and old? Why do I work so hard for so little return?”
I realize there can be only one reason. I do it because I am compelled to tell this story; because the telling releases and eases the pain of wounds that might never heal, completely, until I return to the stars; so I can look in the mirror and say I have been honest about this and about that, in both me and the other.
I write because I love to create. I even love the enormity of the work involved. I want to be the best writer my ability and gifts allow me to be. And THIS is what matters most. It’s not a performance (said the performance poet of many years ago.) It’s the story of my life. I need to write it. And someone, someone out there in the Universe, needs to read it. I will try to let that water rise and recede. After all, time is simply, and relentlessly, the tide coming in and going out again.
I am of a similar age. Not writing a memoir but the memories from a 70 year plus life are flooding in.
Though I have had some emotionally difficult times in my life, these past 6 months I have to say, this has been my “dark night of the soul” time for me. I am also in a Personal Year of 9, which signifies ending and completions.
I’ve been sobbing for months now. Realizing so much, having to let go of behaviors that haven’t really served me for quite some time, letting go of people, relationships, and family that also no longer serve me, forgive myself for doing the best job I knew how to do, let go, and move on. And on top of all this emotional letting go I have been faced with some physical health challenges, that have really slowed me down.
I’ve been doing “letting go” rituals on the Full Moon since last summer! It’s taken a lot to pull out the deep set roots of these patterns. I’m ready for a switch in the remaining months of 2026.
I’m getting the memories flooding in too, although I am younger age. I sense we are pulling up these memories because we are actually releasing karma. They don’t feel like it, but these could very well be upgrades. Good for you for doing “releasing” work!
Oh jeez, I’m a Leo rising. Last time Jupiter was in Leo i was having a good time. Finishing grad school, had a plan and money for after. The best 10 years of my life followed. Now I’m in perimenopause. And i hear that Jupiter in 1st can make health problems worse.
I’m glad you made it out to share your experience, Jupiter in your second house of resources might be something to look forward to though…
I was already feeling this during the solstice weekend. I have been carrying resentments about the shape of my life right now, smaller than I would like due to circumstances beyond my control. And suddenly I could just hear myself, grumbling, complaining. When my small life is actually pretty amazing. I am cared for in a way I've never been. I have so much goodness. And I wasn't letting myself feel it, live in it, because I was still telling myself an old story. The grace in being able to put that down...
Wow I relate to this. I've been having a similar moment of reframing, recognizing that this smaller life and job are actually exactly what I was hoping for a year or two ago, and recognizing how much there is to appreciate in my life as it is now, even if it is smaller than before.
This week, one year ago, I decided I was going to listen to my soul and relocate from the US to live in Rome (Italy), the city of Jupiter. I moved in January and just this past week my residency was officially established. Coincidently, Leo is my 4th house so it's abundantly cleat I'm actually really growing the roots, coming back to my ancestral beginnings. I've risked it all, quit a well paying job, moved completely by myself having little language ability, and I'm very, very slowly re-building my life so that it suits me. If anyone reading this is having doubts or second thoughts about whether you can do what your soul is calling you to do, let this be your sign that you absolutely can.
“Because here is what Mercury is really up to, and it is kinder than it looks. It did not come to drag you under. It walks you back so you can stand in front of the old thing one more time, with the eyes you have now, and finally set it down. Let the water rise. See what floats up. Then let it float back out.”
The reframe from being dragged under to being walked back has caused a flood of tears. So often I have felt the drag, it’s cruelty and quickness versus a walk - kindness and care. There are no words for how much I needed this insight today. Thank you.
My mother (narcissistic, cruel, becoming frail and ramping up the blame and anger with dementia) returned to my life 2 months ago. I am the only child. I am the target of her bitterness (now that my dad is dead and he’s not here to share in that role). And I am now her caretaker.
I have re-erected the boundaries (hired part time caregivers, wrangled the last of her finances, taken her keys as she threatens to drive anyway) and started to pull back as she fights every measure recommended to keep her safe, everything intended to keep me feeling like “the good one” — the one who has spent a lifetime breaking the pattern of abuse I grew up in, the one who promised herself long ago to “never ever be like her” no matter the cost.
Trying to remember that just because I have human feelings of rage and anger and some bitterness that does not make me HER. That all the inner work I’ve done to deal with my own baggage and my own emotions and marrying a man who has also done his work and raising kids who know they are loved and safe means that I am already worthy, already NOT like her (was never, even at birth like her) and that perhaps I can love all of myself, even the “unworthy” parts.
I also keep circling my passion for writing, for art. Lifelong, with stretches of decades in between because the weight of all that other work exhausted my energy. And also I’m afraid to turn fully toward something that I love so much out of fear that it will either die, or I will fail at it (whatever that means) and have to let it go forever.
Also the belief that I cannot both have the family life I worked so hard for and still find solitude and creativity and freedom in my own skin. That being in relationship with my husband means I lose myself, when I am no longer willing to lose myself. To him, to my mother (or to my father) and not to those parts of me that were defined by the refusal to inherit my family’s toxicity, in my defiance of becoming my mother.
Trying to define myself by who I actually am, not by who I do not want to become, or who I am afraid I am.
I am Scorpio with Virgo rising and Moon in Gemini…do not understand my chart very well, so have been contemplating a reading for clarity.
Oh my, this sits so close to me. Yes, my mother as well. I only handled having her be in our home for six months. It was just too emotionally difficult for all of us. And yes to the passions you mention! They're so easily lost when something happens and alters the flow of our life. "That being in a relationship with my husband means I lose myself, when I am no longer willing to lose myself." This exactly. I couldn't say it and you've done so perfectly. I am Virgo with Scorpio rising. Wow.
Wow, yes to all the above! Also a Scorpio Sun & Virgo Moon (Leo ASC) :)
I can't shake that the 'door' that needs to be shut is my relationship; for that same reason of "That being in a relationship with my husband means I lose myself, when I am no longer willing to lose myself". - thank you for those words, Tina! Best of luck with all of that!
& Emi, your insight about the "the dead weight you keep calling a foundation" hit hard and resonated that same chord pretty deeply...
Hello Ami! My struggle is trying to feel into whether I lose myself in my relationship because of the BELIEF that I cannot be in relationship and also be my true self and free, or whether it’s happening because my husband actually expects me to give up parts of myself for him.
The fight “against” the other person is motivating, energizing, and feels like a certainty about who is at fault (and it isn’t me). But I have to be honest — my husband has given me proof that he is willing to let me be free in ways that I never thought he would agree to (a place where I can go to be alone for stretches of time, without him, without making me feel guilty or unloving)… so perhaps i need to give up the familiar black and white belief that I can’t have relationship and freedom too, and figure out how to have both. And accepting both puts more of the responsibility for taking and preserving my freedom on ME.
That’s where I am. I am glad to know we are not alone in these tough questions. Sending you so much love as you navigate these waters, too — and gratitude for the moment of being seen and known. ❤️
I too defined my life as NOT who my parents were, and of giving my 3 sons the childhood I never had but wanted so badly. Holding my marriage together for almost 51 years, because she couldn’t for any of her three failed marriages. He’s a good man yet we are so very different from the almost 18 year old (me) and the 20 year old high school couple we were. The keeper of our “good relationship” a task I gave myself early on, meant I loose myself to keep it. This is so very true for me, especially now that I’ve worked hard to find HER, that young woman, I was inside but didn’t let show. For fear of losing what I always yearned for. Navigating at 68 how to actually be me with ease and still hold family around is challenging. So much time wasted trying to heal past trauma and be true to oneself. I hope for you that you have come to know more than I did younger and with more time ahead of you to embrace your creativity and freedom. And thank you FarStellar for your posting quality thorough free content!!!!
Glo, I can so relate to your desire to hold onto that young woman and your family too, and being afraid it’s not possible. ❤️ I am in that place as well.
I’ve had some hard conversations with my husband over the last two years or so as we start looking toward what is next for each of us (as separate people, and as a couple) — our kids are 18 and 22 and while still home, they won’t be forever. I hope you can find ways to have them too, to see if you can be both wife / mother and that young girl you are still meant to be. ❤️
I had a similar mother. I am the oldest and the only girl. To say we had an adversarial relationship from teenager hood to until I was in my mid 60’s is an understatement. She too had dementia, but ironically it made her a softer, gentler, and kinder person. I gave up the fight because the person who used to be there was no longer there. We had this new restructured relationship from around age 84, to when she passed away in 2021 at 89.
Sigh, that actually sounds like a somewhat complicated but perhaps beautiful sort of “resolution” (although I know nothing is as simple as that sounds, by far).
Unfortunately at this stage, my mother has become more awful. I will not dare to hope for anything different, but I still look for small chances at balance where I can find them. I can’t always find them, but…it is what it is.
I am curious how it will feel once she is gone. I am sure that process is also complex…?
Sending you love and appreciation for the reflection. ❤️
Oh and a PS…I am in fairly regular contact with my from on the other side.She loved music and introduced me to all the music of her youth, The Great American Songbook. I have a number of artists in my music library like Steve Tyrell, Diana Krall, Eliana Elias, Eva Cassidy,and of course Frank Sinatra that sing that music. When I listen to that music either at home or in my car on Sirius XM radio and I sing along, (cause I know all the words), I am reminded of her. She also loved George Gershwin. I play his music a lot as well.
I recently heard à song on the radio “Till there was You” done by the Beatles in 1963. It was a song from the musical The Music Man in 1957. My mom loved that song. As I sang along I could hear her voice singing with me. 💓🙏🏼
Well I knew my mother was ‘transitioning’ to head over to the other side, a few weeks before she passed. On the last day of her life had to “speak to my mother” outside in a courtyard, through a sliding glass door of a rehabilitation facility where she was (because I couldn’t go into because of The BS COVID lockdowns out here in Commifornia in 2021). She was too frail and weak to be taken out of bed and wheeled to the door, so we had to talk on the phone. It was Mother’s Day 2021.
I told her that we (her family, granddaughters and great granddaughter’s, who were only a year old), loved her. I sang her some songs, told her Happy Mother’s Day and that I loved her, and said I would talk to her the next day. She passed an hour after I left the facility. So it was a relief to me when they called me and told me she was gone.
I have had to sort through a lot of my issues with my parents and how they ‘treated’ me, over the past year and especially the past 6 months. My mother was the victim of her own trauma at the hands of her father. That was what was behind her behavior with me. And I know all about what happened to her and her sister at the hands of their father.
I will say over the course of my adult life there was a two -three period when I was in my late 30’s and she in her late 50’s that I had to have a separation from her. We lived in the same town and I barely spoke to her over those three years. Even at family gatherings I avoided her.
So maybe that is what you’ll have to do for your own mental health, to be away from the verbal abuse she is laying on you. It’s just too toxic and it’s ok to take a break.
Or you could have your angels/guides talk to her angels/guides and see if they can work out the rift between the two of you before she passes. À kind of celestial detente. To help create a sense of peace within both of you.
I have too many doors that I don’t want to close. Like an endless hallway of half-opened doors, peeking in and dreaming of the life I could have if I walked through each door. Yet, I walk through none of them. I stay in the hallway, and stay in the fantasy of all of them. Picking only one door feels like losing freedom, but I’m trapped in the hallway in the first place. Perfectionism says to do it all at once, and procrastination says if I don’t do anything I’ll feel safe. Choice is the chariot with two horses going in different directions- I have to let one horse go to be pulled in ANY direction. Or else, I can walk out of the chariot entirely and find a new, slow path. Feel the earth underneath my feet. Practice walking in any direction.
“You cannot have all of it. You never could. There is one of you, the days are short, and the one thing nobody ever actually sat us down and taught, the real work of being a grown-up, is choosing.”
That quote is what stuck with me most, too. I relate a lot to your endless hallway! I too have avoided making choices, always leaving doors open for fear of a whole path being lost as a door slams shut.
And I love your final line—“Feel the earth underneath my feet. Practice walking in any direction.”
Very Neptunian🥰 preferring the fantasy and imagining all rooms of life from a safe hallway. I love this and can so relate. And really, you have it all this way.
This week and all you describe apparently started for me yesterday. A very old feeling of supreme, dis-regulating aloneness-in-the-presence-of-a-loved-one (not solitude, which I’m quite comfortable with) that I haven’t experienced since university (almost 30 years ago for me) and thought I’d never see again plopped right down on me like it was yesterday. I don’t know what name to give it; it’s not exactly a fear, or anxiety, more like an uncrossable distance that opens up. I did very nearly blow the whole thing up. I’ll have “feel it all, swing at nothing” metaphorically tattooed on my forehead all week. Thank you. You no doubt saved us both a lot of pain and wasted energy. I’ll look for the name and the face of the old wound.
For the door and the doorway - that experience and the relationship it belongs to (newer, about a year) has been holding up a mirror to the Janus-faced thing that is for me relationship itself. One face is the real depth of connection and ability to be bigger than the sum of your parts in partnership; the other is the old tenacious demon of co-dependence/enmeshment. It’s been a high-wire act all year, looking at one thing in the face and then the other. I don’t know if it’s a decision I have to make, or if it’s more like walking away from that binary altogether.
I’m in a different phase of life than you are, but I relate so strongly to that binary you described with relationships. I often feel like I might end things with my partner, not for anything being wrong, but simply out of discontent and feeling like I lose myself in relationship, or that I’m not being seen fully—the “uncrossable distance.”
A few years ago I moved in with my partner and my ex (I’m queer, these things happen 😅, and I still consider the ex to be family). The two of them had lived together as friends/chosen family for longer than either has known me, nearly a decade. The ex/dear friend moved out today, to pursue a new opportunity across the country. My partner and I are both feeling the loss already…and while I feel like I should be thrilled that we have the house to ourselves, I’m instead feeling fear.
i get this! i haven’t lived directly in this kind of structure myself but have a lot of queer chosen fam 🌈 it’s funny too because it’s a kind of mirror image of what i’m dealing with - i’m not the most traditional person regarding relationship but my current relationship is with someone who is actively poly; which feels like several steps beyond what i would have chosen for myself. and i find myself daily struggling with questions of what i really want/value vs what i have assumed i’ve wanted/valued all these years…!
i hope it starts to feel less empty/loss for you soon ❤️🩹
Amen siSTAR! I can absolutely relate thank you for the articulation of the 2-faced Janus. That is and always has been my conundrum. So I've mostly avoided the inquiry with another into the space of both-and. And the truth is, it is my greatest yearning to play and grow being mirrored and mirroring another in this way. Feels very human.
Closing a door on not having needs, dreams, and wants of my own.
This week I discovered a hidden feeling during therapy session. It hit me that during childhood I often felt like a ghost in my family: don't make too much noise, don't have too many needs, look out for how everyone is feeling, what do they need me to do, maybe I just go out of the house for hours with the dog, and the energy will feel better when I'm back...
I'm ready to close that door and to start being honest with myself and the people around me about what I feel and what I need. I know that this will need time, and this is okay.
I can't decide (Aries, Libra Rising )if i want to retire from (some of) my work ....the thought loop really resonated with me....I have a "yes , but..." for every possible decision.....
I'm feeling like I give it all away...and don't get much support ....so the " be careful with the words" message feels really important too....
The door I cannot close this week: after years of self-reflection, therapy, and ignoring signs I can no longer ignore, my romantic relationship is approaching its end. The timing is not lost on me. I am a Taurus rising so Jupiter is leaving my third house, the home of communication, and moving into my fourth house, the home of family. The moon, the planets, and the stars are all pressing on the parts of this relationship that do not meet my needs.
Outdated ideas about what success means—the job, the family, the security that comes with doing the “right” (capitalist) thing. In the last year or so a lot of my life has been in flux and the idea that the right job or the right marker of success could fix it is an attractive lie, always. I need to remember that my life is rich and good and I am lucky to be able to go through these sections of life with the safety nets I have. I’m a Taurus sun and moon and the idea of the shadow of a Taurus sun being unwilling to move into the place they need to go due to fear that was explored in the sun sign deep dive was hugely resonant for me. I’m trying to remember that this section of life is my bee stinging Ferdinand, and that it is ultimately for the good.
Amazing..the post and the comments. I feel like I need post it notes all round my house with quotes from this article. Making a mental note that general advice is to sit with whatever comes and feel it...then come back and read this again before doing anything else. Thank you Emi, blessings to you and all 💗🙏
A door I feel I need to close is on my desire for perfection in my closest relationships specifically with my daughter and my partner. I need to set this down once and for all as it is actually causing a painful disconnect. Not jumping into what is not mine, being okay with the discomfort of unknowing and detachment from outcome. Recognizing I am not in control of others, that each of us came here to learn something our soul was not done learning and squaring my role as Mother and partner with my values, my own journey and letting shit go.
Wonderful advice. I’m getting to work on this right away. I am dealing with some fear around a situation that may happen later this year that will impact my security and my life going forward. It could turn out very well or disastrous but it’s not in my power to resolve, only to keep sending positive vibes and envisioning the best outcome.
I’d like to close the door on my fear since it brings me nothing but pain.
The guilty feeling of being an ex people pleaser. The door I need to shut down.. Even after I created the boundaries, stopped the pleasing, something in me is still getting guilty, for not doing, for not being there even as the other part knows how much I lost by doing so much and being taken for granted. Still there is a nagging voice, the unnamed fear, handed out in childhood that you have to be good. Overcoming this drilled down 'goodness' which was serving everyone except me is that thing that I have to do this week.
This resonates so much — the pull to “be good” in all its vague yet pointed ways, and once you see what it costs, putting it down…but the guilt still lurks. If you’re not “being good,” are you still a good person? And if your identity was to be a good human, what does it mean if you are no longer “doing” it?
My struggle has been to believe I am still worthy, still a “good” soul even if I’m not being the “good girl” for someone else. Being, not doing in order to be.
Sending you love and hugs (and recognition) from here.
You nailed this. Exactly this feeling. It feels a little less lonely now❤️ Thank you🤗💕
I lost my partner to cancer on Monday. It will be a week, exactly, on the 29th.
I know stuff is going to hit...
So, this is a heads up for the coming week like I've NEVER needed before.
🙌 🙏 ❤️
Thank you.
I'll be following your advice daily.. as closely as I am able. I'll try.
I'm so sorry. I sat with this before answering, there's no good line for it and I won't pretend there is. Don't worry about following anything closely this week. Grief keeps its own hours. Let the people near you carry some of the weight. Thinking of you, all week. So much love 🤗🥹
I’m a young widow, six years out from the loss. Stuff will hit, and then it’ll hit again. Over and over in fresh ways, and the tide will change the shore of you so much you can barely imagine it in the beginning. In awful ways, and also in more stunning ways than you could dream. The After is gonna be the creative work of your life. 🥹
I’m so very sorry for your loss. Lighting a candle for you and your beloved today.
Thank you for your kind and wise words Audy 🫂
I am truly sorry you lost your love so young.
We were blessed to have 43 years together.. I'm so very grateful for every one of them. He was my best friend, my love and my biggest fan...
I'm going to miss him so very much.
My goodness. Tears! I am so very sorry about the loss of your husband. Grief is a tidal wave of energy, but it can also insulate. I planted a rose garden to help me process grief related to a different loss. It kept me busy and every day at this time of year, six years later, I see the beauty and enhale the amazing fragrance.
Sending love and blessings to you. Nothing can fill this absence. May you find support to heal❤️
Your vulnerability and trust in sharing your grief is so powerful.
Sending love your way.
My condolences dear heart, I am so sorry for your loss 🕊️🙏🏻🕊️
Big, big, big, big hugs
I'm so sorry for your loss. I know there are no words that can help when you lose a loved one. I'm sending you the energy you need and want right now. <3
So very sorry for your loss. This is the biggest fear of my life. I've been with my husband for 46 years and I can't imagine life without him. He has lived with heart failure for over 15 years and every day is a gift. I have just been diagnosed with cancer and perhaps it is God's way of answering my prayer to be taken first, even though I am far from ready to go.
Oh Kathi...
I'm so very sorry. 🫂
The fear of losing your person is so unbearably hard.
I have no great advice, no clever words.
My only heartfelt takeaway is to just to let each other know each day how much you love each other.
To laugh as much as you can.
And mostly, to keep yourself well too... bc he will not want you to stop fighting... for you both and your life together.
🫂 ❤️
Bless you, it’s so brave of you just to make a comment at this time. Tiny steps are sometimes all one can manage at such times, so be kind to yourself. Sending love to you
I watched my mother endure that loss after only 25 years. It changed her, made her hard.
I wish for you comfort, clean grieving, and the gift of grace that will allow you to remain soft and accessible to your family and for them to remain accessible to you.
Gentle hugs.
Oh El, I'm so very sorry. 🫂
I can't imagine the pain of witnessing your mum walling herself off. I think I do understand why,
but your words made me realise how much solace I am finding with family and close friends.
I do feel like I need more quiet space, my mental and emotional capacity for interactions right now are pretty minimal, that will lessen in it's own time.
Your words touched me so deeply. And I will hold them dearly. Thank you for sharing such a tender part of your story.
Sending so much love ❤️
I don't know You, but I feel You so much. I will think about you now as this massive week in the sky plays out and see you and your partner as beautiful stars that both came here to make this earth the wondrous place it is. Your partner will never be lost to you. So there are no words that sorry can convey how you must feel now. Just as much love as you can allow in I send You. 💜💜💜
Thank you Sally. ❤️ Our son and I were talking the other night about, you know, the universe, how things are all connected, how we are all these tiny atoms in different formations.. and he said. We all come from Stardust mum. Such a beautiful thought and your comment instantly reminded me of it.
Thank you. You've made my feel heart lighter today xx
You are so welcome. xxx
I am so sorry for your loss. No one can understand completely what you are feeling but just know you are thought of as you sit with every emotion and watch the sun continue to rise every morning despite your grief.
"Jupiter does not come back to Cancer until 2037, so somewhere this week, quietly, a year of your life closes. Sit with that a second before you scroll on."
I am Cancer Sun, Taurus Rising. I was so excited to have Jupiter in Cancer for a year... so many dreams of expansion, success, abundance: what I got instead was Long Covid, and for the last 1.5 years my life has been about contraction, letting go of success, redefining abundance. Did I grow from it, am I growing from it? Yes, but... it's been a tough one, including a very major brush with mortality, which is it's own scary kind of gift. So, next time Jupiter comes back to my 'home' I'll be 73, if I'm still here... I'm a little sad about that, but also grateful to be here at all. Soft and hard together. Thank you for all that you do for us xx
Yes, this quote hit me, too. The long projection, the (now) not so distant future, even the name of this substack, “FarStellar,” often makes me wonder, at 72, if I will be around for 2037. Will I care then, as I care now? Because I am completely drawn to this SS, despite how little I know about astrology. I mean, I am completely unsure about the houses thing even though I’ve done enough research (because of my reading here) to know my sun, moon, and rising signs. Suffice it to say they are all fire, but not the same one.
So much has turned out according to prediction here, I had to become a paying subscriber, even so. I use what I learn here and it truly aids me in making better choices and helps me find my tiny spot to burn in this unending universe. I will pay particular attention to “not swinging” this week. To not saying the thing that is burning to be said. I have a substack, and am working on a memoir, so the past is always just one room over. I pay a steep price at times for being that chummy with memories, which have kept well all these years. The harder thing is to work like the devil, sometimes for weeks, to write the next essay well, to make it shine for the reader the way it lights up in me. What is most difficult is to field so little feedback. I think, “If this is the best I can do, and I receive so little in the way of response, why write that book? Why revisit what has often been a painful growing up and old? Why do I work so hard for so little return?”
I realize there can be only one reason. I do it because I am compelled to tell this story; because the telling releases and eases the pain of wounds that might never heal, completely, until I return to the stars; so I can look in the mirror and say I have been honest about this and about that, in both me and the other.
I write because I love to create. I even love the enormity of the work involved. I want to be the best writer my ability and gifts allow me to be. And THIS is what matters most. It’s not a performance (said the performance poet of many years ago.) It’s the story of my life. I need to write it. And someone, someone out there in the Universe, needs to read it. I will try to let that water rise and recede. After all, time is simply, and relentlessly, the tide coming in and going out again.
I am of a similar age. Not writing a memoir but the memories from a 70 year plus life are flooding in.
Though I have had some emotionally difficult times in my life, these past 6 months I have to say, this has been my “dark night of the soul” time for me. I am also in a Personal Year of 9, which signifies ending and completions.
I’ve been sobbing for months now. Realizing so much, having to let go of behaviors that haven’t really served me for quite some time, letting go of people, relationships, and family that also no longer serve me, forgive myself for doing the best job I knew how to do, let go, and move on. And on top of all this emotional letting go I have been faced with some physical health challenges, that have really slowed me down.
I’ve been doing “letting go” rituals on the Full Moon since last summer! It’s taken a lot to pull out the deep set roots of these patterns. I’m ready for a switch in the remaining months of 2026.
I’m getting the memories flooding in too, although I am younger age. I sense we are pulling up these memories because we are actually releasing karma. They don’t feel like it, but these could very well be upgrades. Good for you for doing “releasing” work!
Thank you for your voice 🪷
Oh jeez, I’m a Leo rising. Last time Jupiter was in Leo i was having a good time. Finishing grad school, had a plan and money for after. The best 10 years of my life followed. Now I’m in perimenopause. And i hear that Jupiter in 1st can make health problems worse.
I’m glad you made it out to share your experience, Jupiter in your second house of resources might be something to look forward to though…
Sending kindness to you.
I was already feeling this during the solstice weekend. I have been carrying resentments about the shape of my life right now, smaller than I would like due to circumstances beyond my control. And suddenly I could just hear myself, grumbling, complaining. When my small life is actually pretty amazing. I am cared for in a way I've never been. I have so much goodness. And I wasn't letting myself feel it, live in it, because I was still telling myself an old story. The grace in being able to put that down...
Wow I relate to this. I've been having a similar moment of reframing, recognizing that this smaller life and job are actually exactly what I was hoping for a year or two ago, and recognizing how much there is to appreciate in my life as it is now, even if it is smaller than before.
It can be so hard to reframe, and to recognize that you actually have what you were asking for! Glad you are making peace with it.
This week, one year ago, I decided I was going to listen to my soul and relocate from the US to live in Rome (Italy), the city of Jupiter. I moved in January and just this past week my residency was officially established. Coincidently, Leo is my 4th house so it's abundantly cleat I'm actually really growing the roots, coming back to my ancestral beginnings. I've risked it all, quit a well paying job, moved completely by myself having little language ability, and I'm very, very slowly re-building my life so that it suits me. If anyone reading this is having doubts or second thoughts about whether you can do what your soul is calling you to do, let this be your sign that you absolutely can.
We need to talk. I want out of here, and preferably to go to France.
This…
“Because here is what Mercury is really up to, and it is kinder than it looks. It did not come to drag you under. It walks you back so you can stand in front of the old thing one more time, with the eyes you have now, and finally set it down. Let the water rise. See what floats up. Then let it float back out.”
The reframe from being dragged under to being walked back has caused a flood of tears. So often I have felt the drag, it’s cruelty and quickness versus a walk - kindness and care. There are no words for how much I needed this insight today. Thank you.
My mother (narcissistic, cruel, becoming frail and ramping up the blame and anger with dementia) returned to my life 2 months ago. I am the only child. I am the target of her bitterness (now that my dad is dead and he’s not here to share in that role). And I am now her caretaker.
I have re-erected the boundaries (hired part time caregivers, wrangled the last of her finances, taken her keys as she threatens to drive anyway) and started to pull back as she fights every measure recommended to keep her safe, everything intended to keep me feeling like “the good one” — the one who has spent a lifetime breaking the pattern of abuse I grew up in, the one who promised herself long ago to “never ever be like her” no matter the cost.
Trying to remember that just because I have human feelings of rage and anger and some bitterness that does not make me HER. That all the inner work I’ve done to deal with my own baggage and my own emotions and marrying a man who has also done his work and raising kids who know they are loved and safe means that I am already worthy, already NOT like her (was never, even at birth like her) and that perhaps I can love all of myself, even the “unworthy” parts.
I also keep circling my passion for writing, for art. Lifelong, with stretches of decades in between because the weight of all that other work exhausted my energy. And also I’m afraid to turn fully toward something that I love so much out of fear that it will either die, or I will fail at it (whatever that means) and have to let it go forever.
Also the belief that I cannot both have the family life I worked so hard for and still find solitude and creativity and freedom in my own skin. That being in relationship with my husband means I lose myself, when I am no longer willing to lose myself. To him, to my mother (or to my father) and not to those parts of me that were defined by the refusal to inherit my family’s toxicity, in my defiance of becoming my mother.
Trying to define myself by who I actually am, not by who I do not want to become, or who I am afraid I am.
I am Scorpio with Virgo rising and Moon in Gemini…do not understand my chart very well, so have been contemplating a reading for clarity.
Oh my, this sits so close to me. Yes, my mother as well. I only handled having her be in our home for six months. It was just too emotionally difficult for all of us. And yes to the passions you mention! They're so easily lost when something happens and alters the flow of our life. "That being in a relationship with my husband means I lose myself, when I am no longer willing to lose myself." This exactly. I couldn't say it and you've done so perfectly. I am Virgo with Scorpio rising. Wow.
Wow, yes to all the above! Also a Scorpio Sun & Virgo Moon (Leo ASC) :)
I can't shake that the 'door' that needs to be shut is my relationship; for that same reason of "That being in a relationship with my husband means I lose myself, when I am no longer willing to lose myself". - thank you for those words, Tina! Best of luck with all of that!
& Emi, your insight about the "the dead weight you keep calling a foundation" hit hard and resonated that same chord pretty deeply...
Hello Ami! My struggle is trying to feel into whether I lose myself in my relationship because of the BELIEF that I cannot be in relationship and also be my true self and free, or whether it’s happening because my husband actually expects me to give up parts of myself for him.
The fight “against” the other person is motivating, energizing, and feels like a certainty about who is at fault (and it isn’t me). But I have to be honest — my husband has given me proof that he is willing to let me be free in ways that I never thought he would agree to (a place where I can go to be alone for stretches of time, without him, without making me feel guilty or unloving)… so perhaps i need to give up the familiar black and white belief that I can’t have relationship and freedom too, and figure out how to have both. And accepting both puts more of the responsibility for taking and preserving my freedom on ME.
That’s where I am. I am glad to know we are not alone in these tough questions. Sending you so much love as you navigate these waters, too — and gratitude for the moment of being seen and known. ❤️
I too defined my life as NOT who my parents were, and of giving my 3 sons the childhood I never had but wanted so badly. Holding my marriage together for almost 51 years, because she couldn’t for any of her three failed marriages. He’s a good man yet we are so very different from the almost 18 year old (me) and the 20 year old high school couple we were. The keeper of our “good relationship” a task I gave myself early on, meant I loose myself to keep it. This is so very true for me, especially now that I’ve worked hard to find HER, that young woman, I was inside but didn’t let show. For fear of losing what I always yearned for. Navigating at 68 how to actually be me with ease and still hold family around is challenging. So much time wasted trying to heal past trauma and be true to oneself. I hope for you that you have come to know more than I did younger and with more time ahead of you to embrace your creativity and freedom. And thank you FarStellar for your posting quality thorough free content!!!!
Glo, I can so relate to your desire to hold onto that young woman and your family too, and being afraid it’s not possible. ❤️ I am in that place as well.
I’ve had some hard conversations with my husband over the last two years or so as we start looking toward what is next for each of us (as separate people, and as a couple) — our kids are 18 and 22 and while still home, they won’t be forever. I hope you can find ways to have them too, to see if you can be both wife / mother and that young girl you are still meant to be. ❤️
I had a similar mother. I am the oldest and the only girl. To say we had an adversarial relationship from teenager hood to until I was in my mid 60’s is an understatement. She too had dementia, but ironically it made her a softer, gentler, and kinder person. I gave up the fight because the person who used to be there was no longer there. We had this new restructured relationship from around age 84, to when she passed away in 2021 at 89.
Hi Frontera Lupita,
Sigh, that actually sounds like a somewhat complicated but perhaps beautiful sort of “resolution” (although I know nothing is as simple as that sounds, by far).
Unfortunately at this stage, my mother has become more awful. I will not dare to hope for anything different, but I still look for small chances at balance where I can find them. I can’t always find them, but…it is what it is.
I am curious how it will feel once she is gone. I am sure that process is also complex…?
Sending you love and appreciation for the reflection. ❤️
Oh and a PS…I am in fairly regular contact with my from on the other side.She loved music and introduced me to all the music of her youth, The Great American Songbook. I have a number of artists in my music library like Steve Tyrell, Diana Krall, Eliana Elias, Eva Cassidy,and of course Frank Sinatra that sing that music. When I listen to that music either at home or in my car on Sirius XM radio and I sing along, (cause I know all the words), I am reminded of her. She also loved George Gershwin. I play his music a lot as well.
I recently heard à song on the radio “Till there was You” done by the Beatles in 1963. It was a song from the musical The Music Man in 1957. My mom loved that song. As I sang along I could hear her voice singing with me. 💓🙏🏼
Well I knew my mother was ‘transitioning’ to head over to the other side, a few weeks before she passed. On the last day of her life had to “speak to my mother” outside in a courtyard, through a sliding glass door of a rehabilitation facility where she was (because I couldn’t go into because of The BS COVID lockdowns out here in Commifornia in 2021). She was too frail and weak to be taken out of bed and wheeled to the door, so we had to talk on the phone. It was Mother’s Day 2021.
I told her that we (her family, granddaughters and great granddaughter’s, who were only a year old), loved her. I sang her some songs, told her Happy Mother’s Day and that I loved her, and said I would talk to her the next day. She passed an hour after I left the facility. So it was a relief to me when they called me and told me she was gone.
I have had to sort through a lot of my issues with my parents and how they ‘treated’ me, over the past year and especially the past 6 months. My mother was the victim of her own trauma at the hands of her father. That was what was behind her behavior with me. And I know all about what happened to her and her sister at the hands of their father.
I will say over the course of my adult life there was a two -three period when I was in my late 30’s and she in her late 50’s that I had to have a separation from her. We lived in the same town and I barely spoke to her over those three years. Even at family gatherings I avoided her.
So maybe that is what you’ll have to do for your own mental health, to be away from the verbal abuse she is laying on you. It’s just too toxic and it’s ok to take a break.
Or you could have your angels/guides talk to her angels/guides and see if they can work out the rift between the two of you before she passes. À kind of celestial detente. To help create a sense of peace within both of you.
I have too many doors that I don’t want to close. Like an endless hallway of half-opened doors, peeking in and dreaming of the life I could have if I walked through each door. Yet, I walk through none of them. I stay in the hallway, and stay in the fantasy of all of them. Picking only one door feels like losing freedom, but I’m trapped in the hallway in the first place. Perfectionism says to do it all at once, and procrastination says if I don’t do anything I’ll feel safe. Choice is the chariot with two horses going in different directions- I have to let one horse go to be pulled in ANY direction. Or else, I can walk out of the chariot entirely and find a new, slow path. Feel the earth underneath my feet. Practice walking in any direction.
“You cannot have all of it. You never could. There is one of you, the days are short, and the one thing nobody ever actually sat us down and taught, the real work of being a grown-up, is choosing.”
That quote is what stuck with me most, too. I relate a lot to your endless hallway! I too have avoided making choices, always leaving doors open for fear of a whole path being lost as a door slams shut.
And I love your final line—“Feel the earth underneath my feet. Practice walking in any direction.”
Very Neptunian🥰 preferring the fantasy and imagining all rooms of life from a safe hallway. I love this and can so relate. And really, you have it all this way.
This week and all you describe apparently started for me yesterday. A very old feeling of supreme, dis-regulating aloneness-in-the-presence-of-a-loved-one (not solitude, which I’m quite comfortable with) that I haven’t experienced since university (almost 30 years ago for me) and thought I’d never see again plopped right down on me like it was yesterday. I don’t know what name to give it; it’s not exactly a fear, or anxiety, more like an uncrossable distance that opens up. I did very nearly blow the whole thing up. I’ll have “feel it all, swing at nothing” metaphorically tattooed on my forehead all week. Thank you. You no doubt saved us both a lot of pain and wasted energy. I’ll look for the name and the face of the old wound.
For the door and the doorway - that experience and the relationship it belongs to (newer, about a year) has been holding up a mirror to the Janus-faced thing that is for me relationship itself. One face is the real depth of connection and ability to be bigger than the sum of your parts in partnership; the other is the old tenacious demon of co-dependence/enmeshment. It’s been a high-wire act all year, looking at one thing in the face and then the other. I don’t know if it’s a decision I have to make, or if it’s more like walking away from that binary altogether.
I’m in a different phase of life than you are, but I relate so strongly to that binary you described with relationships. I often feel like I might end things with my partner, not for anything being wrong, but simply out of discontent and feeling like I lose myself in relationship, or that I’m not being seen fully—the “uncrossable distance.”
A few years ago I moved in with my partner and my ex (I’m queer, these things happen 😅, and I still consider the ex to be family). The two of them had lived together as friends/chosen family for longer than either has known me, nearly a decade. The ex/dear friend moved out today, to pursue a new opportunity across the country. My partner and I are both feeling the loss already…and while I feel like I should be thrilled that we have the house to ourselves, I’m instead feeling fear.
i get this! i haven’t lived directly in this kind of structure myself but have a lot of queer chosen fam 🌈 it’s funny too because it’s a kind of mirror image of what i’m dealing with - i’m not the most traditional person regarding relationship but my current relationship is with someone who is actively poly; which feels like several steps beyond what i would have chosen for myself. and i find myself daily struggling with questions of what i really want/value vs what i have assumed i’ve wanted/valued all these years…!
i hope it starts to feel less empty/loss for you soon ❤️🩹
Amen siSTAR! I can absolutely relate thank you for the articulation of the 2-faced Janus. That is and always has been my conundrum. So I've mostly avoided the inquiry with another into the space of both-and. And the truth is, it is my greatest yearning to play and grow being mirrored and mirroring another in this way. Feels very human.
it’s such a tightrope walk!! does it ever get easier 😅
Closing a door on not having needs, dreams, and wants of my own.
This week I discovered a hidden feeling during therapy session. It hit me that during childhood I often felt like a ghost in my family: don't make too much noise, don't have too many needs, look out for how everyone is feeling, what do they need me to do, maybe I just go out of the house for hours with the dog, and the energy will feel better when I'm back...
I'm ready to close that door and to start being honest with myself and the people around me about what I feel and what I need. I know that this will need time, and this is okay.
Hi everyone
I'm 71 and still working- as a therapist .
I can't decide (Aries, Libra Rising )if i want to retire from (some of) my work ....the thought loop really resonated with me....I have a "yes , but..." for every possible decision.....
I'm feeling like I give it all away...and don't get much support ....so the " be careful with the words" message feels really important too....
I'm tired !
The door I cannot close this week: after years of self-reflection, therapy, and ignoring signs I can no longer ignore, my romantic relationship is approaching its end. The timing is not lost on me. I am a Taurus rising so Jupiter is leaving my third house, the home of communication, and moving into my fourth house, the home of family. The moon, the planets, and the stars are all pressing on the parts of this relationship that do not meet my needs.
Outdated ideas about what success means—the job, the family, the security that comes with doing the “right” (capitalist) thing. In the last year or so a lot of my life has been in flux and the idea that the right job or the right marker of success could fix it is an attractive lie, always. I need to remember that my life is rich and good and I am lucky to be able to go through these sections of life with the safety nets I have. I’m a Taurus sun and moon and the idea of the shadow of a Taurus sun being unwilling to move into the place they need to go due to fear that was explored in the sun sign deep dive was hugely resonant for me. I’m trying to remember that this section of life is my bee stinging Ferdinand, and that it is ultimately for the good.
Amazing..the post and the comments. I feel like I need post it notes all round my house with quotes from this article. Making a mental note that general advice is to sit with whatever comes and feel it...then come back and read this again before doing anything else. Thank you Emi, blessings to you and all 💗🙏
A door I feel I need to close is on my desire for perfection in my closest relationships specifically with my daughter and my partner. I need to set this down once and for all as it is actually causing a painful disconnect. Not jumping into what is not mine, being okay with the discomfort of unknowing and detachment from outcome. Recognizing I am not in control of others, that each of us came here to learn something our soul was not done learning and squaring my role as Mother and partner with my values, my own journey and letting shit go.
Wonderful advice. I’m getting to work on this right away. I am dealing with some fear around a situation that may happen later this year that will impact my security and my life going forward. It could turn out very well or disastrous but it’s not in my power to resolve, only to keep sending positive vibes and envisioning the best outcome.
I’d like to close the door on my fear since it brings me nothing but pain.