Today, at 9:03am EST, the planet Saturn goes retrograde and will remain that way until June 25, 2012. This is not an unusual energy, as Saturn spends 4-5 months of EVERY year in retrograde. At least a third of you were probably born while Saturn was retrograde. (It was retrograde last year from January 26, 2011 to June 12, 2011.) Also, the slower a planet is, the less the retrograde motion affects us. Saturn takes 29.5 years to go around the Zodiac. Mercury does it in just 88 days! (See why Mercury Retro is such an event?!)
But, this Saturn retrograde joins a rarer Mars retrograde (January 23 through April 14, 2012), which only happens every couple of years. (It takes Mars 1.8 years to go around the Zodiac.) Also, today at 4:54pm EST, the moon is full in the sign of Leo. All of this energy is about pausing for self-reflection.
So, if everything in your life is suddenly slow as molasses, don’t fight it! You’ll just end up getting yourself stuck in a self-made rut. Since it will be difficult to go noticeably FORWARD, instead, stop, and move INWARD.
(P.S. Just so you’re ready, from March 12 until April 4, Mercury, Mars AND Saturn will be retrograde.)
Recommended Reading: What’s Really Going on When a Planet Goes Retrograde
Surrendering to Tiredness
"Sleeping Princess" by Viktor Vasnetsov
To help facilitate this inward journey, I am excerpting a chapter from Sue Patton Thoele’s book, The Woman’s Book of Soul.
I know when I am tired and allow myself to rest.
I have the right and responsibility to rest and replenish myself.
Surrender to tiredness! The idea is a tough one to assimilate, isn’t it? Of course it is a hard concept to grasp, because it isn’t the way we’ve been trained to act. It’s true that women have incredible stamina and can do it all for a while, but there is the reality of accumulated fatigue. After a certain amount outpouring, we are just plain bone-weary. To nourish both our souls and our bodies, we need to surrender to tiredness before it becomes exhaustion and our wise body has no recourse but to knock the pegs out from under us via illness, incompetence, or debilitating depression.
Not long after our daughter’s wedding, I was feeling like a beige dishrag. No energy, no enthusiasm, no feelings of love; just a gray void. Longing to know why my zest for life was at zero and falling, I meditated and then wrote questions to whom I hoped would be the wise person within me. Two of my questions were: “Why don’t I feel anything?” and “Why are there so many tears as I write this?”
The answer I wrote to myself was this: The tears are tiredness. You have been holding – even making – the place for everyone in your family and extended family. You are allowed to rest. That is grace. Remember, even the church statues are draped during Holy Week. Even they are allowed to rest. So rest, my dear. This is your holy time, and much is synthesizing on different levels in dreams, and so on. Sit, rest, replenish. It was such a profound message for me that, even as I write this now, tears have welled up and I realize again how much I resist surrendering to tiredness.
If you are a woman who easily surrenders to tiredness, I congratulate you. If you are like me and find it difficult, then, together, let us give each other permission right now to rest and replenish in the perfect, right ways for us.
3 Comments
I recommend this book, on the topic of honoring rest as a sacred space in our lives, necessary for our very existence. http://www.amazon.com/Sabbath-Finding-Renewal-Delight-Lives/dp/0553380117/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329162456&sr=1-1 I read it a couple of years ago and now I give it as a gift to all the harried, busy women in my life (which is to say every woman I know!). Thanks for this great post!
Absolutely agree with you Jill. Also with ageing comes the ability to have discernment through ‘grace’. Making space for other people to learn through responsibilities, choices they make enabling their grow can be the benefit of our letting go of projects that perhaps we have out-grown and can nolonger serve the good of the ‘whole’. Recognising when we have come to the ‘completion’ of our part of the task or project creates another opportunity for our rest and perhaps stepping back ready to begin anew in another direction.
Creating a win/win situation for all of us.
Yes. Rest. I am living proof of soldiering on until finally illness takes me out and forces me to rest. I have grown wiser with years and embrace a new pace of life. It means that I am more discriminating about the projects I commit to. It means I have fewer, but more satisfying discussions in a week. It also means that I notice new opportunities that I might not have tuned into if I had been functioning at my wild multi-tasking speed. I am grateful for the time to rest, regroup and revisit my core. And then I return to my labors with love and intention.