I walked through the backstreets of residential houses and uneven cobble stones. Flowers and plants growing through the cracks, life attempting to live despite the hostile environment.

As Venus slows down to retrograde this Saturday Oct 3 in Scorpio, we are also experiencing multiple shifts as we begin October - Mercury now in Scorpio, Mars in Leo squaring Pluto in Aquarius, Sun in Libra squaring Saturn in Aries.... if you haven't already been feeling it in your own life or the people around you, this week feels like a rumbly start to the month.

Venus is the planet that retrogrades the least - occurring every 18-19 months - and because Venus rules relationships, pleasures, artistry and love, when she descends into an underworld journey, it feels personal.

Relational questions become more pronounced, our desires undergo a seismic tremoring, we are reckoning with what we could not allow ourselves to access because the conditions we were once in did not let this part of us exist.

ִֶָ𓂃 ˖ ִֶָ་༘࿐

I’ve been contending (again??) with how the only way is through, that I will still have to walk through the underworld when it beckons - a brief departure from the ordinary sanity of everyday life where everything looks picture perfect above ground.

We treat discomfort and the chaos of the emotional realm as an inconvenience, when denying what we feel causes more suffering.

Venus’ 40-day retrograde cycle is often associated with the Sumerian mythology of goddess Innana’s descent into the Underworld to face her sister Ereshkigal. As Innana goes into the underworld, at each of the seven gates to the underworld she has to remove a layer of her royal regalia, leaving behind what is of value to her, until she arrives stripped of her powers, naked and vulnerable.

Stripping away what we wrapped around ourselves as protection to have a new experience of ourselves in relationship to life.

In the start of the Underworld journey, the part of you that endures - that has endured for a very very long time - is asked to give up and let something within die to face what has been repressed and unconscious.

ִֶָ𓂃 ˖ ִֶָ་༘࿐

No amount of vision boarding will remove the hurt your body did not feel safe to feel.

Suffering occurs when you judge your response to what hurts and then judge yourself for judging yourself, a never ending loop of self-animosity. Hostility does not facilitate healing and growth.

You survived concrete walls, even in environments of fear and hate you blossomed through the cracks like dandelion, your wishes for a better world pollinating the corner of your neighbour's garden and the cyclist rushing past.

ִֶָ𓂃 ˖ ִֶָ་༘࿐

I work with people who have constructed identities around their usefulness, their helpfulness, their ability to be the one that solves, that fixes, that can rescue no problemo!, who can stay deadly calm in a crisis, who everybody else goes to for comfort and reassurance.

Identities crafted in order to feel belonging, to stay in connection even when it hurts you.

When you have built an identity around being the thoughtful, considered one - what happens when you break the rules of unspoken agreement?

When you have played the role of the one that arrives in a crisis without fail - what happens when you hang back for more than a second?

When you have stuffed down your desires to do what you’ve always dreamed of as a child - what happens when you give yourself permission to just try?

The body caught in a double bind - pulled in both directions, if not multiple - is a body under duress, under stress, bound up in survival energy.

I should do this, but I also want that.

Can they co-exist? Can multiple things be true?

A conceptual question our mind can get on board with, but when you make space for this to be felt in the body, something shifts.

A third space opens up.

What comes on the other side of reckoning with what you want?

ִֶָ𓂃 ˖ ִֶָ་༘࿐

Venus entering the underworld invites us to relinquish what we’re comfortable with to receive what we really want. In the dark we see our relationship to having as a tiny dot, clouded by other people's judgments on what is right-sized for us to have and hold.

When what you want goes against the relational dynamics you've been playing, Venus retrograding in Scorpio is a honest face off with finally feeling safe enough to remove the thorns from the back of your heart.

What if what you desire is on the other side of letting yourself actually have what you want?

ִֶָ𓂃 ˖ ִֶָ་༘࿐

My books are open for October if you desire 1:1 support to meet what is bubbling up for you - Somatic Experiencing sessions to untangle the relational survival knots in your nervous system, and astrology consults for making meaning of your current season in life.

May you meet each moment with honesty in your heart as October beckons.

♡
Rachel