Artwork by: http://serafleur.deviantart.com/

Venus Retrograde officially began on March 4th this year but it entered the shadow zone January 30th. It began hitting me hard about a week before the 4th though. Maybe it's because my ruling planet is Venus (in Taurus) or maybe it's my imagination... Either way I feel as though my life was a particular way and then in the last week I found out I live in a giant snow globe and some unseeable force shook it up and I'm still floating in the air watching life happen around me but unable to touch or interact with any of it. Is anyone else feeling this way?

I suppose the point of periods like this is to force us to see how disconnected we have become, whether it's from others or ourselves and it's time we take a long hard look at where we are at in life and how we got there and whether we want to remain. I am privy to and witnessing major life events that I must keep to myself. I see people I have been closest to step into phases of their life that they had worked for and dreamed of for as long as I have known them (some of them waiting decades) and feel every emotion I never allowed myself to feel.

This is most difficult when you are forced to realize that no matter how much work you have done on yourself or on your personal healing or growth you have still sacrificed more of yourself than you realized and you are left with the question "for what?" You can have a sense of accomplishment when it's a child you have invested so much in and you can rest in pride that you did all you could in the best way you knew how but everything else feels empty and any sense of purpose you once thought you had has vanished.

Yes we must allow the tears to flow. Mourn what might have been. Mourn time that now feels lost and meaningless. Mourn dreams and hopes that now only feel like childish fantasies. You can remind yourself that the unhealthy ego needs purpose, needs to feel as though you can add meaning to the world around you but when you find yourself in the in-between you succumb to the most primal part of who you are. The in-between forces you to look at life and all your choices from a sense of survival rather than a sense of perspective. You must face everything you have feared and why you hung on to so much only because of those fears and then you must release them. Everything you hoped, everything you believed mattered, everything you dreamt floats away with all the little plastic flecks of snow in this thick watery globe that still feels upside-down. You must throw your arms out and surrender to the in-between and the discomfort of not knowing when you will land or where, reserving any shred of faith you have left for yourself and how you will stand on your own two feet once more. You've been here before and you will likely be here again.

But just for today, I want to blame Venus for forcing this all on me at once. I will thank her for this no doubt but for now I just want to curse it all while at the same time wishing everyone leaving on their own adventures the very best. Mostly I'm thankful if those I love are feeling anything other than what I feel now.