Our second week in March begins with a Capricorn moon that wants to walk us through the grief of a year spent reckoning with the COVID-19 pandemic, leading us toward some attainable goals and ambitious distractions. Don’t let the dreamy haze of Pisces season fool you: A fish might be difficult to spot beneath the waves, but they know exactly who they are and where they are going. If world events have continued to feed your sense of hopelessness and powerlessness, hold on. With Mars getting comfortable in Gemini and Mercury dragging himself out of his post-retrograde shadow, there’s more information on the way, and with that information comes a clearer sense of how to proceed. The more we surrender to the flow of time this week, the more likely we are to feel a part of it —rather than thwarted by it.
As a Mars-fueled cardinal sign, Aries is known for being quick to respond and to react. The truth is, it’s hard for anyone to take it on the chin when things don’t go our way. And, accepting terms you never agreed to can feel like a loss of control. Sometimes, if we wait long enough for the dust to settle, we come to find that either we were always mistaken about the emotional terms of the situation or the terms had changed organically. There’s no one to be angry at and no one to blame in situations like this, there’s only the work of acceptance. This week, if you find yourself feeling overpowered, do your best to identify how that feeling lives in you and what it activates. Is there a younger self that rises up, ready to resolve things it has no idea how to resolve? Is there an older self who has time to sit with that younger self in you?Illustration by Stefhany Lozano
In a sense, the pressure is off — the external kind anyway. You might not have a destination, exactly, but the road you’re journeying on has started to feel right. The internal pressure you might be feeling, however, is entirely yours to manage and therefore can only be lessened when you release the valve. What would that take? Permission? And, from who? Perhaps this uncanny year has made it harder for you to distinguish your incubation periods from the jags of escapist indulgence you are prone to. If so, let this be a reminder: You are the expert of your own life and whatever vision you have or don’t have of it is okay. Focus on what makes you feel good both when you’re doing it and after. When these good feelings arrive accompanied by intuitive hunches, you are on the right track.Illustration by Stefhany Lozano
There are risks to putting yourself out there, everyone knows that. And, despite the general encouragement to do so, good results are never guaranteed. In some cases, it’s just the luck of the draw, but sometimes luck is only a part of it. You have a say, after all, in how you put yourself out there and where the “out there” is. The more discerning you can be about what you offer and where you offer it, the more likely you are to come to any kind of conclusion about the environments and relationships that are affected by your actions. This week, when you reach out, do so directly and candidly. You’ll find that the less wiggle room you leave for interpretation, the less you left to wiggle in uncertainty. Illustration by Stefhany Lozano
It’s true that healing isn’t linear. There’s no simple way to mark progress and feel certain that we’re getting “better.” Apparently, certainty is far from guaranteed in almost every arena of our lives. While some might find this daunting, Cancer, you are well equipped to face uncertainty. A crab leaves their old shell and ventures out soft-skinned and courageous, knowing the risk. What is progress for the crab? And does it change with each new shell, each moment of transformation? It’s possible, dear Cancer, that the most recent version of you no longer fits into the shell that once protected you. This week, do your best to truly listen to what your body is asking of you. How often is your instinct to deny its requests? How can you teach yourself to honor them?Illustration by Stefhany Lozano
Independence works. It can, if you set yourself up right, work all your life. But, it’s a personal practice, an investment in one kind of system. And, systems are prone to fail us in one way or another — especially systems that rely on the resilience and capacity of only one person. If this week you find yourself wishing you had support, a partner, a collaborator, or close knit group of people who could help you realize the fullness of what you imagine might be your potential, let yourself wish it. Let that wish inspire you. Let it guide you toward envisioning. Let it move you toward others. When fear or shame creep in, remind yourself of the power in numbers. Whatever taught you that you were better off alone taught you to fear your own power, too.Illustration by Stefhany Lozano
You’ve been hustling hard to make it to the finish line, but you know more than anyone that the race is not quite over yet. Still, it’s nice to see the finish line. At this point, the pace is entirely up to you. If all you wanted was to know you could finish what you set out to accomplish, then congratulate yourself for your commitment and go ahead and take your leisurely time. On the other hand, if what you set out to do was break a record, or set a new standard for yourself, then full-speed ahead will surely get you there. Perhaps the lesson isn’t in whether or not you can make good on your word to yourself or others. Perhaps the lesson lies in the personal sacrifice you made to keep those promises and what they can teach you about your values.Illustration by Stefhany Lozano
What’s undeniable is that the minutiae of our lives is a huge part of our lives. The bills, the errands, the dishes, the animals, the clothing pile on the reading chair. And, while these things might seem like white noise, they contribute to our emotional landscape. When we share that emotional landscape with another person, the way they interact with our minutiae and their own becomes a part of the story — a part of our emotional landscape. Given all this, you can see why it’s valuable to keep the lines of communication going about the small things. How small things can add up and start to weigh heavily on us, how they can change the way we relate to someone else. Quiet resentments are a greater threat to intimacy than conflict could ever be.Illustration by Stefhany Lozano
Sometimes, when blood rushes back to an area, the pins and needles rush in, too — what’s proof of life can be quite painful. On the other side of that sensation, however, is relief. Relief that the pain of adjustment is past; relief that you are more fully yourself again, more equipped to do whatever it is that requires as many limbs as you’ve got. It’s not optimism, quite, but it’s something like it — the flow within you harmonizing with the flow around you — spring birds on the trees of Brooklyn, a bald eagle spotted flying over a city park, If this week finds you showing up to the same situations with a whole new attitude, don’t question it — and don’t let anyone else question it either. Everything has a season and you have nothing to prove.Illustration by Stefhany Lozano
We know that everything is always changing, a lesson that feels all the more evident when you live in a city where old favorite restaurants shutter and new favorite stores open every couple of years. Of course, climate change upends small towns as well, burning down houses, flooding city centers. Change is the only constant thing and, if we allow it, having faith in change can serve as a kind of permission to live through it. If a whole ecosystem is sensitive to one small shift, why should you be surprised when your internal ecosystem reacts in kind? If an ecosystem needs time to figure out how to respond to loss and imbalance on its own timeline, then so do you. If a dry river bank keeps the shape of the river that it once held, it's learning to live with a memory.Illustration by Stefhany Lozano
It’s not that you don’t walk the talk. You have and you do — on occasion. It’s just that prerequisites are necessary for most actions, or most actions you take seriously. And, sometimes, you get distracted. Sometimes you get sucked in to the other things that have very little to do with your own ambitions. Prerequisites unattended lead to actions not taken lead to one very frustrated Capricorn. Have heart, sea-goat. When you’re ready to prioritize your ambitions, you’ll have just the right words to express your limits to whoever and whatever tries to steal your time. Besides, you know well enough that the long way round to a destination is a valid way. Illustration by Stefhany Lozano
Pretty wild how the more you open yourself up to new opportunities, the more they come your way. It’s almost like challenging internalized beliefs about your own abilities and needs allows you to develop new ones based on trial and error rather than say… defensive self-negating techniques that shield you from disappointment. Part of the process, apparently, is reframing your understanding of risk and reward. This week, congratulate yourself every time you do something that requires faith in yourself, even if you don’t get the results you want. Let your gains be the Bold Brave Bitch muscles you build along the way. Illustration by Stefhany Lozano
There are multiple realities, even scientists know that. But, you know it especially, and if you’re in your Pisces-bag then you’re more sensitive than most to things like dreams that show you how it all might have happened differently, a hair-raising sense that someone is beside you, a strange melody that evokes a memory from a past life. Perceiving the various strands of lives and worlds woven with our own is not a gift without burden. While it’s not always imperative for us to keep these strands sorted, confusing one for the other makes difficult decisions all that more confusing to make. Because what we do in this world affects the people we share it with, it’s important to ground any decisions you make now in what you know to be true now, not what could otherwise be true in a world adjacent to this one. Illustration by Stefhany Lozano
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