Integrating the North Node: Personal, Work and Writing Updates

For years, I’ve found that when a client embraces his or her natal North Node of the Moon, it opens portals where concrete walls once blocked the way. Your South Node represents where you came from — in previous lifetimes and early this life. Your North Node points to your soul’s idea of purpose and success. Like magic, leaning into North Node qualities beckons positive synchronicities, flow, and opportunities. Think “best of the past” with a new, soul-approved, focus and direction. This works in health and other areas of life, so I often explore the North Node in seemingly “unrelated” types of sessions.

Having recognized this power for my clients, I’ve spent the past few years working hard to integrate my own Capricorn North Node, but not without some challenges. Read “big challenges” that involve strongly competing desires, goals, and aspects. As with clients, I knew I needed to find ways to honor that North Node while also recognizing my own quirks and ways of summoning energy. I decided to share some of my process, because it illustrates how we can take a complex chart (or competing desires) and embrace instead of run from it. When we know what and whom we’re dealing with, we can make deals that honor all involved. Even if all those aspects exist inside ourselves!

Our natal chart presents a blueprint, but how we build and decorate our lives remains up to us. As with feng shui, learning how to flow with energies and challenges of the birth design makes a huge difference in how we experience our lives:

Do we step into our lives and say, “Ahhhhhh! This is why I’m here!”?

Or do energies short-circuit and block each other, create jarring effects and a cluttered, non-harmonious space?

Does life feel authentic and free?

Or do we feel boxed in by structural limitations and our parents’ or society’s rules and style projected into our own interior design?

My natal chart is filled with Gemini, Air, trickster Mercury, and Aquarius. I have four planets in Gemini –including Saturn– in the 10th house of social status, public life, career and fame. Four or more planets in a house is called a stellium. When a stellium occurs, the themes and goals of that house get extra influence. Traditionally, Capricorn (ruled by Saturn) rules the 10th house, which makes Saturn’s influence here even stronger. My packed 10th house and especially my 10th house Saturn insist on a strong public life and/or career. I’ve also got a Capricorn North Node.

Remember, along with the 10th house, Saturn rules Capricorn. With this double whammy of Saturn/Capricorn influence on my work/career, the responsible, committed Saturn is making his list and checking it twice. Even as a three-year-old, I felt a strong sense of calling and responsibility. I knew I’d write, and I always knew that I needed to find the “right” career of responsible service. Anything less wouldn’t cut it, no matter how much this Gemini dilettante wanted to flit, flirt and dabble her way through life.

In many charts, this Saturn setup might exert the strongest influence in the chart, but not in mine. Along with all that easy-breazy Gemini, I’ve also got an exact Grand Trine in Air with very private Pluto (in Libra), Gemini Sun (conscious mind/identity ) and Aquarius Moon (subconscious and emotions, inner life). Wherever he appears, Pluto acts as a force of nature. In this case, I’ve got Pluto in my 2nd house of values, body, and wealth. With Pluto exactly Trine both Sun and Moon, I experience outer and inner life, conscious and unconscious awareness, through a Plutonian lens. Pluto in my chart has the will and power to refuse the demands of 10th house Saturn and Capricorn North Node. They say, “Get to work, put yourself out there,” and Pluto says, “You wanna piece o’ me? Huh? You wanna piece? Oh, yeah? Screw you.”

Pluto can wreak havoc in a chart, and my life reflects a strongly aspected Pluto, complete with many NDE’s. Trying to manipulate or control me through money backfires big time, and I’ve learned the hard way that if I don’t honor Pluto in my body and values, then Pluto tanks my finances. Unlike many people who dread Pluto’s impact, I love and honor my Grand Trine with Pluto. More than that, I respect Pluto’s influence. It’s one of my favorite aspects to explore in natal charts and transits. Sure, Pluto takes you to the Underworld, but that’s where you find real gems.

One astrologer looked at my chart and said, “You have the worst of luck, and the best of luck. You’ve got angels on both sides of the veil, and you walk both sides.”

Yep. I’ve been communicating with the dead since age three.

Life presents me with some of the strangest, scariest adventures, but somehow I always land on my feet. That harmonious Grand Trine with Pluto-Sun-Moon has also given me unusual powers of regeneration, shamanic abilities, and compassion to guide people in the depths of Shadow, finding buried treasure, and helping them rebirth themselves back into the Light. Like Persephone, I journey to the depths, but I always return with Spring in tow. I’m grateful for Pluto’s challenges and the gifts, because I feel them to the core of my being.

And that’s where Saturn has a problem. No one bosses Pluto around and lives to tell the tale. They might survive the ordeal, but they will not be the same person they once were. Pluto’s a badass and fiercely guards his privacy.

Saturn in my chart says, “Ahem, it’s time for that public career. You need to write, put yourself out there, go big. These are the rules. Go big or it will affect your health.”

Pluto says, “Over my dead body … and by the way, I don’t fear death.”

Saturn looks at his watch, clears his throat, sulks, tries a Gemini song and dance, crosses over my Capricorn North Node a few times, and Pluto just stares him down.

Unimpressed. Unamused.

Pluto knows that he’ll win any face-off, because Pluto will crash and burn, fail for spite, die and reinvent himself. If Pluto seems to have given up, he’s gone subterranean. He’s relentless, and he’ll pop up just to prove he can. Add to this showdown that my disciplinarian Saturn is closely Trine my rebel/innovator/anarchist Uranus, which also lives in the 2nd house with Pluto. Practicality? Doing things because “this is what you have to do to make money”? Uh-uh.

My Saturn and Capricorn North Node know they’re outmatched, even though they want the best for me. All they can do is appeal to conscience. They get some help because my Uranus in Libra exactly opposes my 8th house wounded healer Chiron in Aries. This centaur pleads with Uranus to embody his ideals of liberation and brotherly love. Traditionally, Pluto rules the 8th house, so my Chiron has some inroads to Pluto. Like Chiron, Pluto understands wounds and feels compassion for people undergoing an Underworld Initiation. Despite the desire for privacy, Pluto really does enjoy heartfelt intimacy. He just hates superficial stuff, power plays, or feeling trapped. In a battle of wills, Pluto wins, but he can be softened by compassion, just as zany Uranus will conform enough to support the Highest Good of All.

So what does all of this mean to my personal, work, and writing life?

I’ve grappled with the competing elements and come to realize which ones feel malleable and which ones will not budge. I love and feel committed to the intuitive coaching career I’ve had for 17 years, but I have never felt led to create an empire with that business or become a household name. I need to allow “my Cosmic Secretary” free reign in synchronously bringing the right clients at the right time. I enjoy the sense of Mystery, as well as my Cosmic Secretary’s uncanny ability to clear my schedule when I’ll need a break, to replace emergency cancellations with emergency session requests, and to keep my finances flowing in a balanced way. With Uranus and Pluto in the 2nd house, hats off to my Cosmic Secretary! I’m in awe of how she manages unruly Laura Bruno.

Since buying a house in Kalamazoo, Taurus hubby David and I feel led to put down roots. For me, that means more than getting settled. It also means restructuring the foundations and goals of my business after 17 years. It means David and me working with financial planners, a new accountant, and an attorney to get our wills, etc. in order. I’m on David’s health, vision and dental insurance, and I got a full physical and blood work for the first time since 2007. All clear, and all very Capricorn.

From the outside looking in, my business won’t seem too different. I’ll still offer sessions, but I’m changing my business name and will be “putting myself out there” in ways that honor my Plutonian need for privacy, and my Uranian and Gemini needs for freedom, especially creative freedom. In January, when the new business name goes into effect, I’ll release some already completed and nearly completed writing projects, including a guided journal for people with Lyme disease. I’ll publish these non-fiction projects under the name “Laura Bruno,” along with my book-in-process The Metaphysics of Lyme Disease. I also have at least three more non-fiction book ideas that will flow from “Laura Bruno.”

After much consideration, dreams, and other synchronicities, I’ve given myself permission to release any fiction I write under one or more pen names. I’m also allowing myself to create T-shirts and other products under an anonymous or non-Laura-Bruno-related brand name. This shift allows me to release the message in a big way without private Pluto torching the entire enterprise. It also gives my four 10th house planets in Gemini (ruled by trickster Mercury) and my Virgo Ascendant (also ruled by Mercury), a lot of room for fun, change, diversity and play. At some point, I may merge with the pen name(s), or maybe I won’t.

Authors use pen names for a wide variety of reasons, including genre separation, privacy, and branding. I tend to avoid branding and social media like the plague, but I could even see a pen name version of myself maintaining a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram page. It would be kind of like what I always said about weddings, “If I ever had one, I’d get married on Halloween and insist that everyone go in costume. Then ‘the bride’ wouldn’t be the only one playing a role. If we just got it out in the open that everyone’s role playing, I could get into this.” For both marriages, I eloped, but I could have enjoyed a masquerade wedding. In the same way, I might not mind social media if it wasn’t “me” doing it.

We shall see. I haven’t written any fiction since the now out of print Schizandra and the Gates of Mu, released in 2009. I’ve already felt a huge influx of creative freedom and joy now that Pluto’s mollified. I look forward to giving Saturn his due and experiencing the powerful flow of leaning into my Capricorn North Node. Like all of us, I just need to do it in ways that honor all of me. If you’ve struggled with the competing factions or unclear goals, you can find your way, too. The whole is greater — and more satisfying — than the sum of its parts.