Happy Solstice, Happy Anniversary, Happy Holidays, and Merry Christmas Eclipse!

I’m not sure how much I’ll be online for the rest of this year. On Saturday, December 21, 2019, Winter Solstice arrives, right on David’s and my third anniversary of our Winter Solstice marriage. We’ll celebrate the change of seasons with a long weekend and a few of our favorite things. We’ll also feel our way into the dynamic energies finishing out 2019.

Depending on your location, Christmas or Boxing Day this year includes a New Moon at 4° Capricorn and an annular Solar Eclipse. As far as eclipses go, this one feels rather lucky with Jupiter at 5° 20′ Capricorn in a harmonious, Earthy trine with Uranus at 2° 45′ Taurus. This combo brings wild, liberating, revolutionary Uranus to support Jupiter’s truth, expansion and luck. Not many people look at the Centaur Pholus, but this “small thing, BIG EFFECT,” slow moving powerhouse will be at 2° 8′ Capricorn on December 26, almost exactly trine that wild Uranian energy. With expansive Jupiter so close by, we might find that tiny moves during this eclipse produce exponentially large results over the next six months.

It takes a New Moon to ground and activate intentions made during the previous Full Moon. At 12:12 a.m. on 12/12 (Eastern US time), this Full Moon released a potent explosion of pent up energy: Saturn, Venus and Pluto conjunct at 19-21° Capricorn, with the Full Moon forming a creativity-generating quincunx at 19° Gemini. The quincunx (aka inconjunct) aspect demands integration of energies that appear to have nothing in common. A tall order — made taller if you happen to have any natal or progressed planets in the 19-21° range of Gemini or Capricorn. I do, and I definitely experienced that Full Moon in a major way. I know many clients did, too.

This New Moon Solar Eclipse and its roll out over the next six months will give further insights into and support for that Full Moon integration process. On the collective level, this involves finding ways to merge playful, trickster, mutable, chatty Gemini with cardinal, karmic, professional, law and order Capricorn. Tensions between eternal child and stern patriarch may arise — and we must find ways to honor both. In addition, we’ll need to find balance between superficial, verbal gymnastics and technical “truth,” versus a more somber and rigid sense of rules and honesty. We need both Gemini and Capricorn during this period of increased revelations. Gemini knows how to make difficult messages more palatable, and Capricorn brings integrity to that process.

This Christmas Solar Eclipse features the Sun, Moon, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto all in Capricorn. That much Capricorn can feel heavy, so remind yourself that the days are getting longer, bit by bit in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, you’ve got Summer. All that sunshine should offset the occasional Cappy Gloom. In the Northern Hemisphere, it may help to hearken back to traditions of light: candles, fireplace, staring at the stars.

Take this time to go inside yourself and find your own light in the darkness. We are both Shadow and Light, Earth and Spirit. Even if you don’t follow events in the sky, you feel them in your body just by virtue of living on this planet at this time. We live in miraculous, challenging and potent times. Honor your courage in choosing to be here now. Thank you for being here.

Whichever holy days you celebrate, I wish you a beautiful rest of 2019. I may or may not return here before the New Year. I’ve got an exciting new collaboration to announce in 2020, and some new projects in the works, as well as old ones on the docket for completion soon. (Yes, The Metaphysics of Lyme Disease, I mean you!) The past ten years have been a wild ride. I filed divorce on the Blue Moon of December 31, 2009, and now I’m completing nine years of living together and three years of marriage with such a sweet, tender, loving, funny man. I feel blessed and deeply grateful.

Love and Blessings,

Laura

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:

Lyme Book, Gardening and Other Updates

First, a Writing Update

I haven’t given a progress update in awhile, so I thought I’d share some recent developments with my Lyme books. Yes, that’s books, plural!

The Metaphysics of Lyme Disease has over 102,000 words and counting, written primarily by me, but also including wisdom, examples and inspiration from many Lyme savvy colleagues and survivors. I’m so grateful for their contributions, and I cannot believe how much I have grown along with the book. When I couldn’t find an astrologer to write the most important patterns I see again and again in the charts of Lyme clients, I formalized 12 years of armchair astrology, under the perfect-for-me mentorship of my dear friend Ann Kreilkamp.

Now I find another need to branch out, as I would love to offer one, primary, hands-on resource for guided journaling, self-assessment, and timeline shifts related to Lyme disease. I currently have about 30 additional books people would need to read and then discern which aspects and how to tweak them for healing Lyme. If I add all those exercises and questions into The Metaphysics of Lyme Disease, then the flow stops and starts, switching gears and losing the important sense of a larger, interconnected picture. Plus, it would become an even longer book and require major editing to create a cohesive text with all the contributors, my explanations and much more hands-on guidance. I originally wanted to release my Lyme book by the end of 2018, but the project has grown — and deepened — so much that trying to rush for an arbitrary deadline feels wrong.

But I do feel led to release a Lyme book this year!

Last Friday, inspiration struck.

Future’s So Bright …

I planned to share this on Monday, but in many ways, this giggle fest post illustrates the positive, magical and more joyful aspects of Timothy Glenn’s “Smoking Hopium” post. The following events occurred on Valentine’s Day morning. David manifested the afternoon off, and I scheduled off the morning, too, as a personal day.

In my effort to embrace more of my Capricorn North Node and the December 19, 2017 move of taskmaster Saturn into its home sign of Capricorn, I ordered a goals workbook/2018 planner in addition to my astrological and moon cycle planner. This is not just any goals workbook, though!

Timothy Glenn ~ 2018: Welcome to the Storm

Today’s post comes from my “tell-it-like-it-is” friend, the beloved Timothy Glenn. In retrospect, you’ll find his pre-Eclipse article from August 2017 eerily prophetic. I have a few notes before his article begins. Since people always ask me for my own take on Tim’s information, I’ll share my comments here.

I very much agree with Tim’s observations about the Opt-Out Clause. I was just saying, “People are dropping like flies these days — young ones, too.” In addition to our dear friend Tim Martin who passed right before Saturn went into Capricorn, I’ve supported so many people and animals as they crossed over these past few months, and/or helped their remaining loved ones process the changes.

I do want to mention that in addition to those opting out, with the fertility work I do, I also see so many amazing souls opting in. The huge hearts, creativity and determination of the souls coming in right now, as well as those who’ve incarnated in the past few years, give me tremendous hope and inspiration for humanity and our planet. Please don’t read this post as a doom and gloom post! As Anatole France said, “All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another.” The old world is dying, but I know so many people embracing the new world in astonishing and beautiful ways.

Happy New Year + Context for This 2018 Shift

David and I are still busy here hosting my mom and contemplating our own pivotal 2017, with continued major shifts into 2018. Last New Year’s Eve, David and I drove to Kalamazoo from Goshen, IN for a mini-honeymoon at the Radisson, enjoying Kalamazoo’s First Night Celebration. I posted about our experiences here.

What I did not share was how we had reserved our 2016 holiday letter for mailing from the post office in Kalamazoo last New Year’s Eve. We did so with the strong, full intention that we would be living here next (this) year at this time. We felt magic in that symbolic action, and every time we pass that post office, we celebrate the results.

Here we are, and what a whirlwind year it’s been! We have so much gratitude and awe for how everything transpired, and the volume of physical work it took to make it so. For us, 2017 was very much about bringing ideas into tangible actions, step by step into the new. We expect 2018 to continue that trend but in a more expansive and even more grounded and disciplined way.

I don’t have time today to write a long post about the coming energies, but for those wanting more context, I’ll include the following links (and sometimes links within links). I do want to note three significant factors: