Astrology for Friday, 24 April 2020:

Today the exalted Moon in Taurus makes a square to Mars in Aquarius, a sextile to Neptune in Pisces, then trines to Pluto and Jupiter in Capricorn. The square from Mars is a difficult aspect, a condition of maltreatment in Hellenistic astrology. Sometimes being part of a collective feels impossible. Sometimes it feels like in order to be part of something larger, there are parts of ourselves that have to be excised, cut off, our left out. When confronted with abandoning parts of yourself in order to be a part of something, remember what Brené Brown writes: “If I get to be me, I belong. If I have to be like you, I fit in … True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.” What if your response to being challenged to cut off parts of who you are in order to fit in was to get more and more intimate with your whole self? The sextile to Neptune reminds us that the more deeply we go into being present for our own experience, the more we will find that we were part of something larger than ourselves all along. We become more available to being with the experiences of others when we develop a practice of holding and accepting our own experiences in their wholeness. The trines to Pluto and Jupiter show us that committing to staying in our own integrity and the truth of our experiences—despite insistence that we must be something or someone else—we access power and growth that would not be available to us otherwise. So, today may challenge us to belong fully to ourselves in spite of demands that we become less of ourselves, but as we come through these challenges, we access more connection, compassion, power, and growth.