Side Notes on Cosmic Shenanigans
Experience with some of our more challenging transits.
Every year the sun returns to the same spot in the sky as where he☀︎ was on the day of our birth. This is known as our solar return, and it may or may not be on our exact birthday. Around age 30, Saturn will do the same, returning to his exact spot on the day we were born. Our solar return is one we experience yearly because of his 365-day orbit, whereas Saturn’s takes 28-30 years to complete.
The Saturn return gets a bad rep, and depending on your natal Saturn placement—like the sign, house, and aspects—this may be a tumultuous transit for you. Or this may be quiet and inconsequential. For instance, mine passed by with barely a blip on my radar, but my natal Saturn isn’t super dominant.
Pluto, though, he’s up there dragging my life through a personal Underworld, and the more I’ve learned about astrology, the more I understand why. Pluto had a strong place in the sky at the moment of my birth. He’s in Scorpio, in my 4th house, and practically hugging my Imum Coeli (IC)☥. Now, for many people, Pluto is a planet that affects their lives in a generational sense. As the furthest planet from us, with an orbit of 248 years, his placement usually doesn’t have such a profound impact on someone’s personal life. He’s more likely to impact how a generation will interact in the wider world. For instance, according to my AstroGold software, those who were born with Pluto in Scorpio back in the mid-to-late 1980s, “This generation…may experience conflict on a worldwide basis. They will be forced to learn the right use of the world’s resources.”
This may sound like it predicts a global world war, ending in an apocalyptic-level dystopian society. Or it may be referencing the very real, lived experience my generation has in an interconnected global world brought into our homes and lives on a daily basis through 24/7 news media and, let’s not forget, social media. Technology, population growth, global warming, among others, are all topics that have my generation discussing and thinking about how we use the world’s resources. Whether we’ve found the ‘right use’ remains to be seen.
And for many of my generational fellows born under that Pluto who was moving through his happiest sign—his home, his domicile—that’s the period ending the statement on the Underworld’s ruler’s influence in their lives. His transits beyond that will have varying degrees of effect on everyone, but they’ll be felt as a collective experience rather than like they followed Orpheus into Hades to help him find Eurydice only to turn around at that last second and poof, watch all your trials and tribulations not pay off.
Except when the current Pluto makes a 90° angle with your natal Pluto and creates the Pluto square, around ages 40 to 42. This is something we will all experience should we be blessed to live to those ages. And with this transit, you might notice his presence in a very big and often unpleasant way. Or for people who did not come into this life with a profound Plutonian influence, you might feel the changes.
In March 2025, Pluto came within 1° of being a perfect square with my natal Pluto. The square became exact on February 14, 2026. The first time. Because yeah, I guess he had so much fun he decided to retrograde back and perfect his square again on July 18, 2026. And what happened to me during that time was another back injury followed by a 405-day period spent from the confines of my bedroom, encountering some of the weirdest things my nervous system has ever put me through. First was weeks of being unable to walk on my own without excruciating pain, then it was months more before I could walk without a cane. Chronic fatigue cloaked itself over my body like a wet weighted blanket. I was lucky if I had a four-hour window of active brain time; after that window, zombies made me look animated. This all culminated in a fifteen-day migraine, an ER visit where I was thankfully NOT having a stroke, but the way they rushed me to the back and had me in front of a neurologist, my symptoms were serious enough the nurses thought it was possible. For weeks after that, I couldn’t look at a computer screen without getting a migraine or vertigo that had me walking and speaking like Captain Jack Sparrow.
Some points AstroGold makes about this transit:
This is a profound turning point - a deep inner reckoning that marks the beginning of a powerful phase of transformation. Often associated with the midlife transition, this transit calls you to examine the foundations upon which you have built your life. It is less about outer events and more about inner truth. Pluto challenges you to confront patterns, ambitions, and motivations that may have guided you for years, asking whether they still reflect who you are becoming.
Emotions may run deep. You might feel more driven, more aware of time passing, and more determined to eliminate what feels false or superficial. This can manifest as a strong urge to simplify, to reclaim personal power, or to redirect your energy toward what truly matters.
By releasing outdated identities and entrenched fears, you lighten your emotional load. What emerges is resilience, clarity, and renewed purpose.
For a list of some of the general transits☤ we will all experience, should we live to the ages at which they normally occur, are:
☾ The Progressed Lunar Return happens around ages 27-29 and can bring intense emotional evaluation, prompting us to question our career paths and relationship choices.
☉The Saturn Return around ages 28-30 marks the definitive transition into true adulthood, urging us to face hard realities, dismantle unstable foundations, and commit to long-term responsibilities.
♇ Pluto Square Pluto around ages 40-42 can bring power struggles, deep psychological reckonings, and shedding old survival mechanisms.
♆ Neptune Square Neptune around ages 40-43 can herald disillusionment, spiritual confusion, and the dissolution of old dreams.
♅ Uranus Opposition Uranus around ages 40-44 is perhaps most associated with the classic “midlife crisis” spark, driving sudden desires for radical freedom, rebellion, and lifestyle overhauls.
⚷ The Chiron Return around ages 50-51 can trigger the resurfacing of core, deep-seated emotional wounds, offering an intense window for profound spiritual healing and teaching others.
♄ And the Second Saturn Return around ages 58-60 marks the threshold of elderhood, often demanding an evaluation of life’s legacy, retirement planning, and structural lifestyle shift
I am currently coming out of my (second) Pluto Square, and in the middle of a perfect Neptune square. Going through both at a time when Chiron is conjunct my Midheaven and Uranus is opposing my Saturn has been no picnic. ALL of these involve some kind of transformative experience as a result of dismantling (Uranus-Saturn), dissolution (Neptune), shedding (Pluto), and facing deep-seated, unhealable wounds (Chiron). All are said to be leading to some form of rebirth that should sharpen my view of my path ahead to living an authentic life. And that’s all great. Looking forward to it.
But I’m not gonna lie. Living through it has fucking sucked. I spent over a year in bed and doctor’s offices only to still have no answers. I’ve hit career walls in every direction I’ve tried to follow. My physical condition has absolutely 100% given me ‘deep psychological reckonings,’ in accepting this new need to simplify, reclaim personal power, and redirect energy toward what truly matters. Age and circumstance have brought heartbreaking ‘dissolution of old dreams.’ Especially since many of my old dreams involved a body with twenty-year-old me stamina and health function. The career challenges have torn down every idea I’ve had about where I was headed and what I want to do with my life, specifically with my writing. I’ve thrown in the towel on being a writer more times than I can count in the past year only to pick up my pen and begin journaling the day after because I can’t just not write.
And it’s also given me time away from screens and a need for deep reflection and quiet to let my brain reset. In that time, I had weeks of time to spend with my kids and the energy to do more than watch TV from bed with them. I reconnected with an old friend and was a bridesmaid at her wedding. I was reminded how important writing notes by hand is to my brain and my process. I began meditating again and working specifically with practices targeting vagus nerve stimulation. And I had profound epiphanies about how I want to write, what I want to write about, and where I want to share my writing. And my career situation came with a caring, compassionate boss who said to me on more than one occasion, “people matter most,” every time I apologized for needing time off to heal and recover.
Sure enough, three weeks into my self-imposed recovery period, I woke up on June 10, 2026, and that wet weighted blanket was drying and becoming lighter. The slowness in my brain and body began to reenergize, and I was able to move and think for full days! Recently I’ve been able to make it past 7 PM without passing out from exhaustion. I’ve been able to go on excursions with my kids, driving them myself, and stay out with them for an entire day sometimes.
And my AstroGold software gave me the mantra I’ve needed and may continue to recite for a while. Or at least until Uranus moves his ass along and some new cosmic current is creating different shenanigans in my life:
This is not happening because you have failed. It is happening because parts of your life have become too rigid, and Uranus is calling you to liberate yourself from structures, routines, and beliefs that have outlived their purpose.
Understanding the impacts of astrology isn’t about finding excuses or throwing up my hands and blaming the cosmos. It’s about understanding my current place in the cosmos so I can accept, take accountability, and learn. I’m not saying I stay this high-minded every minute of every day in this cosmic turbulence. Trust me, there are still days when I’m raising my fist to the sky and cursing the cosmos with all the rage of my inner angry teenager. But to me, this is the magic of it all. That when I am going through a tough time, I can turn to the stars and hear the planets answer my fist waving with, ‘We know this is tough, but you got this, because this too shall pass…’ That’s something angry teenager me didn’t have, so if growing up is gonna hurt, at least I now have that.
Footnotes
☀︎All gender references used here have to do with the energy of the celestial body and the god and/or goddess they’re named for. I have a tendency to personify the planets when I think about them. This has no subtext; I mean no harm; it’s just how my brain thinks about them.
☥All of the planets have a domicile (ruling sign), sign of exaltation (where they’re feeling good about themselves), a sign of detriment (they meet some challenges here), and a fall sign (where they feel the most out of sorts). Pluto’s domicile for astrologers who read with modern planetary rulers is Scorpio. The 4th house is our house most associated with our experiences growing up and influences from our ancestors. And the Imum Coeli and Midheaven are angles calculated based on your Ascendant. In the simplest terms I can think of, the IC relates to what we carry with us into this life from the previous one, while the Midheaven represents our destiny. Any planet that has a strong aspect with one of these angles—which means they’re either sitting right next to it (a conjunction) directly across from it (opposition), 30° away from it (sextile), 60° away from it (trine), or 90° away from it (square)—will have a strong influence on a person’s life whether they’re one of the 5 personal celestial bodies (sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars), the two social planets (Saturn and Jupiter), or the three generational planets (Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto).
☤It should be noted that when looking at transits in a collective sense, the information comes from looking at the placements in a single chart of the sky at a specific date, time, and location. When looking at personal transits, like the ones I’m writing about here, they're personal because we’re looking at current placements compared to where they were when you were born. For example, when Mercury goes retrograde 3-4 times a year, and astrologers discuss the impacts this might have on our lives in a general sense, that’s a collective perspective. When an astrologer sits down with you and locates Mercury (retrograde or not) in his current placement and says to you, “Well, Mercury is conjunct your Mars right now, so you might be feeling like speaking your mind a little bit more these days,” that’s a personal transit reading. All of the above-mentioned refer to looking at our personal transits.
