This week’s question comes from Lauren in Vermont:

I’m 27 and lately I’ve been feeling kind of nuts and like my life is turning on its head. I’ve been reevaluating everything – career path, relationships, you name it. A friend of mine told me that a person’s Saturn returns (I’m assuming she meant to the same sign as in your natal chart?) around 27-28 years of age and that it can cause upheavals, but I’m wondering what exactly it means when your Saturn returns.

Could that be what’s behind all this existential confusion? How can I navigate it?

Lauren, both you and your friend are almost right. The Saturn return occurs when transiting Saturn makes a complete orbit around the Sun and returns to the same sign and degree as in your birth chart. Normally, this happens at 28 or 29 years old, although occasionally it can happen earlier or later.

Your natal Saturn is at 1 degree Scorpio, so you won’t experience your first Saturn return until the middle of October 2012. The first Saturn return sometimes can be accompanied by existential angst, but only if you’re completely off-course and living your life totally out of synch with who you really are. There’s nothing like a Saturn return to instill a sense of maturity and responsibility, toward others as well as yourself.

The likeliest explanation for your turmoil is Venus retrograde. As a Rising Libra, you have Venus as your chart ruler, so when she’s retrograde, you feel it more than others. However, you’re particularly sensitive to this Venus retrograde, because she’s in your first house, which is about your personality and how you approach life in general.

To complicate matters even further, Venus crosses your natal Saturn three times during her retrograde period. The first pass was on September 10. The next two will be on November 5 and December 3. That alone is enough to make you question every relationship you ever had. Under this influence, we sometimes feel lonely and isolated – that old “nobody loves me” feeling.

Normally, the Venus-Saturn conjunction lasts only a couple of days. But anyone with Saturn in late Libra or the first half of Scorpio unfortunately will have to endure this discomfort for a couple of months, and it may be more intense. If you’re considering breaking off a relationship, you may want to wait until after Venus returns direct on November 18. It’s very possible that the relationship in question isn’t meeting your needs and that it’s time to let go and move on. But it’s also possible, under this transit, that you’re seeing all the negatives and none of the positives. Sorry to have to report that. But I hope you at least feel better knowing what’s going on and that there is an end to it.

By the way, my family is from Vermont, and I have many fond memories of visiting St. Albans as a child and swimming in Lake Champlain. 

Hang in there, Lauren, and thanks for writing.

Pat

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