Staying inside myself

I am beginning to realise that for most of my young and later adult life I have spent a lot of time going outside of myself.  If there has been a call or demand from someone in need then I have answered, and even when it was not my responsibility I felt the responsibility to help.   And at times I have helped when really I didn’t want to and I don’t think it was really my responsibility.   Also as a person who was conditioned to be a people pleaser by family and education in a catholic school I have an underground shadow of a not very ‘nice’ girl underneath and the way I feel lately that is the place I need to be more lately, less ‘nice’ and more guarded and protective of my own time and energy, even if that means being alone a lot.

Also lately I am realising the family member I helped a lot doesn’t really care that much for any kind of deeper contact at all. I am beginning to accept that our relationship will always be superficial and to be honest its sparking up a lot of resentment from my childhood.  I never got the support I needed from this person in the way I wanted and partly it may be my fault as I tried to present an image of having it together, at least in my years of active addiction.  When it became clear I was struggling in my early 20s I wasn’t help but slammed with self righteous judgement.  Most probably because I have lived the shadow side of things that siblings didn’t, apart from my older sister who came to grief earlier on in her life.  She also got scapegoated a lot and in the end her exile took her life.

Now it is becoming abundantly clear that if I want any happiness in my later years I have to be rigorously honest about what I want and need, instead of denying it or glossing over it.  This does not mean I will make demands in the places that need could never and perhaps should never be filled but it does demand of me being my own parent and keeping my energy more within my own skin all of which are very Saturnian things and coming to light with the current Venus retrograde square to Saturn moving closer into orb.

This kind of transit hurts and squeezes us in raw places and it has to do this for us to take action.  There is no soft cosy way our of Saturnian experiences and I should know with my Moon and Mars conjunct the rejector and task master planet for all of my life I have lived in this space a lot but the Neptune part of me has cried out with longing and that part of my longing to be honest needs to be reigned in at the moment because I am coming to realise that it is far better to meet my needs from within myself or stop looking to hurtful or empty hungry others for support.   Its growing up time!

I am also learning that living inside myself is quiet a lovely place to be.  After the painful incident with the trees yesterday I was realising that I need not to be hyper vigilant but ever vigilant of my environment and energies.  A lapse of attention cost me some beautiful branches off a favoured tree which were hacked away.  I am not as mad today because the deed is now done but it still bites.  Aside from that the environment I am in feels cosier when I am here deeply inside my own skin and not pulled out too much by the outer environment.  This kind of deeply inward turning impulse is all part of Saturn Venus and retrograde Venus anyway.  It is a time to centre deep within to call up what our true inner resources are and draw on them, not squandering them where they will be drained and much of that pattern can come out of projected need from childhood never met to my mind.  This is where I find myself today.  I feel stronger and more centred.  The challenges have come but I am learning the lessons I hope!