You can't make them love you

Saturn Retrograde has officially reared its ugly head, transiting now until mid December. This retrograde can feel alarmingly oppressive and overbearing, like a wake up call in any area of your life where you desperately need more boundaries.

This transit can seem like a stern father that only knows how to give you tough love, while ruling with the coldest iron fist.

It kicks the door down and calls to your attention anything in your life that demoralizes or degrades you, as if to say “Hey. You know you deserve better.”

And perhaps that is why this transit feels so familiar. Saturn has a way of bringing us back to the truths we were never taught, and forces us to confront the places we learned to accept less than what we deserved.

For me this began within the relationship with my biological father, a man who never truly supported me or uplifted me unless it was tied to his personal gain.

From an early age I learned his love was conditional. His access rare and occasional. And his presence always unpredictable.

Some of my childhood memories with him are positive. His love of music, baking, and his gift of gab made him charming and easy to be around. But as I got older, I began to understand that part of what made him feel so fun and easy was that he was never carrying the true weight of his responsibilities.

He was the entertainer, the jokester, the DJ, the film buff, the salesman, but never the one responsible for the day-to-day sacrifices, discipline, and stability that raising children requires.

I remember my beloved mother putting us in every class, program or activity that was free or low-cost, and buying us high-quality second hand clothes to give us confidence on the first day of school.

All the meanwhile my father was driving a lime green Mercedes, living in a mansion in Oakville and using loopholes to get out of paying child support.

For years I falsely idolized him. I put him on a pedestal and cherished the brief moments he spoiled us before discarding us enthusiastically. I resented my mother for being harder, stricter, less forgiving.

Until one day I realized she had an impossible role. She had to play both mother and father. She couldn’t ever transition from hard to soft. She had no escape herself.

Through her powerful model I learned to become fiercely independent and successful, but more recently I’ve been learning to take care of myself in a different way.

Saturn is helping us learn this new form of self-care. How to feel safe enough to receive. How to stop carrying what isn’t ours. How to choose ourselves without guilt.

This is the invitation of this retrograde season - not a punishment, but a final liberation. A chance to break free from old protective mechanisms and move forward in peace.

What might this look like for you?

• Slowing down and resting when your body needs it, and grounding into it to feel safe without being productive.

• Creating energetic boundaries with yourself - choosing more nourishment, nurturing, and compassion, and releasing patterns of self-neglect, depletion, and self-judgment.

• Creating new boundaries at work, with friends, or with family to ensure your energy is being invested in places that are reciprocal and sustainable.

• Assessing relationship dynamics to determine whether they are safe to exist within as they are, or whether they need to evolve in order to better protect your relationship with yourself.

• Noticing where you are overextending, overexplaining, or overgiving in an attempt to earn love, approval, or acceptance.

• Releasing the belief that you have to carry everyone else’s emotions, healing, or responsibilities in order to be worthy of connection.

• Choosing yourself even when it disappoints others - and understanding that boundaries are not a punishment, they are an act of self-respect.

• Letting go of outdated versions of yourself that were built around survival, people-pleasing, or proving your worth.

• Keeping promises to yourself - building trust within by honoring your own needs, desires, and commitments.

Saturn’s tough love may feel harsh but it is a gift. It reminds us that our power was never found in convincing someone else to choose us. It is found in choosing ourselves first.

For my paid subscribers, I’ve created a guided Saturn retrograde meditation to help you integrate this energy on a deeper level. In this meditation, we’ll work with releasing old patterns, reconnecting with your inner authority, strengthening your energetic boundaries, and returning to a place of self-trust and self-respect.

This is an invitation to move beyond simply understanding these lessons intellectually and begin embodying them - creating safety within yourself, releasing what you were never meant to carry, and choosing yourself with love.