Grief doesn’t always stay soft and sorrowful. After the burial or cremation, when the ashes come home, it can feel like all that’s left is the weight of mourning. But grief has layers. Sometimes, what follows isn’t peace, it’s revelation. Hidden betrayals surface, old lies come undone, and truths you weren’t prepared for spill into the open. In those moments, grief can darken into something sharper, almost unrecognizable. This isn’t weakness; it’s the shadow side of loss, when mourning collides with betrayal. If you find yourself here, know that you’re not broken; you’re simply walking through the raw, unlit corridors of truth.

Grief changes everything. It stops time, rearranges your heart, and teaches you that love does not end, it simply transforms. In this post, I share my own current experience of grief and explore why grieving is never linear, why it shows up in many forms, and how we can honor it while continuing to live.

 When the Moon slips into Virgo, there’s a tug in our spirit toward the small details we often overlook. Suddenly, the clutter in our home feels louder, the unfinished tasks sharper, and the need for ritual undeniable. This isn’t nagging energy—it’s Virgo’s sacred whisper: “Make space for what truly matters.”

Not all wounds are visible. Some live in silence, shaping our choices, whispering through our bodies, and clouding our hearts. These are the hidden traumas, the ones no one else sees, but we carry every day.

I am experiencing challenges with making a decision that requires honesty, although the choice appears to have already been determined internally. Admitting that and acting on it are two different things. Letting go can be terrifying. The mind spins with questions: What will happen to me if I do? Who would I be without this? Will I be alone?When relationships, whether romantic or platonic, become familiar, we cling. We tend to rationalize, excuse behavior, endure discomfort, sometimes even enable unhealthy patterns, or fall into co-dependence, because the idea of release feels like a free fall. But the truth? Holding on to the past, to the point of growth, can harm both people involved.

This week in Women’s Group, a truth rose up that felt so obvious and yet so rarely spoken. When the children grow up and move out, so much changes — but the deepest shift is invisible. For years, your life orbits around your kids: the routines, the meals, the rides, the talks, the worries. Every decision is filtered through 'What do they need?' Then one day… the house is quiet. There’s no homework spread across the table, no laundry mountain waiting, no daily chatter to fill the rooms.And the question hits: Now what?No one prepares you for this part — the strange grief of losing a role that defined you for decades, the awkward space of no longer being needed in the same way, and the uncertainty of what your own life looks like when it’s no longer tethered to theirs.

I have always known astrology as a tool for self-discovery. Still, recently, Mercury's (my Lord of the Year by perfection) retrograde transit through my fourth house in Aries made it deeply personal. As Mercury retraced its steps through the part of my chart connected to family roots, home, and emotional foundations, it formed a tense square to my natal Mercury in Capricorn in my first house. This cosmic tension ignited something powerful within me—a profound need to explore and understand family patterns through the language of astrology.

You slipped into silence, a shadow, a star,drifting away, though never too far.A chasm of echoes, a space left unspoken,a bond still unbroken though painfully open.

I stood at the edge of the final goodbye,a heart full of echoes, a soul asking why.The weight of your absence, heavy and wide,left me with words that never arrived.

Fire-born fury, steel in the veins,A blade that cuts, yet also sustains.Mars, the warrior, fierce and untamed,Strikes the stone where gold is claimed.

Reading Michelle Corbesier’s article on fermentation and its connection to the alchemical principle of Mars guided me to a deeper exploration of what Mars is teaching me. Transit Mars Rx in my 7th house of Cancer, squaring my natal Saturn RX in the 4th house of Aries, has been one of the most challenging transits I’ve faced—yet it has been profoundly transformative.

For much of my life, I feared Saturn. I had heard the warnings—stories of discipline, struggle, and restriction. Saturn was painted as the great taskmaster, the bearer of heavy lessons, the planet that demanded without mercy. But as I walked my path, I realized something profound: Saturn is not here to punish—it is here to teach. My greatest lesson came in a moment of loss. When my father transitioned, I felt like I was drowning in darkness. Grief wrapped around me, and I wasn’t sure how to release it. In that space of sorrow, I reached for Saturn—not as an enemy, but as a guide.