Satellite of Love

June opens on a buoyant note with the Sun in Gemini. Gemini energy lightens the mood, lights up the room, and can find the punchline before you’ve realized there’s a joke. Astrologically, this is a year when we’re thick in The Struggle That Is Love, so enjoy the first three weeks of June as a vacation from heavy processing and deep questioning. Drop the heaviness of any ongoing or recent crisis. Let your shoulders drop, too. Call up the friends who help you laugh hard at whatever is happening, whether your life looks comic or tragic. Let some joy in. Find another angle on whatever feels stuck.

One way to honor the energy of this month is to say YES to adventures — anything that takes you out of your comfort zone in an exciting way. Especially if you tend to be shy or cautious, this is a beautiful time to take some risks. Instead of dreading whatever discomfort might come with this adventure — scraped knees, embarrassment, boredom, feeling lost, risking rejection — think of what an entertaining story it will make in years to come.

Of course, if you have any kind of trauma history you’ll want to recognize the difference between discomfort (easy enough to push through, benefits usually outweigh the costs) and being triggered or retraumatized (your nervous system goes into high alert and gets stuck there — universally not fun). You know your own triggers — honor them, and if you want to start pushing past them, do so slowly and with support. Whatever you do, don’t feel you have to take any risks that don’t feel FUN — or potentially fun. Especially if you’re partnered with or trying to impress some cutie who’s down for wilder times than you are, remember that knowing what you do and don’t actually enjoy is much hotter than pretending you’re having the time of your life while you’re an anxious mess. We don’t all meet on an even playing field. Many of us walk a thornier path toward the joyous experiences that Gemini season dangles in front of us like ripe fruit. For some people, reaching that fruit means pulling down a low-hanging bough and at worst getting their hands all sticky. For others, it means climbing over a barbed wire fence to reach a tall tree whose fruit they might even be allergic to.

Wherever you fall on this spectrum, remember that risk assessment is never an exact science. Practice in small steps if that feels easier. Have as much fun as you can doing it. Don’t feel ashamed of what you can’t do. This last piece is especially true toward the end of the month, as Mars — planet of passion, ambition, and motivation — will be turning retrograde on the 26th and won’t turn direct til August 27th. More on this next month, but for now just remember that Mars retrograde periods are generally a good time to slow down, reassess, and regroup. In your relationships, this may mean putting things on hold for a few weeks and sussing out what your real energy levels and desires are. By all means, don’t feel you have to rush into any decisions this summer. Instead, feel more deeply into what you really want. Let that be a question you get to answer again and again over the coming months.

I’m available for readings to help you navigate all your adventures this month. As always, for these horoscopes read your Venus and Moon signs first, followed by your Sun and rising. Use these for what they can give you, and discard anything you don’t need. Have fun out there, cuties!

Aries

You’ve got a little extra sparkle dusting your every move this month, and you can bring a welcome dose of excitement and levity wherever you go. Can you let yourself relax, though? If you’ve been worrying about a longterm project or where you fit into a larger group, this summer will be a time for more deeply reassessing these issues, so don’t try to solve everything right now. Free yourself up as much as you can without shirking your real responsibilities — you know what those are. Let early June be a gaycation that will help you feel replenished as your sign ruler, Mars, turns retrograde on the 26th. This summer will be full of character-building growth opportunities — have your dessert first, this month.

Risk: Saying what’s on your mind. Letting things be ridiculous. Getting out of old thought patterns.
Slow down: Overcommitment — especially to your community, collectives, or your own idealism. No need to rush into all your big plans right now; let the future unfold at its own pace.

Taurus

One delightful enigma in loving a Taurus, or being a Taurus who wants love, is the remarkable self-sufficiency of Taurus energy. As a sign, Taurus is all about establishing a sense of safety and pleasure in the body — sometimes ice cream, napping, or a solo walk in the woods are all you really need to get the job done. This doesn’t mean you don’t love people hard, or want them to help you feel loved and adored. Rather, on a certain level, you may not expect the people you love to know how to care for you. You know exactly what you need when you’re stressed; why complicate it by involving anyone else? And this is how you end up in relationships where you’re never quite getting what you need from your partner, which frustrates both of you. This month, take a risk and start asking for exactly what you need to feel connected and secure, instead of just doing what you usually do to come back to center. Start small — like just asking for a hug, or for someone to run an errand. Notice what happens to your intimacy with friends and partners when you try this.

Risk: Asking for exactly what you need. Loving yourself exactly as you are.
Slow down: Here are some things you really don’t need to stress about this month: your ambitions, your social status, what you think you should be good at by now, where you’re trying to be in 5 years.

Gemini

This month brings your strongest desires out into the open. Specifically, you’re tapping into the part of you that has no patience for being held back. You’ve been surrendering to circumstance for a few months now, and it’s finally time to take the helm and steer your own ship. But where are you headed? A handy tip for navigation: You can re-invent yourself without needing to “improve” yourself. Maybe you just need a new haircut or a different name, not a new exercise regimen. Above all, you don’t want to starve yourself of experiences right now — though a little structure will rein in your impulse to get so drunk on freedom that you leave half-finished projects everywhere. Remember that you get to be a chameleon, and that your lovers should love you for all the multitudes you contain, not just one facet. There is no perfect; there is merely process. Enjoy the ride!

Risk: Re-invention. Showing up exactly as you are, not needing to fix anything but curious about all of it.
Slow down: Restless desire to travel, literally or metaphorically. Pinging off in all directions at once. Sense of adventure out of balance with stable intimacy.

Cancer

Your mantra for this month, dearest Cancer, is this: Having compassion doesn’t mean having bad boundaries. You get to deeply empathize. You get to understand why, you get to really connect to the pain and sadness that are behind whatever bad behavior has hurt you or someone you love. And you get to take steps to heal that harm and prevent future harm. These things can go together. To help you in this process, remember that witnessing and loving is enough sometimes. There’s nothing you need to solve. You don’t have to know how to fix this mess. Just keep showing up with your full and powerful heart. You’ll notice that when you’re open to grief and pain you’re also open to intense joy and connection. And you get to keep choosing joy.

Risk: Not knowing what happens next. Being in touch with your spiritual side. Embracing mystery.
Slow down: All the complicated, sticky, shifting emotional worlds that arise around intimacy — especially sexual intimacy. When the terrain feels dark and uncertain, you get to shuffle along slowly and even stop to let your eyes adjust.

Leo

There is something undeniably exciting to you about the chase. You like to rise to a challenge, to become grand, impressive, imposing, inviting. Sometimes a new crush is good motivation for you to step up your game and move toward the kind of growth you’ve been longing for, whether or not the person you’re crushing on even notices. This is one of those times when you’ve got a lot of energy for becoming a shinier version of yourself — just beware getting caught in the traps along the way. Specifically, remember: 1) Style and appearance can be a fun game, but they don’t define you. 2) Whatever you do, make it your own. 3) You don’t need anyone to complete you.

Risk: Dreaming bigger. Reaching out to more people. Remembering where you belong.
Slow down: Curb the relationship processing. This isn’t the month for figuring it all out through conversation and analysis. Let things be a little messy, a little uncertain, and notice what anxieties come up — can you soothe these fears without needing to solve them?

Virgo

Oh honey, sometimes the world just doesn’t deserve ya. Here you are hustling so hard to learn from your mistakes, do it better next time, to become the best possible version of yourself — not from some grandiose sense of pride, but to be of service. You bring such high standards for what it means to be devoted to someone, and you aim to be worthy of the people you love. Are they worthy of you, though? If you find yourself caught in this bind right now, here’s your homework for the month: 1) Do less. Do fewer favors, stop tracking what your boo needs, stop remembering the books your crush likes so you can surprise her with them in six months on her birthday. 2) Recognize your worth. Get the recognition you deserve.

Risk: Being a total badass. Taking center stage. Stepping into your power.
Slow down: The roles you play in service to others, even if they’re roles you enjoy. Take a little bit more off your plate, if you can. Leave a little more room for receiving care.

Libra

You have an ongoing love affair with the world, but sometimes the sparks die down and the days begin to feel stale. This month revitalizes your passion for all learning about life. Student-teacher role play may be extra-hot right now, if there’s someone you’ve been willing to do some extra-curricular studying with you. Just remember that whether you’re learning or teaching, whether you’re playing or in dead earnest, don’t brush off the things you care about most deeply. Risk sincerity, and taking yourself seriously.

Risk: Knowing what you’re talking about. Sharing your ideas. Learning a lot more.
Slow down: That pattern where you laugh off your accomplishments, leave things half-finished, or pretend what matters to you is just a joke. Those times when you choose temporary pleasure over deeper, long-lasting joys.

Scorpio

I don’t know why it’s gotta hurt so much sometimes, dearest Scorpio. You’re more sensitive than you let on, and when you’re wounded it tends to stick. Over time those thorns add up and you start to resemble a porcupine — a little prickly, but mostly out of self-protection. This month, you have a chance to pull out some of those thorns and patch up those sore spots. Specifically, there’s someone you can reach out to right now who will help you find some relief. Come out of hiding; show someone where you’d like to be kissed to make it better.

Risk: Opening up parts of yourself that have gotten closed off. Letting yourself feel more. Letting someone else get closer. Letting intimacy bring release from pain.
Slow down: Your default hermit-mode. That routine where you don’t break your routine, even when the world begins to feel too small and predictable.

Sagittarius

Trust takes time to build. Imagine it like a wooden bridge between you and another person, letting you travel far beyond where you could ever go alone. Sometimes, though, a heavy storm might wash away some planks or pull some loose nails from their homes. Conditions will test trust, again and again. We always assess whether it’s worth rebuilding — do we have the resources? Can we do it together? At some point in your life, your tendency has been to abandon broken bridges, sometimes even before the damage is done — when a dark cloud menaces the horizon you may feel the urge to head for clearer skies. Right now, though, there’s something you need to commit to, and possibly mend. There are places you haven’t yet been that you can only go with someone you trust enough to take you there. What do you need to do to create that trust?

Risk: Committing. Choosing to stay put and work it through. Compromising instead of running away.
Slow down: All the chatter. Gossiping when you really just want to connect. Telling your secrets — or someone else’s — to the wrong people. Making impulsive decisions rather than letting things percolate.

Capricorn

Your ordinary life is becoming a little more extraordinary this month. Whatever your daily routines look like, making small changes in them will ripple out into much bigger changes in your perspective. Right now the world is asking you to trust that there is enough for you — enough love, enough care, enough resources — despite all appearances to the contrary. What do you risk in opening up to that desire? What does enough mean, in a world where none of us gets to hold onto to anything for long? What seeds can you plant toward a life with stronger, better love — and what can you start doing right now to help those seeds thrive? You don’t have to believe in the plant yet, or the fruit. Just start watering those seeds.

Risk: Disrupting your ordinary routines. Embarking on new daily habits. Learning a new skill.
Slow down: Any anxieties about lack of resources — emotional, material, or spiritual. Knee-jerk assumptions about when to hold on and when to let go. Fears of losing love being tied to deep survival fears.

Aquarius

We humans sometimes just want to know that someone, somewhere wants us. We feel lonely and disconnected. We say yes to sex that we aren’t totally into, we drunk-dial an ex, or we flirt with someone we’re not interested in. These are fairly ordinary ways of handling loneliness, even if they aren’t our happiest or proudest moments. Sometimes, when the hunger for connection is great, any nearby salve will do. This, my friend, is not one of those times. This month, you get to hold out for being loved in all your glorious uniqueness — for being truly heard, seen, recognized, adored. So discard all the masks that will keep you from connecting from the heart, from the body, and from a clear sense of who you are and why that matters. Believe me, it does.

Risk: Showing off. Telling your stories. Being passionate, even if you look foolish. Confessing a crush.
Slow down: Incessant self-interrogation. Needing to be seen as tough. Survival fears. Whatever makes you feel you won’t be able to show up and be loved as fully yourself.

Pisces

You have a beautiful paradox before you, Pisces, and it looks like this: Now is a time when you can really go deep and establish the kind of intimacy (with yourself and others) that will heal old wounds. This month brings up questions of homecoming, of returning to a happier time, of insisting on your right to belong to this world and to your loved ones and to yourself, primarily. At the same time, this is a time when you’re more aware of how you tend to lose yourself in intimacy; how love takes you outside yourself, makes you a channel for healing others, and how good that feels — until you’re totally drained. Your assignment this month, dear fish, is to learn what it means to go deep, to let love in, and to keep yourself centered and whole in the process.

Risk: Putting down roots. Healing family rifts (even if that just happens in your own heart). Claiming your space in the world. Tending to your deepest needs.
Slow down: Your tendency to merge with the people you love. Feeling as though you don’t have separate needs or desires. Getting lost in fantasies. Keeping unnecessary or dangerous secrets.

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