stoptheartichoke

venus retrograde and why she loves fucking you in the ass

Who the fuck is Venus Retrograde and what is she doing in my ass?

Anyone who knows a bit about astrology is probably familiar with both these terms, but for those of you wanting to be clued in, here’s a breakdown:

Astrology is based in the stars. Obviously. The planets all play characters and then pass on some of their ‘traits’ to the signs in the Zodiac. But we don’t care about the Zodiac right now, let’s focus on how these characters and their actions can influence the events in our lives.

Firstly, Venus represents two main areas in our life; love and money. How sexy is that? She rules over the things that bring us pleasure in life. She is what we desire, what we chase and what we love to have an abundance of. She also shows us what we value and the things we deem most important. Studying what sign your Venus resides in teaches you what makes you the happiest and what you’ll essentially chase in life. The key component to understanding what Venus actually means is recognising that she is all about attraction in both directions. That is, what we are attracted to as well as our ability to attract. Being the ruler of Libra and the ancient ruler of Taurus, she is very much about harmony, stability, security and appreciation.

So on a normal day, Venus transiting direct (her normal astrological pattern, NOT retrograde) would mean those aspects of your life would be fairly balanced and you’re free to move forward without much apprehension. But, sweet friends, she is turning her back on us for a hot second, and it is so important we turn with her. This is a retrograde. Usually, the planets spin on their axis and rotate around the sun, but during a retrograde, instead of moving forward, they move back. This throws our Venusian energy off a little bit, but I promise it’s for a good cause.

This is the part that frightens most of us, for good reason. Retrogrades are all about slowing down to reflect and re-evaluate where we’ve come from in order to be safer in where we are going to go. Delving into our own past and having to return to places where our hearts and minds were weaker is painful to say the least, and extremely displeasing when all you want to do is let the past go and move on. Moving on is the easy part, dealing with your past is the hard part, and that’s why we tend to struggle during retrogrades. It’s in our basic biological nature to continue to grow and expand and conquer, but sometimes we need to just CHILL.

Think of a retrograde as an intentional brake. It’s like the universe telling you, “Hey, you’ve been doing like… a lot. That’s cool, but you’ve been moving so far forward that you’ve forgotten this, this, this and this. Please come back and clean up your fucking mess, thanks.” I said brake, not break. There are no such things as ‘breaks’ when it comes to the stars, only brakes, and Venus is truly pumping hers right now.

Why the fuck am I looking into the past when my soulmate lives in the future?

SOULMATES live in the future, but what makes them your soul mate lives in the past. Ms. Venus is trying to show you something about who your future soulmate is by forcing you to deal with all the shit those failed attempts have had you carry around since.

The topic of soulmates is a fickle one and I’m going to go ahead and blame the older generations and all their divorces. Those assholes and their total lack of commitment have created a world where your soul mate is like a mythical creature that evades you in your waking hours but comes to taunt and tease in your dreams or as a ghost that possessed all your past relationships.

This can be hard to believe, and I genuinely don’t expect you to buy a single word of it, but your soulmate does exist. We hear it time and time again and it always feels untrue. We always feel like the exception to the rule, but this is a straight up law. Maybe you’ll find them, maybe you won’t but that completely depends on you.

The best and practically only way to find your soulmate is by letting them arrive. Whether that will happen tomorrow, or next month or next year, they will arrive. That leaves you feeling a bit hopeless though, doesn’t it? There’s no certainty or specific date or place or time, because their path to you is only going to be walked if the destination is attractive. Now, that doesn’t mean you won’t find your soulmate unless you have blonde hair, blue eyes and a body that could kill a man. It means you have to raise your vibrational frequency enough to SHAKE them into your orbit.

So, now that you know there’s this mystical creature out there that ticks all your boxes and will ~complete your heart and soul~, what can you do to bring them closer? This is where Miss Venus comes in clapping.

We absolutely have to look into the past. Something that’s incredibly hard to deny, especially in our current political climate (ANOTHER TOPIC FOR ANOTHER DAY), is that history repeats itself until it no longer needs to. We will have the same event, the same story and the same conclusion over and over again unless we figure out what to change to improve it. Or worsen, in some cases. Every lesson worth learning comes from a mistake, so you have to be able to recognise both.

When we look into the past, we’re faced with not only the decisions we made but the way that we felt. We have to analyse who we let into our lives, what they did and how that made us feel in order to better understand what kind of behaviour, people and feelings will serve us best today. Perhaps those things in the past were beautiful! Maybe you didn’t make a mistake. Maybe you wish you could return to that place, but unfortunately, that simply is not the way things work. We can reflect, we can’t return, but knowing why we want to return will better prepare us for screening future partners.

In terms of your soulmate and how your past can contribute, it’s important to know that your soulmate is most likely going to be someone that ticks all the boxes you need ticked, not the ones you want ticked. This will most likely result in some uncomfortable conversations or experiences with this person, but it’s only uncomfortable because you haven’t found comfort yet. You need to remember that human beings are exactly that; human. We were born flawed and we will continue to make mistakes. When that person eventually steps into your life and blows your entire mind to smithereens, you can’t hold onto their past. You can bet they beat themselves up over their mistakes enough, and they really don’t need you giving them a reason to hit harder.

If you truly want your soulmate to step into your life and have the experience be clean and free of guilt, shame or uncertainty, you need to take advantage of this retrograde in order to discover what you actually need in a relationship, as well as what a relationship might need from you. Are there aspects of your personality that makes being close to you hard for others? Have people brought issues up with you that went unchecked? Think about who you are to the people around you and try to better that person, because how the fuck are you going to expect the mac to your cheese, the apple to your pie, the salt to your pepper when you actually ain’t shit.

You absolutely have to be your best self to attract your soulmate at their best self. Reflect on what you’ve done, who you’ve been, what you’ve felt and why, otherwise they’ll arrive and realise that you’re the same piece of garbage that broke those hearts all those years ago. You need change to attract change.

Damn. Am I actually a piece of garbage?

Yeah. We all are because it’s in our nature. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again; we were BORN to make mistakes. There’s this quote, ‘what separates the monk from the master is ten thousand mistakes’, paraphrased for convenience’s sake. This is so dead on I shouldn’t even really need to explain, but I’ll spit a couple bars.

To live freely to live without fear of making a mistake. What makes you experienced in life is fucking up and changing your behaviour pattern to get closer to not fucking up next time. Not even to nail it perfectly the next time, but to not fail in the way that you did before.

Of course, like I’ve said, it is crazy painful and difficult to look at your past and actually acknowledge your mistakes to their fullest extent, because it’s the admittance that you did the wrong thing. We never want to be doing the wrong thing, but we do it every day all day. If it were the right thing, we may as well die because we wouldn’t be learning anything.

So yes, unfortunately you are a piece of garbage, because you have and will always fuck up. But that’s where the beauty truly lies; you are a natural fuck up, so why are you afraid? You are a piece of shit but you get more and more polished every single day! We are all shit! And we should love it! We make mistakes because we are not perfect, but that is exactly what makes us perfect! The perfect human being is you. You were born perfect and you’ll die perfect, you just have to acknowledge that true perfection is undefinable, because IT IS YOU. Embrace and acknowledge your shitness in order to be a better shit tomorrow.

Now that I’ve told you how garbage you are, it’s time for you to think about why. What mistakes do you seem to make over and over again? Are there even any? What loops are occurring and how can you break them?

Quickly stepping back to the concept of history’s repetitious nature, the only way we can stop terrible things from happening is by analysing why they happened in the first place. This is possibly the hardest part of a retrograde; literally trying to decipher what happened. Figuring out something as abstract as a human relationship or even your feelings is next to impossible. Emphasis on next to. That’s why we need the retrograde to slow the absolute fuck down and really think about what happened.

The alignment and transition of the stars not only creates a theme in our own personal growth, but can manifest physical real-world experiences. You might find yourself reconnecting with people of the past, maybe even entering relationships with them. You might see yourself feeling things you felt so intensely once upon a time, or revisiting hobbies and activities from your past. Remember that things that resurface have resurfaced for a reason. This is a time to beware of falling back into a trap you once had to fight to get out of. This is where loops may begin again, and the last thing we want is to make the same mistake again. You can either make ten thousand mistakes, or ten mistakes a thousand times. One of those options is a streamline to becoming better.

If you find people from your past are returning to give you the love they once did, or things are going back to what you once found comfortable, try to remember why you left in the first place. Remember which areas they served you and analyse where they did not. Perhaps it can be different this time! For something that once failed to succeed this time around, something has to change. What can you change about yourself to avoid what happened in the past?

Now, don’t freak out and start avoiding all opportunities because you fucked it up before. That’s definitely not what I’m saying. What is important is to think about is whether this really is what you want. Was there something that made you feel the same way that is different? Did you find what you had with them with someone else? What was it about them that you loved?

Was it them or was it the way they made you feel?

That’s a heavy and confronting question, especially when it comes to admitting that your ego is what fuels many difficult decisions. I’ll talk about the specifics of ego and all the misunderstandings that come with it another time, but for now, pretend that the ego is your shadow self that is made up of all the pain or unfairness you’ve ever experienced. It’s the literal voice inside your head that is super mean and tells you what to be afraid of.

In reality, there is nothing to be afraid of. Absolutely nothing. Not death, not loss, not pain, not destruction. There is only fear itself, and that is what your ego is made up of.

This is where I want to talk about the actual concept of love itself. Loving someone doesn’t mean wanting to spend every waking minute around them, waiting for their texts, checking where they are on Snapmaps, or even wanting to die for them. It means looking at them and admiring God’s work. It’s acknowledging all the beautiful shining traits that person gifts to the world, and forgiving them entirely of all the flaws they allow to surface in their weakest moments.

To love someone is to recognise them as their best self and congratulate them on coming so far. It means being happy for someone when you know that they’re happy because they don’t deserve to feel down. When you love someone, your heart beats when theirs does. Theirs will not beat for you. It’s the giving of your time, effort, attention and care with absolutely no expectation for it to be returned. Loving is appreciation without expectation. You can’t project your expectations on someone else, because they will never live up to it. If you love them, they won’t need to meet your standard because you recognise them as perfect regardless. And they are, as are you.

So what if I thought real hard about my own bullshit and don’t know what to do?

WOW SO GLAD YOU ASKED!!!

First, you have to acknowledge that you going through shit almost definitely means there were people around you that went through shit too. You don’t spiral out of control without having collateral damage. Hurt people hurt people.

So it’s time to think about what your actions meant for someone else. It’s important here to recognise that you have absolutely no idea what is going on in someone else’s head, so you should be very aware of the thoughts that you are projecting onto them.

We are born and raised in specific and unique ways and even science can agree. There was a study conducted over the span of fifty years on twins that showed the minor differences in two experiences of life and how they can shape the individual (Polderman et al., 2018). Essentially nature versus nurture. This applies to our patterns of thinking, and you can bet your sweet ass that that person is definitely not thinking what you are, so to assume that is not only stupid but unproductive.

To avoid your projections blurring your view, you need to step up to a vantage point and think about what happened to them in accordance with what happened to you. This is called empathy! This means recognising and acknowledging someone else’s feelings and analysing your behaviour based on them. Step into their shoes and think about how you would feel if they had acted in the exact way you did. It’s very basic and you’d think it would come naturally, but unfortunately we are all morons, and this might need to be reiterated.

Recognising the way the people around you feel and how you can change that not only draws attention to what can be adjusted in your own behaviour, but also what can be adjusted in your environment. Are the people around you treating you the way you deserve to be treated? Do they make you feel loved and valued and important? Would you prefer something better? If so, why?

Reflecting on what you love and your values includes the people and things around you. If you feel you could do better, it means you can, and you should. Even though you are a piece of garbage and a major fuck up, you still deserve beautiful things. Someone loves you and that means someone agrees with me. If the people and things in your life aren’t what you strive to be or achieve, you have to find a way to fix it.

Don’t be afraid of labelling people in your life as good or bad. This can allow you to mentally map out what you do and don’t want around you. Obviously don’t tell them that you’ve labelled them good or bad, and definitely don’t treat them that way, because they are trying as hard as you are to be good. They’re trying to become better too, they just might not have the same information as you. They’re on a path and they’re struggling too, so don’t let that affect the way you treat them.

It is unhealthy to label someone as good or bad and then treat them accordingly, but it is healthy to label them and be closer to the ‘good’ ones and distance yourself from the ‘bad’ ones. Of course you don’t have to cut them out of your life, but you also need to do what’s best for you. Surrounding yourself with negative energy and negative people will only create negativity in you. If you want more positivity, surround yourself with positivity.

Surround yourself with people that have traits that you admire, or that you want to embody. Think she’s tough and you want to be tougher? Go hang out with her. Think he’s wise and you want to be wiser? Go have a conversation with him. Think they’re happier and you want to be happy too? Spend more time with them and less time trying to heal someone else’s wounds. It’s not your job to soothe someone’s pain. As much as we want to help and heal, and as much as it hurts to leave someone behind, you have to remember that you have to create the future you want, and that starts by changing the present.

Be around the people and things that make you happy. Do and feel the activities that lift your spirits and make you want to live tomorrow. Spend today in a way that reminds you this is what love songs are about. This is what being alive is about. Remember how peaceful you are when you’re living in a moment and basking in the little things. That includes words and thoughts, mind you.

What now?

Embrace yourself and your past. Embrace the people that taught you valuable lessons, and try and apply them to your current situation.

Your mistakes are not just mistakes, but learning experiences. We have to fuck up in order to know how not to fuck up next time. Forgive yourself for not knowing, for how could you have? You were younger, more naïve, more ignorant, but you aren’t now. You are able to look back and see that that was a mistake, and that is enough. You are enough.

Your soulmate is out there, and you will find them as long as you want to. Align your thoughts with what you want and the universe will provide. If you want to be happy, try and reposition yourself to think happy when you’re given every reason not to be. If you want to be in love, try and love the things that you once hated. If you want to find your soulmate, remember that you are someone else’s soulmate too, and they’re just as desperate to find you. You aren’t in each others’ lives right now because neither of you are ready. Focus on becoming the best version of yourself.

You have got this, and you have no reason to be afraid. The best is yet to come, you just have to want it.