Recent Posts

ANOTHER URANIAN SHOCK . . . this one involving the navel. WHAT?!?

August 20, 2026

My navel. My belly button, exact physical location of my personal “origin story.” Where the cord that connected me to my own fearful mother’s womb was severed. Fitting symbol for the fact that, when my own first son was born, I held him to my breast and realized, with a shock: “This is supposed to be the most beautiful moment of my life. BUT I CAN’T FEEL IT.”

This lack of full feeling, as well as my simultaneous awareness of the lack, as you can imagine, disturbed me greatly.

Seven years later, I would move from the east coast to the west coast, leaving my two sons with their father. For the next twelve long years, I would see them only in summers.

 

Now cut to August 16, 2023, when my second son Colin Cudmore, born 1/31/66, suffered an aortic dissection of both ascending and descending branches — and lived. Since then, slightly over three years now, he has been both paralyzed from the waist down and suffers from tremendous nerve damage.

(See Colin Cudmore Healing, caringbridge.org.)

August 16, 2023 happened to be the day when the transit of eruptive Uranus made an exact conjunction with my natal 23° Taurus Moon. I have been working with this ever-changing, always fraught, and incredibly inspiring, drama ever since, and will be until the end of March 2028, when we plan to move to Colorado to be with Colin’s brother Sean. (See Colin Cudmore Healing, caringbridge.org.)

 

 

Okay. Here’s what happened.

Yesterday evening, as I was showering, my finger instinctively felt into my deep, round belly button.

Something I don’t ordinarily do.

It was as if my finger was exploring an unknown cave, with lots of micro-crevasses in it. Weird. Plus, there was a weird bump. A BUMP. Has a tick gotten in there and latched on?!? YEEKS!

My panicky finger tried to yank or twist or otherwise worry it off. But the tick, if it was a tick, was persistent. All it did was create a  bad belly button sore spot.

WOW!

 

At some point I realized that I had actually, on a subliminal level, been preoccupied with my belly button for the past few days. Had been thinking about dosing it with castor oil and DMSO, in order to penetrate the skin in that vulnerable spot, which would from there work its way into the entire abdominal region. I’ve used large castor oil packs before, on the liver, to soothe and calm the liver, back in my menopausal fury. So I know they are effective.

And interestingly enough, as I write this, I realize that for the past few days, my voice has been erupting with “FUCK!” “FUCK!!” “FUCK!!!” Something I used to do, but had largely eliminated from my vocabulary over the past 20 years. Over and over again, Sagittarian fire aroused (natal Mars in Sag opposite Saturn/Uranus in Gemini, crossed by transit Uranus) I’ve felt liverish, any time I’m frustrated: “FUCK!”

So perhaps a liver castor oil pack is called for again?

Perhaps my weird subliminal focus on the navel is actually misplaced by a few inches . . .

Or: perhaps it really is time to work again with, this time, my entire abdominal region, using castor oil packs, buttressed with DMSO, which helps drive it into the interior.

BTW: afterwards, after I had put a drop of castor oil plus a drop of DMSO in my navel, and covered it, lying down, waiting, waiting, for the combo to penetrate and begin its healing journey, I began to actually focus on the fact that the navel is the actual origin of life; that I am symbolically returning to when the umbilical cord was cut shortly after my own birth.

 

I recall how I had a subliminal awareness of a sore behind my knee for a few days before the turkey vulture incident, which alerted me to the fact that I needed to actually look directly at that sore, and pay attention. Because yes, there WAS a tick there, and it had latched on, days earlier, creating a target, inside a large red sore area.

This time I didn’t need any turkey vulture help to finally notice what I thought was possibly a tick, but it turned out, not to be.

Transit Neptune opposite Natal Neptune/MC!

And wow, the navel, center of the third chakra of PERSONAL POWER.

Transit Pluto opposite Natal Pluto! 

What power? I, who have “processed” a lifetime of trying and failing to utilize my personal power to control both my own bodily desires (as a good Catholic), and my relations with others (as a good hippie, “bad” mother, and fleeting wife, four times . . .) am utterly powerless in the face of this ongoing . . . what? what? WHAT?

Transit Neptune at the root of my chart right now, opposite its natal place. I seem to be full of delusions, mostly regarding my physical body, and yet I do manage to work my way through them. So aha! Yes, let me finally recognize and honor the navel, the belly button, as what remains from when my physical body was originally rooted into physical life, through the umbilical cord’s link to my own also fearful mother’s womb.

 

All of which reminds me: Lying abed, I listened to a podcast last night wherein someone (can’t remember who) talked about the current quality of time as not only one in which the entire culture is purging all the dark gunk, both current and historical, bringing it to the light, but that this same process is working through each individual.

(Or, I would add, working through each person who is at all awake; and when not awake, is simply causing unimaginable suffering.)

DUH! Why didn’t I make that utterly obvious connection myself?

(Okay, Ann. Stop judging yourself! Just stop it!)

Yes, I, personally, am “going through a process” where I simply must let go of all the gunk in my personal history that still has me caught, stuck; and of course, I tend to assume that, as usual — after all, this part of my ego “identity,” what I’m “known,” for —  I need to (continue to) process it, i.e., “face it, embrace it, erase it.”

 

But NO! this mysterious voice said not to worry about “processing” any of the gunk.

Forget embracing it; it’s what has embraced me, its gravity (double meaning) holding me down. (Moon in earthy Taurus, Uranus/Saturn in airy Gemini/opposite Mars in Sagittarius: transit Uranus now crossing over the latter two.)

Instead, said the mysterious voice over the internet, we must simply let it go; clear it out of the way.

 

PTSD from your fucked-up mothering? So what? Clear it. WAKE UP!

Yep. No time for “processing,” at this point,

in humanity’s rapidly accelerating, chaotic —

ending/new beginning —

death/resurrection—

into what?

 

We have no idea.

Stop trying to figure it out.

Just clear it. NOW

 

 

READER’S COMMENT: “How can you be in the moment when you ‘know’ that a bad cycle is happening?”

August 19, 2026

Yesterday, I received this comment in response to that day’s post:  Countering Anxiety with Gratitude. 

I found his comment stimulating, and said so, and that I would respond in today’s post. So here goes.

First, shorthand version.

I both direct my attention to the “present moment,” and situate my small, personal self’s more or less conscious experience within the mysterious, cosmic, ever-changing panorama, by utilizing the symbolic language of astrology. Thus, I both live inside the present moment, and, given my intense (double Sagittarian) seeking nature, I also long to notice, give words to, its continuous, meaningful state of becoming.

Plus: since one’s experience of “the moment” can itself stretch, one might say that ultimately the distinction between space and time collapses:  the TWO, the moment, and the cosmic panorama, are ONE.

Which they are, of course, as is any polarity that we play out during our embodied lives here on planet earth.

 

Next, extended version.

To me it’s obvious, given the astonishing astrology of these times, when the cycles of all three of the outer planets (Pluto, Neptune and Uranus) are making a rare, harmonious “minor grand trine” aspect pattern with each other (last one was nearly 50 years ago), that we are in a period of ultimately harmonious change.

Then, for people around my age (83), these planets while aspecting each other, are also also making rare, strong geometric aspects to their natal positions (Pluto opposite Pluto, Neptune opposite Neptune, Uranus conjunct Uranus), these years are especially noteworthy, directing us to see our entire lives within the auras of three new meaningful cyclic understandings.

For we who were born during parts of 1942, and into 1943, when Uranus was in early Gemini, these years of the Uranus Return are especially remarkable; especially for one such as myself, whose natal Uranus is belongs to a “difficult” aspect pattern with Moon, Mars and Saturn that proved to be by far the most difficult of my life!  So yes, I am observing larger understandings of — new meanings given to — my entire life so far — making the entire procession through the years appear divinely and harmoniously ordered. However:

Given the massive breakdown/breakthrough eruptive force of Uranus (by the way, Bruce, I don’t call it “bad”), is it no surprise that I find myself even more than usually internally directed towards getting and staying in, the miraculous present moment, no matter what? Because I well know that, no matter what, this can and likely will include moments that will shock me to the point where at first I won’t know if I can keep on, so drastic will be the change.

Thus does the practice of meditation help, so very much, in staying present. For me, my meditative practice is walking, not sitting. This morning’s four-five mile walk is when, for me, the moment expands, to include all the smells and sounds and rhythmic movements of my body, Scampi’s more or less continuous pulling on his leash, the rustling waving chirping scuttling trees, bushes, birds, squirrels, voles, moles below and the mysterious sky above. Remember the turkey vulture circling high above that flashed its “shit” on the top of my head, twice in one day? How is that not a miracle of the moment!

Something that, frankly, I’ve learned to almost “expect,” given the astonishing astrology of these times. And I do think that such “miracles” are simply our minds and hearts and souls opening to synchronicity, i.e., opening to include way more than the current Overton Window we are supposed to remain within or behind, as a frame, or screen, screening out the infinity of mysteries that just go on and on and on!

 

Oh, and the Sun, the Sun! Moving east and west, moving north and south, moving in hidden concert with the Moon, the Moon! And, yes, THE WINKING STARS, their human-created patterns! Geez! How could I help but be astonished, utterly grateful, all of the time!

Or at least, when I wake up! over and over again; at least when I manage to get and remain present, conscious, connected, and not caught, deluded, behind the illusive trappings of ego.

Don’t know if I “answered” your question. But I certainly did find myself responding to it!

Thanks for the opportunity!

I do think that by attuning to the mysterious signals offered by the cycles of the planets, especially the outer planets, we can vastly increase our gratitude for the present moment reverberating outwards and inwards forever.