Life in the pulsing center of the Uranus Return

February 11, 2026

Note: See yesterday’s post.

Here’s an interesting, detailed essay on astrological returns, each of them a circle that, as it closes, shifts into spiral. Notice that when it comes to the Uranus return, however, there’s no specificity; obviously, the author has not yet lived through this phase! How many of us have? (The granddaddy of today’s humanistic astrologers did. Dane Rudyhar lived to be 90).

https://mysticryst.com/blogs/the-mystic-journal/spiral-time-astrological-return-cycles

More and more, I am appreciating this 84-year first ever (and only) Uranus Return (a five year process for 83-year-old me; I’m in year 2).

Hmmm.

More and more, I feel myself spreading into the pulsing center of a gigantic 84-year cycle, only now beginning to bend out into spiral.

How far will I get along the spiral? Will I “die” at some point during this five-year Uranus Return? Will I, like Dane Rudyhar, wait until Saturn returns for the third time (30 year cycles) at 90? Will I outlast that to go into my 90s, the way my parents did, not leaving this plane until 96, two years apart?

More and more, I also notice how friends in their 40s become extremely uncomfortable whenever I even mention altering my daily patterns to reflect my current age. “Oh no, you’re not . . .” is their automatic response, whenever I bring up this subject.

For example, I no longer hike long remote forest trails alone. A friend in her 40s, with whom I was walking two miles yesterday evening to an event — and she was shocked, kept remarking “You walk fast!” — dismissed this concern: “Oh, just use walking poles.” That’s what she does. (I don’t like them; they interrupt my Sagittarian stride.)

Another example, no longer riding a bicycle. Not because I don’t want to — and yes, biking IS inherently dangerous, but so is walking, and slipping, and almost falling, on black ice, which I’ve been doing this winter, in spades. (Two slips this morning; one of them major.)

But because three years ago, when I went to get on a bicycle again after 12 years, I was utterly surprised to realize that my body had to learn how again. Huh! I had assumed my body would remember. Of course! Wrong. Oops! This process, of learning how all over again, would put me in greater danger of falling. Something that more and more, concerns me — as it should!

Let’s face it: Any physical activity, taken to excess, or in the wrong conditions, or without taking into account the “fitness” of one’s own aging body — or one’s own footwear! — today, for the first time, rather than winter boots, I had on new Hi-Tec running shoes — is or can be dangerous.

Also today, on my way back from 3-mile morning walk, a young man on an electric scooter whizzed by on my left, immediately hit a black-iced curve, and went down, hard, on his hip. Lucky he was young! I stopped, and so did a biker who came along in the other direction, both of us commiserating, asking if he’s okay. Yes.

Interesting, how very comfortable I am speaking of my own aging process; very unlike younger folks.

I loved the idea of getting, or I should say, growing old, even when I was a kid; I would tell adults that I couldn’t wait until I was 65!

Well, I’d say, in hindsight, that the 60s were not all that easy, compared to the 70s, or especially the 80s! What will the 90s bring?

My desire nature was still strong in my 60s. Surprisingly. Menopause had not killed that part of me, though it had weakened it somewhat.

70s? Better.

And now 80s! Whew! Finally, I sense what my kid self was seeking all along, to live in the material world in a detached, centered manner, both appreciating and continuously letting go, of whatever or whomever I encounter. As if I live at at the edge of a gigantic sphere, all of which is deeply familiar to me; I simultaneously gaze upon and move into compassion with the passions that drive younger ones, passions that inevitably yield emotional highs and lows, sometimes in rapid succession, other times agonizingly slow, in both directions.

Simply, agony is no longer a part of my life.

But of course, all that could change, in an instant, should I fall and break a hip or knee.

I can live with that contradiction, that contrast between what is, and what might lie directly on the other side of it; disability, and/or death.

Yes Ann. Become comfortable with that contrast, too. Live in the pulsing center of that one. I dare you.

 

 

Don’t argue; RADIATE! A Discourse on LOVE

February 10, 2026

Thinking about making this into a tee-shirt:

At 83 years old, on my daily 4-mile walks (which lately include carefully navigating over ice; I sometimes slip, but I do not fall), I can’t help but ponder the entirety of my very long life, a contemplation which is only possible when one reaches this age!

Uranus, the planet of surprises, sudden changes, volatility, unexpected directions, is busy returning to its native place at 1°36 Gemini when I was born for the very first time in my life. Unless I live to be 168 (joke) there will not be another. And believe me, I am savoring this extended 84-year return, which, since Uranus, in my chart, sits at the midpoint between Moon (23° Taurus) and Saturn (7°) includes fthe first ever conjunction to both these planets. Plus, that Uranus midpoint happens to be directly across from Mars (2°40) Sagittarius!

The entire process, for me, takes nearly five years. I’m now about 3/5 of the way through it.

It began with the Uranus conjunction to the Moon, which governs nurturing, mothering, in July 2023, when Uranus reached 22°, one degree from exact conjunction with the Moon’s natal position. During that month, and for the first half of the following month, I was enduring a powerful, uncanny dread, centered on my 58-year-old son inventor Colin Cudmore, who lived next door to me: his health. I kept seeing visions of emergencies in my mind’s eye; this itself distressed me so much that I began to intone the mantra, “I wish him healing, healthy whole,” internally, all day long.

Then, on August 16, 2023, which just happened to be the very day that Uranus reached its exact degree and minute of 23°02 Taurus, conjuncting my natal Moon, the emergency erupted.

At 8:30 in the morning, Colin called me: “Mom, would you please come over here right away . . .” It turned out that both ascending and descending branches of his aorta has dissected (delaminated.)

The local hospital emergency had him airlifted to a hospital in Indianapolis. The subsequent operations — during which not enough blood circulated through the legs, left him paralyzed from the waist down, and in sometimes horrific nerve pain, 24×7, ever since.

He should have died. What he went through was considered impossible. Yet he did not die, and the saga has not ended.

Nine days later, I began posting, daily, on his journey:  caringbridge.org.

 

So this is how my Uranus completion journey began, with its first-ever conjunction to the Moon. And as I said, the entire process will not complete until May of 2028.

You’d think I’d get cynical, or at least bitter, worn down. And yet, I have not. Why?

Well, on these daily walks, I’m periodically amazed at how my view of, and my desire for, my all-too-human longing for “LOVE” has mutated to the point where now, rather than being something I want to get to fill a hole in my being, Love is experienced as a fluid, a flow, coursing through me and radiating. Every person whom I pass by feels that radiation, and it is often returned! Which lifts the hearts of both of us.

 

I wrote the following essay, one which I still consider my magnum opus,  when I was 65 years old. That was nearly 20 years ago!

The evolutionary process indicated in that essay continues, in spades.

Discourse on Love