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