For the past two months, I’ve been on an inner journey. It’s hard to say how long this journey will last. All I know is that once ignited, it has taken its own course.
And of course, I see this entire drama in terms of astrology, how current transits are affecting my natal chart. I cannot stress enough how astrology helps put things in perspective as well as promote healing processes.
The long term astro situation: transit Uranus is approaching its very first and only return to its natal place at 84 years. A huge event; once in a lifetime.
Natal Uranus at 1°Gemini, which itself is opposite natal Mars at 2° Sagittarius. So my very mental Uranus happens to be a more than usually fiery and “interruptive” energy. However, the original natal Mars/Uranus opposition is also subject to two natal energies which enclose it, one aiming to slow it down (Moon 23° Taurus) and the other to discipline or limit it (Saturn 7° Gemini).
This entire transit process began in earnest in the summer of 2023 as a motherly (Moon) feeling of increasing dread during June and July as Uranus approached the motherly Moon for the first time in my life. Then, when it got to an exact conjunction of the Moon, the dread climaxed with a horrific medical interruption that involved my 58 year old son Colin on August 16, 2023, an aortic dissection of both ascending and descending branches that should have killed him but instead left him paralyzed from the waist down and with painful nerve damage.
He’s been dealing with the damage ever since. I post daily on his agonizingly slow healing process here.
https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/colincudmorehealing
The interruption didn’t stop with Colin; it then switched to me. This time voluntarily. One year after Colin’s ordeal began, in mid-August this year, I decided, seemingly on the spur of the moment (very Mars/Uranus in air/fire signs) to experiment with intermittent fasting, two meals a day, with the goal of what’s called 18/6, i.e., 18 hours between the second meal one day and the first meal the next day.
Just to see if I could; and to see if it would bring my average 150 blood pressure down. Which it did.
I started with 16/8, one meal at 10 AM, and the other at 5 PM (so done by 6 PM). Then 17/7, and now, finally, for the past few weeks, 18/6: the first meal at noon and the second at 5 PM.
I’ve never in my very long life skipped breakfast. So intermittent fasting is a decided break in a lifelong routine.
Then, once that interruption was successfully set in motion, I decided, a few weeks ago, to see what I could do to interrupt my serious addiction to screens. Though, unlike most people, I don’t carry a phone with me on my long daily walks, I am either on screen, or have it open nearby, most of my other waking hours; plus, I take the ipad to bed with me, to help me get to sleep by listening to something not too interesting . . .
Okay. So I began this aspect of pattern interruptus on a Sunday, with the aim of being off-screen from 7 AM until 5 PM, except during daily one hour nap.
That went off okay.
Then I decided to do the same, and include nap in the screen fast.
That worked out okay too.
Then, and this was last weekend, I decided to go off screen from 7 AM to 7 PM. So a full 12 hours!
And even that worked.
Okay, then I began thinking about doing the same thing on Saturday, with the goal of eventually being off-screen a full 48 hours each week: from Saturday morning through Monday morning.
But: I knew that during this entire time I was seriously disturbing my “little girl,” that aspect of me I call “Orphan Annie,” who was already quite pissed at how I had interrupted her comfortable habit patterns. I knew that unless I gave her something in exchange, something that would make her feel pleased, that she would sabotage my intended 48-hour-per-week screen fast.
So . . . I decided to start on Saturdays by going for a walk with puppy Scampi somewhere nearby, but out of town, and so beyond my usual perimeter (which is 4-5 miles any direction from where I live in town). And then, take myself out to lunch somewhere interesting, leaving Scampi in the car (he doesn’t mind).
Today was the first day. I remained off screen from 8 AM until 2:00 PM (including one hour nap), going first for a walk on a trail at nearby Griffy lake and then out to lunch at a Korean restaurant.
If you are interested in doing your own version of pattern interruptus, i.e., letting go of whatever addictions that keep you bound in chains, I can’t stress enough the fact that the one who is addicted is the inner child. She must receive something in return for her terrible sacrifice!
Here’s a post on how I finally let go of cigarettes, after many attempts, each of which, when I failed, cemented the addiction further.
Reminder: I’ll be off-screen all of tomorrow, so no Sunday post.
