Excuse Me, I’m Having a Leo Moment

I’m single. I date. I’m also polyamorous. Not to get too much into my personal life, but when I speak of multiple partners, that will help explain it.

The important thing to know is that I have longer-term partners, both local and far away, and a new relationship that looks promising. I have people I care about and people I’m interested in. 

Everything has felt pretty good for the past several weeks. I’ve been in amazing flow. Until I tried to set up visits at the end of an upcoming extended trip and got a lot of: “I really want to see you, but…” followed by any number of things that might be more important than making time when I can be in town.

I started to wonder, why am I doing all the work? Why am I the one saying, hey, let’s get together? Offering dates? Suggesting plans? Checking back in? There seemed to be an awful lot of I want to see you floating around and remarkably little here is what I’m doing to make that happen.

Then one particular conversation hit a nerve. I tried to make plans with someone important to me who I truly expected to enthusiastically jump on board and got another version of I want to see you, but I have other people and things to fit in, too.  So we’ll have to see.

Ouch.

There was nothing inherently wrong with the answer. But something about finding myself once again waiting to see where I might fit into someone else's plans made me look at the whole pattern differently.

About 45 minutes after the Leo New Moon perfected, I went to the orthodontist. Somewhere in the middle of that completely mundane afternoon in a medical waiting room, I had what I can only describe as an enormous Leo moment: Why can’t somebody revolve around me just once in my life?

There it was.

I’ve never, ever had anyone put me consistently at the center of their life—not even my ex-husbands.

And with the same amount of certainty, I realized this needed to be a blog post.

Hello, Dark Moon

The astrology had actually started setting this up the day before.

During the Dark Moon, the Moon was moving through my 7th house in Leo, conjunct Jupiter and Mercury. Which is almost funny in retrospect, because there was certainly no shortage of talking: people saying they're interested, saying they want to see me, possibilities, plans that might happen—or, my favorite, people taking me off read to flirt but not answer anything I'd said.

Jupiter was putting a spotlight on all that relationship activity while the Leo pileup opposed retrograde Pluto in Aquarius: Who actually holds the power here? Who is orbiting whom?

Meanwhile, Juno—the asteroid I use for commitment and partnership—had just slipped into Capricorn. Suddenly the question wasn't what somebody might theoretically want someday. It was: What are we actually building? Is anybody going to show up and do the f**king thing?

Nothing in my relationships had dramatically changed overnight. My perception of them had. I was suddenly seeing the gap between stated desire and demonstrated investment.

And I had some opinions about it.

Excuse Me, Leo Would Like a Word

The next day, the Sun and Moon met at 20° Leo in my 8th house. The transiting South Node was at 29° Leo. This is not neutral territory in my chart.

My natal South Node sits at 23° Leo, also in my 8th house. I don’t think of the South Node simply as something “bad” we’re supposed to leave behind. It’s familiar territory. Old patterns. Old stories. Depending on your spiritual framework, it can also describe something we bring forward from previous lives.

Based on my chart and story, I’ve long associated my Leo South Node with the image of the woman waiting for her lover to come back. Waiting to be rescued. Waiting to be chosen. She wasn’t the center of the story. She orbited somebody else and waited for the day when he would finally turn toward her and say: You. I choose you.

She died waiting.

Whether you take that literally, symbolically, psychologically or spiritually doesn’t really matter for this story. Because I know that woman. I also know I am not her anymore. However, under an eclipsed Leo New Moon sitting on my South Node, some piece of her stood up and yelled: WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO GET SOMEBODY TO ORBIT ME?

Fair question, ma’am.

Meanwhile, my natal North Node is in Aquarius, with my natal Sun at 28° Aquarius. During this New Moon, the transiting North Node was at about 29° Aquarius—right on my Sun.

So while the New Moon woke up the old Leo South Node material, the North Node was simultaneously sitting on my Sun. My identity. Who I am now. The old desire came back. But the woman experiencing the desire isn’t the prior woman.

I still want to be chosen. There. I said it, second-house Aquarian Sun and North Node be damned. That doesn’t mean I suddenly want monogamy or secretly want a primary partner. It doesn’t mean I want another human being to arrange his entire life around me.

But sometimes? Yeah. I want somebody to say with no reservations: F*ck yes. You. Let’s make this happen.

I want to be enthusiastically prioritized. I want somebody else to initiate. I want somebody else to move toward me. But wanting to be chosen is not the same thing as waiting around to be chosen.

And Then My Scorpio Moon Got a Microphone

As if the nodal activity weren’t enough, the New Moon chart had something else waiting for me. The Ascendant was about 16° Scorpio. The Part of Fortune was 16°31′ Scorpio. The Part of Spirit was 16°32′ Scorpio.

My natal Moon? 15°09′ Scorpio. In my 10th house.

Meanwhile, the Descendant landed at 16°34′ Taurus. My natal Saturn is 16°34′ Taurus. To the minute.

And suddenly the question looked almost ridiculously clear. On the Ascendant: What do I need? On the Descendant: What is the other person actually capable of giving me? Not what they say they want. Not what they theoretically feel. What are they actually doing?

Apparently the universe enjoys a punchline since all of that landed on my Moon in the 10th—the most public part of my chart. What I haven't really done with Scorpio Moon Astrology is make my lived experience of astrology part of the work, until now.  Hot on the heels of my Leo revelation, I knew I wanted to write about it. Publicly.

Hello, 10th house.

Enter: The Gary Standard

By the next morning, the Moon had moved into Virgo and was separating from all that South Node activity. Something had shifted. Instead of sitting around pissed off about who wasn’t making an effort, I found myself making concrete plans for Friday night with one partner and not worried about chasing the others.

And then there’s Gary.

While I was walking laps, my elderly neighbor Gary was mowing his lawn. I noticed him stop and head down the road by his fence. I thought maybe he’d dropped something.

A minute later, he walked up carrying two beautiful stems of gladiolus.

He handed them to me.

Smiled.

Got back on his lawn mower.

And drove away.

That’s it.

For the record, Gary is not sitting around pining away for me. The man has female company with enough regularity that I’m pretty sure Gary is doing just fine.

Gary doesn’t even know he’s in a competition. And Gary is winning hands down. Because the Gary Standard isn’t about flowers. It’s about initiative.  He saw the gladiolus. He picked them. He brought them to me. End of story.

Maybe That’s What the Leo Moment Was About

I don’t think the lesson of this New Moon is that everybody in my life needs to start revolving around me.

Probably for the best. I would become absolutely insufferable.

But I also don't think I need to look at my desire to be chosen and decide it's something I've spiritually outgrown. Maybe I need to understand the difference between wanting to be chosen and surrendering my power while I wait for somebody to choose me.

I can want reciprocity. I can want enthusiasm. I can pay attention to whether someone's actions actually move in my direction. I just don't want to be the one always generating all the gravity.

Maybe that’s what lived astrology looks like. Sometimes astrology doesn’t predict what’s going to happen. Sometimes you’re already standing in the middle of it before you look up and realize the sky has given you language for the thing you’ve been living.

Sometimes the South Node opens an old door.

Sometimes the North Node asks who you are now that you’re standing in front of it again.

And sometimes, while you’re busy trying to figure out what the universe is attempting to tell you, a man on a riding mower hands you two gladiolus and answers the question perfectly well.

See me. Think of me. And then do something about it.

A Little More Lived Astrology

I've mostly used Scorpio Moon Astrology to teach you what's happening in the sky and what it might mean for you. I'm going to start showing you more of what happens when I catch that astrology operating in my own life, too.

Because sometimes the best way to understand astrology is to live through something, look at the chart afterward and say: Well, sh*t. There it is.