Aquarius Full Moon & More: Radical Change

“Speak your mind - even if your voice shakes.”
-Maggie Kuhn

Last week, a text arrived from an old friend. “Thank you for your forgiveness,” it began.

Radical change doesn’t always happen in a flash. It can arrive as a whisper, dropping hints over the years of something new to come.

When I was in college, I studied in Spain for a year. Arriving back on campus, I needed a place to live. Luckily, one of my besties from high school offered me space in her apartment, along with three of her friends.

Nowadays, I don’t hide the fact that I’m gay. But over three decades ago, when I agreed to live with my friend, I hadn’t come out yet. To anyone.

Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I knew that I was different. But back then, I had no language for who I was; there were no queer role models available to me. I didn’t know how to live my truth out loud, and so coming out was a long, drawn-out process of shedding what wasn’t genuine and allowing myself to be born into authenticity.

Meanwhile, my friend was being born again too, but in a different way: She was an evangelical Christian and found belonging in a group on campus that identified with Jesus as their personal savior.

By the time school started that fall, I’d come out to a couple of dear friends, but no one else knew my secret – including my housemates. So I found myself trying to navigate the cognitive dissonance of learning how to be myself wholly, while simultaneously rooming with four people who regularly had prayer circles in our living room. As I piloted the complicated path of coming out without a map, I knew their stance regarding people like me was “love the sinner but hate the sin.”

To be fair: My roommates and I got along fine overall, often sharing food and laughter. But we had separate lives otherwise… and I wasn’t about to tell them that my new close “friend” was also my first girlfriend! After all, being called a sinner isn’t a great way to build trust, so I found other folks to confide in.

After graduation, my friend and I went our separate ways. We stayed in touch a little, eventually having a conversation about my being gay – but we never quite saw eye-to-eye on matters. As a born-again Christian, religion was a core part of my friend’s life and identity. Meanwhile, I strayed farther and farther from my Catholic roots and anything to do with institutions that saw my essence as sinful. Our friendship lost steam.

But people can surprise you.

In having tough but courageous conversations, seeds can be planted that don’t blossom until later. People remember kind honesty, and I’ve learned in my life that words matter – even when it’s hard to get them out.

══════════════════

“When the music changes, so must your dance.”
-Elaine Welteroth, More Than Enough

The Full Moon on August 19, 2024 (1:25pm CT) is at 27° Aquarius.

Full Moons are the point in the lunar cycle when the Sun and the Moon stand opposite each other, offering illumination, reflection, release, and balance. They’re a chance to sew events together and change course – or not – based on what’s being unveiled.

The revolutionary sign of Aquarius represents society and the groups to which we belong. We think and innovate with Aquarius. We view humanity with the future in mind.

How can you take a fresh approach to ingrained ways of thinking? Freedom-loving Aquarius just might help you break out of a rut!

The Sun, on the other side of the zodiac, is in open-hearted Leo, offering courage, generosity, and the chance to express yourself with love and a dramatic flair.

Leo asks: What’s your path with heart?

Taken together, how can you balance self-expression with collaboration and community?

All Full Moons offer touchpoints from previous time periods: In this case, look to February 2023 and November 2023. Are there threads that connect to now, asking you to see things in a new light? What storyline runs through these dates for you?

This Full Moon chart is busy!

Communicator Mercury is cozied up to the Sun, currently doing the moonwalk and bringing our minds back to days long ago – the people we knew, the places we went, and the events that shaped us, for better or worse.

The lights are also forming a tense relationship to anything-can-happen Uranus. The planet of surprises is in earthy Taurus, forming a destabilizing T-square to the Sun and Moon. There’s a push-pull happening, and while Taurus is usually a comfort-seeking sign, this combo can feel itchy; it’s hard to know what’s coming or going when changemaker Uranus joins the show.

If unexpected circumstances arrive, how can you be adaptable during this time?

Forward-thinking Aquarius is ruled by sensible Saturn, always reminding us to be mature, work hard, and persist. The practical school principal of the zodiac is currently having lots of conversations from its seat in compassionate Pisces.

Diplomatic Venus is across the table from Saturn, cleaning up the clutter of our lives from discerning Virgo. When the planet of what we yearn for opposes the planet of restrictions, it can feel like we’re blocked, or like what we want is out of reach.

What actions can you take to nourish and fortify relationships during this time? With Mercury retrograde, anything that brings you into the past would be right on time.

Venus and Saturn are forming a second T-square in this chart – this one to both waymaker Mars and amplifier Jupiter in let’s-talk-about-it Gemini.

How is your relationship to anger? This is the second red flag from the cosmos which suggests that it would be prudent to pause and respond, rather than immediately react. Are you good at thinking before speaking? Breathe, and count to ten before acting if you can.

Finally, expansive Jupiter is also squaring restrictive Saturn on August 19 for the first of three times over the next year. (The other two occur on December 24, 2024 and June 15, 2025.)

This aspect calls to mind December 21, 2020, when the two met in innovative Aquarius. What was happening for you at that time?

Jupiter-Saturn cycles bring up themes of exploration versus limitation, growth versus constriction, freedom versus authority, expansion versus contraction, and trust-it versus see-it-to-believe-it.

We’re now at the “opening square,” a pivot point that connects back to December 2020 and asks: How have you been navigating these two vastly different energies in your life? Can you balance them better? (If you’re familiar with your birth chart, look to the Gemini and Pisces houses to understand which areas of your life are being affected.)

To bring all this together, consider: Do you have entrenched outlooks that no longer serve you? And what opportunities do you have to build in groundbreaking ways, for the benefit of self and others?

How can you reach into the past in order to move into the future, cultivating tenderness in the communities to which you belong?

What do you have control over? What don’t you have control over? Focus and act on the former; find a community of like-minded folks to share and discuss the latter.

The times we live in are not easy, as we look to the future and wonder what it holds.

It takes an act of courage, of heart, to move into the future by adapting as needed… especially when it means shedding a piece of your identity along the way.

══════════════════

“The me I am is not the me I was.”
- Val Emmich, Dear Evan Hansen

My beloved high school pals and I got together recently; as a group we hadn’t seen each other in 30+ years!

My former college housemate was there, too. Surprisingly, she arrived wearing a rainbow shirt with the word EQUALITY written on it.

She told me about her son and his husband.

And most astonishingly of all, she told me that she left the Church recently.

My friend explained it this way: Her decision came as a slow process over many years. And while there was more than one motive behind her decision to leave, a key reason was the treatment of LGBTQ+ folks by those in her religious community.

Early on, my friend tried to reconcile her faith as it pertained to me, a longtime friend. As the years passed, she struggled to merge her worldview with that of the Church on other related topics, such as marriage equality. Then, starting about a decade ago, a couple of extended family members shared that they identified as LGBTQ+. My friend continued to feel the discrepancy between, as she said, “acting in loving ways yet having this theology that conflicted.”

The proverbial straw broke when all of this arrived at her doorstep in the form of her son. She could no longer bear the internal conflict between the ministry’s principles with the love she had for him. Something in her broke wide open – something that felt insincere at best, and harmful at worst. 

So she left – the Church, the religion, the faith, all of it. This had been her identity, her community, and, in many ways, her home – but it no longer felt like it aligned with her integrity.

“If anything, love is my ethos now,” she said.

This Aquarius Full Moon asks: Is radical change calling to you somewhere? Do you feel the pull to break free of something that feels like a constraint? Perhaps it’s an unhealthy habit, or a philosophy or community that no longer supports who you are, for example.

When you look to the future, who do you want to be?

After the reunion, my friend wrote to me:

Thank you for your forgiveness. I tell that story of our college apartment as part of my journey all the time. I hate that I wasn't safe – I thought being kind and of the “love the sinner hate the sin” variety was enough, but your honesty [years ago] that if I couldn't accept your whole self, I wasn't really loving you helped start me on my journey... so that conversation at [our friends’] wedding was critical in my own growth to allyship.

In 1000 ways, you and our whole group helped to make me who I am, but you perhaps most of all. My son-in-law's mom doesn't fully accept him and it's painful to watch. But I get to have a beautiful relationship with both he and my son... and it all started with a friend who was honest with me.

So I'm not walking around saying “mea culpa” and living in misery. But I do share [my] start so people know that radical change is possible. It was maybe a more convincing story for Christians when I was still finding ways to be in the faith as an open and affirming person!

You were my first and perhaps best high school friend. I'll love you forever for so many reasons, even if I don't show it enough.

Maybe this is some of the most profound love of all: Actions and words from years ago echoing back, arriving as a remorse-filled request from someone who is learning and growing with a heart wide open.

It’s easy to stay in the same lane in life – to recognize something is off, yet to keep going as usual because that’s what you know.

It takes true courage to make repairs and walk the talk.

This visionary Aquarius Full Moon invites you to consider: Is radical change blooming in your life, and if so, how can you welcome it in with full-hearted acts of love and self-expression?

We can wait for change, or we can anticipate it – either way, perhaps freedom awaits.

Essay and photo ©2024 Jen Braun, JJ Boots Productions LLC

 ══════════════════

 Note: This essay is the retelling of a personal experience, and not meant as a commentary on Christians in general; many of my family and friends are Christians who love Jesus and unconditionally love and accept me for who I am, fully and wholly. ❤

A big thank you to my friend, who gave her blessing to post this essay.