Feeling the Cycles Without Giving Away Your Power
Astrology, Agency, and Grief in the Year of the Fire Horse
In this personal reflection, I explore my evolving relationship with astrology, numerology, and the natural cycles of the universe. As we enter the Year of the Fire Horse and a significant planetary shift, I’ve been sitting with grief, renewal, and what it means to strengthen my agency in midlife. This isn’t about giving power away to cosmic movements — it’s about learning to feel them without surrendering sovereignty. If you’re navigating your own liminal space, this reflection may resonate.
We’ve entered the year of the fire horse and it’s ready to run. I am strapping in for the opportunities to strengthen my agency as I meet whatever life brings forth.
I don’t study astrology in any depth, but I do study numerology and I have a new theory about why these systems exist and allow us to decode patterns of energy. At the most basic level, they help us to access information about how to align with the natural cycles of the universe and the earth.
I don’t know about you, but during the last few years I’ve become increasingly sensitive to these energies even without seeking them explicitly. Often I will experience a profound mental shift or emotional activation and I’ll look up what the planets and the moon are up to. Inevitably, there’s some important transit or the moon is full or dark. Knowing their influences helps me understand my own experience and make sense of things – not to allow them to dictate my actions or decisions, but to help me orient.
I think humans are meant to be sensitive to these energies for this very reason: whether it’s the planets or the numbers, they offer us ways to interpret what’s going on. They don’t predict experiences or prescript anything, but they do invite more rest, or to make new and confident choices, or to take action. By following their cycles we too can live cyclically instead of constantly efforting and pushing through.
The more I heal my own body and mind from past stress and trauma patterns, the more deeply I sense these energies and they empower me to know myself more deeply.
The more I heal my own body and mind from past stress and trauma patterns, the more deeply I sense these energies and they empower me to know myself more deeply.
As of yesterday we are now in the year of the Fire Horse. We are also currently in a once in 30 year transit of Saturn, Neptune and Aries in the zodiac. According to the books, this represents a new clean slate; an invitation to plant seeds.
The last couple of weeks have felt very intense as I have contemplated and even wrestled with what new seeds I would like to plant next, especially as I walk my menopausal years.
For women especially, this time in midlife is a rite of passage, a time of rebirth and I’m not taking that lightly. I’m paying attention and reclaiming my agency one step at a time.
I currently feel deconstructed – that’s the best way I can describe it. Almost as if I have been taken apart to my elemental pieces and they are being cleaned. Like taking apart a machine to detail it before it gets put back together. This isn’t scary in any way and I’m not fighting against it. I feel quite settled on the one hand. On the other hand I feel a deep grief for the things that have passed, the things that will no longer be and the things that have never been.
Grief is part of transformation and embodiment. I’ve had the dense fog of it rise up in my chest often since the beginning of 2026. Today it feels different than the grief from even a few weeks ago which felt more like anticipatory grief – like when you know a loved one will imminently pass, but you don’t know when.
Today’s grief feels cleaner – not a fog in my chest but more of a mist – because the passing of whatever I shed the previous year has now happened and I can move on. If I clutch too tightly to what’s gone that would intensify the grief, but without attachments to the past, I can simply observe it and allow it to move through me and make space for what’s next.
This is an interesting liminal space to be in. I have made conscious decisions, planted a seed and am being cleared and that’s the best language I have for this experience. It’s not scary or difficult. It simply is.
And I know for me, what’s making it easier is knowing that this energetic shift is reflected in astrology and numerology and that I have agency in how I navigate it. We are meant to feel the cosmic cycles without letting them steer for us.
How are you navigating this time? If you’re finding it intense and need support, I invite you to join one of my somatic writing circles or have a 1:1 session where we can support your nervous system.
Summary
Healing does not need to be intense to be real. For sensitive and intuitive women navigating stress and trauma, embodied somatic nervous system regulation allows patterns to shift gradually and sustainably. Fast cognitive processing and spiritual breakthroughs are not the same as embodied integration. Through somatic healing and the Stress Indicator Point System, stress energy can metabolize at the pace the body requires, creating lasting change without overwhelm. (SEO heavy summary)