When my husband spends more time at work or with friends than with me (in my perception), I start to feel unloved, and not beautiful or desirable enough. My abandonment wounds get triggered.

Working with adolescents in an outdoor therapy program has been the greatest challenge of my life. It takes a lot of care and compassion to live with teen boys in treatment, in the desert, for 8 days at a time, every other week. Emotional burnout is significant. Even greater still are the rewards, growth, and strength that I've cultivated from doing this work.

It often happens that when we experience emotional release and/or moments of intense vulnerability, sometimes there’s a recoil. Moments of truth and tenderness can lead to shelling up to hide and protect ourselves even more. We sometimes get worse before we get better. The wound always wants to have the last word.

The following exercise is an emotional regulation tool called thought defusion. Thought defusion helps you to zoom out and detach from thoughts that may be causing you stress.

This is a reminder that we live in a free will Universe, one that always presents us with the choice to choose Love or Fear, Hate or Kindness. We can choose to focus on the good, on the miracles, on the acts of service, generosity, and love that we witness everyday.

Through my pain and my grief recently, I’ve discovered that at the root of it all is the belief that I’m unworthy of God’s love, that I’m not doing enough, not helping enough. This is what God said to me in response…

Truth and transparency are universal human rights. With the assistance of Uranus in Gemini, we can demand this of ourselves, our relationships, and our leaders. Uranus can help us become smarter and wiser.

“Diana The Desert Coyote” painting by Jen Farnsworth.

There is great potential to expand our emotional intelligence at this time, and to learn how to better nurture those we care about while also improving how we express and advocate for our emotional needs. 

I'm proud of myself that I am now 4 years sober from alcohol, and yet I'm realizing that sobriety is not about any particular substance (although boundaries with certain addictions are healthy). Sobriety is about sitting with my experience and not running from it. Anything can be an addiction when we are using it to numb, hide, or avoid.