On Holding Space For Integration

Hey y’all,

Happy Spring! I hope you’re doing well and appreciating all of the signs of Earth humming back to life: the birds chirping, the flowers, the extra sun. As a March baby, Spring is truly one of my favorite seasons despite the seasonal allergies that are surely on their way to me.

March was an intense month for me and I imagine the collective as a whole. From an astrological perspective, we moved through Mars hanging out in Cancer after being retrograde since December. Then we opened the month with Venus retrograde in Aries and Pisces, an eclipse in Virgo, Mercury retrograde in Aries, an eclipse in Aries, and Neptune going in to Aries for the first time since the Civil War. If you’re not super familiar with astrology: 1. I definitely recommend getting the CHANI app but 2. just one of those things happening in a month would be a big deal normally so the fact that they happened all at once is wild.

Although I had planned on writing a newsletter last month, I realized that it was one of those moments where life just needed to happen to me and I could put the pieces together later. As we continue to move through this massive era of change as a collective, astrological signatures like the ones we experienced in March can serve as portals to shift into a new way of bringing our dreams into reality (Neptune in Aries) and moments to reflect on what’s not working well (Venus and Mercury Retrograde). Particularly as we transition from winter to spring, it can be really easy to jump immediately into all of the things that we need to get done but I’ve really been leaning into integrating all of the lessons from winter and these retrogrades so I can move forward with focus and intention.

Aries energy in particular is the definition of do first, think later which is sometimes necessary but at the end of the day our energy is finite. How can we integrate what all of the challenges we’re experiencing are teaching us about ourselves and each other so that we can work smarter and not harder? How can we use our understanding of the ways that we’ve grown to focus our energy on what really matters to us?

As someone who is both an Aries stellium (meaning I have a lot of Aries in my birth chart) and is neurodiverse, it is particularly challenging for me to sustain my attention and energy. I have multiple unfinished crochet projects lying around my room to prove it. However, in reflecting on the goals I set out to achieve in Q1 and revisiting old voice memos that I recorded to myself in the depths of winter, I actually learned a lot about what it makes it possible for me to focus my time and energy. For example, I recently finished the draft of my first script (woohooo!) and that was one of two goals that I set for the quarter that I actually accomplished. When I started reflecting on what made completing that goal possible, I realized that it was a few things:

1. I started small, meaning I typically only set a goal to write for 5 minutes. If I got in the swing of it, I would keep going but sometimes I stopped and that was okay.

2. I kept a log of how I felt after I wrote which helped me collect evidence to support that I always felt good after writing even if my brain didn’t feel like it at first.

3. I found a reoccurring coworking space that allowed me a consistent writing time to come back to with other writers that I didn’t have to actively think about or plan.

4. I broke down my goal based on the number of coworking sessions I needed to join vs. the number of pages. Once I knew I could write ten pages during one session, I knew I only needed to join one a week for a month to hit my goal.

All of these actions seem pretty small but together they led to me achieving a goal that I thought was impossible this time last year. Now I can apply what I learned to my next writing project. I say all that to say, before you go into this energetic new year full steam ahead, it may be worth considering what areas of your life were activated by the recent astrology or just reviewing your own goals for this year and seeing what worked well that you can carry forward and what didn’t work well that you can release. If you’re going based on the astrology that could look like seeing what happened in terms of how you take action (Mars), how you communicate (Mercury), or how you relate to love, relationships, beauty, and creativity (Venus).

One of my favorite poses in yoga is Shavasana. Not only because you get to lay down but also because it’s an opportunity to rest and integrate all of the work you’ve done. It is a reminder that integration is just as important as doing the work so I hope you’ll gift yourself a few moments to do so.

Coming up later this month, I’ll be hosting a virtual Inner-Child Play Date which you can learn more about and register for here. My books are also currently open for 1:1 energy work sessions and self-care strategy sessions so you can set up some time with me here.

Thanks for reading as always. Wishing you a beautiful and integrative start to Spring! 💕🌱

With love,

Paula