As a vigilant cosmos-watcher (most astrologers naturally are) I always get a good laugh when circumstances align in my reality that exactly play out the energies of the planetary placements in relation to my own chart. That happened this morning, to perfection.

Venus and Mercury in Pisces – more covers please

In classic Mercury retrograde form  (Mercury stations direct tomorrow, 3/28, after a 3-week retrograde through the last half of Pisces, revisiting all those degrees until he moves into Aries on 4/16)  there was a communication glitch (felt like a chasm) with a person I hold dear and BOOM! Just like that! I had a HUGE emotional reaction to his behavior. Deep, ingrained patterns of neglect and abandonment surfaced almost immediately for me, even though I absolutely know in every fibre of my being that he would never want me to experience that because of him. But I did.

Neglect, abandonment, not being worth his time, not being counted for what I was doing for him (not that he at all asked me to do anything at all for himes, that was all me). Like the recovering codependent I am (name one person who grew up with narcissists that doesn’t have codependent tendencies) I made his agenda more important than my own and then was emotionally crushed when he had not done the same for me. Ha! Ridiculousness at its best. To think that you have the same agenda as another person or that another person expresses love for you in the way you do is a set-up for disappointment. Expectation is a set-up for disappointment.

So in the moment of seeing the exchange for what it was, evidence of Mercury and Venus transiting Pisces – communication confusion leading to codependent-induced emotional meltdown – I could make the choice (because you can’t make a choice if you are stuck in a loop but if you can step outside the loop even for a moment you have choice) to have myself a good little cry and then move on with my day, choosing activities and experiences that I enjoy, not dependent on what another person choose for himself to experience today. Whew! Nobody said working on yourself is easy but it does offer liberation from the Piscean maze of codependency and confusion. I’ll choose liberation every time.

I ask myself: what is going to help me get back to a neutral, peaceful state of mind and heart? The first step for me is always to cognitively understand what’s going on. Then when I get it cognitively I energetically release the pattern. I may have to do this many times until I feel better because feeling better is imperative to being in a positive creative space and that’s the space I choose to inhabit.