Welcome to my Astro Advice Column! If you subscribe to my Astro-Kats or Star Kids Club groups you are able to ask me questions about astrology for this advice column.


My partner is currently going through their Saturn return in their 12th house. Even though the transit has been going on for the past few years, it seems as though the intensity has really accelerated this past year. Do you have any advice on how I can support them during this time?

–overwhelmed


You know, Overwhelmed, this is something that I don’t know the answer to. I think about it a lot. I’m going through my first (technically second because Saturn retrograded a bit after my birth) Saturn return and so is my partner. Even though our risings trine one another, our Saturn returns are very different. We have lived different lives and, so, we stumble into full maturity a bit differently.

You’re seeing someone you love change. What a wonder and what an uncertainty.

You’re seeing someone you love change. How might you need support around this time?

We sometimes think of these transits as so insular. A Mercury retrograde happens to us when it really happens to the world. A Saturn’s return is a personal transit. It happens to us but, when things happen to us, do they really only happen to one person?

People do all sorts of things during a Saturn return. They transition. They start hormones. They move. They quit employment and live out of a suitcase for a while. They watch people die. They give birth. They discover long lost siblings.

I don’t deny that your partner’s Saturn return is theirs. I also don’t deny that these signs of a return will never impact one person alone.

You’ve called yourself overwhelmed, Overwhelmed. When we are overwhelmed in something, that is often a signal that we might need to take it one day at a time, that we may want to lower the stakes, or that we are ready to retreat or shake or sit very still to hear something that we cannot yet hear.

What might your overwhelm need from you, Overwhelmed?

What creatures might lurk in that overwhelm? Understanding? Anger? Disappointment? A feeling of being proud of your partner? A sadness that wants to pull them close? A feeling of needing to be away sometimes for a while?

There’s some tools that you can use, for sure. All of these tools are imperfect tools. You can see where Saturn in Aquarius lines up in your chart and do some wondering about how your partner’s changes might impact your life and perspective. There’s the significations of the twelfth house itself, which are about things that your childhood denied to you and how loss moves you, which you can move through with your partner. I see a lot of twelfth house Saturn returns show up as being about not being able to work in the ways that you thought you’d need to work. There’s asking your partner, directly, what support they might need from you.

All of these are important and yet imperfect tools. Astrology itself is imperfect for talking about the seizure of growing up. Asking people who we care about directly what support they need from us isn’t as clear cut as we might hope. There’s all sorts of reasons why someone may not be able to answer that question. And, also, there is the possibility that your partner will simply tell you what kind of support they need from you.

And, so, I ask you again—what support might you need as you see your partner come into adulthood, change, and become another version of themselves?

Is this a question whose answers jump into your being or is it one that conjured a kind of momentary lapse of memory? Are the eager answers the answers that need the most listening or are there other answers that need the shroud of privacy? Are there any answers that make you laugh? Any answers that make you scared?

What might you need in this moment?

And I understand that your question is about how you can support your partner while I’ve wasted many lines on how you can support yourself. I do think that, something between that asking of yourself and support, is a window that will allow you to peer into the question of how you might love and care for another person and see something real. I believe that is true because you have been getting to know your partner through your own capacity to love. That capacity for love is real. That capacity for love is where all of those creatures who try their very best to support you in supporting someone who is changing live.