I remember when Saturn entered Capricorn. It was January, sometime during Capricorn season, and I was writing horoscopes for Go Magazine. That was before they let me go. The woman who runs the magazine had called me and told me that people my age are only interested in hearing about romantic relationships and jobs and that horoscopes should only address those topics. They didn’t tell me a reason for letting me go but I suspect that it was because I did not follow orders.

In 2018, when Saturn entered Capricorn, I made $16,000 and that’s what I lived on. I was working at a community center for seniors two days a week where Italian seniors hated me because I am Chinese. A memory from that time—a woman who wore a Trump sweatshirt barked at me so frequently to pick up her trash, telling me that I was dirty, that I had to go to the bathroom to cry. When I came back I told her that I knew what she was doing and that she cannot treat me this way. She didn’t yell at me for the rest of the day but she would often look at me when she wanted me to take her side when she abused the Chinese seniors at the center. Shortly after, the senior center was evicted. Its landlord was a Catholic organization and it needed the space for a nunnery.

I wanted so badly to be an astrologer in 2018. I had no idea how to do it. I didn’t have a place to post writing and tried to put it on Instagram. I got my first post with over 100 likes in 2018 and I was elated. I did readings sometimes in the apartment I lived in with two roommates and two cats and I was and am grateful for every person who came to me. I had been doing readings for three or four years at that point. I had a bit of an idea of what I was doing and was working on my counseling skills. It was trial and error. I learned something from every client.

While Saturn was in Capricorn, I wrote three books, built a website that now has 35,000 unique visitors every month, and ran seven community programs. I broke up with the art world after fits of disillusionment and do not say yes to opportunities within that world anymore. While Saturn was in Capricorn, I figured out what I wanted. I learned how to hold space for elders and for teens, who happen to be some of the funniest and most distrustful people in the world.

While Saturn was in Capricorn, I learned from old people. They told me about having to eat stray cats during famines, about secret compartments under coffins that the Mafioso used, and about what it’s like to live with chronic illness.

When Saturn was in Capricorn, I learned from young people. They taught me that your truth doesn’t have to be everyone else’s truth, about gen z memes that I don’t really get, and that nihilism is not the absence of hope but of questioning morality.

I learned what it’s like to accept care while Saturn was in Capricorn. I learned that I feel exhausted with guilt when I receive care but that the people who give me care often do not need that guilt from me. My current roommate is the first person to not punish me for having a trauma response even when it happened in a way that was hurtful to them. I learned the difference between my own shame and someone else’s shame while Saturn was in Capricorn—I learned from an eighteen year old that social transformation becomes possible when you accept the shame that belongs to you and reject the shame that doesn’t.

I self published books while Saturn was in Capricorn. I used an open source software for screenwriters and never edited anything. I made a list of bookstores and witch stores that might be interested in my books and I called them relentlessly. I didn’t know if anyone would buy the books and wrote them anyway. I was scared that I was wasting my time while Saturn was in Capricorn and that all of the work that I was putting into astrology would never build into anything. I didn’t really think that I could become an astrologer. I did it anyway because I was obsessed with it.

I’m not poor anymore. When Saturn first entered Capricorn, I was. I make the median salary for my neighborhood now, which is something that shocks me—that I could be a real person with a real income. This isn’t the first time that I have been not-poor. I grew up poor and then my family became middle class when I was a teen. I became poor again when I realized that I couldn’t survive while being under my parents’ financial control. That was when I called my mom after being sexually coerced and she told me that something was forever changed about me now, that it was my fault, and that the only way I could become better was through her Jesus.

Saturn was in my twelfth house while it was in Capricorn and not so much is supposed to happen when it is transiting your twelfth house. I became a completely different person. What changed aren’t the obvious things but the things that I never tell anyone. I’m a Cancer Moon. I have a lot of secrets. One of my secrets is my love for myself—it’s a thing that I never need to tell anyone about not because I am keeping it from anyone but because I’m keeping it for myself. That’s what I learned from Saturn in Capricorn—that fundamental and seismic things might shift in you but they might be completely unnoticeable to anyone on the outside.