Your life is good enough and worth fighting for.

The weather is too hot this year. I remember seeing an article about how the heat is related to the wave cycles of the Pacific. El Nino, the warm wave, is evaporating this year. I’m not really sure how this works. I’m not a weather scientist but did read about this from a science journal. All I know is that it’s hot, that people are dying from the heat, and that this is really scary.

The light of the Sun clarifies things. So does fear. I know that, as I sat with my fear about climate collapse this last solstice, a lot of things became clear to me.

What became clear to me is that we are fighting infrastructure with our bodies. I believe that morality is instructional, not essential. This means that I believe that everyone has an innate goodness and that we use stories about good and bad to teach ourselves how to listen to our goodness. I also believe that we live in a world where we are coerced into serving infrastructure instead of life. In this world, every breath of fresh air carries some risk.

Our food distribution channels are designed to exploit land. The rivers around us are chained and locked to direct water towards corporations and away from common use. Our social contracts are designed to create surplus value, to expand into imperialism. Our factory farms are designed to spread disease, to make different strains compete against each other so that spread is accelerated. This is infrastructure. Infrastructure is not a place. It’s control.

In July 2024, we're going to get a second Capricorn Full Moon. Sometimes we get more than one Full Moon in the same sign in a year. The Moon makes 13 cycles in a year. Capricorn is the sign that honors Mars and, this summer, we get two Capricorn Full Moons. Mars is about fighting—what are we fighting for?

In this world, we fight for life. We fight for the innate goodness inside each and every one of us.

Leo is the sign that believes in its own goodness. Cancer is about caring about something. Mercury moves into Leo at the beginning of the month. Venus splits its time in Cancer and Leo, moves into Leo around mid month. The Sun stays in Cancer until later in the month, moving into Leo close to the last week of July. These are the two brightest signs. They beam like sunlight. Cancer and Leo season are the best times for understanding what the solstice has illuminated for you.

I know that each person’s goodness is innate. Everyone has a heart that wants to shine, nurturing and life affirming, just like the Sun. But we don’t often believe in our own goodness. When we don’t believe that we are good enough for life, we stop fighting for our lives. We give up. We think that it’s too hard, that there’s too much risk, or that the world will end. We think that, when the infrastructure collapses, that we will just die.

This is what clarified for me during the summer solstice—we are fighting infrastructure with our bodies and that sometimes we are successful. This fight did not start yesterday. It’s been happening. This is a fact. Many of us have survived huge disasters.

Leo season is coming. This is the hottest time of the year. The weather is too hot and this scares all of us. What becomes clear to you because of your fear? What are we fighting for?

You are good enough to fight for. Your life is good enough and worth fighting for. My life is good enough and worth fighting for. You are worth fighting for because, in being alive, your heart can and will answer the call of love. It knows how. It’s been learning how to love for so many years and, yet, you were born knowing how to care. This is true of every person you have met, true of every person who answers love’s call or ignores it.

The reasons to ignore love’s call are numerous—nihilism, corruption, and exhaustion. Our lives are still worth fighting for. The risk is worth it. Your goodness is true.

P.S. In July, Mars will also enter Gemini where it will begin to approach Jupiter. Mars won’t conjoin Jupiter exactly until August 9th so I’ll keep mum about what I think about this transit for now. I have thoughts but I’m not sure which I will share. For now, I will just share one thing—I think this transit reminds us that we take care of each other. Our fears and our anxieties don’t take care of us. We take care of us.

Cancer

What is the power of the Moon? You have it, Cancer. You have the power of the Moon.

The Moon is the agent of premonition. Turtles are connected to the Moon not just because they know when to swim based on the Moon’s cycle but because their shells have thirteen sections. The Moon makes thirteen cycles in a year which is why we have two Full Moon in Capricorn this year. In the past, people used to burn turtle shells and read the cracks that would bloom across the surface as a form of divination.

You are like that turtle shell, Cancer. You have intuition. You know when to do things and when not to do them. You know what to say. You can read people and you understand your own heart. You have a hunch about where each of your desires lead.

The second Capricorn Full Moon of the year comes in July. I want you to respect your intuition. Treat intuition like a discipline, as something serious to be studied. Nurture it the way you would nurture any other skill.

Questions for Cancer for July 2024:
How do you feed your intuition?
How do you protect your intuition?
How do you teach your intuition?

Leo

As your birthday approaches, Leo, the one question that the Sun caresses with its rays is the question of being yourself. What does it mean to show up to protracted, loving action as yourself? We might find all kinds of reasons to show up—a recent event, an invitation, even a dismissal. What remains consistent no matter what you do is the factor of you. You can’t go anywhere without showing up as yourself.

Being yourself is enduring. Hiding a part of yourself doesn’t diminish the vitality of being exactly who you are. Amplifying your own ideas doesn’t make you more and neither does it make you less. The reason why you have such great empathy is because you feel for everyone as yourself.

July gives you a second chance to organize something that you wanted to do but missed in June. Was there anything that you missed due to circumstances? Anything that you intended to do but forgot about? The second full moon in your sixth house of labor is a reminder to give yourself more than one chance and more than one day to plan the things that you really care about.

Questions for Leo for July 2023:
How do you feed your personality?
How do you protect your personality?
What do you have more time to do than you previously assumed?

Virgo

What are the things that no one, absolutely no one, is willing to say about love? What histories of love jump out of the blue and try to interrupt your tongue? What are these histories trying to halt in your throat?

I think that love is too wicked, that it makes us worry over small things too much. Love makes us speak of lofty ideals. It makes us believe in ourselves too fully and it also makes us despair in incredulity. Is love merely hope or is it also a discipline? What does love permit and what might it reward?

In July, speak not in fear or anger or joy but with love. Practice love’s enduring character with your mouth. If you can practice it, then you can seize it. If you can seize it, then you can let it go and give it away. A hundred different paradoxes live inside of your own heart. Pull them out and enjoy them on your own time. Let the second full moon in Capricorn give you an epiphany about love this July. Let every epiphany become a mystery at its completion. An open door is only interesting when it leads somewhere.

Questions for Virgo for July 2024:
What are the things that no one is willing to say about love?
What confuses you about love?
If you were to create a riddle about love, then what would that riddle be like?

Libra

Is there anything that you need to talk to your family about? A heart to heart that you have been putting off about aging and responsibility and long term planning? July gives you a second full moon in Capricorn, a second chance for a needed examination of responsibility. Let the full moon tell you where you are needed back home and ask it to cut away unnecessary worries.

The other thing that July brings you is loving friends. Your friends are your best teachers. They teach you how to have fun. Most of us know how to play Uno in a really specific way because of some set of niche rules that we learned from our childhood friends. Most of us only know that play is possible because of our friends.

Let your friends tell you about the possibility inside of your own life. Begin your mornings with the task of responsibility but finish every evening with the pursuit of possibility. Worry when your mind is fresh and well rested from sleep. Dream whenever your mind becomes weary. A tired arrow can’t break through the thinnest fabric. It can only sleep. It will dance again at a later time.

Questions for Libra for July 2024:
What responsibility do you begin your day with?
What possibility do you end your day with?
What happens in between responsibility and possibility?

Scorpio

I feel like a lot of us assume that we will know how to receive when we need and that we will know how to give when we have more than we need. This isn’t always true. We are taught how to give when we see people ask. We are taught how to receive when we see people offer. We are taught how to ask when we learn how to take and we are taught how to offer when we trust someone’s no. One of my favorite consent teachers, Betty Martin, writes about this flow of giving and receiving and taking and accepting.

What happens when we get tired of giving? What happens when we get tired of withholding? Or of taking? Withholding, too, is an action and requires a lot of focus. Taking isn’t always enjoyable because it uses so much initiative.

Whenever we share something, whether that thing be a room, a savings account, or a kitchen, our egos tend to get involved. Sometimes, our ego is our sidekick in life—it helps us set boundaries and declare our wishes. Sometimes, our ego believes someone else’s request or refusal to be a personal attack. Let your ego help you. Guide it with gentle humor. Always remember that finding the humor in your own personality helps keep you open to what could be.

Question for Scorpio for July 2024:
What does your ego think about giving?
What does your ego think about receiving?
What is the cutest thing about your own ego?

Sagittarius

July is about intellectual growth. Study something. Education is a lifelong pursuit but, during certain eras, we accelerate or broaden our learnings.

The best way to learn something is to teach it at the same time. You know when you get so excited about an idea that you can’t stop talking about it to all of your friends nonstop? You’re actually figuring out how to teach that idea whenever you share it with people. You’re practicing your understanding of it everytime you explain it to a new person with a new perspective.

Get excited about an idea in July. Explain it ten different times to ten different people. Take questions and analyze paradoxes. Find your own teacher so you can practice being a student. Find your own student so you can practice being a teacher. If you find that intellectual growth starts to become one of debate or antagonism, leap out of the stage of conflict by pointing out what you hope to learn.

Questions for Sagittarius for July 2024:
What are you excited to learn?
What are you excited to teach?
What are you excited to learn so you can teach?

Capricorn

I want to offer you a question for July—what are you hoping to change through the work that you do?

I think that, at various stages in a project’s journey, the hope of change can be enough. We hope for change, we realize some of what we hope for, and we learn about our own limitations. I think that we understand how to organize our energy and time when we understand what we are trying to do. I think that, when we lose our purpose, we quickly burn out and get confused.

What are you hoping to change (not achieve) through the work that you do? What are you hoping to impact? What are you trying to change in yourself?

Change is very big. It is the only constant. Through our work, we are helpers of change. Change happens regardless of what we do but we can shepherd the law of change and ease change along. We can embody change and allow it to transform us. What change do you embody through the work that you do? And can you recognize the moment of change when your whole world starts to pivot?

Questions for Capricorn for July 2024:
What are you hoping to impact through your work?
What are you hoping to touch inside of yourself through your work?
What change do you help facilitate through your work?

Aquarius

What helps you be a more assertive lover?

Personally speaking, I can think of a hundred different reasons why I am not assertive in love. Lol! I could write a novel about my history of hurts and all of my fears. But this isn’t getting at the question. We can be assertive and reluctant at the same time. None of our fears will ever stop us from wanting love. What helps you be a more assertive lover?

Maybe being desired back helps your assertiveness. Maybe familiarity or knowing that you have enough time to shrink back and step forward again and again helps. Maybe privacy helps the assertion in your heart or maybe being publicly loved is the thing that soothes you. Maybe telling jokes back and forth relaxes you. Maybe taking yourself seriously helps you assertively set boundaries and make sharp desires known.

What helps you love other people in a big way? When do you feel invited into a group of friends? What happens in a group to make you actually want to be friends with people? Think about the last time you initiated a piece of fun. I wonder how you became so assertive and whether you can grow what helped you get there.

Questions for Aquarius for July 2024:
When was the last time you initiated pleasure?
What helped you do that?
What helps you act assertively in love?

Pisces

July isn’t a time for productivity, for winning at accomplishment, or for killing it in terms of performance. You will have times that favor excellence but this July just isn’t one of them. July is a good time for self forgiveness, for taking care of yourself despite less productivity, and for the gleeful task of relaxing your standards.

Take plenty of naps in July. Cook a slow cooked meal. Let yourself make mistakes when you can afford them and take it in good humor. Forgive yourself in July. Forgive yourself for not being productive each and every day. Forgive yourself for needing rest. Forgive yourself for having some standards in the first place even if you don’t always meet them every single time. July is for chilling out, for liking yourself even when you’re not perfect.

I wonder where you need rest in your life. If someone blocks you this month, then just wait for a better opportunity. If you find that you block yourself, then analyze this phenomenon and wait for when you are ready. Give yourself a bit of a reprieve from the part of your mind that believes there is only one way to do something (we all have a part of our minds that believe this). If you care about something, then you’ll find a hundred ways to do it.

Questions for Pisces for July 2024:
What concerns do you forgive yourself for at the end of a day?
What concerns do you forgive yourself for at the end of a week on Friday or Saturday?
What concerns do you forgive yourself for at the end of a month?

Aries

Have you ever felt your mind clench around an idea so strongly that you stop paying attention to everything else? I think that anger can make our minds feel like this. Conflict gives many of us a lot of focus—sometimes, too much focus.

When you make yourself busy clenching your mind around one single topic, you start to get really sensitive. Any leniency leads to worry. You don’t want anyone to come pry you away from the thing that you are so fixated on. You start to read everything else in your environment with your obsession in mind.

In July, stop clenching around your idea and just hold it in your mind instead. Let go of the obsession. If you find yourself thinking about one thing from one angle too often, think from another perspective for a while. If you find yourself thinking of one thing from multiple angles too often, then think about something else for a while. When you stop clenching around a topic, you’re not discarding it. You’re taking it with you and looking for better tools to help you wield it. Clenching around something too tightly can distract you from actually doing something about what you care about.

Clenching around a topic intellectually doesn’t help you think. Let go of the fist inside of your mind. Open your mind so that you can remember how to learn.

Questions for Aries for July 2024:
What kinds of things does your mind tend to clench around?
Is it clenching around anything right now?
What helps you relax the fist inside of your mind?

Taurus

I believe that our values only have meaning when we understand how they function in a coherent spiritual system. Most of us don’t value things—whether those things be hard work, pleasure, or material benefit—on their own. Hard work makes no sense when you are overworked. Pleasure for the benefit of the overprivileged doesn’t make sense either. Our values aren’t siloed but live inside a coherent political and spiritual context. We have to believe something for our values to make any sense.

This means that your values will change when your circumstances change. None of us believe in the same things all our lives. No ideology is objective.

July asks you to explore your values. Actually explore them. Use your mind to go somewhere. Ask yourself where in the world does your value system make the most sense. Whose knowledge and practice enriches your value system? When your values make no sense to someone else, this doesn’t always mean that this disagreeing person can’t believe in your merit. They may just be referencing circumstances that are completely different from your own.

Questions for Taurus for July 2024:
Whose expertise enriches your value system?
Who do your values make sense to?
What circumstances are your values rooted in?

Gemini

For many people, being interrupted while speaking is a sign of respect. This is true for me. When you interrupt someone while speaking, you show them how excited you are about what they’re saying. This varies from culture to culture but, if you grew up used to your own voice overlapping with another in musical conversation, then you probably know how to listen while you speak. Just because you are speaking doesn’t mean that you aren’t also listening.

Being able to listen while talking is a learned skill. Having a conversation with someone is about hearing both of your voices conjoined, overlapping, and interacting. You’re singing a song together. Our voices are not meant to be siloed and appreciated in isolation. We want to sing when we hear others sing.

In July, enjoy your many conversation skills. Nurture a conversation using your melodic voice. You might have certain skills in one language but then other skills in another. You might know how to sing in one language and strive to learn in another. You might remember the woundings of having to hold your tongue in one language while you struggle to earn another. Nurture a conversation or, alternatively, use conversation to nurture your voice.

Questions for Gemini for July 2024:
How do you feed a conversation?
How do you protect a conversation?
How do you nurture a language?