Now that we’ve done personal archival research (part 1), identified where this summer’s Venus Retrograde is hitting each of our charts (part 2), observed how Venus is vibing with other planets (part 3), and taken a look at the cultural implications (part 4), I’m now going to tell you some of my stories.
I wish that my Venus stories were more sexy, that I could indulge you with some cute romantic tales. But for me, Venus is mostly about work. Not career or achievement or recognition, but actual work. Getting my hands dirty. My ascendant ruler Venus is in the 6th house of my birth chart, the place concerned with maintenance, labor and managing dis-ease. It’s where we see day jobs and health problems and emergency vet visits. It’s where we might win a battle but still have to show up everyday to the war. In Vedic astrology, Venus in the 6th house is considered marana karaka shtana, or a planet playing dead.
The laborious demands of the 6th house go against the fundamental nature of Venus who is concerned with love and art and beauty. To put it simply, Venus wants to chill. But my Venus? She has a job. Though perhaps my life is less romantic in the mainstream sense—in my chart it’s actually malefic Mars and Saturn that have the most to do with my romantic relationships—I love having Venus in the 6th house. It’s what makes me an artist. It’s what makes me see beauty in everything and want to make everything beautiful. Romanticizing life comes naturally to me, but in the most mundane sense. Squeezing the lemon. Wiping the counter. Pouring the vinaigrette. Those are the moments that ease my suffering, and in those moments that I’m most inspired to ease the suffering of others. Venus in the 6th house makes me both gentle and scrappy. She helps me figure things out and most of the time the only way out is through.
As a Libra rising, Venus rules my 1st house (image, identity) and my 8th house (shared resources). While Venus is on her retrograde journey in Leo, she’s traveling through my 11th house (community, dreams). Venus retrograde in Leo blends all of these topics together. For me Venus Retrograde in Leo is a process of curating community both in my own image and through collaboration, while also working through power dynamics and settling debts. Venus is always busy. Always working.
2007 for me was the summer between high school and college. I did not have a good senior year. Most of my friends had already graduated, and I was afraid to drink so I was never invited to parties. After a series of unfortunate events, I lost a school election, quit the spring musical, and was fired from the newspaper. Expelled from all of my clubs (11th house), I had nothing. Basically, I had no friends. Not even the Existentialism unit in AP English could bring me joy. Not even reading for Estragon in Waiting for Godot. I was over it and college was still too far away. I was in desperate need for community. I also needed something to do so I applied for a job at Starbucks.
I didn’t want to work at the Starbucks that was close to my house, so I applied a store two towns away where I wouldn’t see anyone from school. I ended up getting hired at a store that was three towns away. Heaven. I’d drive 15 minutes on the parkway and feel so much freedom. No one knew me there. Around new people, I could be whoever I wanted to be. I could crush on coworkers (which I heavily documented in my LiveJournal) and paint a whole new identity for myself. I started the job in April, and by June—when Venus entered Leo—I was working there full time for the summer.
In the Summer of 2015, I was also in an in-between place. I was 26 so it was a different kind of graduation: my first summer with a fully developed pre-frontal cortex. As Venus entered Leo in June, I was going through two breakups. First there was a romantic breakup, which actually happened in March but felt ongoing because of our extreme amount of mutual friends and the claustrophobia of “community.” Then there was the roommate breakup with my then best friend. Our paths had diverged both socially and professionally, and I wanted to live with people who were more on the same page. Still, I knew she would not take it well. We’d lived together on and off for six years and were basically family. I broke the news that I was moving out in early June, just as Venus moved into Leo. My mom refers to this as my divorce.
A few weeks later, I found out some unsettling information about my romantic ex and cut off all contact with him in a frustrated spiral. Our relationship was based in the downtown performance world, and lately I’d been feeling on the outs there, getting rejection after rejection. I’d known for a long time that I didn’t want to do theater. But I also didn’t know where else to put my energy. I said to my friend David one day, “You know, I think I only did theater because I wanted to have friends.” Was it finally time to find some new ones?
A lot of things happened that summer. I recast my romantic ex’s role in the workshop of my new play and started reading I Love Dick. I embraced my bisexuality. (What’s funny about this part of the story is I can actually trace my bi feelings back to the Summer of 1999—another Venus Retrograde in Leo—when I was obsessed with both my camp counselor Emma and the boys’ camp counselor Joey—literally the two genders.) I apartment hunted for a new place with other friends. I was trying to set up a new life.
I can’t go on / I’ll go on.
While all this was happening, I was also applying for jobs. My romantic ex was the one who first encouraged me to get out of food service (what I’d been doing for a day job since Starbucks in 2007) and transition to an office. As Venus moved into Leo, I applied for a job at a small arts non profit. I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to integrate my artistic life with my day job life. It was really a last ditch effort to feel part of the performance world. I thought it would help blur the lines between my life and my art and my job in a productive and sustainable way. I also somehow thought that was a good idea?
With my ascendant ruler in the 6th house, I’m destined to get extremely involved anywhere I work. No other job fit that description quite like Starbucks. Starbucks was like Cheers! to me. There were endless inside jokes about the people from corporate and our manager’s kids and the entitled customers. Off the clock, I’d hang out there with the regulars. I even hooked up with a beloved regular, the Assistant Manger of the local Ben and Jerry’s. Of course it was fun. I was 18 and nothing was that serious yet. I lived for the drama and being part of the drama. It was like a home away from home.
Part of the corporate training you go through at Starbucks is about the third place—a term popularized by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his book The Great Good Place (1989). The third place is not home (“first place”) or work “second place”), but a (not so) secret third thing meant to be a neutral and level playing field for anyone who chooses to be there, a space for conversation. The third place is where everyone knows your name. It’s not supposed to work like this, but I tend to make my job the “third place” when it’s already the “second place.” I think a lot of us do this in our late capitalist hell-scape. I also have a kink for making my job into my art practice, as evidenced by the full-length screenplay I wrote about Starbucks or the performance piece I made about the arts non profit. Is this the “fourth place”? Or just another “third place”? Or is it the “first place”?
I can’t go on / I’ll go on.
I started this off by telling you that my Venus stories aren’t sexy. But really they are in their own way. Crushes and weird hook ups and and breakups and disappointments. These are all love stories.
As I already told you, by the end of Venus Retrograde in 2007, I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to stay at Starbucks with my friends. Venus was still retrograde when I moved into my dorm on Fifth Avenue. I had a weird roommate and I became close with the guy who lived in the room next to mine who also had a weird roommate. We bonded through the struggle (6th house), and of course, I developed a crush (Venus). Nothing ever really happened between us but we had a weird relationship for years after that. He was a defining part of that era of my life, an era I got to at the end of that Venus Retrograde.
I can’t go on / I’ll go on.
By the end of Venus Retrograde in 2015, after a long and demanding process, I finally left the apartment I shared my ex-BFF and roomie. Venus was still retrograde when I moved into a new apartment with my friends Tessa and Joe. We named our apartment Gay Hell and started throwing parties with that same name. I signed up for a poetry class and joined Tinder. I was already frustrated working at the arts non profit, but was becoming actual friends with some artists I really admired. It was a few months later that I started telling people I did “poetry” rather than “theatre.” Finally feeling accepted in the performance world is what made me okay with giving it up. Something I got to by the end of that Venus retrograde.
Venus retrogrades are for editing. Revision and review. I wish I could present these stories with perfect framing or tie them up with a bow in a cute little box. I wish they were satisfying in the way all good stories are. But these cycles are messy and imperfect and ongoing. I feel like I’m in a similar place now that I was back in 2007 and in 2015: moving on from relationships, seeking different kinds of community, creatively inspired and fiscally stressed out. I know that if I’m open to life and to recalibration, I’ll find myself somewhere totally new by the end of this summer. Maybe what I find won’t “go anywhere,” but maybe it will be a defining part of the next era of my life. I won’t know until the end of the retrograde.
If you want to create one of these Venus Retrograde narratives for yourself, book a consult with me this month, and we’ll find the threads of your story.