PLUTO IN AQUARIUS IN GATORADE, OH, MY!

There are moments when something shifts in you before you have language for it, and lately that’s exactly what this has felt like for me.

I thought I was just outgrowing people quickly. This past week especially has felt off, but not in a way that was isolated or internal. It showed up in my interactions, in community, in the way I was experiencing other people. Something felt different, and I couldn’t fully explain it at first. Since discovering astrology, I’ll be the first to admit that it has changed the way I see everything. I try not to overdo it, but there are moments where it becomes impossible to ignore, especially when the patterns line up this clearly. So I checked the sky, and that’s when I saw it. Pluto is currently retrograde in Aquarius.

It didn’t fully click until I looked at my own chart and realized that Pluto is moving through the same sign as my North Node. That’s when it hit me that this isn’t just a moment. It’s a redirection. Throughout my life, there has been a pattern of me outgrowing environments quickly, sometimes so quickly that I don’t even realize it until I’m already disconnected. It's like something that gets hidden away from me too.

I can think back to moments earlier in my life where I was still showing up, still answering texts, still physically present, but something in me had already shifted. It wasn’t dramatic and nothing had gone wrong, but I could feel myself detaching quietly, almost like I had already said goodbye internally before anything actually ended. Or more recently, I remember times where I needed space but didn’t fully understand why. Nothing was necessarily wrong, but my body was asking for distance, and I used to question myself for that. I would wonder if I was being too distant or too quick to pull away, not realizing that I was actually responding to something deeper. I'm not always proud of how I detached, but it was so challenging to communicate something that didn't have words. And being a intellectual person, VIRGO, I was so disconnected from feeling in the body because being in the mind was safer for me, even though it didn't always work out well in my mind.

Right now, this transit is moving through my third house, which governs communication, voice, learning, and expression. When I realized that my Aquarius lives there, everything started to make more sense. It’s not just about relationships shifting, it’s about how I think, how I speak, and how I relate to the world changing at the same time. This transit is giving me access to my throat without having it polished. A fear unlocked for any earth sign, because I always felt like I HAD to make sense to be seen and heard.

Pause here and pull up your chart.

Look at where Aquarius sits. What house does it fall in. What part of your life is connected to that space. This can give you insight into what is being transformed for you right now.

I’ve noticed myself becoming less tolerant of things I used to overlook, more aware of how I feel in my body around certain people, and quicker to recognize when something simply doesn’t fit anymore. That kind of clarity sounds empowering, but in real time it can feel isolating, confusing, and disorienting. If I’m being honest, it felt like grief. Not tied to one specific event, but something heavier. Like I was losing something without having the words to name it yet. My voice had to catch up to what my intuition already understood.

I started to notice it in my nervous system before I could understand it mentally. It felt like a low level panic, an alertness in my body that did not always match what was happening externally. Sometimes it showed up as procrastination or difficulty responding, and other times it felt like confusion or a lingering sense that something was not right. It was not constant, but it was consistent enough for me to realize that my body was processing something before my mind had caught up.

Pluto is not a light planet. It is deeply psychological, connected to transformation, power, and the parts of us that live beneath the surface. When it moves, it asks us to be honest in ways we may have avoided before.

And because Pluto is currently retrograde, this process is internal.

This isn’t a quick moment, and that’s important to understand, because when Pluto moves, it doesn’t rush transformation; it unfolds it over time. Remember, it's an outer planet that takes a while to rotate through signs. What we are experiencing right now is only the beginning of a much larger process that will move in waves through May 2026 and into 2027. What feels like sudden clarity in this moment will deepen over time, revealing layers we may not even have the language for yet. This is not about instant change; it is about sustained transformation that asks us to sit with what we see and slowly become someone who can hold it.

Pluto transits don’t just change your life externally. They affect the nervous system, emotional processing, sense of identity, and perception of reality. So, you may feel overwhelmed but clear, isolated but aligned, emotional but decisive, tired but certain. That duality can feel confusing AF, but it is part of the process.

Part of why this feels so heightened right now is because of what’s happening collectively, not just personally. Pluto moving through Aquarius is not only about individual transformation, it is also about the restructuring of the systems we exist within. The world is on fire babe, and yes it has to fall. All those things that were hidden in the ocean during Pisces transits must come to land *catch the pun - because huh? ALIENS? *

Aquarius governs community, technology, and social structures, so when Pluto moves through this space, it begins to expose what is no longer sustainable. What we are already seeing is a growing awareness around power, transparency, and the way information moves. There is a discomfort with systems that feel disconnected from real people, and a stronger desire for authenticity over performance.

As this unfolds in the world, it also unfolds within us.

As systems shift, so do our identities within them. Like me, you may find yourself questioning where you belong, how you participate in community, or what you are willing to continue engaging in. There is a quiet but undeniable shift happening where people are becoming less willing to perform roles that do not feel aligned, and more aware of the difference between what is presented and what is real.

Pluto works beneath what is visible. It asks us to recognize what we can no longer ignore. What feels uncertain right now is not always a sign that something is wrong. Sometimes it is a sign that something is becoming more honest.

What I don’t think we talk about enough is how this kind of growth impacts our mental health, especially when the changes are happening faster than we can process them. As a water baby that is learning to feel her feelings, this can affect the emotional body, which is connected to mental health in a BIG way.

There is a real emotional weight that comes with outgrowing people, especially when nothing went wrong. Because you are not just losing connections, you are releasing versions of yourself that once felt safe. And how dare you!? That can create confusion, guilt, and even self-doubt. You may question whether you are being too distant or too quick to move on, when in reality, you may just be becoming more honest with yourself.

Growth like this can feel like grief.

It can show up as emotional fatigue, overstimulation, or a sense of isolation even when you are supported. It can feel like your inner world has shifted, but your external world has not caught up yet.

JOURNAL + CHART PROMPTS

Look at your chart and ask yourself:

Where is Aquarius in my chart, and what part of my life does it influence?

Where is Pluto currently transiting for me, and what themes are coming up in that area?

What feels like it is quietly ending in my life, even if nothing dramatic has happened?

Where do I feel a shift in my body before I can explain it in words?

Then reflect inward:

What version of myself no longer feels aligned?

Where am I staying out of familiarity instead of truth?

What am I being asked to release that I keep trying to hold onto?

What would it look like to trust the change instead of resisting it?

I’m starting to understand that what I used to call outgrowing people is actually something deeper. It is recognizing when a version of my life has already ended internally. If you’ve been feeling this too, you’re not alone honeyyy.

Not everything that ends needs to be explained, !!shocker!!, and not every shift needs to be rushed into clarity. Some seasons are meant to be felt while they are happening, even if they do not fully make sense yet. Depending on where this aspect is in your chart, it may not make any sense at all, and it's only to be felt. So it's extremely important to understand what your baseline is in your body. And maybe this isn’t about losing people or changing too quickly, but about becoming someone who can no longer stay where they once did.

I’m learning to trust that what feels like an ending might actually be alignment and a new beginning.

The Body Remembers What the Mind Forgets

At twenty-four, I was not doing well.

On the outside, my life looked like it was moving forward. On the inside, I felt disconnected from myself. My friendships were shifting, and I found myself surrounded by voices that told me who I was instead of allowing me the space to discover it on my own. I started to question everything, especially the way my mind worked.

That curiosity led me to seek professional evaluation. What I thought would be simple turned into weeks of testing with my therapist. Long sessions, hours at a time, answering questions about how I think, feel, and respond to the world. At the same time, my life was unraveling in other ways. I was in a relationship that was not healthy, graduating from college, and I was preparing to leave my home. Everything felt unstable.

When the results came back, I did not fully receive them. I skimmed, acknowledged, and kept moving. Because life kept moving-FAST. We never take into account the amount of experiences we witness on top of processing things we've already felt in our bodies for a long time. That became a pattern. I spent much of my twenties cycling through growth, burnout, confusion, and return. Learning something about myself, then losing it, then finding it again. It was just as intense as the environment I made. Have you ever outgrown a version of yourself and felt embarrassed for how you showed up? Yeah, all of that. I was not showing up as my best in community, friendship, and with myself.

Five years later, during the stillness of 2020, I came across that same packet. It had been sitting in a box I carried from place to place, untouched. I had forgotten about it completely. When I opened the envelope, I felt something shift. I read it slowly this time. Line by line. I cried, not from judgment, but from recognition. Pages of labels that I never once thought would relate to my life so clearly.

There it was. ADHD, which I already sensed and was the reason for beginning this journey. But there was something else written throughout those pages that I had not allowed myself to fully see before. CPTSD. I remembered it being mentioned once, but I never let it land. At the time, I believed naming it would somehow take away from others who had experienced visible and intense trauma. I thought my experience did not qualify. So I dismissed it and moved on.

CPTSD stands for complex post-traumatic stress disorder. It develops from repeated or long-term experiences of stress, harm, or instability, especially when there is little or no sense of safety or control. Unlike Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is often linked to a single event or moment, CPTSD is shaped over time. It can come from environments where the body learns to stay alert for long periods, where emotional needs are not consistently met, or where survival becomes a pattern instead of a temporary state.

It does not always look the way people expect trauma to look. It can show up as overthinking, emotional shutdown, people pleasing, difficulty trusting yourself, or feeling like your body is always on edge, even when nothing is happening. It can look like being highly intuitive but also deeply overwhelmed. It can look like knowing something is off, but not feeling grounded enough to respond to it.

For many Black women and Black people, this experience is layered. It is not only personal. It is also cultural, generational, and systemic. There are inherited survival patterns that do not begin with us. There are environments where strength is expected, but emotional processing is not always supported. There are moments where you learn to keep going instead of slowing down, to hold everything instead of being held.

So CPTSD is not just about what happened. It is about what the body had to do to keep going.

And for a long time, I did not realize how much my body had been carrying.

By the end of reading my packet, I felt, "Who could ever love someone who has this much going on?" I felt unlovable.

But that moment in 2020 changed something. I began to learn. Not just the definition, but the lived experience of it. How it shows up in the body. How it shapes reactions, relationships, and the nervous system.

Years later, after another major ending, I returned to therapy. This time, I worked with a black woman who created a space where I could actually understand myself. I shared my old results with her. She reviewed them carefully and helped me separate what truly resonated from what did not-this was SO helpful. Not everything written about me felt accurate, and she affirmed that I did not have to carry labels that did not fit in the present moment. She could tell and witness the change in me. But my mind still remembered how horribly I showed up in spaces or wasn't there for myself in setting boundaries. So it was not easy to process on some days, but I showed up anyway.

But one thing remained clear in my sessions.

CPTSD.

It took time to fully accept it. Not as a label, but as a framework that helped me understand my experiences. Session by session, we unpacked my past. Patterns in relationships. Early emotional wounds. Moments I had minimized or pushed aside. She helped me see how my body had been responding long before I had the language to explain it. The funny thing about growing up in therapy, life is still happening. I've been in therapy on and off since I was 16 years old. So though I'm in my sessions sorting out family dynamics, I was going through toxic relationships that I didn't get to process as much. Once I came back to therapy in my 30's, I was able to give space to the things I needed to process in my 20's that still lived in my nervous system.

That was the turning point.

I realized I had spent much of my life disconnected from my own body. Before I had the chance to feel safe in it, I experienced disruption. My nervous system learned to stay alert, to anticipate, to protect. Some of that was mine, and some of it was inherited. And understanding that changed everything.

As I began to regulate, something else opened. My intuition became clearer. My dreams felt stronger. It was not that these things were new; it was that I could finally access them without so much interference.

But healing required more than awareness. It required change.

Once I became aware, something else happened that I did not expect. I started to meet myself in others.

Not in a surface way, but in a way that felt confronting and extremely uncomfortable. I could see my patterns reflected in the people I was connected to, in different ways. The way I loved, the way I avoided, the way I stayed too long, the way I tried to make things work that I already knew were not right. It became harder to ignore. Because the truth is, my mental health shaped how I showed up more than I realized.

I was so intense! I was reactive. I had an attitude at times that came from being overwhelmed, not understood, and not grounded in my body. I was choosing partners that I knew were not safe for me and convincing myself that I could love them into being better. I neglected myself in ways that were quiet and easy to hide. Ya'll, I was not practicing what I believed in. And the wild part is, most people did not really know me. They knew versions of me. They knew how I showed up for them. They knew what I gave. But they did not know what it took for me to be that person. They did not know how much I was holding, how much I was navigating internally, how much I was trying to make sense of at once.

Especially as someone who is intuitive.

There is a conversation missing when it comes to people who are both spiritually open and navigating things like ADHD & CPTSD. Social media shows the clarity, the gifts, the confidence. It does not always show the confusion. The moments when you cannot tell if something is your intuition or your fear. If what you are feeling belongs to you or to someone else. If your body is signaling truth or reacting to past experiences. Leaving me to constantly wonder, whose wound was it anyway?

Learning that difference has been one of the hardest parts of my journey. There were times I did not trust myself at all. Times I over-trusted others. Times I ignored what I felt because I did not know how to hold or name it. And I know I am not the only one. That is why telling stories like this matters. Not to label. Not to stay in the past. Not to make excuses. But to create language for experiences that people are already having. To remind someone that confusion does not mean you are broken. It might mean you are learning how to listen to yourself for the first time.

There is something powerful about seeing yourself in someone else’s honesty. Because it gives you permission to look at your own life without shame.

It gives you space to ask better questions.

What am I actually feeling? What is mine and what is not? Where did I learn this pattern? What would it look like to choose differently?

For those of us who are sensitive, intuitive, and also carrying complex experiences in our nervous system, the work is not just about healing. It is about learning how to LIVE in our bodies in a way that feels safe enough to trust what we receive.

Sometimes I wish there were more spaces for that. Spaces where people like us could sit together and sort through what we feel without judgment. Spaces where we could rebuild trust with ourselves and learn how to regulate before we try to interpret everything. Because when your nervous system is supported, your gifts become grounded.

And while this is a lifelong process, I do believe the blocks we carry are not permanent. Some of them are physical. Some of them are mental. And some of them can begin to shift the moment we become aware of them.

That awareness changed my life.

What the 1st House Gave Me

What lives in your 1st house = what you cannot hide, even if you try.

Some placements in our chart are things we think about, but 1st house placements are things we live through our body, and for me, my truth is not just something I know, it’s something I physically experience in real time. So many things have been happening in this stage of life, and there was a certain feeling in my body that I kept returning to, one that felt familiar. I just hadn't had the proper words to describe it. So I went digging.

Looking at my chart, I noticed something that I’ve been staring at for years now, but never quite understood what this aspect & placement were here to expose. Have you ever had a favorite go-to spot, but never really studied the building it's in? Maybe light fixtures on the outside? Or notice how their side door is the color blue? But you know what your favorite snack or drink is inside of it without needing a menu. That's how natal charts are for me. I can study, and memorize, and still uncover new things about it as I grow. Social media is a weird place, we can all agree; however, more often than not, I find myself hidden in between threads that expose parts of myself I was unaware of, to a degree. I’ve always known I was a catalyst. If you've been here for a while, I've written about this before. After my most recent relationship, it hit me like a stack of bricks how often I find myself being the mirror to others. Never to stay permanently. For so long, I thought it was because of another placement in my chart, and half of that is true - but that placement was pressing up against something more hidden and mysterious: Lilith. I mention this because it's in a very important place, my first house in Sagittarius. My Lilth is in opposition with a couple of personal planets, where I thought this catalytic energy was coming from.

This is a beautiful place to start if you are new to astrology. The 1st house is quite personal, and we don't talk about it enough, especially if you have the 1st house in planets and prominent asteroids. The 1st house is the most immediate and visible of all. What lives in your 1st house will shape your lived experience in real time.

“This is how people meet me before they understand me"

Some parts of our chart are lived internally. Some parts are projected onto us by others. And some parts are felt immediately through the body (1st house).

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WHERE IS YOUR 1st HOUSE?

Sun in 1st House: You possess a strong sense of self and radiate confidence, often behaving as a natural leader.

Moon in 1st House: You are emotionally sensitive and wear your feelings on your sleeve, making you nurturing or reactive.

Mercury in 1st House: You are curious, communicative, and independent thinkers who may have a "no filter" approach to speaking.

Venus in 1st House: You are often charming, attractive, and artistic, projecting a harmonious and graceful presence.

Mars in 1st House: You are assertive, energetic, and courageous, taking initiative but potentially being confrontational.

Jupiter in 1st House: You exude optimism, confidence, and a love for growth, often appearing fortunate or wise.

Saturn in 1st House: You are serious, disciplined, and responsible, often projecting an image of maturity or reserve.

Uranus in 1st House: You are unconventional and individualistic, often acting as a "rebel" with a unique approach to life.

Neptune in 1st House: You appear dreamy, intuitive, and compassionate, but may have unclear personal boundaries.

Pluto in 1st House: You have an intense, transformative presence, often undergoing profound personal reinventions.

North Node in 1st House: Your life path involves developing your independence and focusing on your own path, rather than hiding behind relationships.

South Node in 1st House: You may come in with strong, well-developed, and automatic self-focus, needing to balance self-interest with serving others.

Chiron in 1st House: You may carry deep, early wounds regarding your identity, allowing you to become a "wounded healer" for others.

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My Reflection

I always noticed that as I aged, I trigger people just by being myself. Not because I'm doing anything wrong , but because my existence asks people: “Are you living in truth… or are you performing?” The more I reflected on this information initiated by a Threads post, the more I’ve realized how I censor myself because this Lilith placement aspects with my Virgo Sun, in a square. So I’m always trying to refine the truth so it can land gently or “properly”. Sometimes tables must be flipped all ways up, with class, of course. There’s always a WAY to do it. Since I have this in the 10th house, there is often conflict between being raw vs being respected. A fear of being misunderstood publicly, but here’s the truth: my career is not built by shrinking Lilith. It’s built by integrating my Lilith energy into my work. Choosing truth even when it disrupts comfort. With this sitting in my midheaven of Libra energy (before y'all come for me - it's the ONLY libra I got!) I’m meant to package truth beautifully, so here I am, airing it all out, with all of you to judge; unfinished and RAW.

In my most recent podcast episode, I spoke about how all these planets have sat in the water sign of Pisces for over a decade. The water tides did something to me and revealed how a part of myself was drowning without me quite understanding it. And of course, my 1st house created an opposition with my Moon in Pisces in a Cancer house, also aspecting another placement in my Aries, sharing the same 4th house. It unlocked what I've known in my body for a long time. I found the catalyst seed right here. I share this part of me, hoping someone can relate and it helps someone else.

I meet myself through others. I don’t just “have relationships”, I initiate transformation in others through interaction. I always thought it was my Mars that my 7th house rests. I wasn't wrong. However, Lilith's aspect activates it in a BIG way. This is where my body reacts to truth before my mind can explain it. Are you following? I hope I didn't lose you. Stay with me.

I had a moment recently where something finally clicked for me, not in a soft or poetic way, but in a very real, almost confrontational way. I realized that my body reacts to truth before my mind can explain it (Lilith opposition Mars). When I really sat with that, I understood something even deeper: the self that knows cannot always protect the self that feels.

I’ve always been someone who can sense things quickly. I can read a room, feel when something is off, and pick up on what isn’t being said long before it arrives for others. But what I didn’t fully understand before is that just because you know something doesn’t mean your emotional body is ready to hold it. For me, that knowing doesn’t come through logic first, it comes through the body (Lilith square Moon). Tears, tension, exhaustion, confusion, that sudden feeling of needing to go home. Not because anything obvious happened, but because something underneath the surface didn’t feel right.

There have been so many moments in my life where my spirit said, “Something is wrong here,” and my emotional body responded, “I don’t want to hold this. It hurts.” That used to confuse me. I would question myself, stay longer than I needed to, try to understand others, empathize, and make space. But what I’ve come to understand is that I wasn’t leaving because I was restless, I was leaving because my body was already paying the cost of staying. I was sacrificing myself in the process. That is a completely different story.

Sometimes the wound isn’t loud or dramatic. It doesn’t always show up as chaos. Sometimes it looks like emotional absence, avoidance, someone saying one thing but embodying another, or a room that feels warm on the surface but cold underneath. If you are someone who feels deeply like I do, you don’t just hear what’s being said, you literally FEEL the gap between two worlds of words and truth. And that gap can be exhausting, honey.

I think a lot of people meet me in my ability to see, to name things, to sense what’s going on. But what they don’t always see is the part of me that has to recover from what I see. These social media apps leave out one important note: intuition doesn’t always arrive as peace. Sometimes it arrives as disturbance. Discomfort, heaviness, sudden tears, the urge to leave, and not being able to settle around someone. For a long time, I thought something was wrong with me. I thought intuition was supposed to feel calm, clear, even magical. But sometimes it’s simply your body saying, “This isn’t for you,” before your mind has the language for it.

If you’re someone who feels like this, I want to offer you a reframe. You are not too sensitive; you are perceptive. You are picking up on what is unspoken. Not everyone can do that. Some people need things explained to them, but some of us feel it before words ever arrive.

Not All Signals Are Treated Equal

The real lesson for me has been understanding that just because I can feel everything doesn’t mean I am meant to hold everything. That’s where boundaries come in. To be transparent, I'm still working on what that looks like. Because the pattern can look like sensing something is off, staying open, trying to understand, absorbing too much, becoming overwhelmed, retreating to recover, AND THEN later realizing you were right all along. I’ve lived that cycle enough times to finally say that I don’t need more evidence to begin protecting my peace. My circle of great listeners helped me along the way of this discovery. Re-routing me back into my body, because I've spent so much of my life intellectualizing everything. If I let another person tell it, I would have judged myself more harshly. One Spring, I received a dillogun reading from someone at a festival in New Orleans. He mentioned how my life seemed like a rotating door of people, and I took it so personally. I asked myself as I read his lips, "Am I not to evolve?" There is a shadow to this placement of my Lilith, cutting off too quickly. But because it involves intuitive places, I've rarely been wrong - even if people may not even understand themselves. So I've overstayed, time and time again. This isn't to say I have not made some mistakes along the way. This is a large part of why I know for a fact I'm a bridge to different practices; it's harmful how we leave one way of viewing someone's destiny out of the conversation. I do think readers also need to understand Astrology. It should definitely be a course taught at Hogwarts. It's just as important as a Science class. He did not know this about my chart, but I had an idea. And now fully aware of myself and why the revolving door exists.

If you’ve ever felt like you outgrow people quickly, leave spaces before you can fully explain why, or feel things in your body that don’t make sense until later, I want you to look at your 1st house. Not just your rising sign, but anything that lives there. The 1st house is what you experience through your body in real time. It is what people feel from you immediately, and what you feel from the world. For me, that realization changed everything. It helped me understand that my intuition isn’t separate from me; it is my body.

I’ve also come to understand that this kind of sensitivity is like being able to smell petrichor before anyone else sees the rain begin to fall. You are not wrong for noticing it early; you are just early. And maybe the work isn’t to keep proving what you felt, but to trust it sooner?

My intuition doesn’t always feel soft or dreamy. Lilith presses on my Imum Coeli; which is the lowest point in our natal charts. Mine is in firey Aries, which is VERY on brand for this year, so I'm actually surprised I'm really understanding this now. Sometimes my intuition is fast, sharp, and immediate. A sudden yes or no, a pull to move, a knowing that doesn’t wait for permission. And I’m learning to honor that too. Because sometimes the truth doesn’t arrive as a vision, sometimes it’s as simple as my body knew.

There is a rebirth happening for many of us mutable signs, myself included. All my top 3 and some personal planets are all mutable. But something else is taking place for me at least, my Jupiter return in Leo. My Lilith naturally aspects this placement, and it will be activated in a whole new way this year. And with us leaving so many Pisces placements behind and stepping into Aries everywhere, My Lilth is no longer swimming; she is dry enough to burn. Ready to be seen and expressed in healthy ways. So my beginning thought, and question was how does my Sagittarius burn and reignite my sense of self? My sense of self returns when I stop negotiating my truth. For so long, water covered me in emotion, projection, confusion, empathy overload, and mental dis-ease. Now the covers are coming off, and fire does that. My Sagittarius Lilith isn’t here to hold everything anymore; it’s here to tell the truth, clear the field, and make space for something real to grow.