We’ve talked about solar returns on this channel before. This time I want to show you how to use them as a vehicle for healing. People don’t usually connect astrology and healing, because they’re picturing memes, TikToks, and newspaper horoscopes. Real talk: a good astrology reading can change your life. I’ve watched it happen. Here’s one story.
What I mean by healing
I love Dr. Gabor Maté’s definition in The Myth of Normal (long book, phenomenal read, link in the video description): healing is the process of reuniting ourselves with the inner qualities that still live within us as inherent possibilities. To me, that’s the birth chart, the full range of possibilities in a person, for better or for worse.
He also writes that healing is finding the gold in the wound. But to find the gold, you have to be willing, ready, and able to return to the wounded place. That’s exactly what solar returns let us do, safely, because they pinpoint a specific time period. When I covered solar returns before, I mentioned you can also look backward into past years. I was foreshadowing. You’re welcome.
If your birth chart carries placements that point to trauma, past solar return charts can show you which year of your life those themes were loudest. And if you have the right support alongside the reading, a therapist, hypnotherapist, or counselor, looking back can be deeply therapeutic.
A client story
One of my clients had a lot of repressed memories from childhood. Big gaps. One thing she did remember: she was a thin child, and at some point she just started picking up weight.
A while back I got sucked into My 600-lb Life (a little ridiculous, but it pulls you in), and I noticed a pattern: so many people on that show traced their weight gain to a traumatic event. They ate their feelings and built a physical shell of fat to protect themselves from future harm. So I thought: let’s pull the solar return for the year she started gaining weight and see what was happening.
That year, her 12th house was rising. The 12th house is the house of self-undoing, hidden enemies, grief, and sorrow. A 12th house rising year is rough on anybody: not knowing who to trust, feeling abandoned, lost, a dark night of the soul. Now imagine having that year as a child, when you already have almost no control over your life and you’re depending on the adults around you.
The chart kept talking. Her 3rd house (relatives, early childhood) was heavily emphasized. The chart ruler was in detriment at the anaretic degree, meaning a hard year, and it was angular, meaning everyone would watch it unfold. Venus conjunct Pluto suggested early sexual maturation. And Venus, Pluto, and Chiron were all making quincunxes to the ascendant: a hidden love-wounding.
A quincunx represses. It’s something present that you’re not ready to acknowledge, the can kicked down the road, the elephant in the room. Whatever you sweep under the rug is still under there, and quincunx material tends to pop up and wreak havoc after you’ve ignored it long enough. Fun word to say. Hard aspect to live with.
The turning point
As I talked through what I saw, she remembered. She had been molested by several family members. Acknowledging it was painful, and seeing how that experience had shaped her later life was more painful still.
Her healing had plateaued after years of psychotherapy and medication, and before that she’d gone the route Solange sings about in “Cranes in the Sky”: drinking it away, smoking, spending, overworking, sleeping, sex. None of it worked, because the wound underneath was still unacknowledged. She carried guilt for never speaking up, for not fighting back. And I’m looking at her chart like: girl, you were in detriment and anaretic. You had no internal strength available that year. Sometimes surviving is the only thing you can do, and she did it. Every behavior is useful in some context; saying nothing was the best choice available to her at the time. I encouraged her to show her younger self some compassion.
The abuse had left an abandonment wound she kept re-living as an adult: dating unavailable people, addictive behaviors, trying to fill the void. By remembering the events through the solar return reading and sitting with the feelings, even decades later, she could begin releasing the pain and resentment toward herself, her abusers, and everyone who’d disappointed her the same way since. Accepting that it happened (never condoning it) gave her a way to move forward whole. Her behaviors shifted. Relationships improved. Even her finances improved, because she was willing to be still with the wound and get curious.
Where healing begins
A good reading, solar return or otherwise, brings you to a moment of conscious awareness where you get to decide: which version of yourself are you choosing to embody going forward? That’s where the healing begins. One more from Dr. Maté: healing brings the heart and mind into alignment and cooperation. Her heart was hurting, and her mind needed to acknowledge that pain before the two could align.
If you want a solar return reading, looking forward or looking back at any year of your life, book with me here. And watch the full video for the whole walkthrough.
