Venus Meets the Disruptor
On an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, one of the hosts pointed out that you spend your whole life trying to get to an age where you know something, and once you get there, no one wants to hear what you have to say! They see you as old and irrelevant and assume nothing you have to say pertains to them. I certainly don’t think that’s a universal sentiment, but as a person of a certain age it made me smile.
Venus and Uranus meet in a sextile aspect this week (June 15, 2026, 3:53 pm PDT, at 2º54’ Leo and Gemini). And while Venus in Leo loves nothing more than to cruise along at a comfortable hum, collecting admiration and accolades like sunflowers, it’s the job of Uranus to disrupt that flow and make us more awake and engaged.
Uranus represents a unique way of looking at things that can help us avoid the blind spots that come from being too complacent and too caught up in our own process to see other possibilities. The disruptor comes in all shapes, forms, and ages, and this aspect is an opportunity to pause and consider its wise, wild input.
Love and Clarity
Venus faces two interesting aspects within a couple of days of each other. One is a trine to Neptune (June 16, 2026, 8:41 pm PDT), a lovely aspect that makes everything shimmer in a lovely haze for a couple of days. The other is an opposition to Pluto (June 17, 2026, 1:38 pm) – which wakes us up to cold, hard reality.
If you’ve ever fallen madly in love with someone who was no good for you – who was, in fact, a destructive influence in your life – this formula will be familiar. Someone, or something, can seem like the answer to all your prayers, can make everything in life seem beautiful. And then… he drinks too much, she steals from you, he cheats with your best friend, she winds up living in your car. And yet, it’s hard to walk away… because, “I’m in love.”
Venus trine Neptune reminds us that seeing things – and people – as beautiful is a gift. But Venus opposed Pluto points out that seeing things as they really are is another kind of gift, even if it doesn’t always feel as good.
Solstice Reevaluation
If the beginning of January is the time of buying new calendars and drafting bold resolutions for a year of success and prosperity, then the Cancer Solstice (June 21, 2026, 1:24 am PDT) marks midyear’s reevaluation point. Even if we’ve been underachievers in the first half of the year, there may still be time to reach our goals. But we can’t speed our way through this transition.
Just as the Sun at the solstice appears to stand still in its movement across the horizon, then turn around and move the other way, that is our job at midyear: to stand still for a moment, look around, and take stock of where we are. It’s usually too late in the year to start from scratch in an entirely new direction and hope to achieve anything by year’s end. But if we take the time to look back over our shoulders and reevaluate our progress, we can then slowly revisit our goals over the next six months, reviewing our plans and filling in the missing gaps.
In my mid-sixties I find myself at the summer solstice of my life, standing still and looking back at where I started out. It’s not too late to do things with my life, but certain options are realistically closed to me.
But is it too late to do whatever it was I wanted to do with my life, back when I was younger? And what was that, exactly? I was always burning to do something, but not always the same thing. I loved to read, and sing, and write. I dreamed of being famous, but never of being rich. I dreamed of being married, but never of having children. I wanted to travel the world, I think, but I was afraid of it, too.
I’m fortunate that my dreams and passions were built to a fairly small scale. I’m not famous, but then, I lost interest in that dream long ago. Everything else worked out pretty much the way I’d hoped. I’m pretty happy with my life choices.
But you get to a certain point of your life where, as you begin looking back over it all, you begin to want to jettison parts of your past – as if to make your life lighter and more fuel-efficient so that it will carry you farther.
Team Work
This week’s First Quarter Moon is in Libra (June 21, 2026, 2:55 pm PDT), the sign associated with relationships of all kinds, personal and professional. This First Quarter Moon urges us to rely more on other people to help us reach our goals. So, if you’re planning to take action toward last week’s Gemini New Moon objectives, it’s time to tighten up your team work.
Sometimes, that can simply look like bouncing ideas off a trusted friend or family member. On the eve of my marriage, I asked my mother, long a widow, what she had appreciated most about being married, and she said, “I think it was just having somebody to talk things over with.” Several decades later, I completely understand what she meant.
Even if you’re a strong, independent person, it can be difficult to feel you have to make every decision 100 percent on your own. At this First Quarter Moon, let someone close to you hear you out, make you laugh, and help you decide on your next steps.
