The mind and all its powers of communication and negotiation move out of the happy, hot-headed, and horny realm of Sagittarius into the heavier, slower, earthier Capricorn. If we’ve been avoiding certain realities, they now seem large and inescapable.

There is research that indicates people in depressive states have a more accurate assessment of reality than others. That perspective is, itself, depressing—that happiness requires a measure of adaptive self delusion. A little bit of delusion isn’t so bad, it’s quite harsh when all of our avoidance gets in our face with what was ignored that is actually a big problem.

Today, as our minds shift toward sober assessment of difficulties and desires, we’re also being informed of all that’s changed in the past year and a half as we’ve collectively purged fake harmony and shallow justice and experienced a voracious appetite for fighting for our interests at all costs. This focus too is about to shift. It’s good to step back. What has fighting won you? This isn’t a trick question, there are likely some good things that have come from it. But where does it feel endless and stuck? Where could diplomacy be useful, still supporting your aims?

To forge a strong blade, the superheated metal after being beaten into shape is plunged into a bucket of water. From extreme heat to coolness, what was malleable becomes set.

This comes to mind observing Mars moving backwards from fiery, dramatic Leo into watery, dramatic Cancer. The events of the past couple months rallied collective rage, but reactive rage cannot be sustained nor disciplined for work. Instead it softens the collective mood, made us malleable, and now we return to the home realms, to nurturance and sorrow, to see what we have wrought.

In this realm, Mars is said to be weak, and his weakness is his strength. He may appear brittle and easily hurt, but he is also ready to strike should that disarm his opponent with care and compassion. Do not fear your rage softening in grief and care, because this warrior becomes even more ferocious in protecting the spaces where he gets to feel small and needy.

The relationship researchers and therapists John and Julie Gottman call defensiveness one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, in that couples who express a lot of defensiveness in their discussions with each other—along with three other communication habits—are more likely to divorce. The defensive partner might say, “Well, yeah, it’s because I’m being attacked all the time.” But it’s also about the defensiveness. If you cannot relax and admit your role in the interaction, if you cannot acknowledge any bit of truth in what the other person is saying, then it’s harder to work together to deal with problems and help each other feel loved and appreciated.

Defensiveness is not always a sign of guilt, but it is a sign of tenderness. We’ve hit on something sore, or injured, or just very sensitive that the other person wants to protect. This shows up in the body, too, when we instinctively tense up around an injury and grow more anxious if someone starts to reach for it. We have to really trust that someone is reaching for the injury out of care and a desire to help for us to feel able to even begin to relax, and even then, the one who would help must start with gentleness and confidence.

If you’re feeling emotionally beaten up by your loved ones, you don’t have to sit there and take it, but it’s possible that what feels like an attack is just accidental contact, or a helping hand, or simply a finger pointing to what it sees. What you are defending against is the pain and fear you feel because of the hurt, only you think the other person is causing it because they drew attention to it.

Instead of lashing out, you can admit what you see is true—that doesn’t mean agreeing with everything said, but just the piece you recognize as valid. If you can’t see anything valid, or you’re too worked up to think about it, you could simply say you’re upset and need a break for a bit. Some partners struggle with that kind of a boundary, but telling them just enough to get a sense of what’s happening helps to cool the tension. “I need a moment because I’m upset and I need to figure out what’s going on.”

This morning I read a heated thread about the disappointment of throwing a party and no one coming against the protests of those for whom going to parties is a challenge. As with many of these arguments, people weren’t really connecting to each other but sort of responding from their own story and insisting it be considered while not acknowledging the other.

Love needs us to connect to real people and have conversations. We can argue on the internet about how people should feel but that is no substitute for talking to your actual friends and family about what we do feel.

In truth, sometimes you go to the party even when it’s uncomfortable because you love the person it’s for and know they want the support. This is actually a relieving practice. It doesn’t have to be about you. You can have low expectations that are surprised.

And sometimes you recognize that going to the party will be worse for everyone, so you don’t. But communication and clarity is still needed, because without it, how would they know? All they know is you weren’t there.

The relationship is its own being that requires tending. When you don’t tend your connections with people, they tend to wither. I understand some people don’t experience this and can go for years without contact but feel the same level of closeness. That’s lovely, and it doesn’t mean the person who needs contact needs it any less.

It may mean the shape of the relationship changes. There are people I love that if they reach out I know I’ll enjoy talking to them, and I know I can’t rely on them for anything. There are people I know will make it work if I need them, sometimes at their own expense. Those aren’t about my worth as a person, but the connection we’ve formed between us.

This is a season for loving without attachment, giving without conditions. And this giving must be a choice based on what you feel willing and able to give. Giving out of obligation is not generosity, it drains us.

Occasionally when exploring a conflict with another person, I’ll try an exercise of imagining that I am the other person and going through the conflict from their perspective. I only do this after I’ve thoroughly explored my own thoughts and feelings about the issue and feel clear about what’s upsetting me. Then I can try imagining the other person’s thoughts and feelings from the view that they’re just like me, they’re trying to be loved and safe at the same time, and all of their actions are coming from that place.

This is not a substitute for talking to the other person, but it helps to slow things down. If I tend to think in terms of other people being evil, hostile, stupid, while I am always right, pure, goodhearted, then I will have a harder time repairing friendship with another person when there’s a problem. At the same time, if I only think about their wellbeing and don’t take the time to understand what bothers me about what is happening, then any repairs I make will quickly be undone when the same problems happen again.

The people in my cultural bubble have decidedly shifted toward the “you don’t owe anyone anything, feel empowered to cut them off if they’re not serving you” end of things, and that has its time and place. It’s good to know you can protect yourself, have standards, and choose the people you want to be around.

And it’s also true that eventually the people you are around will have differences, will have problems, will have fights. If we cut off every relationship with these problems then we will have few to tend. It’s also true that life forces us to have relationships with people we’d never choose—coworkers, neighbors, family, people in positions of authority over the things we need. We don’t have to invest the same level of care in those relationships, but we need to be able to deal with them and figure out how to work through problems when they come up. It’s worth looking at how to do both, to validate my truth and acknowledge another’s experience.

There is a quality of judgment that is simply necessary in separating out what is good for us from what is not, and bad for us might be good for someone else, so we do not need to judge for another. And there is a quality of judgment that really wants to judge for someone else, often with a measure of contempt, and that tends to be what we dislike the most.

“Judge for someone else” could mean that I am judging myself based on what I think someone else might think of me, or it could mean that I am judging someone else based on what I think they should be doing instead. Wherever it’s aimed, it’s usually unpleasant, conflict-inducing, and unwanted. And sometimes there is a wisdom that gets lost in the unpleasantness.

When I notice judgment in myself, if I have the time and energy, I ask the part of me that’s judging, “What are you concerned about?” This isn’t a trick question, it’s a genuine asking, and a willingness to acknowledge any answer. Turning away from the judgment toward the concern makes things softer. It invites the care that is beneath the harshness to come up, and it lets my judging parts express what’s really bothering it.

When the care comes up and the concern is clear, so much moves more easily. Perhaps once I’ve named it I realize it’s not that big a deal and move on with life. Or I can address the concern for myself and the judging part learns it can express itself with the harshness. Or I can decide if the other person would benefit from hearing my concern—best of all, I could ask them if they want to hear it.

In the face of looming responsibility, sometimes we might want to flail in helplessness and hope someone else will pick up the pieces. Other times we might shoulder all the burdens with sober intensity, pushing down the overwhelming feeling to muscle through. Either of these moves is disempowering in subtle ways, disowning either our own power or overvaluing our power to the disempowerment of others.

But if we set these moves at either end and look between them, there is the truth of participation and help. We have things that we can do, and we have resources to turn to for aid and support. The trick is becoming clear on what I can do, what I can learn, and when I am over my head and need support. Then the other trick is risking asking for help and becoming discerning about who can best help me. It is unfortunate that simply wanting or asking for help is not quite enough. We still have to participate in being helped—we have to communicate, we have to work together, we have to allow help to happen.

Yet the more I learn how to engage the help that’s available, the more I see how much needless suffering I’ve created by thinking I have to do it all myself. Without that suffering, I could do so much more.

What responsibilities feel just beyond your capacity right now? What would make them easier to bear?

Late last spring initiated a turn of the spiral for love and beauty, spurred by the unfolding potentials of technological change. What comes to mind is the innovations in medicine and surgical technique that allows those who wish to transition genders, sparking much handwringing and fear to protect “natural” definitions of gender. Which actually requires one to define those natural genders, which turns out to be so tricky that one might begin to wonder how natural they are, or why they require protection, or why a woman forged through her own will, desire, and medical support wouldn’t count.

On a personal level, we might consider ways we’ve come to reassess our own value, what and whom we value, and how we understand love and beauty since last May. Now is a time when those big shifts are bearing fruit and we can begin to see the new form things will take.

I made big changes in my own work and practice to allow myself more time and energy and now find myself in the question of: what to do with it? It’s a good problem to have, and I think it embodied this phase that will continue for several months. We’ll have to live with these changes for a while, but eventually we’ll be clear on what we like and what wants more change.

In what new ways are you experiencing and sharing love this year?

Communication is much harder than it seems it should be. We inhabit a shared reality but our experiences of it are so unique that we might as well be our own planets, sending signals through space hoping that some intelligent life will receive and interpret it successfully. We often have to communicate a lot more than we think we “should” because our understanding and thoughts and feelings are invisible from the outside. When I use a phrase that all my friends use and intuitively understand, it communicates a lot. When I say the same phrase to someone who’s never heard it before, it mystifies a lot. When I assume they should know this phrase that, after all, everyone I talk to already knows, then I see their misunderstanding as being willful or stupid.

So sometimes we have to say a lot to communicate a little. And sometimes the more we communicate, the more confused and muddled the message becomes. It’s taken me a long time to learn that sometimes I have to stop talking and let the other person chew on my words for a bit so that they either can come to clarity, or they can ask questions that will help me understand what they’re not getting.

These seem like opposites but they are compliments. I need to be willing to slow down and let them tell me about the confusion so I can better clarify what I meant.