I really want to connect this to my podcast because this is what I want to talk about on this week’s episode. We shall see.

I came across a post today that someone said, ‘I am 21 now and I realize I am a fully-fledged adult.’ It struck me. 21 was just over 10 years ago for me. I did not feel like an adult then. I felt uncomfortable in my body… I still felt like a child.

Even though I could see my friends, through my 20s, getting married, buying houses, having children, doing all the things that ‘adults’ were meant to do, I didn’t feel like I was ready for that at that time in my life. I also wasn’t sure if that made someone an adult.

I felt like… well I felt that I was finally given the space to go out in the world and figure things out for myself. I felt like I was at the beginning. Not at the end. I didn’t feel that my youth was over, even though I wasn’t a child and I was actually considered an adult.

When I graduated high school, and even during my senior year, a switch flipped with people in my life. Mostly family.

All of a sudden I was meant to start paying for this on my own, doing that on my own, no one needed to come with me to do this anymore. I had to know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, but I still had to be home by midnight every night.

Confusing. And painful. By the time I graduated college, I was a full-fledged adult. Except for the fact that I was not.

But I had to get a job and pay rent and do this and do that. In my heart I was still not sure how to fit in. I had fallen in love and it was confusing. I wanted privacy but didn’t feel like I deserved it. I wanted space but didn’t know how to get it or where to go. Whew.

When I started to study Astrology, in my very first class, and in all of the classes to be honest, we learned about the planets. Saturn is the planet associated with the material world and our earthly journeys. All of our seven year cycles in life are broken down by different points in our Saturn cycle.

When it makes its first completion around the wheel, we are between 28/29 and 31/32 years old. This is the Saturn return cycle. And this, astrologically speaking, is the maturation process. The flowering of adulthood.

Whew. Thank goodness. Is it objective fact? No. But it makes so much sense to me and it warms my aching heart because I know that we have time and it is okay that I haven’t felt like a grown person in the world this whole time.

It is okay. I am currently saying goodbye to my youth and embracing the feeling of inner stability that I have as I feel the flowering of my adulthood. It feels amazing. And overwhelming.

I feel sad about how in society we are rushed. Maybe it doesn’t feel rushed to people. Through my lens it does. In my life it did and I felt like I was behind. Saturn is closing up shop over these recent months and the peace it is bringing is a true gift. I wish that kind of peace for everyone on this Earth. Whether it is in retrospect, present time or forecasted, I wish that each person know that youth is a journey and it doesn’t have to end when we turn 21. And in fact through some bodies of knowledge the youth cycle doesn’t end until around 30.

That is what I am telling myself to heal from the pains of not feeling like an adult with an adult life. It helps. And it also hurts me to think about youth being stripped away at such young ages for some people. There’s much to be said but I’ll leave it for now.

Here’s to my youth. And thank you to all those powers that supported me to live the fullness of it in the way that I did.