Libra is the season of balance, but this month is pushing us to actively work for that balance. Libra is ruled by Venus, planet of rose-scented baths and high femme beauty skills. Venus is how we access pleasure, beauty, and harmony. It’s vital for our wellbeing, and how we share joy with the people we love. Celebrating Venus means validating our need for beauty and tenderness. In Libra season, we’re more motivated to make peace, resolve old issues, and plan romantic getaways with our sweethearts. But wanting love and harmony doesn’t mean we always know how to get it. The shadow side of Libra is artificial harmony—smoothing over something that really needs to erupt. Avoiding conversations that might get heated isn’t the same thing as actually having a harmonious relationship. Shadow side Libra can be tempted to go along with what other people want, to keep the peace at all costs, to dodge direct questions that could transform a lighthearted conversation into a more serious discussion.

That’s not going to be so easy right now. This Libra season, we’ve got some fiercer energies at work and we are guaranteed to come face-to-face with our anxieties and frustrations. Don’t panic, though — treat these as useful information when they arise. Knowing what makes you angry means knowing more about how to set boundaries. Knowing what makes you scared means having a better sense of what will keep you safe. In an ideal world, all our relationships would honor our boundaries and our needs. This is the truest definition of love—wanting someone to thrive as their full self. Anyone who loves you but dismisses your needs or ignores your boundaries is probably treating themselves that way, as well. They can’t offer you what they can’t offer themselves. With this in mind, this month is a powerful catalyst for facing our own shadows and loving them fiercely. This is a powerful time to forgive yourself, even as you strive to do better in the future. This is a powerful time to understand that even if you’ve caused harm you’re not a monster. This is a powerful time to see if you’re ready to forgive someone else. It might not be easy—old wounds and strong feelings are shot through the calmer energy of this month—but you’ve got strong support if you need it.

Get in touch this month and let me know how I can help you: www.flaxandgold.com or follow me on Instagram @corinadross. And as always, for these relational horoscopes you’ll get best results reading your Moon and Venus signs first—these are the two planets that have the strongest influence on all our relationships. If you know the rest of your chart, feel free to read for every planet!

Aries

Libra season is always a time of self-confrontation for you, but even more so this year as your ruling planet Mars moves through Libra. The main question coming up for you is how to maintain the freedom and exploration you thrive on without majorly disrupting your relationships. Depending on where you are on this path, this could be a time of having more honest conversations and really owning your desires, or this could be a time of not facing up to what’s brewing inside until it spills out and makes some kind of glorious mess. This might be just what’s needed in relationships where you need to dramatically change things or fully cut ties, but I recommend getting in touch with what your deepest frustrations and desires really are so that you can consciously decide how to handle them.

Confront: What are you hiding from yourself? Are you blaming partners or friends for something that’s a mutual pattern? If there’s a problem that needs to get solved, start talking—ideally, without blame.

Soften: Indulge your erotic nature, however that shows up for you. This can mean writing erotica, having solo dates, attending orgies, learning a new BDSM skill, or merely doing something that feels really good for you body without a sexual goal. The main idea is to remember that intense experiences of pleasure are a form of healing.

Taurus

When under stress, your default is to get stuck. Hold on tight to whatever used to work for you, even if it isn’t working anymore. Where are you stuck right now? Do a little gentle investigation. Are you stuck in self-harming habits? In limited, doom-filled narratives? In free-floating anxiety or depression? This month could be a wake-up call to overhaul patterns you’ve outgrown, freeing you to face the future with renewed energy and optimism. Whatever you’re facing right now, you are brave to take the first steps. Remember to stay grounded in compassion for yourself as you go on, and remember that your lovers and partners can be allies on this journey.

Confront: Stagnation. Old habits that no longer help you. Activities that distract you from learning what you need.

Soften: Many Taurus folks have strict inner rules about protecting their vulnerability. Why reach out to someone when you can get your needs met on your own? Now’s the time to soften your defenses and let someone know what you need, and how big a deal it is for you.

Gemini

No one denies that you are a real charmer. Whether you’re the life of the party or merely a quiet wit, you know how to make things fun and put people at ease. This is a beautiful skill when situations get awkward or soupy with leftover sluggishness, but sometimes there’s a real need to go deeper—for you and for others. If you default to staying on the glittering surface of a conversation and skating around the deeper feelings like an ice skater avoiding thin ice, this month will challenge you to move a little closer toward what feels scary. Trust your intuition and please remember there’s no need to re-traumatize yourself! Merely get curious about what’s making you uncomfortable and why, and then consider dipping a little deeper to see what happens. One tool at your disposal is your ability to set boundaries. If you feel like you’re about to fall into icy water, say, “I can’t have this conversation right now!”orand “I’m glad you brought this up, let me think about it for awhile” or even, “This is a scary topic for me, can we go slowly and take breaks?” Remember, you don’t have to hold anything that’s too big for you to hold alone.

Confront: Your need to play and joke when something serious is happening under the surface. What happens when you get quiet. Where your focus is needed. What kind of discomfort brings you deeper inward.

Soften: What you expect from yourself. Needing to be perfect. Feeling solely responsible for fixing problems.

Cancer

This month has one major message for you: It’s okay to come out of your shell and let the world see how cute you are. I know this comes with risk, especially for the more visibly gender variant cuties among us, or any queer living in a hostile environment, so I’m not asking you to throw all caution to the wind. Rather, choose your time and place, choose your people—but make the choice to show more of what you’ve been hiding. Ask for more of what you want. Participate in the exchange of desires and capacities that are ever-shifting in every relationship. Enjoy the ups and downs, the uncertainties and discoveries. It gets to be fun right now, even if parts of it feel wildly unfamiliar. Be brave. Rest as needed. Repeat.

Confront: Wanting to hide. Napping when you could be connecting. The belief that the best defense is a hasty and full retreat from conflict.

Soften: Follow the thread of pleasure that will lead you to joyous self-expression. Look in the mirror and get overwhelmed by how hot you are. Remember how fun it is to be a human in a body, admiring and being admired by other humans.

Leo

Do you know the feeling when you really want someone’s attention and you feel embarrassed saying, “Hey, I want your attention!” so you try a bunch of indirect routes and don’t really get the thing you wanted and maybe even confuse or irritate the person in question? You can get tied up in knots trying to deny your extremely valid and human desire for someone you love to give you their full attention and tell you how beautiful you are, listen to the details of your day, read your new poem—whatever it is you need validated. You have cosmic permission to want these things. The more you can claim that, the less you’ll make nonconsensual grabs for attention. Use your words to ask for how you’d like to be held around this. Doing so isn’t selfish, it actually opens up space for your friends and partners to do the same. What is selfish is refusing to ask and fumbling forward trying to get as much attention as you can before someone cuts you off. You don’t gotta play that game. This is a month for really softening into feeling safe with the people you love, so take a risk and name the thing that you keep hiding. Chances are it will feel easier than you think.

Confront: Habits of overthinking things. Mental merry-go-rounds. Talking instead of feeling. Creatively altering your story to hide what hurts.

Soften: Let thorny family issues thaw and drip away. Snuggle up to the people you feel coziest with. Stay in bed longer, rest more, and worry less about being productive.

Virgo

Love can be challenging for people with Virgo planets—especially Venus and Moon in Virgo. You have a strong instinct for noticing not just what’s broken but what’s probably fine but could be working better. Holding this lens to every relationship, it can be hard to feel satisfied for long—with your partners or yourself. This month, your challenge is to find that sense of satisfaction amidst the imperfections of your life. Especially if you can’t always meet your own high standards, shame and insecurity can make you cruel to yourself, setting you up for accepting less than you deserve from others. You have good odds of avoiding this trap right now, if you can spot it. Meanwhile, let yourself soften into seeing the humorous side of all the small dissatisfactions that might otherwise get you down.

Confront: How insecurity will twist your perspective. What it takes to know what you’re worth and demand what you deserve. What you give up in the name of stability.

Soften: Get playful with your language. Let flirting be a game. Find the funny side of situations you can’t solve. Practice non-verbal courtship.

Libra

What do you really want, sweetie? If someone were to ask you to describe your deepest desires, goals, ambitions, and passions, would you know how to answer? How long would it take to name them, in all their full complexity? Does it feel selfish or uncomfortable to think about them? This month your desires are in the spotlight, and it’s time to start untangling what you’ve been taught to want, what your lovers want, and what your partner thinks you should want from what actually gives you that spark of life and joy and excitement. It’s vital that you chase that energy to its source, even if it means tuning everyone else out for a little bit. See what you can discover on your own, and don’t let it get twisted when you’re ready to share it.

Confront: What makes you you. What brings you irrational joy. What you’ve been taught you shouldn’t want but still secretly do.

Soften: Your fear of loss. Your need to hoard friendships in case you run out of love. Only feeling safe when you’re doing what’s familiar.

Scorpio

Let’s say that you, like most humans, have had some bad relationships. Maybe you’ve been with someone who didn’t value you as you deserve to be valued, or maybe you’ve been lied to, or lied to a partner, or lied to yourself. Maybe things got pretty toxic and you wish you’d gotten out of there faster, or never even gotten close to that person. There’s something you need to forgive yourself for before you can move forward, and this is the month to do that. What you are doing in this act is cultivating a space for something else to blossom in the future. You’re tilling the soil of the past, turning over the old dead pain so it can get broken up and reincorporated into healthy, fertile ground. What do you need to bury right now?

Confront: That lingering sense of paranoia you may feel about love—when will this end? How dramatic will it be? What’s my escape plan? How do I get out alive?

Soften: Let yourself melt into a warm pool of self-compassion. Soften your self-critique. Soften your harsh memories. Name what you’re ready to release.

Sagittarius

The trickiest thing about other people is that you can’t predict or control them. You could have the most utopian vision of how the world could look—world peace or loving non-oppressive alliances between trans women and lesbian separatists—and you’re never going to be able to persuade, encourage, lecture, or cheerlead people into doing or learning the things you think they ought to. So what can you do, when you’re feeling stuck or frustrated by the world around you? Start looking at the threads that connect you. Start nourishing the relationships that are mutually supportive. Let that be your work. Acknowledge disappointment, but don’t lead with blame. And this month you’ve got some extra magic on your side in the form of your connection to your own inner worlds—dreams, fantasies, imagination. There are some rich images and impressions coming through, so take some time to let them come.

Confront: How are you feeling disconnected from community? Have you lost your desire to be part of things? Can you trace how this happened? What would a nourishing community look like? How would you participate in it?

Soften: Drift into your fantasies and see where they lead you. Release the need to know the answers. Give up the illusion of being in control.

Capricorn

I know I pester you all the time about softening, releasing judgment, and releasing your need to be competent at all costs. It’s not that I see you as a walking stereotype, it’s just that Capricorn energy is a hella hard worker, and it’s so easy for planets in Capricorn to think they know what they need to work on (“I just need to be stronger!”) and ignore what they actually need to work on (“I just need to work up the courage to ask someone for a hug!”). So here is your monthly reminder, dear pillar of strength and integrity, that you don’t have to do it all alone. Let your rope go slack. Call in sick. Have someone else make you some soup.

Confront: Your need to be seen as competent, important, powerful. Wanting forward momentum at all costs. Needing a job or a mission that keeps you from dropping into vulnerability and intimacy.

Soften: Be gentle in your assessments of how friends or community are failing. Soften your judgments. Bottomline generosity.

Aquarius

This month is a breath of fresh air for you, even if the air is a little cold and brisk. Part of you is waking up and with that clarity comes the pain of change—of knowing that once you’ve named something you’re going to have to address it. Luckily, you’re well positioned right now to speak your truth clearly, without needing to force anything. There’s this old trick that if you want to be heard in a loud room you start speaking very quietly, but with intention, and with the air of someone who’s not going to repeat themselves. This is your magic right now.

Confront: How much you’re running away from what you know is true. Moving around to avoid connecting the dots. What larger pattern can you see that you haven’t wanted to name?

Soften: Feel juiced up about stepping into your power. Release fears of showing up as your full self. Let your neck muscles open and relax so your voice can ring out loud and strong.

Pisces

It’s time to melt away some of your instinctive pessimism. Pisces folks tend to idealize their partners, seeing someone as shinier and more special than all of us mere mortals until they prove themselves to be disappointing, struggling, and flawed as all humans are. Over time, this pattern creates a deep-seated pessimism about what you can really expect from love. You may present yourself as open, giving, devoted, and totally all in—and maybe you believe you are—but you can only dive headfirst into that kind of romance when a piece of you is swept up in the fantasy of new beginnings and not quite tracking where it will end. Or, perhaps you’ve survived enough crashes at this point that you’re outwardly wary. What is love but other people draining your energy and not giving enough back? This month, your task is to clear away these cobwebs. Start by grieving the past. Then start naming who in your life you can rely on, and how they’ve proved that to you. Get realistic about love, which will paradoxically let you reconnect with your faith in love. Remember that the future is unwritten, and can be much more nourishing than you expect.

Confront: The pain you’re still holding from past relationships, or from past phases of a current relationship. Your tendency to merge with people and take on what they’re feeling.

Soften: Those inner defenses that tell you love will always crash and burn. The worldview that you always give and others always take. The lens that tells you to jump into a bad idea and enjoy it while you can.

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