When Saturn Rings is a hybrid memoir and pop-cultural field guide about the Saturn Return as both crash-out and creative initiation. It tracks how personal transformation mirrors public narrative—braiding together ancestral memory, astrological cycles, and pop music as portals for reflection and reinvention.

I’m currently 30,000 words into a projected 60,000. The book weaves: anchor essays chronicling a three-year Saturn Return marked by death, dislocation, grief, and creative reawakening; matrilineal stories tracing the repetition and rupture of patterns across generations of Cuban women; cultural readings of albums like SZA’s SOS, Adele’s 30, and Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour that doubled as survival manuals for the culture; and mythological frameworks that cast Saturn as both destroyer and architect.

Drawing from feminist theory, astrology, family constellation therapy, and the internet-native texture of a life lived both IRL and extremely online, the book reads like group chat wisdom meets academic rigor meets spiritual download. It’s part memoir, part cultural criticism, part spell for anyone moving through the blurry space between who they’ve been and who they’re becoming.

When Saturn Rings began as emergency essays written in real time during my own Saturn Return. What started as personal processing has become something larger: a cultural artifact and nonlinear map of what it means to come undone—and re-emerge, shaky but with more certainty.

When Saturn Rings speaks to the 32 million women currently in their Saturn Returns—roughly 22 million aged 25-34 experiencing their first return, plus 10.6 million aged 55-59 navigating their second. But the book's real audience extends to anyone who's ever googled "why is my life falling apart" at 3am and found themselves in an astrology rabbit hole.

The Market Gap is Glaring: Despite massive cultural interest, there are NO contemporary books addressing the Saturn Return experience. Current options include:

• Liz Greene's "Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil" (1976) - Dense, Jungian, academic

• Brief mentions in general astrology books

• One-page explainers on astrology websites (Astrostyle, The Pattern)

• Chani Nicholas recently launched a self-guided 30 day course with tips/tricks 

• A 2024 Vulture article asking why all our pop stars are talking about Saturn Returns

Meanwhile, demand is explosive:

• Google searches for "Saturn Return" spike dramatically every 2-3 years as Saturn changes signs

• #SaturnReturn has 17.5K+ posts on TikTok with millions of views

• The topic trends whenever a celebrity mentions it (most recently with SZA's SOS tour)

• Women aged 25-35 AND those processing in retrospect (32-40) actively seek this content

When Saturn Rings fills this void by being the first book to:

• Bridge personal narrative with cultural analysis through pop albums as portals

• Speak to the decentering men movement through Saturn as internal authority

• Offer both real-time rawness and retrospective wisdom

• Make esoteric concepts accessible through SZA lyrics and Adele interviews

The readership lives at the intersection of several exploding markets: the astrology/spirituality sector (now a $2.2 billion industry); the personal essay/cultural criticism space that made bestsellers of books like Trick Mirror and The Collected Schizophrenias; and the massive audience consuming Saturn Return content across social media.

Comparable titles:

• You Were Born for This by Chani Nicholas - Both use astrology as empowerment, but while Nicholas offers instruction, When Saturn Rings offers immersion through story

• Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino - Similar cultural criticism meets personal narrative, but through astrological rather than internet lens

• The Recovering by Leslie Jamison - Both braid cultural analysis with raw personal narrative, but swap addiction recovery for astrological initiation

• All About Love by bell hooks - Both examine how we learn to love without traditional blueprints, but through cosmic rather than purely social lens

When Saturn Rings is for readers who learned about shadow work from TikTok, who care about both their rising sign and their Spotify Wrapped. They want personal storytelling that doesn't bypass complexity and cultural criticism that feels like a voice note from their wisest friend. They're ready to stop inheriting their lives and start creating them.

Dania Jimenez is a Cuban-American writer and podcaster exploring the intersection of pop culture, spirituality, and personal mythology. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she writes from the group chat where duty, desire, and diaspora are all typing.

She co-hosts Reality Woo Woo, a podcast that reads modern media through an astrological lens, and hosts The Aura Edit, a voice-note-style series exploring energy, beauty, and embodiment—cosmic audio diaries for the chronically online and cosmically curious.

Prior to writing full-time, Dania spent over a decade as a creative communications strategist, shaping voice and narrative across tech startups, luxury real estate, wellness brands, and hospitality groups. This professional background informs her approach to cultural criticism—she understands how stories are built, sold, and internalized, and brings that lens to the ways we inherit personal and collective mythologies.

Dania holds a degree in Global Studies with a minor in Feminist Studies from UC Santa Barbara. A Virgo sun, Sagittarius rising, and Scorpio moon, she moves between the editorial, the expansive, and the emotional—bringing sharp analysis and deep feeling to every piece of work. She can be found on TikTok [@daniamarienow] sharing real-time spiritual downloads and pop culture analysis, building the exact community this book is written for: women ready to stop inheriting their lives and start creating them.

Launch Strategy:

• Podcast tour targeting astrology/spirituality and culture shows (Stars Like Us, Ghost of a Podcast, NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour, We Can Do Hard Things)

• Essay excerpts pitched to outlets covering the intersection of culture and transformation (Bustle, Refinery29, Tiktok Zines) 

• Activate established partnership network (Magic Mind, Our Spot, Saie Beauty, Awe Inspired)  

• Saturn Survival Guide workshop series in LA and NYC (detailed below)

• TikTok series breaking down celebrity Saturn Returns and decentering men through cosmic lens

• SMS Marketing “Saturn Support Group” campaign featuring “community field notes” sent to subscribers

Digital Platform:

• Co-host of Reality Woo Woo, analyzing pop culture through an astrological lens (3,359+ lifetime listens)

• Host of The Aura Edit, exploring energy, beauty, and embodiment

• TikTok [@daniamarienow]: Building community around Saturn Return insights and cultural astrology

• Instagram [@daniamarienow]: 1,050 followers

• LinkedIn: 2,000+ connections from 15-year career in creative communications

Target Communities:

• The astrology TikTok community (#SaturnReturn has 500M+ views, growing exponentially)

• Decentering men movement followers seeking spiritual frameworks

• Pop culture podcast listeners (Who? Weekly, Keep It, Pop Culture Happy Hour)

• Women 25-35 navigating quarter-life crises without inherited blueprints

• Creative professionals in LA/NYC wellness and spirituality spaces

Built-in Audiences:

• Women actively googling Saturn Return content (searches spike every 2-3 years)

• Readers who discovered Vulture's Saturn Return article and want deeper exploration

• 15 years of professional relationships in PR/creative industries

Unique Marketing Angles:

• First book to decode celebrity Saturn Returns as cultural mirrors

• Timely hook with decentering men movement + cosmic authority

• Workshop series creating experiential connection to book themes

• Author with proven ability to build engaged communities around transformation

Saturn Survival Guide Workshop - Launch Events

A Pop Culture + Spiritual Experience for Your Saturn Return

Event Overview: An immersive 3-hour workshop blending literary reading, spiritual practices, and community healing for women navigating their Saturn Return. Each event creates a sanctuary for transformation, combining excerpts from When Saturn Rings with experiential healing modalities.

Event Flow

Opening Circle (30 min)

• Welcome + grounding meditation

• Brief astrology primer on Saturn Returns

• Community introductions: "What's dying in your life right now?"

Literary Experience (45 min)

• Author reading from When Saturn Rings (focus on SZA or Adele essays)

• Live playlist featuring the Saturn Return albums discussed

• Q&A on writing through transformation

Healing Stations (90 min - rotating)

• Reiki healing: 15-minute sessions for energy clearing

• Sound bath: Full group experience with crystal bowls

• EFT tapping: Led session on releasing inherited patterns

• Perfect Day manifestation: Vision boarding meets cosmic planning

Integration + Closing (15 min)

• Group share

• Gift bag distribution

• Community photo

Presenting Sponsors

• Magic Mind: Morning ritual shots for mental clarity during transformation (contact available)

• Awe Inspired: Saturn jewelry collection - perfect tie-in with their goddess/astrological pieces

• Clevr: Adaptogenic matchas, coffees and cacao for navigating change

• Sakara: Plant-based wellness brand for nourishing through transitions

Gift Bag Partners

• Nopalera: Botanical bath products (contact available) 

• Osea: Clean skincare for stress-related skin issues (contact available) 

Beauty/Self-Care Partners

• Caliray: Clean California beauty vibes

• Kosas: Makeup that's actually good for your skin

• Fable & Mane: Hair care rooted in Ayurvedic wisdom

• Ceremonia: Latinx-founded haircare for all hair types

• Saie: Sustainable beauty for conscious consumers (contact available) 

Experience Partners

• Local sound healers from each city

• Reiki practitioners specializing in life transitions

• EFT practitioners focusing on ancestral healing

Marketing Hooks

• "Your Saturn Return Survival Kit"

• "Where Pop Culture Meets Portal"

• "Your Cosmic Crash-Out Survival Guide"

Documentation

• Professional photography for social content

• Potential mini-doc for YouTube/TikTok

• Attendee testimonials for book marketing

INTRO SECTION:

• Introduction: "Girl, You Have 30 Minutes"

• Who Is Big Daddy Saturn (Mythology piece)

PART 1: THE UNRAVELING

• Personal Journey: "The Unraveling" (Grandfather's death, grief, therapy)

• Cultural Study: Adele - "30"

• Field Note: "A Note on Never Enough"* Note - “Field Notes” are real essays I wrote during my Saturn Return. 

PART 2: THE BECOMING

• Personal Journey: "The Becoming" (Spiritual expansion with new tools: tarot, vision boards, reclaiming desire)

• Cultural Study: SZA - "SOS"

• Field Note: [transformation/spiritual awakening]

PART 3: THE CHOOSING

• Personal Journey: "The Choosing" (Dating, choosing yourself, ending a chapter)

• Cultural Study: Ariana Grande - "thank u, next"

• Field Note: [self-selection/boundaries]

PART 4: THE RETURN

• Personal Journey: "The Return" (Coming back to LA, meeting my romantic partner, integration, grandmother's parallels)

• Cultural Study: Kacey Musgraves - "Golden Hour"

• Field Note: [coming home to yourself]

Introduction - "Girl, You Have 30 Minutes"

Do you know you have 30 minutes? 30, 30 yes. 

That viral sound lives rent-free in my head because it captures exactly how your late twenties feel — like you're on a cosmic deadline you didn't know about. You catch little sound bites here and there about your Saturn Return: it's the roughest time in your life, you’ll finally learn to truly stand on your own two feet, it will irrevocably change you, for better or worse. But what does it all really mean? 

Most of what you find online makes your Saturn Return sound like a threat, and if you’ve lived a life of hypervigilance with a sensitive nervous system, it can feel like one too. At 27, signing up for a three-year bootcamp of the soul sounds like the last thing you’d ever want to do. Hell, your pre-frontal cortex just fully came in, like yesterday.

In reality, your Saturn Return is a promise kept from your highest self. It signals what you knew all along — that there is more, and you deserve all of it. But you’re going to have to make some space to get there. 

My Saturn Return was the first time that I felt grounded enough to really scrutinize what my beliefs were, and to more boldly align myself publicly with the ones that withstood the pressure test. Ironically enough, this groundedness came not from external circumstances, as those were actively crumbling around me, but was rather something I developed by getting in touch with and then actively listening to my inner desires. 

I’ve never been a stranger to strong opinions. But as a mutable Virgo Sun and Sagittarius Rising, my poker face is legendary. Luckily, my Scorpio Moon does a lot of heavy lifting, cultivating an emotional intensity in me that has always boiled right below the surface.

Growing up, I inherited a lot of outdated programming. At every turn I was told to suppress my personal self expression. 

Don’t be so bossy.

Stand up straight. 

Don’t eat like that. 

Suck in your stomach. 

Don’t dress like that. 

A web of restrictions that had kept me trapped for a lifetime, in accordance with a code of conduct that was not mine. 

Your Saturn Return is literally made for pulling up each and every belief you have like “This you, fam?” You will begin to consider what it is that you truly want, and once you figure that out, Saturn hits you with “Love that for you! Now what are you willing to leave behind in order to get it?”

Before my Saturn Return, I had no idea who I was or what I wanted. I had been following someone else’s blueprint for as long as I could remember. I had excelled in school, seeing it as my golden ticket out of the dysfunction of my home. I craved stability, safety and security at all costs. You know. Root Chakra stuff. And Saturn absolutely lives for getting deep in there and jackhammering whatever foundation you may think you have. 

A year and a half before Saturn would bulldoze his way into my life, I was down in Nicaragua on my first solo international trip. I was in the infancy of my sobriety, reaching the nine month mark as I touched down to celebrate my 26th birthday. On a small, secluded beach in Playa Maderas, I practiced morning yoga, rode a horse, went out for afternoons on the catamaran and spent evenings sipping mocktails under a canopy of trees with other young travelers from Toronto, LA, and New York. 

One night, huddled around the fire, I fell deep into conversation with a young woman celebrating her 30th birthday. She was based in LA, like I was, and was gearing up for a big move to a new state with her husband. She said that her Saturn Return had been brutal but beautiful thus far. 

She said that she had never felt more powerful or more connected to herself, and simultaneously, she had endured an incredible loss. Her father had passed away, and while the grief was immense, it had also led to the rebuilding of her faith in herself and her community. 

This was my first time receiving a Saturn Story. I would soon pick up the rhythms. Usually? Some life-altering event strikes your life and washes everything out with the tide. You reassess. You are reborn. 

My first brush with Saturn was not the only cosmic conversation of the trip. I also experienced my first reiki session, and if I’m honest, the results were not great. The reiki practitioner went to great lengths to share with me that my sacral chakra - the chakra that rules your desires, your creativity, your divine feminine and masculine energy - was completely frozen. Luckily, my Saturn Return was about to crank up the heat, melting away anything I no longer needed.  

And while this might sound like Saturn came in like a thief in the night and took something from me, he actually gifted me something quite extraordinary. Of course, it took me a few years to get around to mailing the thank you card (you’re holding it in your hands right now.) 

What Saturn gave me was time to acknowledge every desire I’ve ever had. As women, we are disconnected from our bodies by design, shamed for our very existence, and kept separate from the longings we carry inside. Instead of tapping into our sacral energy, that expansive, creative fire, we are instead taught to fear our hunger, our desire, our unpredictability. 

To fulfill our soul’s desire requires that we learn what happens both when we achieve and when we don’t. What is possible for us in the murkiness, and in the sunlight. How we handle ourselves, the tools we turn to when there is outer turmoil.

I write this now at the grown woman age of 35, well beyond my Saturn Return, but irrevocably changed by what it uncovered. I write this as I stand on the precipice of watching my younger sister, born in 1998, begin her Saturn Return as it approaches 0 degrees in Aries. Coincidentally (or not) my mother will also be spinning the block with Saturn, something I am excited to witness. 

My educated guess for what they might encounter on this journey? For my sister, I imagine every area of her life will be up for review. From her romantic relationships to her friendships, her career to her connection to home and family, she’ll have the chance to recognize what she truly finds to be meaningful, and consciously choose to pursue a path in alignment with her own desires. Or, at the very least — she’ll have a clearer picture of what is in alignment, and can use that to guide her in the years to come. 

As for my mom, I’m paying special attention here. I’ll enter my second Saturn Return in the late 2040s. While that might feel like a ways off, I’m curious about what this new threshold will welcome. Perhaps it will be a flurry of activity, forcing a succession of quick, life-altering choices as my first return did. Or, as I’ll get to vicariously explore through my mother’s experience, maybe it will be something more subtle. A reshaping of the psyche, a time to strike anything from the subconscious that will be of no use in the third and final chapter of life. 

If you’re gearing up for your own return, I hope that what you find in these pages helps you to better navigate your story as it unfolds. If you’re in the very throes of it and it feels like you just got hit by a truck, I hope you are buoyed by the company — the artists, the muses, the makers who have come before and used this time in their lives to create masterpieces that have cemented their legacies. And if you’re still standing in the afterglow, trying to make sense of it all, I hope we can keep walking this path together. No more urgent cosmic deadlines — promise!

Oh! and just a quick note on how to make your way through the guide. Each part will feature a chapter reflecting on my personal visit from Saturn, followed by a culture case study on one of our pop princesses, ending with a special treat — an actual essay that I journaled during my Saturn Return. Consider it on-the-ground reporting.

Enjoy!

One thing about Saturn? He definitely suffered from some pretty severe daddy issues. And while I thought I had done a decent amount of work in that department, I was about to get rocked by my return. 

If you’re an eldest daughter, you might be used to challenging the role of authority in your life. This power struggle can feel like a well worn groove. And while you might fight back from youthful sense of rebellion, your Saturn Return helps to uncover what exactly you’re fighting for and why. 

As aware of my Saturn Return as I was while it was happening, it didn’t dampen the constraint I experienced or the subsequent push to mature into a more sovereign version of self. My awareness did however encourage me to seek guidance and support; primarily from wise women in my life, and the wisest woman of all — my own consciousness. 

If you’re less adept at making your heart race by standing up for yourself and those you love, your Saturn Return can greatly adrenalize your body. It is the perfect time to recognize if under stress you tend to fight, fly or freeze. During my Saturn Return, I recognized I was cycling between all of these nervous system responses. But I craved new ways of being, not just to help me get by, but to illuminate a path toward my own healing.

Leading up to my Saturn Return, I would describe myself as outwardly thriving, internally surviving. By day, I was a Senior Director at a prestigious PR firm, advising some of the world’s most successful real estate developers. By night, I was training to be a yoga teacher, desperately seeking meaning after Hillary's loss shook something loose in me. 

In April of 2017, my internal temperature reached a boiling point and I left my job. I cashed out nearly 40 vacation days, and spent the next six months teaching yoga and volunteering at the Downtown Women’s Center. I also committed the ultimate LA sin and sold my car, relying on the city’s steadily improving, but far from reliable, public transportation. 

When I look back on this time in my life, they are still some of the happiest days I’ve ever experienced. I was broke, but radiant. I loved having freedom of movement and time in my day to read, sit in the sun, sip tea. I was more outgoing than ever, feeling a sense of camaraderie with everyone I encountered. I felt like my light was shining brightly, attracting moths to my flame. 

There were some other things I noticed of course. The way that people’s eyes would glaze over when I told them I was a yoga teacher. The dwindling money I had in my bank account. The panic and shame I felt when I had to turn down a family wedding invitation on the east coast because my funds would no longer allow me such an expense. 

Just as the panic was getting harder and harder to ignore, a life raft floated into frame. I received a job offer from a former client, asking if I’d like to join their team. In San Francisco. 

I moved to the city on December 17, 2017 to begin my new career. My Saturn Return in Capricorn began the same day. (You know… the sign of authority, structure, and daddy issues. But of course.)

In my first few months of being in the city, I was optimistic and excited to live in a new place. I spent most of my weekends exploring the many neighborhoods in the city, visiting different bookstores and cafes. After a career in PR, I had switched over to marketing, and so my initial few months on the job required me to drink information out of a fire house as I picked up the technical expertise I needed. 

I cut my hair preposterously short and bleached it blonde. My new city required me to take risks in many ways, and the physical newness allowed me to explore parts of myself that I had not yet had a chance to encounter.

In April of 2018, the big bomb dropped. My grandfather passed away at the age of 91. It was a confusing time. We'd been estranged since 2016—family rifts that meant I'd barely seen him in his final years, despite having grown up living in his home. I missed him deeply, and the loss struck me harder than I could have imagined. 

Until it happened, I had been operating under the assumption that I could prepare for this major loss and minimize the disruption it would cause to my physical, emotional and spiritual life. I had gotten sober and started therapy a few years earlier, based solely on an acute awareness that I lacked the emotional fortitude that I knew I would need to make it through the potential grief. 

At an especially early age, I had lived through what happens when you have zero coping mechanisms for grief. On Christmas Day shortly after I was born, my paternal grandfather had passed from lung cancer. My father self-destructed with a speed and recklessness that was terrifying to witness. I can still vividly remember explosive arguments between my parents, framed by the bars on my crib. 

Even in the chaotic haze of my early 20s, my future self was quietly whispering directions forward. A series of hip replacements and heart attacks between my grandparents had told me that we were getting dangerously low on time. 

Fast forward to 2018, and a strange, surreal calm took over my body. This is what we’ve trained for, I thought. And while sobriety and talk therapy were certainly useful, they were really just the start of my transformation. This self-assuredness should have been a neon warning sign that things could not possibly be going this smoothly. Saturn saw an opening and gladly took it. 

When I landed back in Los Angeles, my family went out to grab Thai food. I still felt “strong” and like a model of what a grieving person “should” look like. 

As an empath, I unconsciously pick up on the emotions of those around me. At baseline, I’m not an overly emotional person, but I am a highly sensitive one, and so being in a room packed with people that are grieving is overstimulating and can be quite uncomfortable. I want to be clear here — feeling in and of itself is not a problem. On the plus side, I can also feel what’s called collective effervescence, a feeling of euphoria often experienced during celebrations and gatherings. I radiate joy at weddings and Taylor Swift concerts, amplifying the resonance around me. 

The problem, both personal and collective, arises when we avoid the discomfort of feelings we’d rather box away for a more convenient moment, which never comes. Instead, we drag those feelings around, storing it in the fascia, becoming increasingly rigid over time. And when we have porous boundaries, we can take on the burdens caused by the unprocessed pain of others. 

Nonetheless, I made it through the funeral. As they lowered my grandfather into the ground, my younger brother sobbed into my shoulder. I still felt a certain sense of pride as I was able to support him and my mother. That evening, I headed back to San Francisco.

And that was the end of it. Or so I thought. 

Living in the Bay Area kept me pretty distracted from the work Saturn was starting to pile on my plate, struggling as I was to find my footing. When I first got sober in LA, I had relied heavily on working out to help ease my anxiety and feel safe in my body. I often worked five or more times a week. Navigating the city without a car, I was lucky if I made it to the gym twice a week. 

I also lacked a close stable of family and friends I could rely on. I was surrounded by acquaintances; people I could meet up with for coffee, but no one I felt I could really trust in a bind. 

Finding the right speed for dating also made me feel a little like Goldilocks. The people I dated in LA had all been dreamy, creative Peter Pans, never committing beyond a second date, always looking for the next best thing. The men in San Francisco were the complete opposite — all of them lawyers, engineers, data scientists. They were all looking for a wife, and the intensity that many of them brought to the first date was overwhelming. 

I was also adapting to a new role. I quickly picked up the skills I needed, and I was quickly rewarded! With more work. Zipping around from project to project, most days you could find me fighting nausea in the backseat of a smelly Toyota Prius while my Uber driver droned on, unprovoked. 

I felt lost, and yet I wasn’t even fully present with the weight of everything that I was carrying. No matter — Saturn was about to call in reinforcements, dropping me into a physical and emotional turmoil so excruciating, it would be impossible to ignore. 

Remember when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died? Too soon? Well I sure do, because when the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh began, the dam burst. 

I watched Dr Christine Blasey-Ford raise her right hand on my phone screen while riding the 38 Geary, tears streaming down my face as strangers pretended not to notice. Her voice cracked open something I'd locked away, a deep wound playing out on the world’s stage.

Like more than 50% of women and ⅓ of men, I had encountered various forms of sexual violence in my 28 years. The everyday harassment that women are made to endure, the catcalling, the slap of my ass in a crowd. 

But I’d also been privy to more insidious forms of sexual violence. From feigning sleep to ward off the aggressive sexual advances of a date and then waking up with uncontrollable rage when I heard the click of a camera. To a 40 year old cop caressing my 13 year old breasts, the first time I ever drank alcohol. To being coerced into sex with a “friend” because I was too polite to cause a scene and wake his sleeping family in the next room. 

Watching a well-educated, well-respected woman get up on stage and tell her story was just another blow. A reminder that in a patriarchal society, none of us are safe. Women and children are at the mercy of the physical whims of men. 

I wish I could say that I was tuned into Saturn’s masterplan at this point. That I was prompted to get the help I so desperately needed because of the magnitude of what I was feeling. But it was my inability to function. My loss of productivity. I was not yet primed to ask what my discomfort and pain were trying to teach me. I was seeking what I hoped would be a quick solution so that I could continue to trudge along to my job and do the work of maintaining my close relationships. 

In addition to my failing mental health, Saturn was starting to make his presence known physically. Earlier in the summer, I had thrown out my lower back. I was left completely immoble, lying on the ground for two days before I could bear the pain of getting back on my feet. When I was finally able to move again, I found an acupuncturist nearby named Rebecca. No offense to Western medicine, which I think has devised pretty helpful medical interventions for life threatening scenarios, but Eastern medicine pretty much cracked the code on preventative medicine thousands of years ago. 

My acupuncturist played a vital role in guiding me through my Saturn Return. She asked me critical questions about my body that I had never considered before, tracing a history from every major injury to the aches and pains I experienced in my body on a daily basis. She clocked that much of the misalignment in my left knee and hip likely stemmed from an old cheerleading injury, a broken nose for which I had never received treatment

The most important aspect of our work together, though, was that for an hour every Thursday afternoon, I laid on a warm table in a converted yellow Victorian in Pacific Heights, with birds chirping in the garden right outside the window. Rebecca would gently run her hands up and down my body, asking if there was any sensitivity to her touch. It altered my brain chemistry to have that much concerted effort poured into me. Where the healing and focus was only on me. I had only ever felt that sort of radiant attention from my grandmother in childhood. 

Early on, we established that I carried a great amount of heartache. Right along the sternum, between my breasts, I felt an intense pain. While the acupuncture helped to eliminate the protective ring of fire that I had built around my heart, we really started cooking with gas when I asked Rebecca if she had any recommendations for a therapist.

Rebecca referred me to Mary. Mary didn't look like someone who could crack you open. Thin, white, and very expensive. But in our first session, she saw straight through my performance. I told her that I felt constant anxiety about the state of the world, my finances, and the health of my loved ones. In classic Mary fashion, she told me that she believed I was neither anxious nor depressed - but simply grieving the loss of my grandfather. Huh. 

“What you’re experiencing is a profound sadness, unlike any other that you’ve experienced in your life. It is complicated and contextualized by the totality of your relationship with your grandfather. The good, the bad and the ugly.” 

So this was grief. 

And here I thought that I was navigating this stage of my life gracefully. Yet, as the traumas of my past were lit up by witnessing Dr. Ford’s testimony, it seemed that there were other unresolved threads trying to make themselves known. 

I was slowly parsing through what it felt like to navigate adulthood without a father figure, what the role of a father even was, and what it meant for me as I moved through the world. I was also learning to hold a well of unshakeable truth and resiliency within myself, while fostering meaningful relationships with those around me; friends, family and potential romantic partners.  

I worked with Mary for the next six months to try and define these things for myself. Her office was in a maze of hallways in an office building in the Dogpatch neighborhood, near the new Chase Center that was under construction at the time. Mary had a little sound machine that she kept outside of her office, muffling the sounds of her clients’ tears to passersby. 

Every session started the same way. I would come in, talking a mile a minute, spouting off complaints in rapid fire succession. Usually, I was ensnared in some dustup with the many Genx and Boomer men that I worked with, like being talked over in a meeting or seeing a Slack pop up, trying to paint me as difficult.*

*Yes this is a real thing that happened. When I was 28 years old, a 36 year old, grown father of two with a VP title sent a message to my closest confidant at the agency saying “Dania is a little difficult, isn’t she?” I walked into his office the next day to clear that right up. We worked on only one, very slow moving project together, and the client team was enthralled with me. So much so that after I left my role, they retained me as a consultant. His ego could not handle this, so we landed at difficult. 

To be clear — I am difficult. I’m difficult in the way that all women are meant to be. I’m difficult to control, unpredictable in my movements. I’m a sovereign being, in touch with the Universe. I am forever expanding, and to pretend otherwise is what has gotten us into this mess in the first place.

After letting me unload for a minute or two, Mary would swiftly interject and say “Okay, why don’t we take a deep breath. Close your eyes. Place your palms in your lap. And breath. Now describe the feeling that you’re feeling. Try to locate it in your body. What does anger feel like to you? Is it in your chest? Is it in your stomach? Your throat?” 

Yes, at 28, Mary was teaching me to identify emotions. More specifically, she was helping me to observe what was true for ME — how an emotion presented itself in MY body.

We would watch the emotion together. Continue to breathe until it shifted. 

And then she would hit me with a classic banger like “It sounds like your mom treated you like a pet when you were growing up.”

OUCH. Okay Mary. Thanks for that — I’m probably more traumatized by that statement than by anything my mother actually did or did not do during my childhood. 

My sessions with Mary also influenced my work with Rebecca. While Rebecca was sticking needles in my heart and liver, Mary was helping me to travel to those places on an energetic and emotional level. The aches and pains slowly, but surely started to dissipate.

Saturn wasn't done with me yet. But for the first time in months, I could breathe a little easier.