SZA, a Scorpio.
Photo-Illustration: by Preeti Kinha; Photos: Getty
As the week begins, you’re probably still feeling the effects of Saturday’s lunar eclipse in Taurus. Try to be gentle with yourself (and others) as you find your balance again. At the end of the week, in the small hours of Saturday morning, Saturn retrograde ends after four and a half months. While the planet of discipline and authority moved backward through the zodiac, you may have felt directionless and unmotivated, compelled to reexamine your goals or your purpose in life. Now that it’s moving forward again, your ambition will return, and you can move forward with renewed energy and resolve.
You try to move on quickly from disappointment. You don’t see any point in dwelling, so you keep moving. This week, though, any frustration or dissatisfaction you experience won’t be so easy to dispel. Maybe you’re feeling regret over some of your own choices; maybe you’re disillusioned with the people you thought you knew best. Whatever the case, this week, it’s important to sit with your emotions. If you’re brave enough to reflect and think deeply, to be honest with yourself even when it’s difficult, then everything can change, and you can find a new way forward.
It’s easy to get discouraged about just about everything these days, especially if you’ve been feeling isolated. Alone time is important, but right now it shades too easily into loneliness. It makes you feel small, stuck, powerless to change your own life, let alone make a difference in the wider world. So this week, make a point of spending time with others. When you’re invited out, say yes. When your friendly neighbor strikes up a conversation, do your best to engage. Small moments of humanity, solidarity, and friendship will strengthen your resolve.
You might not see yourself as a natural leader. Not because you’re not confident and reliable, but because you don’t like telling anybody what to do. This week, though, you may be called on to step up, to take on new responsibilities or set an example. People look up to you more than you realize. Your voice makes a difference. So don’t be scared to put yourself out there this week, or to take on new roles. You’re ready for this.
You’ve been doing the work, and now, you’ve had your fill of striving and growing. You’re ready to enjoy the fruits of your labors; at the very least, you’re ready for a little rest. All the same, this week, it’s important that you continue to keep an open mind, keep learning. Don’t shut down out of exhaustion or despair. If you need a break, take one, then get up and keep going. You’re getting wiser and more bighearted all the time. You haven’t reached the end of your journey, and — tiring through it seems — that’s a good thing.
No matter how clear you are on your principles, or how steadfastly you stand for what you believe in, you’ll always have to deal with people whose values differ (sometimes dramatically) from your own and who feel just as strongly as you do. You have to figure out how to share a world with people who want different things, whose goals are directly at odds with yours and who deem yours silly or wrong. So this week, try not to get stuck on small differences with the people who are, in the ways that count, on your side. Your job isn’t to change everybody’s mind, to bring them perfectly into line with your own worldview, but rather to find people you can work with.
While some delight in drama and find arguments energizing and enjoyable, that probably isn’t you. You prefer to think of your relationships as soft places to land, sources of steadiness. Even so, this week, you might find that some tension is unavoidable. Being true to yourself and your principles may mean expressing preferences or opinions your loved ones disagree with. In order to maintain your sense of self, you’ll have to be willing to go against the grain. Have faith that you’re doing the right thing: You don’t need to hide who you are to deserve love.
You’re typically clear-eyed and realistic about how much you’re able to take on, what you’re willing to commit to. Some people have a habit of overpromising and spreading themselves too thin, but you’re more measured. Lately, though, you’ve been compelled to work harder than is sustainable, to spend more energy than you have. Maybe it’s because others aren’t doing their part. It could be that you have unreasonable expectations for yourself. This week, take a step back and reassess. You can’t do it all on your own. Commit to doing your own small part, and doing it well.
Normally, you carry yourself with quiet confidence. This week, though, you might feel uncharacteristically off-balance — maybe because the world around you has changed, maybe because something inside you has. Either way, don’t be surprised if you can’t quite find the words to express yourself, or you no longer trust that you’re reading the room correctly. It’s probably tempting to retreat altogether until your old self-assurance returns, but try to resist the urge to hide. Discomfort is a sign of growth. Don’t shrink from it. Rise up to meet it.
It’s happened before that you think you’ve resolved a conflict with someone close to you or healed an old insecurity, only for it to crop up again down the road. It’s frustrating when old problems and habits resurface, but it doesn’t mean that you’ve failed, or that your work was for nothing. Meaningful change takes time, and the important questions about who you are, what your experiences mean, why you are the way you are, can’t be settled once and for all: The work is always ongoing. If you feel like you’re retreading familiar territory this week, don’t worry. Even with minor setbacks, you’re still headed in the right direction.
You aren’t rigid or set in your ways. Far from it. You’re much more adventurous than stereotypes about your sign would suggest. You’re willing to change your mind, to let your experiences change you. It’s discouraging, then, when nobody else recognizes how you’ve grown — when your family holds onto a static and outdated image of who you are, or your friends expect you to act a certain way. But even if others don’t notice your progress, that doesn’t diminish it. This week, trust your instincts.
Maybe your endless to-do list has been more burdensome than ever recently; maybe long-standing ambitions have stopped motivating you and started stressing you out instead. This week, get clear about what really matters to you. Which of your possessions are important to you, and which are only weighing you down? Which of your activities are meaningful, and which do you do just because you feel like you “should”? Give yourself permission to reshape your life. It may be scary, but it may be liberating and joyful too, to walk away from things you don’t want or need.
Lately, you’ve been preoccupied by other people’s ideas about what it means to be a good person, to do the right thing. Everyone, it seems, has their own strong (and often loud) opinions about how to be respectable or principled or kind, about how you “should” be. This week, put all of that noise aside. You can’t please everyone, and there’s no sense trying. Instead, focus on listening to your conscience, on being courageous in a way that’s meaningful to you.
Read the weekly horoscopes for the week of October 23. The weekly horoscopes for the week of November 6 will be online next Sunday.
Buy Claire Comstock-Gay’s book, Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars, here.