​Facing the decade that is just over the horizon is one of those, “Now I’m officially in a different phase of my life,” moments. Scary stuff.

When you’re in your teens, your focus is on getting older – how much longer until I graduate, can I vote yet (good citizen that you are), how much longer until I can go to a bar without getting carded? It’s all about time moving faster so you can acquire the next perk of aging.

Then the 20s come, you’re legal, and the first five years roll by as you master living on your own, go about trying to get a job that isn’t an after-school, only in the summer gig. You change mightily as you wrap up your first quarter century on the planet. Then, a few more in-between years, and bam, you’re facing 30. Have the wrinkles started? Is that really a gray hair … and don’t forget the wisdom part. You’ve been doing this human thing for 29 years. You should have it mastered by now.

Except that’s just not true.

A first Saturn Return is a passage, a crossing into becoming an adult member of the tribe. It’s a threshold, an opening, not a conclusion. You have the next 28 years (until your second Saturn Return) to master the ‘adult of the tribe’ portion of the grand adventure called Life. A side note – your second Saturn Return will be about discovering how to let go of being an adult tribe member and taking on the mantle of an elder. So, don’t get hung up on the number 30. Celebrate that you’ve witnessed over 10,500 sunrises, give or take a few. And, since our planet travels through space at a mind-boggling 67,000 miles per hour relative to the sun, in the last 29 years, you’ve completed a 17+ billion mile journey through the Solar System. No matter what you’ve achieved so far, that is quite an accomplishment.

As your 30th birthday arrives, maybe take a little time for yourself and ask – What does being an adult mean to you? Is this definition yours or someone else’s? Do you want to become that kind of adult? Or would you rather re-define it? Refine it? Tweak it? Polish it? Throw it out all together and create a new definition for yourself? You have the next 28 years to figure out what it means to contribute as an adult member of the tribe – whichever tribe you belong to. Go slow. Savor this threshold. Honor it. Celebrate it. Hell, throw yourself a “I’m ready to figure out what being a grown-up actually means” party and invite all your 29-year-old friends.

Believe me, the best is yet to come. The juicy part is still on the road ahead.

​Lost. Uncertain. Alone. What do you do next? These are all common Saturn Return feelings, whether you’re facing your first Saturn Return (ages 27-30 or so), or facing your second (57-60), like I am.

So, what’s a Saturn Return?

Clock back to before the invention of the telescope (1608). Saturn was at the edge of the known Solar System. Yes, Uranus was visible, but it was so faint, scientists didn’t believe it was a planet. Saturn was the edge, the boundary. Added bonus, it had rings – even more evidence of containment. From that emerged the mythos of the planet and it seeped into our psyches as the ideas of obstruction, limitation, hard work, details, loss, harvest. The archetypes that emerged were Father Time, the Grim Reaper, the Hermit, and the Wise Elder. Definitely not your party planet racing around the Sun in 365 days. Saturn takes a ponderous 29.5 years to return to the point it was at in the sky when you were born – hence the name Saturn Return.

Our Saturn Returns, if properly used, can enhance our existence. It is a hinge-point in your life history. It can be a time of great awareness and sober reflection on Life. Saturn Return is a metaphor for the sometimes earth-shaking, always marvelous notion that you get to be the author of your own life.

One of the best descriptions of “what’s Life all about” came from a professor I met a few years ago. Each new term, he would ask his students to ponder, “What question are you here to have answered?” That pretty much sums up a Saturn Return. It’s an awesome way the Universe has of having you pause and reflect on, “What question do I want the answer to?” It’s not a time of doom-and-gloom-so-far-you’ve-failed. It’s more a time of, “Hey, remember how you came to get the answers to some questions? Explore a few things you were curious about? Are you doing that? If not, why not? Do you even still want to get the answers? If so, do you need a course correction?” Remember, as the author of your own life, you are in charge of your choices, your decisions, and dealing with the consequences.

Let’s start from the premise that this is a great adventure of self-discovery you are embarking on. How do we do this Saturn sober reflection, discover our questions, explore the answers? This is different for everyone, but since we are dealing with Saturn, we need to reflect back to the mythos of Saturn in our psyche. It is a planet of boundaries – so where can we set good boundaries? It is a planet of organization – are we orderly in our work patterns? It is a planet of endings – are there behaviors we need to change or let go of that no longer serve our vision of ourselves? It is planet of the harvest – what crop have you been reaping up until now? Was it the life-crop you really wanted to plant?

Saturn is trying to lead you towards yourself and your questions — sometimes with a swift kick, sometimes with a dramatic ending, sometimes with a stunning benefit. It’s all useful, even the painful parts, because it can allow you to better know yourself.

Start a journal if you haven’t already – it doesn’t have to be a written one. It could be a video blog to yourself. Make a collage. Make an art project. An Excel chart. Something. Anything. The goal is to help you delve into and explore that inner part of you that knows what you really want to do, have, and be. You know what is best for you – if for no other reason than because you are the one who was born on the planet called Earth to experience your version of 5-senses reality. Go do what you came to do. My guess is, from knowing quite a few of these fantastic people entering their first Saturn return, what you came to do is pretty awesome, life-supporting, planet-enhancing, humanity-enriching, indeed.

I survived the holidays. Mostly. 
It’s always a great time to share dinner with family and friends and
recap the year. This time, the recap got interesting as I shared wine and
dessert with friends in a lively NW wine shop. Don’t ask how we got on the topic
of women in the Suffrage Campaign of the 20th Century. It wasn’t pretty. Let’s
just say it involved discussing the assault on women’s health care rights,
objectification on the internet, and how long women have had the right to vote.
To get specific, women were first allowed to vote in the territories of Wyoming
in 1869, Utah in 1870. The rest of the United States took another 50 years to
catch up. The 19th Amendment passed in time for the election of
1920.
 
While the apple crumble was being shared around the table, someone
  brought up the current “what-is-real-beauty” campaigns in advertising. Does
  eating that second serving of apple decadence support or hinder real beauty?
  The innocent question morphed into diet outrage, the impact of women’s rights,
  and questions about how far feminism had actually taken our society. The next
  thing up was the work of Susan B. Anthony, a female leader we all know, if for
  nothing else than she is on a dollar coin and the 19th Amendment is named after
  her. Susan was a suffrage campaigner. Side bar – don’t call her a suffragette.
  Suffragette is used to refer to women in the suffrage campaign in the UK.
Suffrage is from late 14century French meaning "intercessory prayers or pleas on
  behalf of another." These women put their lives on the line to plead for the
right of all women to vote.
 
This led the conversation to the lesser known Marietta Holley, who was
born in 1836 and died in 1926. Marietta was an American humorist who used the
medium of poetry, articles, and novels to explore cultural and social issues of
her time – like a woman’s right to vote. She was compared to Mark Twain in
writing style and popularity. At one point she out sold him 
.  .  .   and yet, most of us have never heard of her. 
 
Women's rights were a key issue to Marietta in a time when women had
few. Women were not allowed testify in court, sue anyone, make a contract, hold
title to property, or establish a business. This was less than a hundred years
ago! It's truly mind-boggling when you think about it. 
 
GUIDING WOMEN TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF
HAPPINESS
 
Marietta’s first novel was released in 1872 and the full title is a
work of art in itself: My Opinions and Betsey Bobbet's: Designed as a Beacon
Light, To Guide Women to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, But Which
May be Read by Members of the Sterner Sect, Without Injury to Themselves of This
Book. 
 
This book launched a ten-book series with world-wide distribution. The
heroine of the series was Samantha Allen, wife to Josiah. Marietta tackled the
reform issues of the day by making the character of Samantha Allen a
plain-spoken woman who used wit, gentle satire, and humor to explore the issues
Marietta was passionate about. Samantha’s humor was used to soften the blow to
the Sterner Sect so they could read Marietta’s books “without fear of
  injury”.
 
THE ONEROUS BURDEN OF VOTING AND OTHER
NONSENSE
 
One of Samantha Allen's observations was relevant to the after-dessert
  beauty argument. I'm paraphrasing here….although Samantha Allen appreciated the
  Sterner Sect's wish to protect women from the onerous burden of having to go
  all the way to a ballot box and cast a vote. At the time, this was an actual
argument used to keep women from voting. Samantha noticed that this same
sentiment of protecting women from onerous burdens didn’t seem to apply to women
having to do the laundry by hand, churn butter, or bear a dozen children. 
 
 
Impressed by the eloquence of her writing, Susan B. Anthony repeatedly
  asked Marietta to speak at suffrage conventions. Marietta always refused,
  saying she was too shy to be on stage. The pen was the way she would
contribute. And contribute she did. She had over 20 novels published. One of her
novels, Samantha at Saratoga, spent a decade on the best-seller list because it
spoke so deeply to so many people. One report put her book sales at 10,000,000.
That’s 10 Million in hardback. 
 
Although she doesn’t immediately come to mind when we talk of woman's
rights, Marietta should. Her books laid seed-thoughts in the minds and hearts of
women all around the world. Those seeds sprouted, blossomed, and continue to
feed the women’s rights movement. This past year has seen inspiring progress
  towards an accurate understanding of true beauty. From the courageous speech at
  the UN by Malala Yousafzai, to the unwavering commitment of Wendy Davis in the
  Texas legislature, to Gloria Steinem being awarded the Presidential Medal of
  Freedom, we all are beautiful.
 
So a belated thank you, Marietta, for using the power of your pen to
help women everywhere find their beauty within.

If  you’d like to learn more about using the power of the global pen on behalf of
women, go to World Pulse, a media and communication network devoted to bringing women a global voice. 

​

As the Syfy channel ramps up for its new show called Opposite Worlds, I must confess, I’m intrigued. Not by the premise that the audience determines the fate of the players as that reeks too much of a psychological test gone horribly awry, but from the idea that we will compare modern civilization to the Stone Age – or as it is more appropriately called, the Neolithic period.

Not only am I a geek for history, I’m also a geek for the latest in archaeological finds. In fact, once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I was going to be an archaeologist. Okay, the faraway land was only Florida and it wasn't that long ago, all things considered. I feed my love of archaeology by subscribing to newsletters and blogs that talk about the latest in interesting "digs".  "Digs" is the bland term archaeologists use to describe excavating ancient dead people . . . and this “digging” is the prime reason I changed my major. I’m not squeamish, but to me, as a storyteller, the writing and reading about ancient peoples is more intriguing then the digging up. Watching what the Syfy channel will call the Stone Age is even more fascinating.

New Stones and the Origins of Family

In a recent research “dig” archaeologists uncovered a European Neolithic family grave among four burial sites. Neolithic is a two part Greek word- “neo” meaning new and “lithic” meaning stone. Together it’s “new stone”, as in New Stone Age,  a time we recognize from cartoons and movies and what we are about to see in a reality TV show. The first evidence for a Neolithic culture is about 10,500 years ago in the Middle East. This period marks a change from a hunter gatherer lifestyle to an agriculturally based life style. The dig mentioned in the article reveals a settlement 6000 years ago. Based on a DNA analysis of the remains, the archaeologists realized the skeletons belonged to a mother, father, and two sons. The other three graves also contained members of single family groupings. This information was revealed through the female DNA. The article said that this discovery suggested that biological relationship was the focus of social organization during Neolithic times. Nothing surprising there, as we know the evidence for the family model we use today had to be somewhere.

Designer Teeth Atoms and Powerful Women

The next bit is what got me thinking about the magnificence of Neolithic women. The researchers analyzed the strontium isotopes (designer atoms) in the teeth. The strontium from food accumulates in your teeth over time. This is a way an archaeologist five hundred years from now will be able to tell if you ate primarily at a local pastry shop in the Pacific Northwest, or visited one in New England on a regular basis – it’s in your teeth. The results of the analysis showed that the women grew up in markedly different regions from the men and children. The women came from a land far, far away from the grave site. One suggestion for how this happened is that women were expected to marry out of their clan. This would cement kinship bonds with other communities. Another, less happy scenario, is the women were the spoils of inter-tribal warfare. Either way, these women would have had to be truly remarkable. Imagine growing up in one clan and learning all the secrets of pottery making, animal husbandry, farming, and the sacred knowledge of your blossoming civilization. Then, at the annual gathering of the clans, you are bonded to a young man who hailed from the other side of the "beyond", or worse, under a full moon, your camp is raided and you are taken prisoner. You are forced to learn a whole new set of skills in order to survive in the new clan.

Portland Maine and Portland Oregon

Think of the difference between Portland, Maine and Portland, Oregon. Different plants, different geography, different colloquialisms. If you moved, you would have to master new tools, new animals, new sacred symbols, new EVERYTHING. And the Neolithic women did this. Again and again. They learned the new ways but still shared their knowledge with the new tribe. Which brings me to why I find this discovery so marvelous and relevant to our century. Because of the courage of our New Stone Age foremothers, we females have successfully been "marrying out of our clan" for over 6000 years. 6 Thousand years! No wonder we are friggin' better at multi-tasking, creating community, seeing the BIG picture, and adapting to change. And, no offense intended, but as far as I can tell, the biggest social and cultural challenge facing Neolithic men was learning to hunt, and, ahem, learning how to correctly use their own "spear".

Hot Water Indeed

Neolithic women could have coined the phrase: Women are like tea bags. You don't know how strong they are until you drop 'em in "new-clan" hot water.

Despite audience feedback, or maybe in spite of audience feedback, I’m guessing the women on the Stone Age part of the show will reveal more grit. I’m lifting my glass in cyber toast to those women and to our rock-solid -- pun intended-- Stone Age foremothers. Thank you for laying the groundwork for us to survive in our own challenging times – including fabricated reality shows.