Lesson 1 of my second Saturn return is the one that forces honesty. Not the curated kind — the kind that sits in the room with you when nobody else is there. If the first Saturn return is about becoming an adult, the second one has a darker punchline: you don’t have unlimited time to faff about. Saturn has kept me employed, kept me out of jail, got me out of bed and stopped me from polishing off all the ice cream. And despite the sore knees, Saturn has kept me chugging along. Saturn deserves cake.

My Top 10 Lessons of 2025

In the final days of 2025, I’m sharing ten lessons this year taught me — not as a highlight reel, but as a reflection on what actually shifted beneath the surface. 2025 has been a significant astrological year for me, marked by a second Saturn return and a fifth Jupiter return, and it’s been a year of recalibration: learning where my energy truly belongs, what deserves commitment, and what needed to be released. Each of these lessons played a role in shaping how the year unfolded, often in ways I only understood in hindsight.

Much of what I share — both here and in my work — comes from the belief that astrology is most powerful when it helps us make conscious, practical choices. If you’re interested in learning how to work with cycles like Saturn and Jupiter in your own life, or in developing astrology as a tool for growth, education, and ethical practice, you’ll find links throughout this series to my classes and consultations. These lessons aren’t abstract; they’re lived, tested, and offered in the spirit of helping others navigate their own turning points with greater clarity.

Lesson 1: Saturn Deserves Cake

Whatever you’re here to do, you’d better get on with it. I don’t mean that in a melodramatic way. Death isn’t imminent, but it’s no longer theoretical either.

When I was very ill in hospital a while back, there was a moment — one of those cold, fluorescent, middle-of-the-night moments — where I genuinely wondered if something was so wrong that it couldn’t be fixed. I was placed on a ward with older women, and when they gave their dates of birth, some of them weren’t that much older than me. That does something to your thinking. It’s one thing to know intellectually that people go into hospital and don’t come home. It’s another thing to feel that truth breathing next to you. And once you’ve had that thought, you start noticing the world differently. Funeral plans start appearing in your advertising space. Medication commercials list side effects so catastrophic you wonder why anyone would risk it. You find yourself thinking: if I’d been seriously ill in the wrong country, without the right support, would I have just… stayed home and hoped for the best? The second Saturn return doesn’t ask you to panic. It asks you to be real.

Which brings me to the box. The inevitable Pine Box to be specific. I’ve made plans for my funeral. I know that’s grim but inevitable death is a part of life. We sugar coat it far too much so it’s a shock when someone dies. If I had choices — and I suppose I do, within reason — I don’t want my children to resent me nor do I want some 18 year stranger spoon feeding me a Sunday Roast that’s been put through a blender. I’d prefer to be in reasonable shape for as long as I can. I’ll carry on flossing twice a day and visiting the dentist. I’ll haul my lazy ass to the gym, eat my veggies and wear sensible shoes.

The older I get, the more I understand why so many people quietly opt out of spectacle of funerals. I think about that scene in Amadeus, where Mozart is thrown into a pauper’s grave without fanfare. That’s the real Saturn joke: you can create something extraordinary and still end up handled like last week’s trash. It didn’t erase  Mozart’s accomplishments. It makes you ask what actually matters. No me knows where Mozart is buried but I’ll bet most of us can hum a few lines of The Magic Flute.

And what matters, for me, isn’t a pile of certificates. I’ve earned my qualifications. I’m proud of them. I like looking at them. But I also know that one day they’ll just be paper my daughter will have to deal with. She won’t want them. She shouldn’t have to. In the end, the certificates won’t tell the story anyway. The only things that will outlast me in any meaningful way are the people I’ve taught, the ideas I’ve contributed, and the work that can stand without me.

This year I had an unusually direct conversation with my daughter, Jessica — who, as I often say, is the jewel in my crown. I told her something with complete seriousness and a dash of gallows humour: if the day comes when I become unmanageable, I do not want guilt to be the thing that runs her life. If she ever needs to make decisions on my behalf, I want her to make them calmly, without emotional blackmail from the idea of what a “good daughter” should do. I’ve seen too many people my age terrified of becoming a burden and too many younger people crushed by duty. That isn’t love. Love is trust. I’ll be fine if I have to go to a nursing home. I’ll be the life and soul of the party.

Perhaps that’s why the symbolism of cake mattered so much this year. Just before my Saturn return began, I was in Portugal and I ordered a Saturn cake — a large one — to share with friends. It wasn’t exactly my birthday, and it wasn’t a fishing expedition for attention. It was a deliberate act of respect. Saturn gets blamed for ageing, for limits, for endings — but Saturn is also mastery. Saturn is the part of life that asks you to carry responsibility without whining. And I wanted to mark that with celebration rather than shame.
There’s a video of people singing and laughing as I brought the cake out to be cut and I’m glad I have it.

Finding the video took some doing: I had stategically placed my special guest (my former roommate Christine who is a huge part of my Saturn Return celebrations) to take photos. Christine is a highly accomplished woman who knows how to manage an i-Phone camera. What neither of us planned for was someone with a far bigger head than me deliberately (or at least it seemed that way to us) blocking Christine’s view. Fortunately, another friend had a better (if shakier) view. And so we have documented evidence of people celebrating Saturn. They sang the wrong song but at least they sang for me and for the fact I probably won’t live to see another Saturn Return.

At the very least, I won’t remember another Saturn Return. The video doesn’t prove anything, but it captures something I’m trying to live: I’m not ashamed of getting older. I’m not pretending I’m thirty-five. I stopped dying my hair and I stopped thinking I have to put on make up to go out to buy bread and milk. I don’t want to be a “Glam-ma,” an old woman pretending she doesn’t care that she has to chase her tits around her back when she can be bothered to wear a bra for special occasions. I’m a grandmother — or, in the language that means more to me, a Nokomis. That isn’t mutton dressed as lamb. That’s responsibility, continuity, and the next generation.

Because yes, 2025 contained achievements — huge ones — but Saturn doesn’t let you enjoy success without showing you what success reveals about people. My Waterstones event was the culmination of the year. Not a casual signing, not a niche corner of the internet — an actual author talk with a mainstream bookseller (and YES I GET TO BOAST ABOUT THIS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE). It brought together my work, my voice, my books, and my community in one place. It also revealed who could handle my success and who couldn’t. There were people who tried to knock the shine off it. People who compared it to their own smaller versions of the thing. People who couldn’t simply say “well done” without inserting themselves into the story. Saturn didn’t send them, exactly — but he did make them visible.

And that’s the real reason this is Lesson 1. It isn’t a victory lap. It’s an acceptance. The second Saturn return is the moment where you stop bargaining with time. You stop auditioning for approval. You stop scrambling for scraps at the table. You let the work speak. You let the relationships show themselves. You let endings happen cleanly. And you choose what deserves your energy. So yes — I’m celebrating. I’m proud. I’m grateful. And I’m also clear.
Saturn deserves cake.

And you deserve cake too. I guess the icing on all this cake is gratitude. Thank you for all of you who have followed my work over the years and and advance thank you for all those who will hop aboard for the white-knuckled ride xxx

What Saturn Taught Me This Time

If I had to reduce my second Saturn return to its essentials, it would look something like this:

Lesson 10: Nobody needs me as much as I need me.
Self-preservation isn’t selfish — it’s foundational.

Lesson 9: Never throw the baby out with the bath water.
What’s worth keeping often just needs time, not replacement.

Lesson 8: Jupiter didn’t ask me to travel — yet.
Expansion doesn’t always require departure.

Lesson 7: Slay, don’t play.
If I show up, I show up properly.

Lesson 6: Home shows up when it counts.
The people and places that matter don’t need announcing.

Lesson 5: I’ll keep my clothes on.
I don’t need exposure to have substance.

Lesson 4: Let the work do its job.
Systems that last matter more than noise.

Lesson 3: Teaching is the legacy.
What survives me matters more than what centres me.

Lesson 2: Authority doesn’t need performance.
It arrives when you stop trying to manufacture it.

Lesson 1: Saturn deserves cake.
Because endurance, clarity, and acceptance are worth celebrating.

What my second Saturn return really taught me was how to clear the mess — old relationships, old papers, old habits, even the clutter in my own body and space — and then stop before filling it all up again. Saturn in my face meant straightening things out, not hoarding more. I don’t need to die clutching a pile of stuff; I need things that will actually carry me through the next ten or twenty years. Case in point: this year I travelled to the States without buying extra luggage for the first time in my life. I packed intelligently, layered creatively, stuffed my knickers into hoodie pockets, tied scarves like engineering projects, and carried half my wardrobe on my person like the Michelin Man. It wasn’t elegant — but it worked. And that, it turns out, is the point. Less to carry. Fewer illusions. Just enough to get where I’m going.

My second Saturn return reminds me I don’t have far to go but I don’t have to be in such a goddamn hurry.