A Season of Becoming

This Leo New Moon is also a Total Solar Eclipse at 20° Leo, and honestly, I think the part I keep coming back to is visibility.

Not visibility in the “look at me” way. I mean the deeper kind. The kind that asks what happens when you stop needing everyone to understand, approve of, validate, or even recognize what you’re becoming before you allow yourself to become it.

Leo brings us back to the heart. Creativity. Joy. Courage. Desire. Leadership. The willingness to take up space without apologizing for the fact that you exist.

That feels especially relevant for me right now because I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to actually be seen. Not just online. Not just through my work. To let my writing be read. To let my ideas have a life outside of my journals. To stop waiting until everything is perfect before I put it into the world.

Maybe that’s part of what this eclipse is asking us to look at over the next six months: Who are you when you stop performing the version of yourself you think other people will accept?

What identities have you outgrown? What relationship patterns keep repeating? Where have you made yourself smaller? What creative thing have you been sitting on? What would you do differently if you trusted your own voice before you had proof that anyone else would?

I don’t think this is about becoming louder just for the sake of being loud. I think it’s about becoming more honest. There’s a difference.

The Perseid meteor shower also peaks August 12–13, right around this New Moon. I love that timing. There’s something poetic about looking up at a sky full of things burning themselves out while we’re being asked to consider what in our own lives has already completed its purpose.

Maybe everything you’re releasing doesn’t need to be mourned.Maybe some things are simply finished.

There’s also a six-planet morning alignment happening around this time, with Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Uranus, Saturn, and Neptune appearing along the ecliptic before sunrise. I’m less interested in treating that as some cosmic checklist and more interested in using it as a reflection point: Are the different parts of your life actually moving in the same direction?

What you believe.

What you say.

What you do.

What you dream about.

What you tolerate.

What you’re building.

What you keep saying you want.

Are they aligned? Sometimes the thing we call “being stuck” is really just being divided.

Then we have the Pisces Full Moon and partial Lunar Eclipse coming August 27–28, which feels like a very different kind of invitation. If Leo is asking, Who are you? What do you want? Are you willing to be seen? Pisces asks, What are you willing to surrender?

That feels important because reclaiming yourself also means releasing what no longer belongs to you.

Uranus in Gemini adds another layer around communication, ideas, learning, and unexpected conversations. Chiron retrograde in Aries brings up those tender places around courage, identity, self-expression, and the old wounds that taught us we weren’t enough.

With Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, and Chiron retrograde, there’s a lot of reviewing happening beneath the surface. So maybe this eclipse isn’t asking you to figure out your entire life. Maybe it’s asking you to tell yourself the truth about the life you already know you want. Then listen to what your heart says next.

I’m taking that seriously because I think there comes a point where you have to stop asking, “Do they see me?” and start asking, “Do I see myself?”.