Let’s Talk About Shame: Saturn Stops on the Subway of Life

Saturn Story

Where Saturn is in the chart dictates work and pay. Inflation rises, time gets tight and baffling. Then one day, after years of being knocked down and up… Success! Party!

Saturn is the energetic place where shame can live during rough times—rough transits in our life. Shame and guilt have siblings like self-acceptance and self-understanding, which come from doing Saturn’s hard work.  They all bunk together. Young or old, Saturn in our chart is where we can feel not good enough. It takes a lonnnnnnnnng time to shake hands with Saturn and get that award you bled for.  This life is a full-time reality taco, and it can be dry dry dry, lacking guacamole.

A very gifted healer I like blames his wife for all of his success. I dig him for the large silk bowtie he wears, and the gratitude talk he walks. He loves his children and shares how chaotic and totally out of control his life is.  His hair is upside down, he’s chubby, and he has big bags under his eyes. He says he has a bad chart, his signs all suck, and he needed his wife to survive.  I value the bad lighting on his YouTube channel because his content is just that good. He also says profound things that resonate like, ”God made death totally unpredictable for a good reason: so you don’t know when it’s coming.” This guy speaks my language.

Back to the Shame Game

September 3, 1998: Saturn Return

I was 27 years old at an appointment with a New York City talent agency getting signed as a stand-up comic (I had been going at comedy hard in clubs, bars, universities, parties, and odd doctor’s conventions for years every night after work).  It was noon on a Wednesday, I was in this important meeting which included a conference call with William Schatner, and I had an insane feeling I immediately had to check my messages on my home phone.  My head starting pounding, and my heart began racing. It was like an episode of House. I couldn’t wait, I dialed my number in Brooklyn on Pacific Street because I just knew (I’m psychic). I was on a 10-month hiatus from my family at this time, avoiding them at all costs.  After the beep, I heard a cousin yelling on my answering machine, “Come home now—your father was murdered.”  A day later, a heated loud discussion in Italian and English broke out (my father had six siblings at the time) deciding which sibling, offspring, or cousin would identify my father. 

There were no deep epiphanies that washed over me right there, and then at the scene of a tragic crime.  Small amounts of clarity entered in time, as it takes tons of time to process trauma. Did I wish I was in more contact with my father that year? I do.  

Dr. Brene Brown, Social Psychologist and Shame Researcher, defines shame as a focus on the self: “I am bad.” Guilt is a focus on behavior: “I did something bad.”  Guilt is felt when we hold something we did or didn’t do, up against our values.

I value family. Mine was often going through something. I was called to act, had to leave school, leave jobs, leave appointments, to help this one in the ER (again) or save that one in a bar (again) from a toxic boyfriend. While on break from all the drama (I should have just moved to Kenya), I did not have a chance to say goodbye (Saturn can be endings as well as the 8th house).

Survivor Guilt and The Good Things

Good thing I have a friend Gemma who talks to the dead. Good thing I talk to my dad as often as I want, and I know he’s watching my son every day. Good thing I remember the way my dad lived, and not how he died. Can shame and guilt win the war against the self? Only if you let it (and if the welcome mat outside your apartment says “depression”). 

We have to be the boss where Saturn is—a Great Boss with lunch breaks and fine shoes.