Saturn Returns with Caggie - 6.12 Reflections, learnings and healing: A solo episode with Caggie

Episode Date: December 26, 2022

As the year comes to a close, Caggie is on the podcast solo this week to share her thoughts on feelings in the past year.  Themes explored in this episode include how success looks different to all of us; navigating the holiday period; feelings of not enoughness and how it manifests; and what to expect from Saturn Returns in the new year. Caggie also shares her conflicted feelings about the release of her book, she recommends some wellness practises you can do over the Christmas break, and shares her realisations on death and rebirth.   --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Keggy Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. today is going to be a solo special episode i haven't done a solo episode in a while and i wanted to just connect with you guys and share with you some of my thoughts and feelings and what's been going on recently i have been busily working away on a number of projects for Saturn Returns that I cannot wait to share with you next year. Mainly the book, for those of you that haven't heard, I have written a Saturn Returns book, which has been quite a process. It's taken me about two years and it's really for anyone wanting to understand Saturn Returns more. So it's part astrology, part memoir, and part self-help.

It has exercises that help you navigate whatever you're going through and is interweaved with my personal story and my own Saturn Return journey and all the things that I struggled with, really. It's a very vulnerable one. so I have conflicting feelings about bringing it out but I hope that the community of Saturn Materns enjoys it because essentially I wrote it for you guys and I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone that shared the podcast I recently got the Spotify unwrap thing and it showed how many of you have listened and how many of you have shared and it truly means so much to me because it gives

me that reassurance that what I'm doing is the right thing, that I'm on the right path, that what I'm speaking about is resonating with someone and helping someone out there. So thank you because in turn it also really helps me. Today I wanted to talk about a couple of things. I just had a catch up with one of my best friends and we were talking about the metric of success and what success means to people. This is something that I've written about in the book, this idea that we sort of chase these particular goals or adopt this one idea of what success is. And we think it's sort of, you know, achieving certain things, a certain amount of status. It's often wrapped up with finances.

And so we kind of jump on this hedonic treadmill and we find it hard to ever get off. But the more we achieve, the more we think we need to achieve and the gold post gets kind of pushed but the more we achieve the the more we think we need and so we kick the can down the road and just think we need more things in order to be happy and that's what success really is about at the end of the day we think it will make us happy so one thing me and my friend were talking about was well how do we measure success what success looks like to you and me might be very different and we can't all adopt this one idea of success someone I've been working with recently on a project for Saturn Returns that will be coming out next year, which is our online courses,

has really encouraged me to look at success holistically. So it's not just about growing a business or profit and loss. It's about how you're contributing, how you're giving back to society. How are you nurturing and nourishing yourself? How are you growing personally as an individual? For each of us, we'll have different things that are important. Perhaps it might be, you know, how are you blossoming into becoming a mother? How are you adapting to having a child? How are you learning to be more spiritually aware? How are you inviting a spiritual path? Are you looking after yourself emotionally, physically, spiritually? I think all these things are really a healthy measure of success.

Success should also be the measure of our relationships. Are we being vulnerable? Are we communicating truthfully? Are we seeking external validation? Or are we actually leaning inward? This time of year can often be a triggering one as people go home to their families for Christmas and it can stir all sorts of things. And also, this is just a weird, this is just a weird, it feels like a weird Christmas because this is just a weird this is just a weird feels like a weird Christmas because we came out of the pandemic and I feel we were promised this roaring 20s of sort of hedonism and and gluttony and wondrous things and we've we've been met with a recession and a cost of living crisis and just all sorts of awful things going on in the world that creates

a lot of anxiety and that's a big thing to process so if you are feeling uneasy at the moment I don't blame you and I've been feeling the same I'm really having to pause and notice where I'm kind of scrambling I've also noticed that I'm kind of transferring some of my perfectionistic tendencies or that concept I just spoke about of not enoughness into work. It's like, I'm not achieving enough, I'm not growing enough. And I've really had to just slow down for a second and be like, okay, that coming from and why do I feel this need to be doing more so as a bit of homework for you guys I would invite you to slow down at the moment and just give yourself some time check in with your breath check in with where you are emotionally

and allow space for whatever's coming up another thing me and my friend were discussing this morning was the internal narrator or the internal critic that we all have living in our minds and how sabotaging it can be I spoke on someone's podcast yesterday about this very topic and how much I struggled with this before my Saturn return during my 20s and how much that internal critic robbed me of things, robbed me of happiness. The sneaky thing about that voice is it tells you it's what other people think of you, but it's entirely untrue. And it's a corrosive narrative that can stop you from being present. It can stop you from being grateful. I have found that the best way to combat this is to speak it out, to share that voice with someone and tell them what's going on.

Because it's essentially our shadow part. And when it exists only in our mind, it can fester, but we have to bring it to the light, we have to confront it. And by no means am I immune from that voice. It comes up on the daily, and especially when I'm tired or feeling a bit run down. But rather than let it grab the steering wheel and destructively push me off track, I just sort of acknowledge it and then put it to the side.

I'm like, I get that you're here, but you're not taking over. I don't identify with it so much. It's also important to acknowledge that these parts of ourselves are very natural and normal. It's a part of ourselves that develops in order to cope with life. Its goal is really trying to protect us. And if you listen to Britt Frank's episode, who is a psychotherapist, she discusses internal family system therapy and how we all have these various parts of us that are at play all the time and how we can better learn to manage them. So if this is something that you are struggling with, I suggest going back and giving this episode a listen. Also something that has come up for me, and I spoke about it yesterday when I was a guest

on Ella Mills' podcast, was this idea of not enoughness. This can manifest in perfectionism or various other things for various people but essentially at the root of a lot of our behavior is this feeling of unworthiness, of not enoughness, that we are unlovable just as we are. One of the key messages of the book was actually about coming home to myself, going on this journey, travelling to LA and coming right back to London and making peace with all parts of myself, the past versions of myself, releasing unrealised expectations, mourning a future that hadn't happened and just being okay with the present, feeling like I was enough just as I am I saw yesterday on Johan Hari's

Instagram page a quote that I found I connected with and I highly recommend his book Lost Connections if you haven't given it a read a funny story about coming across that book was that I was living in LA when I was 27 and I was going through this intense period of I guess anxiety and depression I didn't really recognize it at the time but I was incredibly isolated and lonely and yearning for connection but I also was recognizing that I needed this isolation I call it in the book, the fertile void, where we need to kind of abstain from people's situations because we keep repeating toxic patterns or going for the same person in a different body. And so we need to abstain from all of that stuff and create this sort of social exile in a way. And this is part of the process of our healing but I also know how painful that in itself can be but the quote was this depression is a form of grief for all the connections we need and yearn for but don't have which I thought was so apt and beautiful and really resonated with me and my own periods of depression.

As human beings, we are wired for connection. It's what we need. And when we don't have it, we hurt. Before I went through my Saturn return, I was definitely in that place. And I've spoken about it before on the podcast. I guess that's when I had a bit of a rock bottom, or I had a couple actually during this time.

I would say that it hasn't been truly until the last year where I haven't actually had a period of depression. And thinking back to the last time I did, I remember I was seeing someone at the time and he did a fire ritual. He was quite into his spirituality and he did a fire ritual for me to release my depression. almost burnt my flat down because the bowl that he had set up a fire in uh had a candle in it that the whole of the wax caught fire and then he thought it was a good idea to pour some water over it and it basically exploded so anyway I digress but I remember that was about two years ago which is crazy to think it was that long ago and that was the last period of depression I had and I was writing the book at the time and I was writing this chapter on

depression and hearing that quote yesterday really I was just like that's it that's what it was that's what it is and of course it's very's what it was. That's what it is. And of course, it's very different for everyone. And sometimes it's just a chemical imbalance that has no rhyme or reason to it. But personally, for me, I really felt that that lack of connection that my soul yearned for, that I didn't have in my life, was what caused my depression. didn't have in my life was what caused my depression. I feel very grateful and fortunate that I am in a relationship now that allows me to feel fully seen and held and a companion that I get to go through life with. So that has been one of my greatest blessings this year. And for the live show that we have in January that I hope I get to see you all

at I have decided to put a big focus on love and relationships self-love but also about finding a healthy partnership because that was such a big part of my journey I used to mold myself and morph myself into whatever relationship I found myself in adapting myself to the person and I think that that's quite a female trait we are chameleons in many ways by nature or at least we're conditioned to be and so I wanted to put a focus on that because I also see that you guys love the love and relationship episodes and Saturn Returns and I always feel that every conversation I have I kind of spin it to that angle because it's just a subject matter that I find so interesting and it's something that we all crave and desire but there's such

little education around it. I'm going to be joined by Millial love host and journalist Olivia Peter who whose work also focuses on love and relationships and so I cannot wait for you guys to hear the discussion that we're going to have unpacking all the kind of loves that you go through throughout your 20s and it will be an opportunity for you guys to answer any questions that you have for me. It will be a sort of cosmic agony on evening. And it's also a really amazing opportunity for you to meet more like-minded people. The beautiful thing that I've seen about creating Saturn Returns is that you will all message me individually and you will be going for your walks and you will be having me in your ears. And you think that you're alone in what you're experiencing, but I get so many messages from people struggling with the same thing.

And it has been my experience that when we share these vulnerabilities, when we share these fears, it alleviates so much of the shame and pain because we recognize that we aren't alone. And that is why I sign every episode off with that. So if you're feeling brave enough, I would love to invite you to get a ticket. Just one if you want to come alone or if you have a friend that you think might enjoy the evening. Because it is a great chance to make some friends in the Saturn Returns community. I know friendship can be such a complicated piece as we go through life and as we get older and life goes in different directions and we change and our values change and we say goodbye to friendships that we might have had in

our life for years and years and years and like I said at the beginning we often go through this fertile void this self-inflicted exile where we are on a path to healing and our personal development journey at the beginning can feel lonely I have found that to be true for me so when I get to meet all of you and have an evening like we're gonna have in January everything comes to life one really beautiful thing that happened at the last shows that we did was when people started asking questions, not only were they so smart, intelligent, considered and brave and vulnerable, but the rest of the audience were able to get up and actually say, hey, me too. I went through that too. And this is what helped me. And it was such a proud moment

for me because I was like wow these people are incredible like there's a point I was like I don't even know if I need to be here they've got it like they can help and hold and support each other and it was just this energy of support and love and vulnerability and everyone in the room was there because they were on the same mission, and that was to better themselves and come out the other side a more authentic and truthful version. So if you are feeling in the midst of something, and the podcast has helped you, I hope to see you in January in Chelsea on the 18th. The show will be at Cadogan Hall. So we're going right back to Chelsea for those that have followed me from the very beginning.

And then we are doing a show on the 19th in Manchester at Stoller Hall. There will also be an opportunity to get a signed book of Saturn Returns. And the night will obviously have a lot of what is in the book, which goes through all these big topics and these heavy themes. Essentially, more than anything, it is about the relationship I had with myself. It was about healing my relationship to my body. I talk about sober curious. I talk about that self-inflicted exile, loneliness, love. There really isn't anything that I miss out in this book and it's all interweaved and told through the lens of astrology with a focus of course on Saturn. Now before I leave you I want to invite you to do a little bit of homework

over the holidays and that is a wellness practice and it's a very easy one and i'm going to put a link in the show notes to a wonderful teacher who people often say that they think that I've got a calming voice, but this one, this one is divine. Her name is Sarah Blondin, and I'm going to put a link to some of her meditations. And I'll also put a link to Beautiful Chorus, which is my sort of go-to spiritual music. I'm going to invite you guys just to carve out some time for yourself, to sit on your own, snuggle up on the sofa, make a cup of tea, get a hot water bottle, get a blanket and just lie there. Not with your phone, not on your phone, not watching TV, but just simply being with yourself, noticing what you're feeling

and encouraging a sense of calm, a sense of gratitude for where you are and all you have achieved. If you have made it through the last couple of years, that in itself is a huge achievement. We have been through a lot collectively and individually. And rather than just rushing through frantically onto the next thing, just take a moment to appreciate all that you've overcome, the person that you're blossoming into becoming. Take a big breath of gratitude and put your hand on your heart I'm so proud of all of you I cannot tell you the support that you create for me it makes me quite emotional thinking about it because at the end of the day I'm on this journey with you and every episode that I put out, every conversation that I have, I'm going through it too.

I'm learning just as you guys are. And I'm having to confront myself again and again. And it can be scary, but knowing that I have you guys around me means that I know that I'm going to be okay. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for making Saturn Returns happen because if it wasn't for you we wouldn't be able to be going on as we are and I cannot wait to share with you everything that we have on offer next year as well as the book we are going to be expanding into online courses and we're going to be doing more live events because I hosted a focus group for some of you guys recently and it was just so nice to meet you and have like I think it was only 30 of

us on the call and you guys just told me like what you wanted what you needed how you felt supported what you would like more of and it was so informative for me and so I'd like to do more of that as well so that we can connect personally and that I can keep supporting you as you support me. One more thing that I wanted to discuss was this idea that me and Kirsty discussed on our episode. And it kind of hit me in the middle of the night the other evening. hit me in the middle of the night the other evening I woke up with quite a lot of anxiety just because I've got so many projects going on and I felt this sort of sense of terror and overwhelm like I was going to mess something up but also this feeling that I've been having that I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was so I was like why am I feeling this resistance

and this unease and I recognized it I was like I felt this way before so I know not to let it derail me and I've just got to push on through and it's something I speak about in the book and it's this idea that when we are on the cusp of expansion when we are growing when we are blossoming into the person we're supposed to become and piercing through our perceived upper limits, there is going to be a lot of resistance because there is a part of you that doesn't want to go there, the part of you that fears success.

And I've thought about this a lot, this fear of success and where it stems from. And in the middle of the night the other evening, I woke up and I suddenly was like, that's it. The death and rebirth. Because a part of you knows that part of you that wants to stay small, that tells you you're not really good enough, that you can't achieve that, that everyone thinks you're stupid,

that you don't have a valuable contribution to make to society. That part of you doesn't want to go there. Why? Because it knows it will die. That part of you does not exist in the next version of you you're going to become. There's no place for it there. And it knows that. So it tries to keep you back back tries to hold on to the

past it tries to keep you stuck because it's terrified of its own death I think we need to get more used to this rhythm of death and rebirth to accept past versions of ourself and let them go to know that in order to be reborn a part of us will have to die. So what I am learning to do at the moment is to mourn that, to grieve it, to grieve that part of me that told me I wasn't enough, that tells me that I'm not capable of achieving my dreams, that I'm going to mess things up and be excited to step into the next space. I'm so excited for next year but I need the energy to go towards the excitement and the love rather than the fear. We always have a choice which one we're going to fuel

and to a degree both of them will always exist so what do you choose love or fear and one more thing actually that I wanted to add that I thought of yesterday I was walking along the streets and you know sometimes like everyone else I can get in my own head and you're sort of walking past people and shuffling through and everyone's sort of pushing each other out the way especially in a city like London and we're not really aware of human beings that are around us and I decided to kind of get out of my head and slow down as I was walking and look at everyone I was passing. And rather than just seeing them as sort of like faces on the street, I looked at them and I thought, that's somebody, someone. That person

pushing the shopping trolley with her hat sort of falling onto her eyes, like that's somebody someone someone loves that person and they mean the world to them and I started doing it with everyone that I saw and it was such a humanizing thing because it makes you realize and recognize that we're all just trying our best we're all just here to grow in wisdom and to learn to love better and seeing our fellow human as somebody someone is really important especially when people are behaving less than loving me and we all know when we see people on the street and they push people out the way or they're in road rage or whatever so it's quite a humbling thing I encourage you to give it a go but I am sending you lots of love and I thank you again for your support this year and I am so excited for where we're going in 2023 2023.