Venus is retrograde and I got love on the mind.

Look around — most media is telling us that co-dependent love is the way to go. The phrases “you complete me” or “my other half” are somehow normalized. In most movies and songs you hear of people being “saved” by love, or they bond over shared wounds instead of a powerful connection.

I think we should all use Venus retrograde to move beyond these boring tropes. They are unhealthy, unstimulating, and ultimately lead to a delusional idea of love — that romantic love is what is going to make you happy, it’s what is going to make you feel complete, that it is going to save you from your own wounding. This messy, enmeshed existence with another human only leads to drama. It is when you make excuses for why they don’t act with integrity and with nobility, it is when you take on their suffering as a martyr instead of supporting them to get themselves through it, or when you put them on a pedestal and their needs before yours, and are lost in that persons kingdom. Suddenly, you’re gone. You’re drained. You are exhausted and a shell of who you once were. Good news — there’s another way.

Growing up, I fantasized about relationships and love. I wanted it so bad. I thought, like many others, that it would change me, make me happy, give me a reason and a purpose to exist. It would mend the parts of my heart that felt awful or rejected or misunderstood. Well, after a couple of failed relationships, I realized there was a pattern. After a few months of intense passionate romance, I felt awful, rejected, and misunderstood. Sound familiar?

All of that pressure fell on my lover. He was like a drug. The passionate crusading in that love was the best distraction from my own wounds that I could have asked for. My lover was my world and I would just orbit around them, and then resent them when I felt like he didn't get me. And honestly, I was bored.

So, I decided to take some time and build my own world. I spent a long time challenging myself to enter my own darkness and get to know the really vulnerable or not-so-great parts of myself. It was there I discovered absolute wholeness and self-love and began a quest for purpose beyond love.

Empowered, crazy, cosmic, cataclysmic love starts with you and your own sovereignty. In powerful love, you need to have boundaries in order to truly, wholeheartedly, surrender and receive. If you have any walls in your way, you are blocking out power that could supercharge you.

Walls are not the same as boundaries. Walls are built from fear to keep people out in order to not be hurt. Boundaries are out of love and power, rooted from a place of deep self-awareness and knowing. One is about fear, and the other is self-respect. Can you discern what your boundaries versus your walls are? Walls blocks you from vulnerability, and you power is never not going to come from vulnerability. In order to give way and open fully, you have to be okay with being vulnerable, fully knowing you have your own back.

You can self-source enough to know how to be open to receive. You can handle it. You can recognize your own needs honestly and ask for them. You are an independent, powerful, unique force. And there is nothing more powerful than two independent, powerful, unique forces coming together for something bigger than themselves.

This is the difference between a prince/ princess and king/queen relationship. A prince and princess love gets lost in each other; they are co-dependent and don’t have much else going on. The king and queen relationships stand for something. They know themselves, what they are made of, their power, and they work together and support each other. They are looking at what happens with themselves when they are together — ultimate sovereignty.

Find your own Kingdom during this retrograde period. Be your own ruler. Live for something big so you can attract someone on the same path and take the world by storm. Life is short and you are here, with purpose, filled with a fire in your heart. It is precious. Wield it with care.