There Will Come a Time When You Feel Like Everything is Finished. That Will Be The Beginning

Name: Caitlin
City: Sacramento, CA
Saturn Cycle: Saturn Return in Scorpio (Saturn is also conjunct Pluto and opposing Venus)
Born: 1983

The day that my Saturn Return was exact, was the day I fled my home and moved into a domestic violence safe house with my three children. I was 29.

 I always thought my Saturn Return would be easy or straightforward for me. After all, I was familiar with astrology, had a healthy relationship with Saturn and with my own father (I thought) whom I admired.

Yes, my marriage was falling apart, but I was in denial about it. After all, the number one most important thing to me in my whole life was that my children would grow up in an unbroken, intact family, with both their parents-- something I had always wished I had experienced for myself.

I worked very hard trying to save my marriage, a basically one-sided effort, but finally I began to understand that it would inevitably end. It was just a question of when. Still, I was determined that I would never give up, for the sake of my children and the promises I had made. The summer I was 28, one of my husband's best friends fell in love with me and made advances towards me. It awoke in me a sense of being desirable again, although I rebuffed all of his advances. I was honest about everything with my husband who didn't confront his friend and continued to neglect and humiliate and emotionally abuse me. 

We moved across country for his job and were extremely poor the whole way with unexpected expenses and costly delays. I should add that my husband was experiencing his Saturn return at the same time I was, because we are nearly the same age! It was a sad recipe for disaster. 

Dreams of the Future

Shortly before my 29th birthday, I had a dream of the future that alarmed me. I woke up with a horrible sense that I was on the every wrong path and that I and only I could save myself from my miserable circumstances and that I needed to make changes not only for myself, but for the sake of others who would be affected by my choices as well.

It took me a couple of months more to gather the courage to tell my husband I wanted a divorce. At first the separation was friendly and amicable and mutual. We were so poor that we agreed to cohabit for the sake of the kids until I could get on my feet with a job. (I had been a stay at home mom ever since we had our first of three children when we were 21 years old.)

Unfortunately my husband, who was starting therapy, changed his mind and decided he didn't want a divorce, and from that point on he began to make my life very difficult, controlling my access to our one car and the money. He managed to sabotage a couple of avenues that I was pursuing for career and income and became increasingly violent. 

End Times

Finally, 6 months after initially announcing my desire to divorce, I had to flee to the safe house with only what I could pack into my car around the three kids.

Much of my own family sided with him, not believing me about his behavior, or actually blaming me and saying I deserved what I got for "breaking up" my family. Others said I should have stayed longer and quietly made a sensible escape plan, but dishonesty and sneakiness has never been my way. Every step of the way I tried to be fair and kind with him.

At the safe house I learned a lot about domestic violence and how financial and emotional abuse is a very big deal even before it becomes physical, and realized how much my self-esteem had been beaten down over the years.

My New Life!

I got a job and an apartment (that was very difficult!) and started a new life. I turned 30 this March. I am so poor now, lol, and it has been so hard. Most of my relationships with my family members are very different now. But I made a lot of new girlfriends and deepened and strengthened others, and discovered that I am so much stronger than I thought I was. 

It is very hard to go from being a stay at home mom to only seeing my children half of the week during times when I am not working. But I am free and I am stronger and I am safe and I am pretty happy and I know that it will all get easier from here on out. <3 div="">