Venus rules the area in our lives most connected to love and pleasure. A Venus in Pisces means that there’s no better place to be than in a dreamy, delusional, floating state of mind, and the only thing keeping you from flying away, is your heartstrings anchoring to Earth.

Personally, love has consumed many sleepless nights and countless car rides spent daydreaming for as long as I can remember. Marathons of Disney Princess movies on VHS lit up the corners of the living room and the hyperactive imagination of a child that consumed every storyline. I found myself believing with absolute certainty, that love would stumble into me at an overpriced coffee shop or while browsing through the cool jazz section in the record store just like in a Y2K movie. For a Pisces Venus, love feels and moves like the ocean, a strong and abundant element that can easily dissolve and swallow you whole into the depths of its strength. And a fish without water is a dead one, so the journey of this placement has been choppy.

I move with love, not just romantic love, but all types. Where will I live, what will I do, how will I be - if love does or does not grow here?

Truth is, I'm a Lover Girl to the core. Everything I do, I hope to do with love and where I land, I always hope to find love. Cultivating love is a two-way street of reciprocity and nourishment. It’s an extension of one’s spiritual self to provide care for another.

I started this painting this last December while reflecting on the self-crowned label of a “Lover Girl”. The places where love has been cultivated have also been accompanied by heartbreak. This painting is representative of both sides of being a lover. The abundance of love being ready to be gifted out while fighting the internal panic of being hurt once again.

There’s a tenderness I have through love and heartbreak that makes me hold my heart twice as hard because I know I’m willing to double down when the time comes. I’ve been reminded in the last three years how one cannot truly enjoy the fruitfulness of love without having experienced the starvation of heartbreak.

A major lesson that collided with this placement was my Saturn return being in my 5th house, ruling children, pleasure, and you guessed it- relationships. Yay for me. What a coincidence that I began my Saturn return in March of 2023 with one of the most gut-wrenching heartbreaks of my life. Little did I know that that would only be the beginning of a three-year journey of self-discovery through love and heartache. Lessons that have now left me where I am now, and are guiding me to where I’m going. To be clear, I don’t categorize those experiences as just lessons, they were people who dug a hole into my heart, planted themselves, and will remain with me forever. With each partner, I found myself in a deeper relationship with myself. Am I really as casual as I claim to be? What is it about heteronormativity that absolutely turns me off? Polyamorous or monogamish lol? Is this my anxiety or intuition communicating something? How can the fluidity of all my identities be explored while being in relationships with others?

While consoling me on my most recent heartbreak, my best friend's mom told me, “Es una bendición sentir el duelo del amor porque hay gente que nunca lo siente”. Something about this señora advice has sat with me since. So what if there’s a bit of a dilution at times when it comes to love? I’ve been blessed with the duality of love and heartbreak multiple times in my life.

The first heartbreak that kicked off my Saturn return taught me so much about visibility and softness. The visibility of a partner seeing you as who you really are while also being in an openly queer relationship. Layers of self need to be torn down to make room for authenticity. She had a tenderness that mirrored me so effortlessly and a feeling of home that was so natural.

The second heartbreak taught me about patience and intuition. It was a season of life that was filled with goofiness, puppy love, and chemistry like I’ve never experienced before while simultaneously trying to put together puzzle pieces that weren’t fitting. It was a situationship that still tugs on my heart till this day. The screaming message I kept ignoring was that, “potential isn’t enough to sustain a relationship”. The outcome would ultimately leave me shattered, picking up pieces of my heart and ego once it ended. Somehow I still hold grace for him because I know what it feels like to be a good person who makes an unkind decision and what he ended up doing was very unkind. Forgiveness takes time and I plan to take my sweet time towards that finish line.

This most recent heartbreak is one I have so much gratitude for. There are people out there who can truly embody love in ways you’ve only dreamt of. The ways that the Disney movies brainwashed me with. The things I daydreamed of could actually exist in a person willing to give and receive them. In the words of Tinashe, “is somebody gonna match my freak?”. She matched the freak of a Lover Girl. Although this did not work out for reasons that felt outside of each other’s control and our lifestyle compatibility, I am happy to have cultivated that love with her than to have never experienced it at all.

The period of repairing oneself during the heartbreak process is one of rawness, nakedness, and shedding. Grief becomes a portal where you are able to meet with past, present, and future self. While I will admit how that portal has been exhausting to continue visiting, it has realigned my values, boundaries, and expectations when it comes to love. The Pisces Venus in me wants to idealize them and place them in a trophy case so I can admire them all forever but that’s unsustainable. That’s where Saturn has stepped in and shown me how to have boundaries when moving on. To not be stuck in the starvation and yearning that heartbreak brings. Find peace with the situation where you can, but most importantly prioritize the peace I can create within myself. Right now, the peace I’ve had while being intentionally single, learning to recalibrate my nervous system and surrounding myself nourishing company has been more than enough to quench my thirst for love.