Dear Moonkisssd,

I read your piece on Mars retrograde. It was very good. I was born near a Mars station on Oct 31, 1956 @ 8:00AM. I was born in the Mars retrograde cycle and so were six members of my family – coincidence? When Mars is retro I feel best. But I do have a problem with anger which is why I work out. What do you think of all this?

Dear Retro,

So is it hard for you to be direct? Or know when to appropriately act and put your identity on the line, and when to pull back? Mars in Pisces’ anger gets stuffed, like a message in a bottle thrown out to sea.

Mars in Pisces can be classically “frustrated” – so misunderstood and then fall to pieces, unable to express anything at all intelligible. See, Mars wants the pleasure of experiencing her righteous anger land in a clear, straightforward “boom, there it is” way.

Yet this is a mere wish for Mars in Pisces. Anger gets messy. Instead of feeling her energy, strength & identity (Mars’ MO) she becomes either an emotional hurricane or collapses into a watery pool of “anger, what – who not me?” And you’re retrograde, you can’t get away with suppressing the distress which boils and bubbles – and if you don’t work with it – boomerangs right back at ya’.

Anger, desire, assertion, courage, endurance, impulsiveness and even selfishness – all expressions of a healthy ego, retrograde Mars internalizes instead of releasing it on the world. Your anger is in your own face. Not in someone else’s, not climbing a mountain, not standing up to your boss – in other words, not where it needs to go. Anger needs to move outward.

It makes marvelous sense that you need to physically work out, to work it out. Do anything you can to “get it out” of the body and into the world. You feel better when Mars is retro in the sky because Mars enters your comfort zone – it feels natural to hang back in the crowd, to work things out from the inside, to not rush ahead, to re-examine your motivations – not just for you, but for everyone around you. Finally, everyone is doing your Mars. Hooray for small victories, right?

Oh, that’s another thing. Celebrate your small Mars victories. An “I stood up for myself today” piece of cake is one powerful antidote for empowering your Mars retro.

Not that your Mars isn’t powerful, it is. It’s just highly controlled -by you. From others’ perspective, you can strike out of the blue, no one saw you coming. Stephen Forrest says that a retrograde grows up like a “wild child,” you and only you can choose to come out of the woods and live in civilization.

Wow, a retro family, that’s quite a coincidence. Not. Inherited family patterns appear in the chart, and it’s remarkable when the message is so obvious. That’s Mars for you. I can only wonder about your “wild child” clan. Maybe it’s hard to be seen as an identity in a house full of “identities,” maybe there are just too many of you who want to stand up and be counted, all wrestling with how to do just that. I doubt you’re a gaggle of shrinking violets, more likely a band of warriors wearing shrinking violet clothes. Yikes, that could be difficult. Well, at least you understand one another – kind of.

Thanks for the great question. Best of luck!