Yikes, it’s a heart-wrenching, tender week. Life and love just keeps coming fast and furious, expanding hearts wider and wider, as Venus, planet of love meets Pluto in the last degree of Sagittarius today.

I guess it was about five days ago that I began noticing a distinct energy shift around my heart chakra. The word poignant entered my vocabulary, lodging itself between my brain and heart so that everything passing between had well, poignancy. Yes, everything suddenly developed poignancy potential, an ability to drop me down into despair and raise me up at the same time- like a spiritually expansive and pummeling force of nature, terrifying, beautiful, depressing and hopeful – all at once.

I’ve found it’s practically impossible to inhabit one extreme (love/joy), before the other appears (loneliness/grief).

Well, says dark God Pluto, life is a terrible beauty, no? If you’ve ever really embraced a dark night of the soul, truly sat with the darkness and discovered your speck of dust nothingness, all that’s left is hope…and light. Likewise if you’ve ever found yourself at the edge of loneliness and despair (have you ever noticed how quiet it is there?) you can’t believe it took all this to finally feel held.

Hmmm, the Gods do have a sense of humor!

And yet…to deeply love another, is to eventually lose them. And that’s harrowing.

Perhaps all this soulful sensitivity is the effect of the Pluto/Venus transit, or maybe it’s the certain movement of Pluto into Capricorn, opposing my Cancer Sun by sign. I get the feeling I’m being pulled to be more deeply involved in the lives of others than ever before, and no doubt about it, it’s painful and beautiful, terrifying and lovely.

I don’t mean to get hallmark on you, but this is the paradox of life – the tragedy and the hope, love and death, existing side by side. See, I really wish I could send something (love! support! courage! peace!) to the family and friends impacted by the death of the actor, Heath Ledger. I can’t shield myself from empathically channeling some level of Michelle Williams’ grief, and feel the impending bereavement of his too-young-to- know her daddy child, Matilda, just as I can’t help crying for two hours straight (with the audience, mind you) to the utterly lovely and terrifying French movie, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. As I said: heart blown open. Can’t help it.