Midlife, Gently

“The future you will thank you for listening to your intuition, for upholding boundaries that supported your inner thriving, for saying no to things that did not align with your values, for taking the time to build your self-awareness, and for staying true to your vision.”  — yung pueblo

I came upon this quote in early 2025 when we landed in Santa Fe, not realizing how precisely it would mirror the year ahead.

The Year of the Wood Snake, which closed on February 17, 2026, felt quiet, internal, and deeply transformational. There were certainly loud and chaotic moments of unraveling (especially in the collective) but for me the change arrived through a steady shedding of patterns, situations, energies, and relationships that no longer aligned.

This cycle overlapped with nine concentrated months of my Uranus Opposition, traditionally called the “midlife crisis” though I prefer the term midlife awakening.

Around the ages of 42–43, something asks you to reconsider the life you’ve built so far… and how you want to inhabit the wiser years ahead.

Uranus transits tend to bring

• sudden realizations

• truth that can't be ignored

• liberation from old structures

• a strong urge to live more authentically

Check mark next to all of them!

During this period, I began noticing where I was overriding myself and defaulting to pleasing others or easing discomfort. Such deep conditioning, especially for sensitives and intuitives.

It surfaced with neighbors, our management company, and within a close family dynamic. I could feel the old pattern rising: clarify, explain more, make sure my heart was fully understood.

Instead, I tried something new.

My answers became shorter. I allowed silence. I stopped playing the role that had quietly been assigned to me.

I had to sit with the discomfort of not managing the outcome, allowing outdated relationship dynamics to fall away.

The boundary wasn’t sharp or dramatic. It was gentle and firm, and not always respected. It appeared again and again in different situations, strengthening the muscle each time.

This time, though, I made a different decision: not to abandon myself in order to be understood. To choose me.

Through it all, I realized how embodied transformation truly is. Not just mind and heart, but the physical vessel reorganizing itself. Like a caterpillar going through its messy metamorphosis.

I had to keep energy moving through my body so it wouldn’t stagnate. Shaking, dancing, smudging, body work... anything that allowed the electricity to move.

yung pueblo’s words sat quietly in my heart each time I chose a small act that brought me closer to my truth.

That shift felt lonely at times but I wasn’t alone in the process. My wife moved through her own Uranus Opposition in the early 2020s - a slower, more stretched-out process unfolding during the confusing pandemic years - and her steadiness helped anchor me through my more concentrated season.

There were moments when I wondered if becoming more aligned meant becoming more separate. Growth often feels disorienting before it feels true.

Those Uranian lightning-bolt insights can feel destabilizing, revealing where the old life no longer fits.

I am grateful to Santa Fe for its role as a sacred chrysalis where emotional and spiritual shedding could occur. A place where the old skin could safely come off.

From mystical healers to fierce desert beauty, the land itself offered both clarity and friction when I needed it most.

And as the Wood Snake completed its cycle, something in me felt complete too.

Galloping into Fire Horse energy

This energy already feels different. Less shedding and more momentum towards new forms of freedom.

Soon, our little family will move to Arizona (Fountain Hills) for a season of integration. A place to let our nervous systems settle after a year of internal reorganization. To be held by softer air and lower elevation, and to live among cacti, citrus, and palm trees (the convergence of SW desert and California lushness!)

If the Snake taught me to release what was too tight, perhaps the Horse will teach me to trust open ground and the freedom that comes with it.

When I return to yung pueblo’s words, I feel tenderness toward the version of me who arrived in New Mexico last February. She didn’t know how much she would have to release in order to become this version of herself.

The future me will thank me for being honest.

For letting silence say enough.

For trusting that alignment can feel uncomfortable and still be right.

For honoring myself in all of it.

I am proud. And I am tired. Both feel valid.

xx, Kris