In November of 2020, I went on my first mushroom trip.

I chose the date arbitrarily, eventually landing on Black Friday because of the poetic ring to it, a wink to the “hero’s dose” I planned on taking — enough to conjure an “ego death,” a temporary pause from the regularly scheduled mind loops and tensions. I waited for a day clear of any commitments, which in the middle of COVID wasn’t hard to find.

The trip lasted about six hours, almost precisely the length of the Johns Hopkins playlist I had found on Spotify to accompany me through the twists and turns. And there were twists and turns. When my consciousness finally floated back to the chimney that was my body, I walked outside to watch the soft, peach sunset as Louis Armstrong crooned from portable speakers, serenading me out of the psilocybin’s final moments. I didn’t know it then, but I was in the middle of more than just one ending — my Saturn Return was also coming to a close.

I was 31, living through an undoubtedly disorienting collective moment, and there was also recalibration occurring on a more personal scale inside. The years prior had been fraught with anger over Trump’s election, which ultimately fueled my detangling from Christianity, the belief system in which I was raised. I felt the distinct ache of being more distant from my parents, whom I still loved, as the gap in our perspectives was widening. I was venturing beyond where I had always belonged, walking the lonely path of differentiation — unmoored and unsure of where it might take me. I sensed a deeper self wanting to emerge, but still felt torn between two worlds; I knew what I was leaving but not yet where I was headed. I feared that changing might mean losing the people I loved, a very real risk I saw playing out around me. With the mushroom trip, it’s like my psyche had been looking for some kind of cosmic comfort, to help me turn the page.

I don’t remember when I first heard the phrase “Saturn Return,” but I do remember being immediately intrigued. My understanding of it was a slow burn, quite the opposite of the hot and heavy conversion experiences I was familiar with, having grown up Christian in Texas. Astrology had never been something on my internal dashboard, an unopened Rand McNally buried in the backseat. I grew up viewing astrology as not only unserious, but also a grave sign of misplaced trust, as prayer and Scripture were the only guidance one should ever need. Looking beyond those guideposts meant flirting with danger — at risk of becoming untethered and lost.

But the more I learned about Saturn Return — the idea that between the ages of 27 to 31 one moved through some distinct portal to adulthood — the more I felt a deep resonance and relief: finally, a coming-of-age framework that didn’t begin in one’s teens or early 20s, exhausted plotlines that made me feel behind, like I had missed something. The Saturn Return framework was a comforting thought: that there was some sort of cosmic force supporting the emerging self, on a timeline that matched my own life’s more closely.

And now Saturn Return seems to be popping off everywhere, or at least among the pop girlies. From Adele’s Saturn tattoo on her right forearm to Ariana Grande’s “Saturn Returns Interlude” (in which astrologer Diana Garland describes it as the time to “wake up!”) to Sza’s “Saturn” — the concept is orbiting the zeitgeist. “My Saturn has returned / When I turned 27 everything started to change,” Kacey Musgraves sings on “Deeper Well,” the title track of her new album, released earlier this year. At the Kia Forum in October, I watched Musgraves play an acoustic set underneath a hovering Saturn installation.

Kacey Musgraves performs an acoustic set underneath a hovering Saturn installation.

(Jasmine Safaeian)

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But even for its heightening visibility in pop culture, the term is still somewhat nebulous — evoking a range from curiosity to dread. There’s still this sense that we’re in a game of telephone about its meaning. What is it, and why Saturn? Is it something to brace oneself for or look forward to? And what exactly is supposed to be happening?

Chani Nicholas, one of the most prominent astrologers currently at work and founder of the CHANI app, translates the cosmos into accessible language. The app, which launched in 2020 and now has over 1 million downloads, includes resources like personalized birth chart readings, guided meditations, journal prompts and weekly astrological forecasts, which Chani playfully narrates herself. I’ve been following Chani’s work since reading her 2020 New York Times bestseller “You Were Born for This,” so getting to bring her my Saturn Return questions felt like getting closer to the starting point in the telephone circle.

“Saturn is all about age and … coming up against authority — boundaries and authorship,” Chani, who has lived in Los Angeles off and on since 2005, says over Zoom in her signature clear-rimmed frames. “Saturn’s always trying to get you to take responsibility and accountability for where you are and what you’re doing.”

She explains how Saturn moves in phases — similar to the moon, yet on a different timetable. Every seven years Saturn moves 90 degrees farther along in its orbit from the place it was in the sky when you were born. So by the time you’re nearing 30, Saturn “returns” to where it started in your birth chart, completing its first full rotation around the sun. If we’re lucky, we’ll experience three Saturn Returns in our lifetimes: the first when we’re nearing 30 years old, the second happening around 60, and the last around 90 — each one sparking an initiation into a new life phase.

During her own Saturn Return, Chani packed up her life in Toronto and moved to Los Angeles “with no car, no friends or contacts, and only $1,500” in her pocket. “All I had was a dream and a need to prove to myself that I could do something challenging,” she says. “I needed space and time to find myself, and distance from everything that had defined me.”

Chani refers to Saturn as “a threshold deity” because, for thousands of years in ancient astrology, it was the last planet we could see without a telescope. “It was what we thought was the last planet out there, the boundary of our known understanding of the cosmos,” she says. Because Saturn was so dim, as well as so far and slow, it had “this heft and heaviness,” and became known in traditional astrology as the Greater Malefic, a planet of hard things.

“It’s not easy, breezy, light, kind or friendly,” Chani explains. “Saturn will always be like, ‘Here’s the bill. Here’s the reality check.’ But if you understand and work with your Saturn, then you’re going to be the one who knows how to be responsible, reliable, consistent and boundaried. If you’ve ever met someone who’s powerful in any way, shape, or form — they have exceptional boundaries.”

I ask about this pervasive idea that Saturn Returns are something to buckle up for — are they inherently disruptive? Chani shakes her head, eager to weigh in: “Disruption is not a part of Saturn Return; however, your cohort and the cohort younger than you — so we’re talking millennials and Gen Z — most of you have this thing where you have Saturn and the planet Uranus, the planet of disruption, together.” In Chani’s view, this misleading conflation of Saturn and disruption has become mainstream because millennials and Gen Z drive the conversation on the internet. But this flavor of disruption is unique to us — and not necessarily Saturn’s signature.

To determine the timing, texture and themes of your Saturn Return, you have to know what zodiac sign Saturn was in when you were born, which you can find in the CHANI app (in my case it was Capricorn). You also want to look at the house where Saturn is stationed in your chart, the planets around Saturn in your chart, and what time of day you were born. (Supposedly if you were born during the day, your Saturn Return just might be a little easier.)

After sending Chani my birth time, place and date, she tells me that my Saturn is stationed in the seventh house of committed partnerships and relationships. (In her book, Chani explains houses as “the sets where the planets’ stories are lived out.”) So in my case, the shifts, tensions and “growth edges” of my Saturn Return played out in the realm of my close relationships.

“Another big thing about Saturn Returns is that it’s one of the first times that we need to psychologically stand on our own apart from our origins,” Chani says. “There’s this thing around the age of 30 where we’re like, ‘time is limited. … If I’m going to take responsibility for my life, I’m going to have to disappoint people.’ That’s the boundary, the separation, in a way.”

In those initial steps of self-definition, deconstructing the political and religious maps I’d grown up with, I had feared my parents’ disappointment. Self-authorship felt risky because I thought I might have to forfeit connection. What came to the surface during my Saturn Return was a road map to the work I’d need to do, the inner belonging I’d need to find, if I wanted my life to be mine.

Our Saturn remains in the same house in our chart over the course of our lives, which means we can expect the same themes to resurface and “rhyme” in our future Returns. But what will hopefully make each one feel different, Chani suggests, is perspective. If we’ve been integrating Saturn’s lessons, we’ll have some wisdom to share.

“When I was growing up / We had what we needed, shoes on our feet / But the world was as flat as a plate / And that’s okay / The things I was taught only took me so far / Had to figure the rest out myself / And then I found a deeper well.”

Throughout her Saturn-coded album, Musgraves is remembering, saying goodbye to, and ultimately thanking the things she’s outgrown: misaligned relationships, bad habits, outdated beliefs. And in that clearing, there’s a deeper exhale into herself: an existential sobriety and awareness of time passing, making everything glisten in a new light.

With some distance from Saturn’s crucible, there’s the hope of alchemizing our discoveries into a more congruent self.

It’s been almost seven years now since my Saturn Return began, so I’m approaching a phase Chani explains as the “First Quarter Square” — when we get a glimpse of the seeds we started planting during the “inception point” of those initial Return years. By the time you’re reading this, I’ll most likely be in bed nursing a newborn, due early December. The tangible sprouting of a shift that I trace back to my Saturn Return.

During my 2020 mushroom trip, I had the very clear feeling that a soul wanted to come through me. As I had been preoccupied with existential questions like how to become myself, this flicker of clarity confused and surprised me. On paper, according to the cultural scripts I had ingested, motherhood was the Ultimate Threat to the self I had been working so hard to find, let alone secure. But that download became a quiet anchor I’d return to, a vision that reached beyond my analytical mind — a dare to my rational fears. Something dim and unknowable seemed to be asking me to trust it. I decided to.

I have no idea what motherhood will actually feel like, of course, as it’s felt mostly conceptual even during pregnancy. But from what I can make of it so far, it seems to be the ultimate paradox: the world simultaneously contracted to its most intimate, atomic form, and the explosion of an entirely new universe. It’s a path that my Saturn Return prepared me for, a lesson that’s only now coming into focus: that perhaps the self can actually blossom, rather than wilt, in the containers we choose and author for ourselves. What matters is who’s doing the writing.

And then there are the parts we’d never choose to write ourselves: I never imagined I’d be bringing a kid into the world amidst a second Trump presidency, a dark rhyme that’s catapulted me back into an uncanny loop of my Saturn Return years. Perhaps the most I can do this time around is bring a more fortified self to the moment. To repurpose my disorientation and anger into something more actionable, solid and firm.

As Chani puts it, this seems to be the gift of Saturn’s invitation to self-authorship: “a sense of your own internal bone structure.”

Just when we reach the edge of what we can make out with the naked eye, another dimension of self appears. Another new threshold, inviting us to pass through, again.

Rebekah Pahl is a writer living in Los Angeles. She’s pursuing an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and working on an essay collection exploring shifts in self during her Saturn Return.

Kroger and Albertsons saw their $24.6 billion merger blocked on Tuesday by judges in two separate cases, one brought by federal regulators and the other by the Washington state attorney general.

What would be the biggest grocery merger in U.S. history is now in legal peril after over two years of delays. The companies could choose to continue their legal appeals or abandon the deal. They await another ruling in a third lawsuit in Colorado.

Kroger runs many familiar grocery stores, including Ralphs, Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer and King Soopers. Albertsons owns Safeway and Vons. In statements on Tuesday, the companies argued the courts erred in their judgment and said they were evaluating their options.

Tuesday’s first ruling is a big win for the Federal Trade Commission. It — together with several states — had asked a federal court in Oregon to stop the merger. The government argued that the resulting colossus would lead to higher food prices and fewer choices for shoppers and workers. In many markets, the two chains are each other’s biggest rival.

Kroger and Albertsons, in turn, have argued that together, they actually would have more power to lower prices, as well as to compete against other huge retailers that sell food, including Walmart, Costco and Amazon.

U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson on Tuesday ruled that the merger must halt while it undergoes the administrative review inside the FTC — a procedure that Kroger is separately challenging in court as unconstitutional. About an hour later, a Washington state court judge separately ruled that the merger violated that state’s consumer-protection law.

“Both defendants gestured toward a future in which they would not be able to compete against ever-growing Walmart, Amazon, or Costco,” Nelson wrote in her order. “The overarching goals of antitrust law are not met, however, by permitting an otherwise unlawful merger in order to permit firms to compete with an industry giant.”

Together, Kroger and Albertsons have nearly 5,000 stores and employ some 720,000 people across 48 states. They particularly overlap in western states.

Cases hinge on how Americans buy groceries

During the three-week federal trial in a Portland courtroom, the FTC and the companies painted differing views of the grocery market.

Kroger and Albertsons described their merger as existential to survival. They argued the FTC’s view of competition — focused on options a shopper might have in their neighborhood — was outdated in the wake of big-box behemoths and the sprawl of dollar stores.

Kroger officials testified that they typically compared their prices to Walmart, rather than Albertsons, and struggled to keep up given Walmart’s ability to negotiate better deals with suppliers thanks to its scale. Walmart is the biggest seller of groceries in the U.S., followed by Kroger and Costco.

The FTC, however, argued that someone who shops at Walmart, Costco, CVS or even Trader Joe’s likely still relies on their neighborhood supermarket. Government lawyers said enough people were concerned about the merger that the agency received an unprecedented 100,000 public comments.

Federal officials also shared complaints raised by labor unions.

Kroger and Albertsons are the rare unionized shops in retail. The companies argue that, in fact, serves as a reason why they should be allowed to unite to face up to bigger, non-unionized rivals. But the FTC says a merger would give the companies much more power over contract negotiations, leading to lower pay and worse benefits.

Questions about a plan to sell off some stores

The judge separately weighed the plan by Kroger and Albertsons to sell hundreds of their stores to a firm called C&S Wholesale Grocers as a condition of their merger, meant to appease regulators.

The idea is to create a new grocery rival in markets where Kroger and Albertsons currently overlap and, therefore, a merger would eliminate competition. C&S, a grocery supplier, had agreed to buy 579 stores in 18 states and in Washington, D.C.

But the FTC argued C&S would struggle to compete. The firm currently runs only 23 stores, mostly under the Piggly Wiggly brand, without much nationwide name recognition. Government lawyers shared internal notes, in which C&S executives raised concerns about the quality of stores they would acquire.

Kroger and C&S executives presented C&S as an experienced grocery company that could hit the ground running. Judge Nelson remained skeptical.

“There are serious concerns about C&S’ ability to run a large-scale retail grocery business that can successfully compete against the proposed merged business, as would be required to offset the competitive harm of the merger,” she wrote in Tuesday’s order.

The last time the government approved a grocery merger that hinged on divesting stores, it was 2015. Albertsons bought Safeway. It sold off 168 stores, then repurchased 33 of them on the cheap because one of the buyers filed for bankruptcy protection within months of the deal.