How Astrology Provided Deeper Closure To My Mother's Suicide
We often think about astrology as something to help us read future outcomes but I want to share about my own incredibly personal experience of how it can help bring closure to past events. In November 2019 my mother tragically took her own life - when studying the sky and the placements of the planets during that fateful day, the confluence of my mother's chart along with my own, my sister's, my husband's, my firstborn's as well as my sister's firstborn is just...mind-blowing. Each one tells a story from our different perspectives but also a common thread that ties it all together through shared aspects. I will break it all down a little below.
On the day my mother passed, transiting North Node and the Moon were conjunct (next to each other) which in itself carries an eclipse signature without it being a formal eclipse. It's a threshold amplification of the Moon's natural significations (the body, the mother, the nurturing principle, life cycles, the unconscious, family, home, the soul's movement) being pulled into the Nodes' collective evolutionary axis. This already lends weight to this specific aspect showing up in each family member's chart with the unique house placement telling the deeper story.
For myself this aspect took place in my 4th house of home, family, the mother, endings, private inner world and ancestral lineage. This was the first aspect that I saw, taking place in my 4th house, which instantly made me see the connection between my mother's death and what was happening in the sky. There just is no coincidence that this specific aspect, related to the mother (Moon) occurred in my 4th house, which ALSO relates to the mother. On top of this, the North Node and Moon were right on my natal North Node suggesting a significant life event that either confirms, redirects, or catalyzes a person's life direction. Perhaps not a confirmation, but certainly a redirect and catalyst by orders of magnitude for me. Astrologically this configuration alone points to cosmically coherent timing and knowing that my mother would have been oblivious to all of this, her soul on the other hand seems to have known otherwise. She chose to depart at the North Node, not the South Node (which is typically associated with endings, release and letting go) symbolizing that her soul departed to move forward into her next arc and not simply concluding. This alone has helped me assimilate her tragic passing, that somewhere her soul knew and chose this timing for a very specific reason. Again, I do not believe in coincidences.
Alongside this aspect, transiting Uranus was also squaring my natal Moon, again the Moon being one of the primary significators of the mother. It is the most direct and universally recognized symbol of the maternal principle, the physical mother, and the early nurturing bond. Uranus transiting in a hard aspect to the natal Moon is one of the classic signatures for sudden, disruptive, or unexpected change in the domain of the Moon. The square is a tension aspect, a friction that forces movement. It carries the quality of rupture under pressure. Something in the Moon's domain is being broken open, not gradually transformed.
In terms of what this can signify in life events, transiting Uranus square natal Moon can coincide with:
Sudden separation from the mother or maternal figures
Unexpected changes in the home or domestic foundations
Emotional disruptions that arrive without warning
Release from long-held emotional patterns or family conditioning
The ending of a maternal relationship in some definitive way
For me this transit translated to a sudden and irrevocable rupture of the maternal bond at the physical level as well as ticking all the points above.
At the same time, transiting Uranus was also opposing my natal Saturn and Pluto in the 8th house of death and transformation. An opposition in transit is usually an external person or event forcing an outcome and in this case it was transiting Uranus coming in with full force to restructure and loosen the grip that Saturn had on mortality up until that point, as well as confronting my deepest transformational relationship with death (Pluto in the 8th). The aspects keep piling up to show what an incredibly heavy and significant day this was. Additionally, the above mentioned transiting North Node and Moon configuration was making an aspect to my natal Moon, one which in predictive astrology is often related to endings, release and/or an adjustment that needs to be made because it cannot be reconciled under current circumstances. An adjustment so fundamental that the original relationship or structure ceases to exist. Again, with my natal Moon being involved, this points once more to my mother, the nurturing bond, the maternal principle.
Let's move on to my firstborn who also had significant aspects hitting his chart that day. He was not even 2 years old when my mother passed away - a child's chart doesn't only show what is going on in the child's life but also in the parents' lives. My son was also experiencing transiting Uranus squaring his natal Moon - again, one of the clearest signatures for sudden, disruptive, irrevocable change in the domain of the Moon with the natal Moon in any chart as a primary significator of the mother. For my child, his natal Moon is symbolizing me and the square reads as the child's primary maternal figure undergoing sudden and permanent disruption or transformation. The mother he has known me as is undergoing a radical and irrevocable change. My world is being restructured completely. My emotional availability, my presence, my foundational orientation towards my son — all of it is being reorganized by a force that arrived suddenly and cannot be walked back. He is experiencing a sudden Uranian disruption to his lunar world and his natal Moon is being squared because I was genuinely and suddenly going through a state of profound transformation.
He was also having transiting South Node conjunct his natal Saturn in the 4th. Saturn in traditional and Vedic astrology can be associated with the grandmother, the elder. In the 4th, there is further confluence with my own chart and this time, instead of transiting North Node, it's the energy of the South Node which is connected to karmic endings, full circle completion and release. It's a different soul-level relationship to the passing of my mother, one that is symbolically more accurate for him in terms of lineage hierarchy.
Let's look at my sister's chart next - transiting North Node and Moon was right on top of her Vertex in the 8th house, often linked to death and transformation. And yes, as can be evidenced here, sometimes quite literally. The fact that her Vertex was being activated signifies that this was a fated inevitability for her. The Vertex is a mathematical point in the sky that symbolizes where we have fated encounters most often through other people and events. And for my sister, she often stated afterwards how she knew this day was coming, that when she received the call from the police that she knew what it was about the minute she was asked if she was the daughter of our mother. Our mother was depressed for most of our lives and yet for me I just never thought she would end her life the way she did. I now understand why my sister and I experienced the same tragic event so differently, literally shown in our charts. Transiting North Node and Moon in the 8th house is a direct and raw confrontation with death and the transformation that ensues. The 8th is the most concentrated death-symbolic territory of the chart. If you are an 8th houser, you might know what I'm talking about, even if there hasn't been physical death involved.
My sister's natal Mars was also being squared by the lunar nodes, what is known as a skipped step in astrology. This is usually a configuration that speaks to whatever planet being aspected (in this case Mars) needing integration - integration of will and assertion in the case of Mars. However, the lunar nodes which only exist because of the Moon still carry the symbolism of the mother, the maternal principle, the emotional body, roots and cycles of life. That Mars specifically was being aspected by the lunar energy of the nodes after years of friction between mother and daughter is again not a coincidence. My sister's instinct to fight, to do something, to direct energy toward the loss in some assertive or active way had any such impulse cut across with the Nodal axis, reminding her that this particular threshold could not be crossed through Mars energy. Death cannot be fought. Our mother cannot be retrieved through assertion or will. It gives me deeper insight and understanding around what she was going through internally that day.
Next I took a look at my sister's firstborn's chart. Similar to my son, he also had his natal Saturn aspected (remembering that Saturn can signify the grandmother). In his case it was transiting North Node and Moon conjunct his natal Saturn in the 9th. The 9th house is the house of meaning, philosophy, worldview, belief systems, higher understanding, and the search for why. It governs how we make sense of existence at the largest scale - our relationship to what is sacred, what is true, what lies beyond the immediate material world. It's the house of the grandparent in some traditional frameworks, which is already relevant here. Having the transiting Moon-Node conjunction land on natal Saturn in the 9th means his encounter with his grandmother's death is being filtered through the 9th house, through the domain of meaning-making, philosophical understanding, and the attempt to comprehend what death actually is within a larger framework of existence. This is a philosophical and meaning-level encounter and a moment that asks: what does death mean? What lies beyond? How do I understand this within whatever framework I have for making sense of existence? It's his first deep and real encounter with some of life's biggest questions, ones that can't be fully answered in the moment nor simply explained. With Saturn here, I imagine that these questions will be taken seriously, held with weight and potentially become a long-term organizing feature of how he relates to meaning, belief, and the larger questions of existence.
Like the rest of us, his natal Moon was also being aspected by transiting Uranus but also Chiron in his case. The Chiron piece is especially vulnerable and suggests a deep wounding being activated at this time, specifically to his emotional foundation, his relationship with his mother, his sense of safety and nurturing and his instinctual and feeling self. His lunar world in other words. The specific aspect in question is another one that cannot be integrated smoothly, cannot be fully resolved, cannot reach a stable equilibrium with the lunar world as it has existed. This is very likely a wound that will follow him throughout his life but as with all Chironic wounds, there is great potential for him to grow into someone with unusual emotional depth and capacity for holding grief, his own as well as others'.
Naturally it was important for me to look at my husband's chart and if anyone needed confirmation as to the validity of astrology and its power of correspondence, then I feel my husband's chart says it all. Since he is the only non-blood relative in the charts I looked at, it would really make most sense that transiting North Node and Moon were in his 7th house of marriage and the spouse. Well, that's exactly where it was, also right on top of his own natal North Node. This aspect showing up in his 7th house is literally stating that this event directly concerned his partner. It is the house of the significant other. The North Node in the 7th in his chart at this moment is saying: the collective evolutionary growth direction is currently moving through the relational axis, through the committed partnership, through the person he is bound to. His dharmic engagement at this moment is not directly with death itself but with the person who is most directly experiencing it. His soul's forward movement right now runs through me - through witnessing my loss, through being present to my grief, through whatever the marriage becomes as a result of this event. The Moon in the 7th alongside the Node brings the emotional and nurturing dimension into this same territory. The feeling, the instinctual response, the care and holding; all of it is directed through the 7th house, toward me, his partner.
My husband was also going through a Nodal return like I was (a soul-level recalibration) and in his case his dharmic direction across this lifetime runs fundamentally through partnership and committed relationship. A 7th house North Node is a clear signature of someone whose growth lies in the territory of the other - in learning to show up fully in relationship, in finding the self through genuine encounter with a partner rather than through purely autonomous self-development. So with the Nodal return, the recalibration is his capacity to show up as a partner, to be present, to hold and navigate the transformation of our marriage through deep and intense grief. It's also the relational contract between the two of us that is being recalibrated at the soul level as part of his dharma in this lifetime.
Transiting Uranus was also squaring his natal Moon and this affected his emotional foundation, home environment and nurturing world on a very personal level. It was restructuring his inner life and his sense of domestic security in the most sudden and disruptive way, the Uranian way. The household that existed before the death and the household after are emotionally different environments, and he was having to adjust and reorganize his emotional self-understanding as a result.
And now a look at my mother's chart. I don't know her birth time so I can't speak to any house placements for her but the aspects speak for themselves profoundly. On the day she chose to end her life, transiting Pluto, Neptune AND Saturn were all inconjunct her natal Saturn. The inconjunct aspect hasn't been mentioned by name but it has been described as the inability to integrate energies without having to make some kind of total readjustment - a relationship or situation that can no longer exist in its current form. It was mentioned in my chart as well as my sister's firstborn's. Seeing these aspects in her chart I knew that they were speaking of an ending, a release, a letting go. And in her case in the most profound and irreversible way possible. I want to stress that an inconjunct aspect is not always a signature of death but in my mother's case it certainly was, especially as it was her natal Saturn that was receiving all this energy from Pluto, Neptune and Saturn in the sky. Saturn as a planet is all about structure and boundaries. We exist, one could say, in this material realm because of what Saturn represents - the body's structural integrity and physical foundation, the bones and the architecture of the physical form, time and the accumulation of years, established order and what has been built across a lifetime. When Saturn is the focal point of multiple simultaneous inconjuncts, there's a quality of the physical and structural foundation being pulled in multiple directions it cannot reconcile with simultaneously. The body - Saturn - is being asked to adjust to pressures it cannot accommodate within its existing form. Without going into too much detail on what each planet was contributing, I will summarize it with the following:
Pluto was forcing a restructuring of what Saturn had built. The deep transformational force of dissolution was in irreversible misalignment with the physical structural foundation of my mother's existence. The container (body) could not hold.
Neptune is the dissolution of the physical form, the softening of the boundary between the incarnate and the non-incarnate, the return of the structured individual self to the larger undifferentiated field. The soul releasing from the body is, in symbolic terms, Neptune finally resolving its inconjunct with Saturn by dissolving the very structure Saturn represents. And in the battle between an inconjunct with Neptune and Saturn, Neptune usually wins.
Saturn meeting Saturn in an inconjunct describes a moment where the accumulated weight of time, obligation, and structural reality is in fundamental misalignment with the foundational structure as originally established. The life that has been built, the years, the commitments, the physical form as it exists now cannot be reconciled with the original blueprint.
Three heavy-weight planets making an inconjunct to the same natal planet in a chart is incredibly heavy...one of these aspects on its own would not necessarily signify death but together, creating this pressure on an individual...I can only imagine how my mother felt that there was no other way out than taking the path she did. Inconjuncts are notoriously challenging to work through and in transit work, they usually always describe moments or events where endings/release happen.
Not only was she dealing with these specific aspects which must have been intolerable on their own, transiting Uranus was also applying pressure in the form of an opposition to her natal Chiron. Chiron, as mentioned earlier, is where we experience our deepest wounds. It describes where we carry our deepest unhealed pain across a lifetime. Something that hurts in a way that can't be fixed, that has to be lived with rather than resolved, and that shapes a person's relationship to suffering, healing, and the impermanence of wholeness. Since I don't know her birth time I don't know which house it was in but I do know that she had Chiron in Virgo. Virgo at its essence is the sign of discernment, of refinement, of the attempt to bring things into their most correct and functional form. It governs the relationship between the self and the standard, the gap between what is and what should be, between the imperfect reality and the ideal toward which one strives. Virgo is also the sign most intimately connected with the body as a system that must be maintained, attended to, and kept in order. It is associated with health, the integrity of physical functioning, service, and the relationship between wholeness and the flaws that disrupt it. A Chiron in Virgo wound can manifest in the following ways:
a deep and abiding sense of not being good enough
a wounded relationship with the physical body
a wound around service and usefulness
a hypercritical inner voice directed primarily at the self
a sense of being broken in some fundamental way that cannot be fixed
I cannot emphasize how ALL of these wounds were very much a part of how my mother saw herself. She often lamented over being a burden, over not being/doing more for us, of being helpless and of how broken her body was. Our last conversation centered around the latter. This is also where True Sidereal validates itself as her Chiron would have been in Scorpio in the Tropical system and everything that Chiron in Virgo represents is what my mother battled with for much of her life. And reflecting on the words she often used were very strongly Virgoan (when you start working with astrology deeply, you can actually hear the different energies through the words and phrases that people use that relate to each sign. I can literally hear Gemini or Virgo or Taurus energy coming through when people speak). Now add transiting Uranus making an opposition to all her felt, internalized wounds - the sudden unbearable activation of her wounds that had been carried across a lifetime, arriving with Uranian force in a way that couldn't be managed within the existing coping structures. Uranus was also retrograde during this time which adds further meaning and context - typically an opposition in transit work is an outer person or event that can precipitate something. But when planets go retrograde, it's much more internal. Uranus' disruptive and liberating force is being directed into the interior landscape, into the psychological and soul-level territory where the Chiron wound lives. Compounded with the above mentioned inconjuncts, the internal pressure must have been tremendous.
If you've been with me this far...thank you. Thank you for taking the time to read the celestial interpretations of what was happening for our family that day. Discovering and pulling the various threads of all our charts for this incredibly tragic event has helped release deeper grief that has stayed stuck, and the part of me that has wanted an answer of some kind. Some of you might be wondering why knowing any of this even helps. It does. In a way that touches something deep within me by providing further closure. I will never know what my mother was going through before she made the fateful decision to end her life but understanding the transits that were happening and the way that they were corresponding with her chart, gives me just an inkling of how she must have felt defeat in the face of this surmounting internal weight and pressure.
It has been a journey going back to that day and looking at all our charts. Alone, each aspect doesn't always make sense...but together, all the aspects and all the charts tell a very cohesive and coherent story. The point isn't necessarily to be on the lookout for these things (and honestly, I don't believe this is the way astrology should be used) but to be able to reach deeper understanding and compassion in hindsight. To gain further closure if possible. I knew, with all my heart, that the day my mother died would be seen in the stars and sky if I looked...and this is the evidence of it.
