Hello and welcome to the Cosmic Nomad.
I'm your host, Bailey Rushlow, and this is a space for the
curious and the heart lead where we explore the human experience
through travel, nature, spirituality and real life
transformation through beautiful conversations.
As I discover my way of living what I call an inspired life, I
share the practices, stories, and perspectives that have
helped guide me back to myself. Hello everyone, and welcome to
today's episode. I'm so glad you're here and I'm
so happy to announce that this is my first recorded episode in
my new Cassita, my new home. I'm so happy to be here.
It is exactly what I wanted, exactly what I was hoping for.
It is full of natural light and plants.
It's full of big beautiful windows, a perfect space for
recording, and it's in a part of town that I love so I don't know
what more I could ask for. 0 and AU shaped kitchen.
That was very specific to me and it happened in my last house.
I was very specific about something totally random, but I
wanted, I don't know what they're called actually, but the
windows, Oh, skylights. I wanted skylights in my house,
like with the windows on the roof, that light could come in
and it had that and it was amazing.
But now I really wanted to have something a little bit more of
an open space. That one was pretty close and
cozy and woomy, but this one is a lot more open and expansive,
which feels very aligned with the season that I'm in.
And part of that is because my Saturn return has ended, and
everyone collectively lets out a large sigh in gratitude that I
made it through. Through the wilderness, you
know? And now, not that I consider
myself an expert by any means on the subject of the Saturn
return, but I think I do bring an interesting perspective to
the table having just kind of wrapped mine up and I'm in the
integration phase of the intensity that was the last two
years. So I want to jump into what is
the Saturn return? How does it apply to literally
every person? You do not have to be a 29 year
old woman to relate to this, but we're going to talk about yeah,
Saturn and who is it? What is it?
Why does it happen? How do we feel it?
Why do we feel it? What do we expect?
And then how do we transform the lessons that we've learned into
deeper freedom and alignment? So welcome to today.
Let's take a deep breath together before we jump in and
find somewhere cozy that you can listen to this podcast.
I was about to record and I looked at my desk and I thought,
this looks so uninspiring right now because I'm still kind of
unpacking. So I got a wine glass from the
kitchen and I poured myself some coconut water.
I have candles lit, I have crocheted coasters.
I've got a little weed present. I've got this inhaler that I got
from Thailand. Basically it's like eucalyptus
and mint and you just breathe it in deeply and it smells so good.
I've got a plant draped around. I've got my notes in front of
me. So it's looking a little better
now. It's feeling more fun and
creative for us to have this conversation today, so do what
you need to do to make your space cozy.
If you've listened to episode 3, it is all about romanticizing
your life and why those little things matter and they're not
actually a waste of time, but they make a huge difference in
our world. So all right, deep breath with
me. Exhale out on a sound like a
sigh. OK.
Let's do it again. We can do better.
Ready. Just drop your shoulders, loosen
your jaw, relax your hands, shake them out.
Put your feet on the ground. Just observe what is around you.
What do you smell? What do you sense?
What do you hear in the background?
The atmosphere of your home just brings us a little deeper into
the present moment when we recognize our senses and when we
sigh on the exhale like that, it's actually a way of
regulating our nervous system and activating our vagus nerve
and allowing ourselves to come into a deeper state of presence.
OK, so now that we are here, let's jump into the Saturn
return. Saturn is the Crone medicine
woman of our solar system. Her energy is like a shamanic
initiator into deeper growth. I experience her as someone that
realigns you to your truth, dismantles your ego and points
you back to yourself and your true soul.
And she has so much work, I think, to align us and realign
us to our true north. Because we don't live in, you
know, aligned places in community and relationships,
typically some of us have elements of that.
But as a society, we are so far removed from being in right
relationship with the earth around us, people around us,
community around us, usually that, you know, you typically we
would have elders in our society that we learn from that we spend
time with and maybe you do in your life.
And if you do, that is incredible.
I hope that you're learning from them.
I hope you're asking deeper questions.
But for a lot of us, we don't have either family members that
live close that are older than us, grandparents, that kind of
thing, or elders in our community that are taking us
under their wing and teaching us lessons and sharing their
wisdom. And so Saturn has a lot of work
to do in our lives, and she takes 28 years to make a full
orbit into the place that she was in when you were born.
Does that make sense? So when you were born, Saturn
was in a specific place in the sky, and it takes 29 years for
her to get back to that same place.
And that's what we consider the quote Saturn return.
And because she comes around every 2829 years, typically she
would come around 1-2 or even three times in your lifetime.
So you don't even just go through 1 Saturn return.
You actually go through three when you are 2829, when you are
5859 and when you are 88 and 89. So it's, it's every 30 years.
So when you are 2020720829, right.
These ages that I've just just come through.
If you're, if you are younger than that, please take some
notes in this episode and prepare yourself for an
incredible experience because it, it truly is, it's a life
changing time in your life. And if you want to to validate
that, I encourage you to go ask some people who are older than
you, 20-30 years older, and ask how it was for them during the
years. With that they turned 27/28/20,
9:30. What did those years hold?
And typically you will hear really profound answers like oh,
that was the time that I got married or that I got divorced,
that I had a miscarriage, That I will got out of my abusive
relationship, that I started my dream job, that I lost all of my
money, that I maybe lost family members, that I was in a car
accident, that I was fill in the blank.
I'm not saying all these things are are good or bad or or
anything else. They're just life experiences,
right? But they are all transformative
and ones that will shape the next 30 years of your life until
your next Saturn return. So if you are younger than this
age, please again take notes. If you are older than this age,
take notes for your next one because it's coming.
And I don't mean that with any kind of fear or panic.
I mean, oh, it's coming. It's it's exciting, you know,
and I'm speaking from experience because mine was a profound
initiation into deeper truth and responsibility and self
liberation. And Saturn doesn't come around
to destroy US, it it comes around to restructure.
So a lot of times if we have been ignoring what is
unsustainable in our life, whether that is relationships,
boundaries, habits, avoidance, Saturn will shine through right
there. She just shines a light right on
it. And so when you are able to lean
in earlier rather than later into that work that we all have
to do on ourselves and learn and to choose the responsibility and
self honesty, I think Saturn doesn't maybe have to hit quite
as hard. It's still going to be intense,
but I think it is less intense than if you have been avoiding
the work and not being honest with yourself and staying in
unsustainable relationships and situations and environments that
are not good for you and you know that they're not good for
you. Saturn's going to come around
and be like, baby, let me help you restructure.
It might be a little bit painful, but we're going to
remodel this whole energy. And again, I don't think that
Saturn is out to punish us. The idea of the Saturn return
gets a lot of really bad press because a lot of people said,
yeah, my whole life changed during my Saturn return.
And, and we associate change with being something bad, but
it's not bad. It is just a mirror.
And when we are already looking at our, at the parts of
ourselves that we have been avoiding potentially, you know,
Saturn doesn't have to bring the whole thing down.
But again, if you've been running from it, you have to
make a choice, you know, And I think for me, like I had already
been doing a lot of inner work before my Saturn return hit.
And I think that made it more of an, like an, an awakening, an
intense level of awakening to myself and to the world rather
than a collapse of everything. And so I have a series of
stories to tell you from my Saturn return as we, we're just
going to dive right into that. And I, I, I heard this idea once
of Saturn being like the teacher who grades you on the
participation of you showing up, you know, doing your homework,
asking the questions, and it's still going to test you, but
it's also going to respect your effort, you know, and if you are
skipping class, it will catch up with you.
So just do yourself, your future self a huge favour and stop
running from things that are that are you're aware of and
your subconscious that need to change.
Start changing them. Take one thing today and just
start it, you know, and and be like Bailey said, Bailey said
that I'm graded on my participation in this life.
So I need to be a part of it and not out of fear out of because
you get to and because I know that we don't like change very
much. Well, most of us don't, but we
really have to come to terms with remembering that it is the
only consistent thing in this life.
So not leaning into that is causing resistance in your life,
in your body. Lean in, baby, lean in.
And now let's jump into it. OK, this is a great place to
pause and go get a snack if you want.
If not, we will continue. So my sudden return began in the
spring of 2023. You can find out when yours
begins by putting in your birth chart information online and
find figuring it out. You can do it with ChatGPT.
You can do it just with different astrological websites
and it will tell you kind of what to look out for.
There's also highly recommend booking an actual session with
someone. The guest that I had on a few
weeks ago, my best friend Fatima, she is an astrologer and
actually does really beautiful readings for people.
If you are looking for a bit of support, another good friend of
mine is KJ Atlas. She has incredible, incredible
astrological tools and just a, just a beautiful way of
teaching. She actually did a session with
me before my Sodom return. So spring 2023, Philip and I
left Mexico. We went to Germany.
We picked up a camper van from Philip's parents and we hit the
open Rd. We literally we just van lifed
through Europe for three months. We went from Germany all the way
through Switzerland, France, Spain, Portugal and all the way
back up. The first route we did the
southern way and on the way up we did up through the north of
Spain and over back to Germany and it was a life changing
experience because I felt like for the first time I had a new
set of wings. It woke me up to how possible
freedom could be for me and what it could feel like being able to
wake up, walk into the kitchen space, prepare a cup of tea,
step outside my door and be on the grass on some beautiful land
underneath a castle on top of a hill in the South of Spain.
Right, like this all of a sudden was my reality and the emotional
and spiritual freedom that I felt in those months opened my
eyes to a new way of travel, a new way of being, a new
lifestyle that to this day is one of my favorite ways to
travel and actually how I spent a good part of my summer.
If you've listened to that episode, it is available with
all the travel stories. We also made several important
pilgrimages in the South of France, following in the
footsteps of the Rose lineage and Mary Magdalene, which was
the start of a spiritual initiation, remembering ancient
paths, reclaiming feminine wisdom and going together.
Philip and I both are in our Saturn Return at the same time.
At this point we were feeling into where we were being called
next collectively together. And yeah, getting to travel the
The Way of the Rose with him through France was a life
changing. We also went to spend a few
months in house sitting in England and house.
This is the first time that we've been house sitting and pet
sitting all summer and traveling without paying for
accommodation. That changed my life.
It's something I still do to this day.
We also went to Stonehenge for sunrise on the summer solstice.
The theme of a lot of this trip is not only freedom, but
expansion, communication, honesty.
We had some incredibly deep and powerful conversations during
this period about our relationship, about what we
wanted, about how we wanted to experience life together.
And those set us up for having been together now for five
years. And they were very pivotal and
important moments in our relationship that I look back on
fondly and with a lot of compassion and and love in my
heart for the versions of us laying awake late at night in
the van and having long talks about things.
And that led us into going to Barcelona and actually having
our van broken into while we were in the city and coming back
to everything being ransacked and gone through and our clothes
everywhere and our, our, it was awful.
It was awful. And it would felt so violating.
We just both were completely shook.
Our nervous systems were destroyed from that for a period
of time for sure. And we really had to come back
to each other and remember that we weren't alone in this
experience and pulled together. And luckily nothing really,
really valuable like our passports or anything were taken
because intuitively we knew to bring our stuff into the city
with us and just watch each other constantly.
And if we hadn't done that and left our things in the van, they
definitely would have been stolen.
So this is a classic Saturn return moment.
This is a test of attachment to things, to identity, to just
you're you're the the things that you feel are safe.
You know, you lock your door at night and you think we're going
to be safe, but it's just a door, right?
Like and and it really, I don't know, it shows you the.
How volatile everything really is in life, like safety and
security is sometimes just an illusion.
And that really was a huge test for me of loss and and
resilience and nervous system regulation.
Nervous. The nervous system has been a
huge theme through my Saturn return, and that was a huge test
of it right there. It's one reason why I love
talking about the nervous system now, because literally my Saturn
return put such a deep emphasis on how important my nervous
system is in my life. And through these stories that I
just told, like Saturn is showing me that freedom isn't
about escaping something or running away from something.
It's about presents and that it can look and feel different than
I ever imagined. So moving into Part 2, which is
the autumn and winter of 2023, I actually returned home for the
first time in several years back to Nashville.
And the lessons there are so, like, ancestral and familial,
you know, emotions and feelings resurfacing.
A place, a location, a home, a space that you were born in that
held you for many years of your life.
And now it doesn't really feel like home in the same way
anymore. And that's a very weird thing to
experience if you've ever experienced that, you know?
And going back was interesting because I was staying with my
dad, who lived in a totally new house.
Like the place that I had been to before was packed up.
All my stuff was out of sight. All my things were tucked away
in storage rooms. And when I had left previously,
I had left a room fully furnished in my dad's house with
all my stuff. And when they moved, they needed
to, you know, pack it up and change location, which is great.
I'm so glad that they did. The experience is so weird going
back into a house that it's not really yours, but your family
lives there. It's it's really weird.
A few months after that, I was helping my mom through surgery
that went unexpectedly bad, and she needed a lot of care.
And there was a lot of lessons in, you know, compassion and
emotional regulation for both of us.
And my mom was actually going through her Sodom return at the
same time that I was going through mine because we are 30
years apart. So that's very interesting.
So this whole period was about the responsibility aspect of, of
Saturn, less about the freedom and the travel and the expansion
and more about can you hold space, being an adult in hard
moments and a lot of internal growth, a lot of emotional
exhaustion and really just feeling like, OK, can I stay
open even when it's not beautiful and even when I'm
tired? Like, can I hold the same
reference for this? The, the, the mundane and the
stuff that's kind of uncomfortable and not as pretty
as much as I can for the mystical and the experiences
that I crave. And that leads us to Part 3,
early 2024. So 2024 began with A2 week trip
to LA where I went to visit my best friend Fatima who was a
guest on the podcast 2-3 episodes ago.
And this, this trip was just a reconnection for us, full of
joy, full circle moment. I actually met three friends of
mine who've been long term online friends for many years
and we actually met in person during this trip, which was very
profound. And I hadn't been there since
2020 to LA. So being there kind of a full
circle moment of being there, this version of myself, looking
back to the 2020 version of myself that was there before and
just making a lot of a lot of connection to that version of
this version. And just all the versions, you
know, and the community felt like it was really medicine for
me in this moment. My queer friend group that I
started here two years ago. So in 2023, and we actually
still meet up, we're still friends and they're some of my
closest friends here in the area.
And that started then I also got to sing at my first wedding,
which happened to be a queer wedding as well, which was so
special. The next Deep dive Part 4 is the
freedom again, freedom and expansion of learning how to
travel, this time with only a backpack.
My first ever backpack only trip, and we went for six months
to Southeast Asia. We spent a few months in
Thailand, a few months in Indonesia, time in the Maldives,
time in the Philippines. And right as this wonderful
season was coming to a close, I was arrested in Bali and spent a
week in jail. And this was probably the
deepest confrontation that I had with Saturn's return, which was
the it's the shadow, It's the the rules, the boundary, the
authority, the control. This was my like underworld
initiation through Saturn as the great archetype of the teacher
through consequence, and that came alive for me here.
And that was something that I've been integrating for the last
year. I just had my one year jail
adversary. It was it was profound.
It was very interesting to think, wow, one one year ago, it
was emotional and and beautiful. I also dyed my hair back to
brunette during this time because I've been blonde through
my whole Saturn return. Dyed my hair blonde in 2022, so
end of 2024. I am now returning back to my
brunette roots, which just symbolizes such a inner
reclamation of my journey. And the reflection here for me
was that Saturn stripped away everything that wasn't truth.
Like even my identity was rebuilt from the inside out,
even with my passport being taken, my phone being taken,
being under constant surveillance, having to pay back
a $30,000 fine, which I'm chipping away at as we go.
And it shook me and it shook my nervous system.
And there's a whole episode about this story if you want to
listen to it. It is episode 7 and I'm grateful
for the experience, but God damn, she was intense, you know,
and then, you know, part 5 of this is late 2024 into 2025, The
integration and this is the wisdom in the embodiment.
Am I going to embody this new freedom?
Am I going to do things the way that I used to that kind of
worked, or am I going to step into my power and into my voice?
Worked on several courses that were training me into to be a
facilitator of womb wisdom and teaching women and assisting
women through the process of understanding their womb and
their cyclical nature better. And I had two incredible
teachers during my Saturn return in those courses and they
changed my life and I'm so grateful for that.
So there for me there, there's definitely a gradual descent
into the shadow and into yourself and that is good.
It's good. It's good for you, I promise.
Even though it feels scary and intense, it is awakening
something in you that you have to have to go forward in life.
And it doesn't mean that you need to be in fear about it,
that you need to be scared of it, but to be aware of it with
reverence and to press into it with authenticity, integrity,
authority, and realizing that in the surrender to the process,
you are making it so much easier on yourself.
It's going to be more challenging when you resist the
flow and you resist being pulled under that current a little bit
and you're fighting and you're trying to get to the air and
you're trying to and you can't breathe and just stop.
Take a deep breath and remember that the current is going to
spit you out the other side. It's not to be feared.
It is simply to be aware of that you can move into with again
presence and authority and come out the other side with an even
greater autonomy and sense of self.
And you know when you'd air in your first Saturn return?
You're looking back over the last 30 years of life.
What have you learned? What what decisions have you
made? What choices got you here?
What relationships did you stay in too long?
What chances could you have taken?
What chances did you take? What jobs have you had?
How have you spent your time? How have you spent your energy?
Are you paying attention to your heart?
Are you listening to your body? These, these are these questions
that you have, right? These lessons that you are being
questioned on by Saturn. Then in your second Saturn
return, you're 575859 years old, different for everyone on when
it exactly hits in your chart. So that's why you have to look
it up yourself. But you're that age and now
you're looking back since your last Saturn return at around 30
and you're thinking, OK, what relationships have I been in?
Do I have kids? Did I choose to?
Did I not? Did I get married?
What is my relationship like to grief and time and family and so
much more. But then you skip ahead to
888990. How has life been for the last
30 years since you were 60? You've loved a lot.
You may have lost a lot. You're an elder now.
What have you learned to share with others?
What is the medicine that you have gleaned and gained from
your life story? And I hope that you have people
at this age to share your medicine with.
So Saturn comes around three times in life.
How will you interact with this energy?
Because it's going to happen kind of whether you expect it or
even whether you believe in it. You might even be hearing this
be like Bailey, I don't buy astrology.
I don't believe in any of this stuff.
That's totally fine. I do just encourage you though
to go and ask the people in your life, like I said in the
beginning, who are older than you, who have already been
through one if not 2 Saturn returns or even 3.
To think back to those 30 year chapters and say what was
shifting for you here? Because the people that I've
done that for all seem to go through massive transitions and
changes and awakenings to themselves.
A deeper remembrance, maybe a little, some trials and some
testing, some stuff they've got to go through.
But like, it's, it's really beautiful at the end.
And, and even it through the whole thing, you know, it's not
like it's just a couple years of intense terribleness.
It's interwoven with beauty, so much beauty.
Like I am coming out of this experience more grateful for my
life than ever before, more focused on my health and what
that looks like to have a spiritual hygiene, emotional
hygiene, environmental hygiene. What does it look like for me to
feel like I'm at home somewhere? I have become way more flexible
through this journey emotionally.
And I don't know, I think, I think Saturn invites you to take
yourself seriously and choose what's real and to honor the
work that it takes to become who you're meant to be.
And the more that you face what is asking to be healed in you, I
think the lessons will land a lot more gentle.
So if every soul has to meet Saturn at the crossroads three
times in a lifetime, then the question to ask is what do you
want to build that will last through this journey?
I experienced freedom and loss and love and surrender.
And now I'm on the other side and I see that this wasn't just
a big storm, you know, it really was.
It laid a clean foundation for me to start building the rest of
my life. And of course, I had already
been prepping for that for all of my 20s, but this gave me like
a whole new lease on life. And in a way.
And yeah, I'm I'm really grateful for it.
If you love the conversations that we are having in these
episodes and you want to go deeper, I would love to invite
you into the Cosmic Nomad Collective, which is my private
Patreon space where I share monthly guided meditations
created and spoken by me, gratitude list practices and
behind the scenes pieces of my life and creative journey.
And it's a great way to stay connected between episodes and
as well to support the art and energy that goes into creating
this podcast. Thank you so much for taking the
time to be here with me today, for listening, for sharing this
space. And if today's episode spoke to
something in you, please feel free to share it with a friend
who you think would also resonate and or leave a review.
It helps more than you know. I'll be back next Tuesday with
another episode. And until then, open heart, open
mind. Stay curious.