A few days ago, I sat in a bright community hall with a view of a bay, surrounded by about forty strangers. I was on Iona, a small island off the west coast of Scotland, listening to the Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama talk about survival through the lens of beauty. Every day, he’d read us a poem, say, by Lucille Clifton, or Marie Howe, or Dunya Mikhail and we’d talk about it: how it moved us, the questions it raised. From that, we’d write our own poems, the first scraps. And as the sky outside changed, we began to share what we wrote. Over the span of a few days, we covered it all: death, loss, silence, conflict, heartache. I wouldn’t say it was fun, exactly. But there’s something to be said for being in community with a group of kind-hearted people and talk about the things that really matter, the things that gnaw at your soul.

On the morning of our fourth day together, Pádraig stood in the same sunlit spot he had stood in all week and gave us another sharp question:

Who in your life doesn’t answer you?

The day’s topic was ‘Desire’ and here we were, being thrown right into it. We were asked to ponder our one-way streets, those we have with the living and the dead and our pets and god and maybe famous people. I thought about writers I admire and the imaginary conversations I have with them. I thought about former lovers, things left unsaid. I thought about teachers, mentors, people I haven’t seen in years. And soon, my head was filled with both the feeling of want and the feeling of shame, and rejection. That awful sensation when you send a message to someone you really like and they leave you on read, forever.

We were instructed to choose one person from our desire-list and write them a series of postcards. We were instructed to be confident and honest. Strangely, doing this made the desire easier to bear. Here are some postcards I wrote to a meditation teacher I found online a few years ago. We’ve never met. I talk to her all the time in my head. I’ll call her ‘Josephine’.

Josephine,

Is it ok that I’m still

at the very beginning?

The pages gather dust.

Josephine,

I haven’t meditated for three days.

I don’t even miss it.

Instead, I think about visiting you

in the countryside.

Would you roll me a cigarette if I came by?

Doing this exercise starts to reveal how complicated our desires are: How we feel helpless and frustrated and lonely within them. But they also contain life, no?

Maybe you’d like to write your own series of postcards (that you never need to send, of course) and find out what it is you really yearn for. Or even just think about that question above.

We are in the middle of a Venus retrograde in Aries. It started on March 1 and will end on April 12, 2025. If ever there is a time to examine our desires and to let ourselves be drawn to the person or place or thing we really want, it’s a Venus retrograde. The planet of intimacy and values only does this every 18 months, and not always in the same sign. The last time Venus went retrograde in Aries (and Pisces) was eight years ago, between March 4th and April 15th, 2017. If you like, check your email archive or diary to see what came up for you then. What did you learn about intimacy, your values and beauty at the time?

Because much of it happens in the sign of Aries, this 2025 Venus retrograde is not subtle, like some of the other ones. Aries-energy is impulsive, confrontational, childlike and obvious. It’s also deeply courageous. If you find yourself gripped by strange new impulses, if you notice an instinct to upset the status quo, I say follow it with your whole heart. Speak the unacceptable words. Be the weirdo you were born to be. Because Desire, the deep one, the one you feel vulnerable and ashamed about, is no frivolous thing - it is the potent place of all we want to make manifest with our love. Venus retrograde is here to remind us of that.