Something is shifting, and I think a lot of us can feel it. More people are admitting that the deal we were handed doesn't work. Eight-plus hours a day given to a job, with family and friends getting whatever is left over and our own lives coming last, was never a great arrangement. Now it isn't even workable. So people are planting gardens, looking for land, and trying to build small circles of people they trust, away from a system that has been wearing them down.

A lot of this energy comes from my generation. In astrology, millennials born between roughly 1983 and 1995 are the Pluto in Scorpio generation. Pluto rules death, rebirth, power, taboo, and everything buried underneath the surface, and Scorpio is the sign where Pluto is most at home. It's no accident that we're the generation that made therapy ordinary. We dug up family secrets, named generational trauma, and stopped pretending everything was fine. That matters, and I'm grateful for it.

But every gift has a shadow, and this one has a few.

When self-love turns into self-obsession

Therapy language went mainstream faster before the wisdom behind it could catch up. "Boundaries," "capacity," "protecting my peace," and "that's not my responsibility" are useful ideas. They're also easy to turn into a polite way of saying no to everything. Somewhere along the way, selfishness started wearing the costume of self-love.

Carl Jung called the process of becoming a whole person individuation. It means separating from the voices you inherited from your parents, your culture, and your religion, and examining which beliefs are actually yours. You become sovereign. Real individuation makes you more loving, because you're no longer acting out of fear or obligation. What I see now is often the reverse. People get stuck in the first half, the "what do I need" part, and never arrive at the second, which is "what can I offer."

I want to be clear that I'm not criticizing the process. We can't reach maturity in a neat line. We get there by stumbling, overcorrecting, and learning. That's human, and it's fine. But I think we need more voices showing what living in community looks like, because a lot of us have never seen it.

Community costs something

Having people who support you also means being a person others can lean on. You can't keep taking support while offering none, and you can't live as the main character of a story where everyone else is a supporting cast member.

Real community is inconvenient. Someone needs a ride at the wrong time. A friend calls during the one evening you'd blocked off for yourself. Life doesn't arrive in tidy boxes, and needs spill over into each other. Sometimes you set aside what you wanted to do, or loosen an expectation you had, because someone you love needs you.

The closest I can come to explaining this is how giving feels from the inside. When a friend was going through a breakup, I went hiking with him. When my father-in-law's lungs were bad, I made him herbal remedies. I offer guidance to friends and family who live far away, and whether they take it, or even say thanks, changes nothing for me. What I get out of it is the love I feel while I'm doing it, and that's all it takes. Nothing is required of the people I care about. I'm not sharing these as examples to admire. I'm sharing them because this is what community can feel like when the giving is its own reward, and anyone can reach for it.

The problem with "I'll give if I get"

I think one of the deepest things patriarchy taught us is that everything is an exchange. You give in order to receive, and you're only valuable if you can offer something in return. So even our kindness gets kept on a ledger. We calculate who owes whom, and we feel resentful when the books don't balance.

Heide Goettner-Abendroth, a German feminist who has spent decades studying matriarchal societies around the world, describes cultures built on a different logic, where resources circulate as gifts and status comes from how generously you share. The American peace activist, feminist, and philanthropist Genevieve Vaughan goes further in her book Women and the Gift Economy: A Radically Different Worldview Is Possible. She argues that the original economy is the gift economy of mothering, where a mother feeds a child with no invoice attached. Exchange, in her view, is a later overlay we've mistaken for human nature.

Think about what a mother does for a baby. Nobody expects the infant to pay it back. The care is simply given, and that is the model of love most of us came from. Some cultures do expect grown children to repay their parents, and that expectation is exactly the exchange mindset creeping back in. But the impulse of mothering, at its core, is the gift.

If I give and quietly wait for something back, I'm still operating inside the system I claim to be leaving. A heart-centered community can't be built on that. It has to be built by people who are grounded enough in themselves that they can give without a receipt.

Follow your own authority

This is where I want to be careful, because I'm not saying to give until you collapse. Martyrdom is another form of the same wound.

The wound is the belief that your worth has to be earned. The person who takes endlessly and the person who gives until they collapse are working from the same ledger. One collects, and the other pays in, hoping the balance will finally add up to being loved. Martyrdom can look generous, but underneath it is often a quiet invoice: look how much I gave, look what it cost me. That's why it so often ends in resentment. Giving without a receipt means there's no hidden account, even one you keep only in your own head. You give because something in you wants to, and you stop when your body says stop, without guilt.

The truth is we can't outsource the question of where our limits are. That includes therapy-speak, social media definitions of a boundary, and even astrology or other occult systems I love and work with. They can be useful mirrors, but none of them is the authority. The only reliable guide is your own inner knowing. If you've done real work on yourself, your body will tell you clearly when you've reached your limit, and you should honor that. But you'll also be able to tell the difference between a true limit and plain discomfort.

I also want to acknowledge that some people have boundaries because they were badly hurt, and those boundaries are sacred. People who survived abuse or neglect shouldn't be told to simply open up. But for those of us who have healed enough to stand steadily, there's a next step, and it asks more of us.

The descent and the return

The old myths are full of people who go into the underworld: Inanna, Persephone, Aeneas. They descend, face what's down there, and the journey only counts if they come back up with something to offer. The return is where the work becomes useful to anyone else.

Here's my call to the ones who've done the descent.

You know who you are. You sat in the dark, did the work, and came back up. Your body tells you the truth about your limits now. Good. Now use that steadiness for something bigger than your own comfort.

Stop waiting for the perfect leader to appear. Community doesn't get built by the loudest voice or the best theory. It gets built by the person who shows up with food when a friend is falling apart, who picks up the phone at the inconvenient hour, who gives and never mentions it again.

Go first. Get inconvenienced on purpose. Love bigger than feels comfortable, and skip the receipt.

People are starving for a living example of what this looks like. I can feel the pull toward it in myself, and if you're feeling it too, that's your sign. Step up.