Saturn Return: How To Embrace The Cosmic Chaos of Your 20s

Do you ever feel cheated by your 20s? They're often heralded as the "best times of our lives," but the reality is not so glamourous. And your Saturn Return could be to blame. 

For many of us, our late 20s/early 30s seem dominated by earth-shattering break-ups, risky career moves, and reluctant stints of sobriety – rather than the carefree hedonism we were promised. 

In 2019, Caggie Dunlop, then an actor and musician, experienced an unexpected (and unwelcome) relationship breakdown. In the next three years, her life was “turned upside down” as she navigated a career shift into the world of podcasting and started publicly sharing her spiritual journey. 

It was an especially vulnerable time, but embracing the uncertainty has paid off: Caggie's podcast Saturn Returns is widely popular, and today, she's releasing a book Saturn Returns: Your Cosmic Coming of Age, about how we can navigate the chaos of our 20s through understanding our Saturn Return. 

Here, Caggie speaks to GLAMOUR about the beauty and wisdom of ageing, the lessons we can learn from astrology, and why spinsters had the right idea all along… 

GLAMOUR: Hi Caggie! It's great to chat with you today. Let's start at the beginning… what is a Saturn Return?

Caggie: Your Saturn Return is something that happens in your late 20s as Saturn returns to the same place in the sky it was when you were born. Within astrology, that brings an initiation into adulthood as we have to go through these big life lessons. It's your cosmic coming of age when you come out the other side a more authentic, truthful version of who you are. 

If you've been living out of alignment – if you are in a career that's just not where you're supposed to be or with the wrong partner – a lot of that stuff just comes crumbling down quickly. Saturn is associated with calmer structure, boundaries, discipline, and responsibility, so if you haven't been living in Saturnian fashion, it can feel extra intense. 

For certain people that have been living in alignment and have been embodying those principles, it can just simply mean up-levelling, so it might mean a promotion, it might mean marriage or children or just things falling into place. But if you haven't, it will blow down your house of cards so you can build things on healthier foundations.

Can you talk about your own Saturn Return?

My Saturn return ended at the end of 2019, and I brought the podcast – Saturn Returns – out in early 2020. I was getting on with life, and then everything fell apart. A relationship fell apart that I really thought was going to be the person, my person. And then, I had a big career shift, and everything in my life was thrown upside down over those three years. It was definitely a challenging time where I felt very isolated, very confused, had big questions about my purpose and what I was supposed to be doing in life and felt like everyone was forming their life into some kind of meaning, and I was just being left behind.

“Regardless of your belief in astrology, turning 30 is such a big milestone because we have so many expectations and put so much pressure on ourselves around that time.”

I can see through doing the podcast now and speaking about these things how universal those feelings are. And actually, regardless of your belief in astrology, turning 30 is such a big milestone because we have so many expectations and put so much pressure on ourselves around that time, especially as women because we want to have careers and our independence. Still, then there's the narrative around the biological clock.

And then it feels like everything suddenly narrows, and that creates this intense pressure of time, which again is associated with Saturn. So we can have this feeling in our late 20s like everything is closing in on us, but then a lot of people you speak to when they turn 30, they actually have this, "Ah," and breathe. I believe we come into our womanhood around this time as well, as we initiate from the maiden archetype into the woman or the mother.

I love how the concept of a Saturn Return rejects the social idea that – as women – all our value lies in our early 20s, from anti-ageing beauty marketing to social pressures surrounding our “biological clock.” Is this something you were keen to examine in your book?

A big mission statement of mine is to empower women to recognise that life is actually just beginning because there are so many corrosive narratives that make us feel like we are ornaments who will only come to life once a man has picked us. And I know that's not always true, but it's still present, and I think that creates really unnecessary pressure. What I want the book to do is to empower people to reject all of that and to actually think about what they want, how they want to live their life and ignite that wild woman energy of “You are only just starting…”

If you think about how women are told basically not to age, and if you look at how men are treated as they're ageing, it's like “bachelor George Clooney”, do you know what I mean? Or women get dismissed as “spinsters.” Actually, spinster was a term that derived from a woman being able to earn independently from a man because they were the first ones to have jobs. I want to encourage women to feel whole and complete just on their own – without the need to have a partner or to be a mother if they don't want to, and to know that that is totally okay.

Have you incorporated this attitude into your life?

I spent a while – especially during the writing of this book – noticing all these things that just float around and then actively rejecting them, and I still have to fight it when people say, "But the pool gets really small for women at this age." I'm like, “No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't.” And when you start thinking like that, that's what starts happening and especially in the context of relationships. Love can find you at any moment, and it doesn't expire past your 30s.

I'm a far better well-rounded human being at this point in my life than I was at 25, and I hope that I will continue to grow in wisdom and invite ageing because it's such a privilege to be able to get older. I hate that women feel like they can't, and I think it's really got to change on an individual level and a personal one where, when people say that kind of stuff, just be like, “No, I'm not. I don't prescribe to that narrative. I'm not accepting it.”

Yeah, it's a super powerful thing once you start grappling with the idea that actually ageing is, like you say, a privilege. Was that something you had to grapple with? 

It was. I had to go against everything I'd been told; I was constantly thinking, "Is this belief really mine? No. Where did it come from, and why is it there?" I love beauty, but a lot of the beauty is just anti-ageing – it's constantly perpetuating this idea that we're not enough and that we need to achieve all these things, but we're also not allowed to age. And it's just impossible, but it's almost a revolutionary thing. The beauty industry would shut down if women were content and satisfied with themselves.

The beauty industry would shut down if women were content and satisfied with themselves.

I also love how you write about sobriety. Do you think there's a tendency for women to use alcohol as a kind of escape mechanism?

I don't know whether it's gender specific, but all I can say is that, from my own personal experience, I did use it as a tool for shape-shifting, being whoever I needed to be to fit in and be liked and loved by all. And alcohol was my means to do that, and that's why I had to abstain because I realized that I needed to remain anchored in the truthful, authentic version of who I was and I couldn't do that whilst drinking.

And that was my Saturn Return journey where I was like, "I know this isn't me, but I actually have no idea who I am." I let go of her so long ago and didn't see the value in just... If people said to me, like, "Oh, you can't be liked by everyone," I was horrified by that. I was like, "I have to be. Everyone has to like me, and if they don't, I can't cope." So for me, actually, sitting with the discomfort of remaining anchored and neutral, and some people thinking, "She's a bit whatever," was such a strange experience. 

On one hand I found it hard and you'd have to experience the social anxiety or whatever you are alleviating momentarily by drinking, but when you do, you actually have this bittersweet victory because you're like, "I know who I am."

In your book, you write about navigating fame in your early 20s as a cast member of Made In Chelsea. Does the publicity you're experiencing now feel any different to then? If so, how do you manage it? 

I would say that for a long time, I did shy away from the limelight or wanting to be in the press because I felt like sometimes the press is like... You can't control it. And I think in my early 20s, to tie in with everything we're talking about, it was like this version of myself or this entity that I'd crafted and definitely played a part in, sort of took over who I really was. And it was this really strange dichotomy where I was like, "That doesn't sound like me," or, "That's not how I see myself," but it just kind of took off. And then I describe it in the book as this kind of Jekyll and Hyde thing where I just felt really at odds with it. But now I feel a lot more grounded in who I am, so I feel a lot more confident and comfortable with sharing this stuff. It's a very different experience.

You work closely with Noura Bourni, who provides astrological insight for your podcast and throughout your book. Can you tell us more about your relationship? 

Noura was such a big part of my journey as my own personal spirit guide, and so I've loved bringing her into the work aspect and having her as the resident astrologer for Saturn Returns. I also think her words and her tone really complement mine, so you've got this beautiful mix in the book and the audiobook of her words and mine, and my life and the parallels of astrology. 

Saturn Returns: Your Cosmic Coming of Age by Caggie Dunlop is out on January 19th.

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