This Is Exactly How Much Your Home’s Value Will Change in 2021, Experts Say

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Your Horoscope This Week: April 18, 2021

Astrology is the belief in and study of universal territory. The sky, its expanse, and the dark mystery beyond it are ungovernable. No matter how many shuttles and satellites compete to make a claim, the planets claim themselves. In astrology, we write the story of their relationships over and over. Because one body is near another, because one planet is illuminated by a grouping of stars. On Earth, our relationships are just as valuable but, on the only planet that sustains life, we destroy it. We say we love each other, but what good is what we say compared to what we allow? This week the police killed yet another unarmed person, a 13-year-old Latino boy. This month, 33 states have introduced over 100 bills against rights of transgender people. Bills that ban trans people from participating in sports, bills that keep trans kids from accessing affirming healthcare, bills that want to remove trans kids from their supportive families. A people policed to death is a people for whom the carceral state is a past life. What if we began our new life now, and agreed that there will be abolition? We, who can feel the rumble and pulse of it begging beneath the concrete. What if we refuse the law of the land when it means to harm the people of the land? What if we are to become ungovernable, like planets, we who know another way is not only possible but inevitable. If you feel small, if you feel far from it, take a look at Pluto’s distant influence. If we are to believe that the planets and asteroids and stars have their power, then imagine what the influence of all our bodies might be. While Pluto works on our values, pitting fear against faith, Saturn and Uranus continue to square off. A minor trine between Mars, Jupiter, and the Sun plus Mercury is our weekly reminder that our actions and rituals have a far-reaching impact, especially for the younger ones who will survive us. Each step we take presses down a new path. Aries Sun & Aries RisingWhen the world gets heavy, people reach for something big to believe in, but you don’t have to believe in God, if God doesn’t suit. You don’t even have to believe in The Universe or anything invisible above or below you. You just have to believe in yourself — in what you see for yourself, and what you want badly enough for yourself to go hard. You have to believe that you have what it takes to raise the child in you and that you’ve earned the right to let the protector rest. What some think of as divine is no bigger, no more sacred, than the work of loving your whole self.Illustration by Stefhany LozanoTaurus Sun & Taurus RisingYou are allowed to feel like one of the lucky ones and still be unsatisfied. You’re allowed to want something more for yourself, even if you can’t articulate what that something is quite yet or how you’re gonna get it. What if dissatisfaction is a sign of life? What if it’s proof of all the pleasures waiting for you on the other side of complacency? It’s better, Taurus, for you to be honest than be humble, better for you to be human than a hero. Otherwise, you might find yourself subconsciously bulldozing what you have to make way for something that you don’t. Illustration by Stefhany LozanoGemini Sun & Gemini RisingIt’s not all a crapshoot, even if it feels like one on days when nothing plays out like you’d rather it did. While it might not be evident right away, there are always a few stakes in the game and consequences to your actions. It’s like Neko Case sang, “time’s a revelator” — eventually, we come to the end of a thread we’ve been holding without realizing it. Don’t let this stop you in your tracks, Gemini, let it give you perspective. Yes, the hurt matters, the mistakes you’ve made matter and they won’t pass unnoticed. But so does the good you’ve done and want to do.Illustration by Stefhany LozanoCancer Sun & Cancer RisingIt can feel selfish to trust your gut instincts and make decisions about what’s right for you — not what you wish felt right, or what someone else needs you to feel. In fact, when someone else’s feelings are in the mix, prioritizing your own viewpoint and values can feel like discounting theirs. But, it isn’t. No one benefits from your decisions to do things that don’t feel good or right to you. No one gets to experience you at your best that way. Besides, you should know by now to trust your intuition and never underestimate it. It’s a tool that works better the more you use it. Illustration by Stefhany LozanoLeo Sun & Leo RisingIf healing isn’t linear then neither is the path we take toward it. If we can fall off the wagon and get back on, if we can cut ties with people who cause us harm and then hastily sew those ties together in a moment of desperation before remembering why we left to begin with, we can forgive ourselves for losing faith in our ability to learn a new way to live and relate to others. When you get angry at yourself for all the ways you wish you could show up, slow down and find one way. You don’t have to be all in all at once, but when you’re up for it, your ride is here to pick you up.Illustration by Stefhany LozanoVirgo Sun & Virgo RisingIt’s only natural that what felt good to you once might no longer do the trick. Human beings are agents of change and under certain world-defining and delaying circumstances, only more so. With all that time for introspection, some personal shifts might have experienced an acceleration process. But, it takes a while for the mind to catch up with the body, to put into language what might have at first seemed like a hiccup in the spirit. It can feel like the body knows something that we don’t. What you feel is more trustworthy and valuable than what you want to feel.Illustration by Stefhany LozanoLibra Sun & Libra RisingA body needs to use or release what it stores. The materials are easy enough to identify: tears, mucus, waste. But the body is full of systems that produce responses harder to see, like the endocrine system, the sympathetic nervous system, and our immune systems. Like Libra people, these systems work as mediators, communicating between stimulus and stimulated. But, unlike Libra people, these systems want to process and let go, because when they can’t release, they suffer. When you’re wondering whether to hold on or let go, look to your body for guidance. Illustration by Stefhany LozanoScorpio Sun & Scorpio RisingLike the dream of a past life, hopeful buds are showing up along the wintered tree of you. A week full of beautiful reminders, that relationships and projects you thought dead were simply dormant, germinating under the cover of darkness. It’s enough to welcome what returns, to regard the cycling nature of all things — including the patterns of others. A budding tree will come to bloom whether you watch it or not and after its bloom, it will shed and go on about the business of greenness. If certain absences hurt you, if opening again scares you, just hang back and let time do its work.Illustration by Stefhany LozanoSagittarius Sun & Sagittarius RisingOf course you know how to stay busy, how to lend your time to whatever problem crops up. And, it’s true that staying busy can do wonders for those of us who, left to leisure, are also left with an emotional state we’d rather let alone. But busying oneself with whatever is furthest from the spirit is a fool’s errand, you know that. You will never stay busy enough. This week might be full of people and places demanding you make good on your work, and you will. But if you don’t make time to keep the promises you’ve made to yourself, your word won’t be worth very much to you.Illustration by Stefhany LozanoCapricorn Sun & Capricorn RisingIt’s time for you to express yourself, Capricorn, to stand in the light of the golden hour. So much of this month has been about setting your limits and figuring out what you don’t want. Don’t you think it’s time for you to not only figure out what you DO want, but actively set out after it? Of course the time between invocation and reception can be slower than some might like, but you know how to be patient if the reward is good enough. You’ve been putting the pieces in place for everyone else long enough, set the dominoes to spell your own name and give the first one a push.Illustration by Stefhany LozanoAquarius Sun & Aquarius RisingThere are months that ask you to rest and months that show you what that rest was for. Rest is a process necessary for both body and mind. Rest can be sleeping in or declining invitations or taking trips to the seaside for salt air. Rest is, no matter how you come to it, a gathering of strength, and it can be taken alongside the daily grind or outside of it entirely. My hope for you, Aquarius, is that you’ve taken your rest seriously and sacredly, because within it were lessons for the work you’re endeavoring upon now. The work comes from that rest; it’s possible because of it.Illustration by Stefhany LozanoPisces Sun & Pisces RisingWe shouldn’t have to choose between what makes financial sense and what makes sense collectively and, in a perfect world, our lives could be easily built in service to the communities we love and care for. But, because this isn’t a perfect world and because some resources are finite, it’s important to approach long-term plans as if they are exactly that — long term. While some situations require immediate response, your present day solutions need not define your vision for the future. You can take care of yourself now without jeopardizing your big beautiful dream.Illustration by Stefhany LozanoLike what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?Charge Your Vibrators: Venus Is In TaurusObsessed With Astrology? Thank TikTok — & COVIDHow Important Is Your Roommate’s Zodiac Sign?