Right before my last birthday, I went on a retreat at Stone Circles in Mebane, North Carolina. In my blog post about the experience, I mentioned that “everyone clucked over the fact that I was turning 28 – I’ve never heard the words “Saturn returns” so many times in my life.” Until that trip, in fact, I don’t think I’d even heard the phrase. The idea (according to Wikipedia) is:
An alleged phenomenon which is described as influencing a person’s life development at 27 to 29 or 30-year intervals…It is believed by astrologers that, as Saturn “returns” to the degree in its orbit occupied at the time of birth, a person crosses over a major threshold and enters the next stage of life. With the first Saturn return, a person leaves youth behind and enters adulthood.
One night around the dinner table, I asked my fellow retreat-goers where they were when they turned 28 and what transitions they went through in the year that followed. Even the people who were more skeptical about things like tarot cards and horoscopes were willing to share funny stories or recount growing pains they encountered around that time. So I thought, sure, the timing may feel arbitrary, but it could be fun to ask people in my life some questions about whether they think they “entered adulthood” at age 28, where they were, how their life did or didn’t change around that time, and so on.
So this week I’ll kick off a little series featuring interviews with people in my life reminiscing about their first return o’ Saturn. My goal is to publish 28 of these before my 29th birthday next month, so if you’re someone in my life and want to participate, please leave a comment or drop me an email.
juliacsmith 
Love this idea. My 28th year probably had more life events than the previous four or five years combined…I don’t think that a year ago I could have ever imagined where I’d be today…and I am starting to feel like a for real grown-up. Although I giggled for about 10 minutes while having coffee at Cafe Panis (tee hee) last week, so maybe grown-up is a stretch :) can’t wait to read these!
Love this idea!
Thanks, Alexis and E-monster!