8 Things To Do to Survive 2026 + Horoscopes for Your Rising Sign

It's a year to raise a garden, raise your kids, & raise a glass

I saw a reel yesterday of a woman ranting about the problem with raising awareness that inspired me to write this post. (And I paraphrase):

“No more raising awareness in 2026.

Raise your kids, raise a garden, raise a glass of champagne… just stop raising awareness.

There’s enough awareness.”

She was being half-sarcastic and silly, but it made me nod and laugh. Because, while of course we need to keep circulating information and sharing things we’re passionate about, it is easier than ever these days to get fully overwhelmed or lost in the fray- especially with so much “fake news”, bots, and deepfakes out there in the awareness-raising field.

Note to self: My hot take on the latest political upheaval can wait… time to plant some plants with the fam.

True awareness is always needed, but the addictive practice of posting your hot take before putting clothes on or brushing your teeth in the morning has become the norm. This year, as the amount of information thrown at us to consume and have an opinion on multiplies like wildfire, we have to remember to slow down. To take care of ourselves (touch grass; start planting seeds for your garden), take care of our kin (I know from experience that raising children requires presence, folks) and keep bringing pleasure into our activism (raise that glass of non-alchoholic bubbly with your homies) so we don’t spin out in the endless spiral of the information age.

Tending our hearths (both our own tender heart spaces and our community fires) is imperative in such an action-oriented Fire Horse year. The goal is to find a center point of orientation, your very own eye of the hurricane, so that you can return to it easily and become harder to destabilize.

Here are a few ideas of things you can do to survive- and even thrive- by returning to your central hearth in the overlapping spirals of the year ahead.

1) Get into your body

If your nervous system is fried, you are, simply put, a propaganda sponge.

• Sleep like it is your job (but don’t get mad at yourself if it’s not a “full 8 hours”. Humans were built for naps and biphasic sleep, so get those winks in where you can!)

• Walk, stretch, breathe, lift, squat. Daily.

• Eat in a way that keeps your blood sugar steady.

• Reduce alcohol and doomscrolling. Yes, I know. Tragically effective.

2) Tighten your information diet

2026 energy is “meaning warfare,” and Gemini entering Uranus will only accelerates this.

• Pick 2–3 primary sources for news that you trust and stick to them.

• Stop consuming news as entertainment. Set a window of intake and don’t exceed it (20–30 min).

• Assume anything emotionally triggering is engineered to spread.

• Before sharing a news-byte, ask: “Do I know this is true? How do I know? and “Does it help?”

3) Build redundancy, not paranoia

You do not need a bunker. You do need margins of error.

• 3–6 months cash buffer if possible.

• Keep important documents organized and accessible.

• Basic preparedness: extra meds, potable water, power backups, car maintenance. (I always try to keep my car above a half tank of gas)

• Two income streams if you can manage it.

4) Invest in real relationships and local capacity

The future is less global village and more strong neighborhoods.

• Know your neighbors. Host skill-share gatherings. Get to know eachother. Build mutual aid.

• Join one in-person community: a gym, a spiritual group, a studio, or volunteer with an organization you care about.

• Be the person who shows up consistently. That’s the real influencer in the coming years.

5) Choose skills that compound

If your work depends on a fragile system, spend some energy diversifying into some high-resilience skills:

• Communication and teaching

• Technical fluency (AI tools, data, automation)

• Sales and negotiation

• Health and nervous-system regulation

• Repair, logistics, food growing, basic DIY

6) Pick a “north star” and build toward it

Saturn and Neptune in Aries reward the person who can answer: “Who am I and what do I serve, even when the paradigm changes around me?”

Write a simple code:

• What I want to do.

• What I absolutely will not do.

• What I am building in the next 12 months.

7) Make your life smaller and truer

We’ve been maximalists with FOMO for far too long- 2026 is the year of JOMO (joy of missing out).

• Make fewer commitments, and higher integrity ones.

• Fewer launches, more practice.

• Less performance, more craft.

8) Keep your world warm

When systems get cold, warmth becomes strategy. This is the philosophy of adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism, and it’s so important now.

• Cook food,

• Host friends

• Get into nature

• Make art

• Laugh

• Don’t live in permanent emergency mode.

Your 2026 checklist:

• Deep sleep and movement daily

• Limit your media diet, with reliable sources upgraded and saved

• Start creating a small financial buffer

• Work on one aspect of basic preparedness each week

• Join 1–2 strong active communities

• Learn one compounding skill

• Love yourself by setting real boundaries around chaotic people

• Write simple code of conduct (something like this that you can paste to your bathroom mirror:

I regulate myself before I react, making decisions only when I am rested and clear. I choose truth over drama and do not outsource my thinking to outrage, urgency, or crowds. I protect my time, energy, and finances with simple systems and clean boundaries, refusing guilt-based obligations and unnecesssary entanglements. I act in ways my child can trust, prioritize health as non-negotiable, and invest my effort in work, skills, and relationships that compound over time. I show up consistently, address conflict directly, decline false saviors and false emergencies, and choose integrity and coherence over approval, even when it is uncomfortable.

It’s a wild world out there, so one small step at a time, babes. Think of each of these actions as putting one stone around your hearthfire, giving you a place to stay warm amongst the spirals of politics and wandering stars.

With all that in mind, here’s a little star-mapping for your rising signs in 2026. Thanks for being here.

2026 Horoscopes for Each Rising Sign

(Whole-sign houses, with a little nervous-system strategy baked in.)

♈ Aries Rising

2026 brings a year of potent self-redefinition. Saturn and Neptune crossing 0° Aries in your 1st house is an identity initiation, where you stop narrating your life and start truly living inside it. Your presence becomes the message. Your body becomes the lie detector. If you want to survive the meaning-making-warfare of 2026, your first job is somatic coherence, because an unregulated nervous system will outsource its truth to urgency.