I woke up with a very tight neck and my lover holding me. I’m feeling the most secure I ever have. Even as things change around me. As people shift in and out. As the world spins and I don’t know what comes tomorrow. I’m singing “Bitter Sweet Symphony”.

I’ve never felt the energy of an eclipse so clearly before. Eclipses offer us an opportunity for change. The energy is shifted. The light constantly brought to us is allowed time to hide, to bring the shadow clearly in front of us, and to be integrated. We get to do something with it.

We had a total lunar eclipse last night, or this morning for anyone in Mountain Standard Time. Also known as the Blood Moon.

Eclipses fascinate me, and I swear I never actually saw one until I was like 22. I don’t ever remember eclipses happening younger than that. It wasn’t until I was in college that we got a total solar eclipse across North America, and I realized this was a powerful thing.

And a thing it is!

Scientifically, what’s happening is:

So during totality, the only light hitting the Moon is filtered, reddish sunlight, making it glow copper, rust, or that deep red.

And it’s very cool to know what’s actually happening on a molecular level, but you don’t need to understand that to appreciate and use the magic of the eclipse.

And over here, in my world, I’ve been pushing really hard for a new life. One with stability and security. One with land and beauty and a sheep farm. One where I have a husband, and he works a job that supports both of us so I can raise babies and just make art. And that’s all good and dandy and a beautiful thing to strive for, but that’s the thing that’s needed to shift: the striving, the pushing, the forcing something to happen because I’ve decided I NEED IT.

Because when I strive, like other high achievers, I just fucking go.

I push and push and push, I build the pressure, until there’s nothing left but the thing I had my eyes on. But often, the pressure does nothing but create tension. And when that tension can’t hold anymore, things usually just collapse. They break. They explode.

And it’s not a bad thing to know what you want and go for it. But it isn’t useful when what’s actually happening is you trying to control the future and everything around you. When you’ve decided this is the best thing for the world. When you’ve tried to play God with your life.

And in its wake, things are often harmed. Not improved. Not expanded.

We know this story. We probably all do it to some extent. But when you try to bend everything around you, you don’t leave any room for the mystery. You don’t leave any room for change and growth, in a different direction. You don’t get to move with the flow of energy.

And that’s not to say you’re supposed to do that all the time. There’s a time to push and a time to surrender. You have to discern which one you’re in. And the eclipse showed me, I’m still in neutral.

I know because when I take the pressure off, I feel relief. I feel freedom. And my direction is expansion, not contraction.

The eclipse brings us the energy that allows us change and transformation.

We can always change and transform, but the eclipses just make it easy.

Without effort, you get an energy that allows revelation, shadow integration, the bringing of the cycle of death and return, and the collective moment to just revel in the mystery.

There is medicine in all parts of nature and the cosmos. When you just pay attention, you’ll receive it. It’s taken me YEARS to realize this.

Below is just my interpretation of the medicine, but it is likely totally different for you. I always needed help to see and understand the medicine, so I offer this to you as a way to start seeing it:

What’s so beautiful about the eclipses is they are systems events. Not chaos but pattern disruption. A temporary obstruction in a relational field. Light doesn’t disappear; it reroutes. Order moves through interruption, through shadow, through refraction, and returns altered but intact.

It’s a reminder that nothing in the system stands alone. Not the Moon, not the Earth, not you. What looks like loss (loss of light) is often recalibration. What looks like darkness is filtration. The shadow is not the breakdown of the cycle; it is the part that makes the structure more visible.

And that’s what was in the shadow of my dream, the person next to me (and me), who I’ve come to love deeply, and want to continue to love. The person who needs to chart their own path, not just get wrapped up in mine. And the freedom to do that, for both of us.

I don’t want dogma, rules, or plans for me that put pressure on me, and I don’t want that for anyone. I think the best part of the spiritual path is the growth into sovereignty and autonomy. And if I can’t make sure my partner is allowed that, and that I retain my own, what the heck am I doing?

And my dream isn’t dying. It’s just getting a bit more mature about how and when it happens. The eclipse told me:

The eclipse let me see the shadow I was holding about charging forward on a plan for my own safety and security. Showing me that I really needed to actually back off. That there’s another person here with me who is going to go through a lot of change himself. We have a lot of power when we’re doing something out of fear.

But we love him, and we don’t want that.

We want him to evolve.

We want me to evolve!

We want joy to determine our life, not fear.

We want evolution and expansion.

We want becoming.

We want to stay in the place of potential and possibility (for now).

We want our love to survive change, not be forced into a mould.

Love,
Val

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