By Amanda Moreno

The theme of letting go has been present in my life for some time. Perhaps the entirety of my 36 years — it gets hard to tell sometimes. This eclipse season seems to have plunged me into new depths in the cycle, and for that reason I’m not entirely fond of it even if I’m of the opinion that everything happens for a reason.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

You see, I’m kind of sick of letting go. Maybe that’s the point. As my life becomes increasingly Neptunized, I’m becoming intimately acquainted with the disillusionment and despair qualities of our foggy overlord.

The latest plunge even has me letting go of the hope factor, getting down to realities I’m not sure I want to face and that I’m pretty positive I have no choice but to step up to. Sometimes it feels as if I’m being taunted as well: Which realities do I have to face? Which are illusions? What is being tested here and why? Reminds me of the subtitle of Maurice Fernandez’s Neptune book: The End of Hope the Beginning of Truth.

It’s hard to write this stuff without sounding totally fatalistic in ways that might set off alarms. I assure you — and most importantly my mom, who is likely reading this — that I’m still a functional human being, even though I crave more time to just stay holed up in bed and sleep. The thing is, I know I wouldn’t sleep. I would lie there and ruminate and analyze and probably end up far more brooding and melancholy than I am.

I’ve seen astrologers write about the potential for feeling existential crisis during this eclipse season. An existential crisis is a moment at which an individual questions the very foundations of their life. I’d say that resonates at every level. Existential crisis is a new experience for me — I’m much more familiar with grief and the kind of despair that comes with that.

This is an experience that’s been punctuated with reprieves in the form of laughing fits with friends and entirely too much work to get done. I’m considering changing my ethos when it comes to using astrology to plan things — when you’re a person who apparently tends to feel quite deeply, it might make sense not to schedule one of the busiest weeks of the year when the astrology is highlighting so many points in your chart and saying: hey! You might be emotional the week that such-and-such-an-astrological-thing is happening! Beware!

Then again, that Virgo business is what’s grounding all that Pisces desperation and emptiness. As I make the decision to just hold myself through the process — to just be in it. I’m also recognizing that, in light of the fact that all of the mental elucidations of these transits are telling me to make concrete decisions, perhaps the most concrete decision I can make is to not make any decisions. Because of this, the requirement of keeping busy feels life saving. Clients and classes and grants, oh my! I’m also aware that pushing myself in this way when my energy is this off means that eating well, getting enough sleep and drinking lots of water are absolutely imperative to keeping my physical systems working.

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At an astrology lecture last week with Kristin Fontana, she mentioned the energy of transiting Saturn square the nodes as being that of coming to a breaking point, of facing the harsh reality of things that just are not working for us. Of being forced to take responsibility for the state of one’s life and where it’s going — and how much fear that can raise.

I’ve already unconsciously funneled fears into a few things that kind of blew apart as a result; but now that I’ve recognized the energies, I’m doing my best to slow down, be patient, and try to be responsive rather than reactive. I never knew what a life-lesson response versus reaction was for me. I’m just getting the gist of it now.

Surrender. Letting go. There are so many things we are called upon to let go of in our lives: objects and people and relationships, sure; but identities, dreams and emotional patterns as well. Hell, sometimes it’s even food preferences, or routes to work, or just seasonal plants or herbs we grow in our own yards. Put in that context I suppose letting go seems run of the mill.

But it’s such a complex process. The body holds on. It clings. It imprints tensions, the sources of which we lose track of over time. We adapt our body movements to work around those tensions, those pains. We brace ourselves. We change the way we exist in the world as our physicality attempts to shield us or protect us from outside physical or emotional harm — or the harm we cause ourselves.

I remember looking at the 2016 Mercury retrogrades at the beginning of the year, noticing they were all in earth elements, and seeing a recurring theme of taking care of the body. And yet, it’s taken me until mid-way through the third retrograde period to put the pieces together and remember the importance of bringing it back home to body — be it because I’m triggered and crying and need to come back to what is immediate and ‘real,’ or because I’m aware I’m taxed and need to feed myself well to keep my systems healthy.

Sitting at breakfast with a friend the other day, he asked me a question. I stopped, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath to listen to how my body was responding, and answered accordingly. He mentioned maybe writing poetry based on a process like that one. And I remembered at the beginning of the year I had said I’d like to honor my body in poetry, to write love songs to it, to listen to what it has to say and channel it out in that form. I never did it. How easily we forget all of our tools — perhaps another form of letting go. And yet, those tools are so vital during times of releasing and opening to the unknown.

As usual, I have some friends and clients mirroring these processes and experiencing similar things during this eclipse season; others are seemingly fine. If you are someone who is in the former camp, I send my love and hugs to you. I also send you a link that just gave me a hearty laugh and made me quite happy. There is, in fact, a WikiHow page for everything.

*Climacteric: (n) a critical period or event; (adj) having extreme and far-reaching implications or results; critical.