desire doesn’t promise safety
Sometimes I start with the astrology. Sometimes I start with a story, a feeling, a phrase. Sometimes I start with nothing.
It is often the nothing that scares me.
Or the story that there is ‘nothing’ here.
And yet as I sit down yet another time with no real idea of where this email might end up, one thing is for sure: there is no 'nothing' here.
There is always something, just whether you’re ready to admit what’s here.
This eclipse season has been a particular kind of intense for me. Not all eclipses affects everyone the same, depending on your personal placements and what is being activated for you. Eclipses signify endings and beginnings, acceleration of events outside of our control, often revealing shadowy material that we didn't have access to until the Sun and the Moon are occluded in the sky.
And on the cusp of Friday's lunar eclipse in Pisces, our last one in this nodal series for another 19 years, I am feeling hard into the trust fall nature of this lunation - the special lessons of grief, surrender and not knowing.
𓇢𓆸
I walked home after a impromptu stroll along the creek with a friend, the waxing gibbous Aquarius moon watching me at twilight. I listened to the Moon & I. I made pictures of flowers along the way, magnolias blooming in late winter.
The Sun and Mercury are now in Virgo, reminding me how devotion asks you to offer your energy to what matters to you: no matter how tedious, no matter how tiny.
In spite of the intensity this eclipse season, I felt the sun lighting up the skies, neighbours out walking, waters gushing, dogs and cats nuzzling up for pats.
Even in stormy weather, there is refuge.
Even as I navigate choppy emotional landscape, I notice how much more deft I am at navigating the stormy seas.
I think to myself: I am becoming a skilful sailor.
𓇢𓆸
Doors slamming in your face as No stings like seawater on an open wound.
Doors quietly closing as in: maybe it is time to trust that what is unseen does not make it less real, that devoting to your desires even when everything else is pointing another way could be how your body learns to build tolerance for safety in the unknown.
Doors closing as in maybe some things are just not resonant.
It takes audacity to admit that what you're doing is actually not what you really want.
When my friend asked me today: but did you really want it?
The surface answer is YesOfCourse!
The honest answer is... No…but I want what I think it offers me: a sense of safety.
𓇢𓆸
The perfect environment may not be at your doorstep, but what if you get to cultivate the capacity to create no matter what environment you find yourself in, conditions 'imperfect'?
Let the Pisces part of you trust what you cannot yet see.
Let the Virgo part of you discern what you do see.
As I walked home, I think about how my Venus return goes exact this Venus day, how Venusian medicine always offers me a balm every single day through the heartache of being human, if I am willing to notice.
Orienting back towards connection, orienting to where beauty peeks through the concrete cracks, orienting to what is already supporting me in present time, like my very capable adult self with sufficient capacity to write this email to you.
𓇢𓆸
Devotion continually brings me back. Devotion to my creative force, devotion to my creative work that asks of me to move through the hard thing with as much of myself as possible for this moment, even when what I can offer is only a drop of water in the entire ocean.
It has felt like moving through oceans of grief to arrive at this point.
To let myself know: maybe I don't always have to be in the best mood before I show up to create. Maybe I don't have to be feeling fly to write something real.
I am all about giving yourself permission to not do the thing.
AND I am all about offering yourself the container to show up and create the thing even when it feels goddamn difficult, while being present to what is alive in you without suppressing your needs.
When your devotion calls your soul forth like a siren song, denying the song only you can sing feels more shudder-inducing than fingernails scratching across a chalkboard.
When you create from the place where only you can sense the vision, you are bringing new possibilities into tangible form in linear time.
The upcoming Venus retrograde in Libra / Scorpio (Oct 3 - Nov 14) is a trust fall in relating to our true felt desires.
Venus wants you to create through your specific taste and preferences, through what you love.
Venus wants you to remember that connection is always available when you look for it.
Venus wants you to feel how your desire is the strongest magnet to create what you want to exist in the world.
Devoted to Desire is a three month immersion for romancing your creative praxis through embodied herbalism, somatic inquiry, yoga and astrology.
Join Ami and I to make space to channel your real-time experiences into a creative project of your choice. Some of you may already be in the midst of a project. Some of you may be sensing that you want to dedicate more time to your passions, instead of your problems.
Whatever it looks like, know that it is all welcome - your doubts about whether any of this matters, whether any of it is good enough, whether you are just adding to the ‘noise’.
This immersion is an offering to your desires, and what happens when it has space to be expressed into form - integrating your aliveness into shapes that nourishes the webs of relations you are part of.
Venus is clearing and composting surface desires into something real. Real is not always easy, but real is what waters the soil for the rose bush to blossom.
We begin Tuesday 8 September @ 7pm AEST, meet twice a month for a 2 hour workshops and once a month for co-creation circles. If you have any questions, just reply to this email :)
Early bird pricing closes tomorrow Thurs 27 August - hop in here if you're ready to romance your creative praxis.
Whatever your experience this eclipse season, may you surprise yourself with a lingering sense of wonder that you are still here, alive ♥︎
