Eclipse Over Country Village

I decided not to make a video about the end of eclipse season, today's lunar eclipse, but rather to write about something vulnerable and heartfelt. It's a personal way of looking at the eclipse, and the changes in my life over the last year, about finding love, connection, and transformation amidst gut wrenching grief.

On this full moon lunar eclipse taking place in Taurus today I’m reflecting a lot about my family/childhood home. Today, I’m leaning on the knowing that being human means that sometimes we get our hearts broken, and sometimes everything just isn’t okay, and that’s okay, and through all the heartache, on the other side, there’s a clearing made for more to come in life.

Eclipses have a way of reminding us to let things go, to make room for changes, often sudden changes. There are so many emotions I’ve felt since June of 2021 when my paternal grandmother died, and over the last 14 months specifically since having Covid and my mom passing away in Sept. of 2021. Their deaths triggered a lot of changes for me personally, but there’s more I’m grieving, especially over the last 6 months and that is my maternal grandparents home going up for sale.

This home has been in my family for 60 years. It is the house that built me. It’s the one place that was secure in my childhood, it’s the foundation, and over the last year the foundation that I was built on is up for sale. This eclipse in Taurus has a lot to do with our personal values, our roots and foundation, how we see ourselves, what we’re comfortable with, our internal rhythms, and how we provide for ourselves. It’s also triggering Scorpio themes during this Samhain portal and Scorpio season, as well as the nodes in Taurus and Scorpio currently. Scorpio representing birth, death, and rebirth, transformation and transmutation, alchemy, shared resources, and the unconscious territory all seems to come into play personally when I think about the changes my life has been experiencing.

​When this house sells, the money that comes from it will be split between my aunt, my siblings, and me. There’s been every bit of turmoil and grief around this house selling that touch on very Taurus and Scorpio themes. Any time the pain of this last year is triggered, I remind myself that pain is inevitable and a part of life, change and loss are part of life, and so is grief. I don’t have to suffer endlessly though through grief. I can do things that help me to work through the pain, to focus on healing, and so I create. I turn pain to art, or in this case, collecting old photos.

Eclipses show us that there are natural endings in life that need to happen. Most of us are never really ready to let go of the things and people we love. Change isn’t often met with acceptance right away; we usually go through resistance at first and may even drag our feet till the very end. Eclipses teach us to surrender, grow, and change. These things we go through, when we have to say goodbye to certain parts of ourselves, certain places, or people that are important to us, they’re just moments in an entire lifetime, but sometimes these moments become part of shaping who we are, who we become, who we change into.

In the case of this home, it’s lasted lifetimes; it’s been in my family for generations. It’s welcomed babies, grandbabies, great grandbabies, its seen friends come and go, it’s held the tears of divorce, losses and deaths, and it’s a graveyard of pets for 60 years. It’s heard the laughter and joy that comes with graduations, birthdays, anniversaries, and holiday celebrations. It’s a kitchen sink where a mother turned grandmother; turned great grandmother has bathed or rather baptized so many babies in the “Country Village” way. It’s a backyard filled with memories of campouts and running through the sprinklers. It’s a front porch that has been like a mother’s lap, holding us and rocking us all as we go through the peaks and valleys of life.

There are new horizons for the members of this family and for new generations of this family that’ll never know this home, but such is life and the changes that come with it. For me, this home will forever be a part of my DNA, part of my lineage and part of my spirit.
The thing with Taurus is that time is a construct, and we learn that even with eclipses that move life along, Taurus reminds us that real change and more so acceptance has to unfold on its own. Scorpio shows us the emotional waters we sometimes have to be immersed in and truly feel our way through. The house hasn’t sold yet, but it will, when it’s meant to. I feel the very real internal weight of sorrow combined with the external pressures of life continuing to move forward, and I have to find a way to release expectations without losing hope, find a way to flow rather than resist, and that is very true of this eclipse and one of the lessons it brings with it.

 I’ve felt like Humpty Dumpty that fell off the wall over the last year. I’m cracked all to hell, and it fucking hurts, but I’m wide open at the same time and I feel so much light and love pouring in over me. I’m grieving and aching, but I’m healing, rebuilding, and I’m changing. As part of my processing, I’ve been working with photographs and family history, something I’ve always enjoyed, but currently feels supportive and helpful. Kind of in a way when you rub a sore muscle and it hurts, but in a good way, that’s how going through old photos has been lately.

At times, I find myself holding my breath, my shoulders tense, and my eyes fixated somewhere as I either drift off in memories or can’t seem to let the tears fall. Other times, I just smile, going through all of the images. My family, on either side, is far from perfect, but I instantly connect in to the love, to my ancestors, to feeling part of something bigger than just me but part of me, and I feel gratitude, compassion, and authenticity in such a profound way that is releases old hurts. It’s like having a way to paddle through the deep, emotional waters.

As I sit through this slideshow, it barely scratches the surface of so many lives touched, of all the memories here in this home, but it’s highlighting a pivotal shift in my life. I learn that although my mother is physically gone, and this home is empty and will be sold eventually, and that I’m feeling uprooted by grief, I’ve never been more secure in who I am and what I’m connected to than I have in my whole life.

I’m being transformed, just as Scorpio season would see to it, as will this eclipse, and the current astrological nodes, just as life will have it, and time will have it. The tide is turning.