After the Eclipse

There are seasons when the sky changes and the woman changes with it.

The eclipse does not ask permission.

It takes the familiar shape of things and darkens it long enough for us to see what has been hiding in plain sight.

I have been sitting in that darkness.

Integrating.

Listening.

Watching the pieces of myself that have been sleeping begin to stir.

And perhaps I should have known.

When I bled on the Solar Eclipse in Leo, something in me knew that something powerful was coming into the light. There was something almost primal about it, as though the body knew before the mind could comprehend what was being revealed.

And then came the Lunar Eclipse in Pisces.

The closing.

The dissolving.

The completion of old karmic cycles that had been quietly reaching their natural ending.

It feels now as though these eclipses have bookended something profound.

The Solar Eclipse illuminated what needed to be seen.

The Lunar Eclipse began closing what could no longer continue.

And beneath all the revelations, there has been one truth circling me like a bird:

I am the Moon, yet I keep trying to be the Sun.

I know the Moon.

She is the woman who knows the language of cycles.

She knows when to disappear.

She knows when to swell.

She knows the wisdom of the dark.

She does not force herself into fullness simply because someone expects her to shine.

And yet I have spent years behaving like the Sun.

Giving.

Radiating.

Holding.

Feeding.

Being the warm place for everyone else to land.

There is a particular kind of seduction in being the woman who can do it all.

People trust her.

They need her.

They praise her strength.

And somewhere beneath it all, strength can become a cage disguised as virtue.

Because I can give.

Oh, how easily I can give.

My time.

My energy.

My attention.

My care.

My resources.

My heart.

But receiving?

Receiving has been the doorway I keep standing outside of.

For 7 years I have been sitting with this.

The guilt.

The discomfort.

The reflex to put someone else’s needs before mine.

The almost instantaneous movement towards suffering:

I’ll help.

I’ll carry it.

Give it to me.

And I know something about myself now.

I am a simple woman.

My needs are not extravagant.

But let me see someone hurting and the old machinery starts.

I reach.

I offer.

I sacrifice.

And the question that has been stalking me through this eclipse season is this:

When did sacrifice become synonymous with love?

The old story of the sacrificed woman

Jesus has been walking through my thoughts lately.

Not as doctrine.

As archetype.

The great teacher.

The one whose story has carried the weight of sacrifice across centuries.

And I keep wondering about the human being inside the mythology.

What happened inside him when he knew what was coming?

Did the human part of him tremble?

Did the ego resist?

Did he have to wrestle with the unbearable question of whether surrender meant giving himself completely away?

Because this is where I am finding my own inquiry.

Sacrifice and self abandonment can look similar from a distance.

But one is a conscious offering.

The other is the quiet disappearance of self.

Devotion asks us to give.

Self abandonment asks us to disappear.

And I am no longer interested in erasing myself in the name of love.

I have met this woman before.

I know her well.

I have sat with her, questioned her, loved her and watched her shape so many chapters of my life.

This isn’t a new discovery.

It feels more like something deeper is finally closing.

The eclipse seems to have illuminated a room beneath the room a place where an old story has continued to live long after I consciously understood it.

Something in me is dying, but it isn’t me.

It is the woman who learned that being indispensable was a form of safety, who turned exhaustion into evidence of devotion and quietly confused being needed with being loved.

She learned to give before anyone asked, to sense another person’s needs before they had spoken them and to make herself useful wherever usefulness became a language of belonging.

I don’t reject her.

She carried me here.

She knew how to survive, how to belong and how to make herself valuable in the places where being needed felt like love.

But I no longer need to live from her.

And this is what feels different now.

It isn’t the conscious mind telling me, I should stop doing this.

It is something deeper, beneath the thinking, loosening its grip.

An old agreement is expiring.

My body no longer wants to make a home inside that pattern.

The woman who once believed she had to carry the basket is discovering that she can put it down.

Not through force or another attempt at self improvement, but through the quiet recognition that the skin she once needed has simply become too small.

There is grief in that, because even the patterns that hurt us once protected us.

So I don’t want to destroy this woman.

I want to thank her. I want to lay flowers at her feet.

She brought me through.

And for the first time, I can feel the possibility of ease.

Like a snake leaving its old skin, the chapter doesn’t need to be fought to its ending.

It is simply no longer mine to wear.

Something is closing.

And what comes next doesn’t need to announce itself.

It only needs to be allowed to live.

That woman has served her purpose.

I bless her.

And I let her find room to breathe.

I remember the village

I come from a community based background.

The village lives somewhere deep in my bones.

There is an old intelligence there that modern life can make us forget.

The village knows that no one person carries the whole world.

Someone cooks.

Someone gathers.

Someone builds.

Someone watches the children.

Someone brings food.

Someone sits with the grieving.

Someone laughs.

Someone rests.

And tomorrow, the roles may change.

The basket passes from hand to hand.

That is the rhythm.

Give.

Receive.

Give.

Receive.

No shame.

No scorecard.

No invisible ledger calculating who owes whom.

Just the great human exchange.

I realise now how far I have travelled from that rhythm.

I learned to carry.

I learned to anticipate.

I learned to be capable.

I learned to make myself useful.

And now the world is moving us towards something different.

2027 carries a stronger current of individuality a movement away from defining ourselves solely through the tribe, towards discovering the sovereign self.

And I feel that initiation in my own bones.

But individuality is not isolation.

Sovereignty is not exile.

It is not:

I don’t need anyone.

It is:

I know who I am when I stand among everyone else.

I can love the village without becoming responsible for every person in it.

I can contribute without becoming the pillar holding up the roof.

I can belong without disappearing.

And this is where the healthy ego enters the room.

The healthy ego has teeth

I have been asking myself what a healthy ego actually looks like.

Maybe it isn’t the ego we need to kill.

Maybe it is the ego we need to educate.

A healthy ego has boundaries.

It has preferences.

It has desires.

It knows how to say:

No.

I don’t want that.

I’m tired.

I need help.

This belongs to you.

This belongs to me.

There is something wild about a woman who knows what is hers.

She does not apologise for her edges.

She does not soften herself into disappearance.

She does not offer her life as proof of her goodness.

She can love you fiercely and still leave your suffering in your own hands.

That is not cruelty.

That is sovereignty.

And sovereignty has been calling me.

Gate 40: The woman who finally puts the basket down

On the night of the lunar eclipse, we were moving through Gate 40.

The Gene Key moves through Exhaustion, Resolve and Divine Will.

I couldn’t have written a more precise mirror for what has been unfolding.

I know Exhaustion.

I have lived there before giving beyond my natural limits, carrying what isn’t mine, continuing because everyone has become accustomed to my going.

I’ll rest when this is done.

But there is always another thing.

Another person.

Another fire.

What feels different now is that I can catch it sooner.

I can feel the moment I begin to move away from myself, before the basket becomes too heavy, before giving turns into depletion.

This is where Resolve feels different to me.

It isn’t gritting my teeth and carrying on.

It is choosing not to abandon myself.

Putting the basket down while I still have the choice.

Saying:

I will not abandon myself to prove that I love you.

It is allowing others to carry their portion.

Receiving without immediately reaching for repayment.

Trusting that the world will continue turning while I lie beneath a tree.

And perhaps this is the doorway I am standing at now.

Not learning how to endure exhaustion.

Not becoming stronger so I can carry more.

But moving towards something quieter.

Divine Will.

The surrender beyond control.

The place where I stop trying to be the source.

The place where I remember:

I am not required to generate all the light.

And then the birds came

As if the universe wanted to make the message tangible, the birds began arriving.

First, a little brown honeyeater flew through my door.

I opened the window.

It found its way out.

Then another little visitor appeared, a female red-headed finch.

Again, I opened the way.

These birds did not need me to save them.

They needed an opening.

There is a difference.

And that difference has been teaching me something about love.

Sometimes love is not carrying someone out of the darkness.

Sometimes love is opening the window.

Creating space.

Offering safety.

And then trusting them to fly.

The honeyeater felt like nourishment.

Sweetness.

The medicine of taking in.

And the little finch carried something softer.

Feminine.

Small.

Untamed.

She reminded me that softness and sovereignty can live in the same body.

That delicacy does not mean weakness.

That the feminine does not have to become hard to become powerful.

The bird knew when to leave.

And I knew when to open the window.

Neither of us needed to carry the other.

The Moon does not apologise for her darkness

This is the part I am learning now.

I am the Moon.

And the Moon has no interest in performing constancy.

She disappears.

She returns.

She becomes enormous in the night sky and then slowly gives herself back to darkness.

She does not apologise for waning.

She does not call her darkness failure.

She understands something the Sun cannot teach her:

There is work that can only happen in the dark.

And my desire for rest has begun to feel less like exhaustion and more like instinct.

Like the Moon knowing when to disappear.

Like an animal retreating into the dark without questioning why.

Something in me simply knows when it is time to withdraw, to be still.

Rest no longer feels like something I have to earn.

It feels like a rhythm I am remembering.

A return to myself.

The wild woman returns

I think this is the shedding.

Not becoming more spiritual.

Not becoming more productive.

Not becoming a better version of the woman who already knows how to give.

Something much more radical is happening.

I am shedding the woman who survives by being useful.

The woman who measures love by sacrifice.

The woman who feels guilty when she receives.

The woman who believes everyone else’s needs are urgent and hers can wait.

The woman who keeps trying to become the Sun.

And underneath her is something older.

Something quieter.

Something with teeth.

The wild woman.

She knows her seasons.

She knows the village. She loves the village.

But she belongs to herself.

Perhaps this is the deeper initiation: not leaving the village, but finding the woman within it.

The woman with her own rhythm. Her own hunger. Her own boundaries. Her own wildness.

And the lesson for me is not that I need to give less.

It is that I need to stop measuring my worth by how much I can carry.

To notice when I am offering from love and when I am giving because I am afraid of what remains if I am no longer needed.

To stop filling every empty space.

To let someone else carry their own basket.

To let a need go unanswered when it is not mine to meet.

Because I am not the Sun.

I do not need to burn endlessly to prove that I am alive.

I am the Moon.

I receive.

I reflect.

I empty.

I fill.

I disappear.

I return.

And so, I am learning to put the basket down.

To rest without earning it.

To receive without immediately wondering how I will repay it.

To let my hands hold only what is mine.

And somewhere in the quiet,

the Moon remembers herself.

Big Hugs x

Lamisha