You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star. – Nietzche
If this was the movie of my life, this weekend would have been the scene on the bathroom floor. You know the one: the moment when it all gets too much and the heroine cries ugly tears locked away by herself in a room. The one right before profound change.
That was me this weekend.
I’m not telling you this so that you will feel sorry for me or so that you will say nice things in the comments. I’m telling you this because sometimes it all gets too much.
Two weeks ago I was feeling high with possibility. Quitting my job, creating magic, moving to another country, shedding layers of myself – both physically and metaphorically – seeing change happening, having profound moments of connection, all felt possible and good and they were happening.
But then I started getting chest pains.
And this weekend it hit me that all of that is happening. The joblessness, homelessness, selling our stuff, still being at work for three more months, the mess, the paperwork, not spending any time with my family this Christmas, the being a wife and daughter and sister and aunt and daughter-in-law and friend and boss and colleague, and maker-of-Christmas – and don’t even get me started on being a writer – and all of this opening up? It’s bloody exhausting and painful and then there is the guilt that I’m not doing any of it well enough. And this weekend the overwhelm was just too much.
Too much = ugly tears.
But here I am again this morning. I am up and I am going to work and things look a little brighter.
It can be so tempting to only show the shiny sides of ourselves. It can be so tempting to look at other people and see their edited version. But if we are to grow and to be and to embrace all of it, we are going to have to go there.
To the darkness.
Because only in the darkness can we see the stars.
xo
“At the end of the Tower the ego, the conscious idea of self, riddled with mistakes, regrets, illusions, delusions, untruths as well as truths, ideas, illusions of separateness, illusions of needs or instincts, of human life, they are blown completely away. The earth is blown away. The lie is exposed. And when that shell falls, when you find you cannot stand on that lie any more and you fall through the illusions that is self and life on earth and everything you know or knew begins to vanish and disappear, all will become black and empty and then, alone will be a single light. That is the truth. That is home. It is one. It is the Star. In the blackness that was the Tower the Star will guide you home. It is in the darkness that the Star shines brightest.” – Marie White – The Mary-El Tarot (The Star)
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