The World is Wild and So Are We: The Intricacies of Hope & Despair

I'm writing from my crone's cave, otherwise known as my COVID-19 sickbed.

I knew as soon as the symptoms started. The truth is, my body was so run down from the stress of changing jobs and managing the chaos of working in a school in a country with cases as high as they are. It was the perfect time for the virus to find me.

One of the most surprising things about healing from COVID has been the immensely painful emotions that it unearthed. Reflecting on it now, it seems obvious that such a thing would happen. For haven’t indigenous healers and physicians around the world always treated illness with a recognition of its emotional, spiritual, and communal dimensions?

Within me began to boil a deep rage, which led to grief and sorrow and a brief but powerful bout of despair. I pounded my pillows. I took a pen and scribbled into the pages of my notebook until I broke through. What about my rage? I wrote.

What do I do with this rage?

Rage at my employer for not allowing me to rest. Rage at these labor systems and institutions, under which we do not control our own bodies. Rage at the lack of value society places on our wellbeing and recovery. There was so much rage, and so much grief, and I was not sure what to do with it all. I must admit I did not express it very skillfully at first.

Then, I turned to the tarot. It was then that I looked up to the sky and realized the moon was full in Virgo, my natal moon-home. I surrendered, as I have learned to do under the full moon, into softness. I laid out Alexis J. Cunningfolk's full moon tarot spread, as I do each month.

And I felt myself being healed by the spirits of the cards. My grief and anger began to take form that felt both specific and useful (Virgo) and mysterious and compassionate (Pisces). I sat with the Queen of Cups, my beloved oceanic queen. I pulled out my phone and hit “record." And I shared what felt medicinal beyond my own experience, let the words pour out until there were no more words to be shared.

What emerged was a collective reading - messy, raw, honest, imperfect, and earnest.

A few notes about this reading.

First, the audio in this recording isn’t great. It is messy and wild and at times rambling. I understand that it will not be for everyone.

Second, in the recording, I misname Alexis J. Cunningfolk’s Lunar Apothecary, instead referring to her professional brand and equally wonderful website, Worts and Cunning. I highly recommend Alexis’s offerings and have learned so much from them.

Third, at one point, I mention how in the past three years I have realized the need to completely change the way we're living on this planet. Listening back, I am struck by this framing. I’m struck by the magnitude of the shift that has occurred in my perspective in the past several years and by the length of time (years! decades!) that my privilege allowed me to live with a sense of denial of or at least disconnection from the harsh realities of the harm caused by capitalism, racism, and colonialism. Indigenous communities, Black femininsts, and many others have been speaking to these injustices for a very long time. Are we finally listening?

This reading feels appropriate for the liminal, heart-wrenching space between Pisces and Aries season, between the end of one solar year and the beginning of another. Just hours from now, the sun will move into Aries and we will experience another renewal: the Spring Equinox.

Here in this in-between time, let us pause long enough to draw our attention to one intentional, slow, and refreshing breath. Let us be washed clean by our grief and our sorrow and by our wild and untamed love for this gorgeous world, for all that it could be, and for all that it is slowly, perhaps invisibly, becoming and unbecoming.

Happy Equinox! Happy Aries Season!