One eclipse later

And the big aha came...

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I’ll start by saying that we are in eclipse season. Of the 5 eclipses that happen this year in 2024, 1 has just happened and the next 2 will continue happening in the next month.

Solar and lunar eclipses are emotionally impactful. It is when everything that needs to be focused on comes out and the loudness of your soul can no longer be silenced. 

An eclipse happens when the sun, moon, and Earth line up, depending on which way they align determines what kind of eclipse we see. So energetically, the moon is known to bring out our (feminine) or emotional side-. and the sun is said to bring out our (masculine) or mental side. Either way, the eclipses have a huge pull on the tides of the Earth, and our bodies are also made up mostly of water. So the awareness in the mind or the heart becomes vastly felt during these times. 

I recently manifested the house of my dreams. I was filled with joy, and gratitude was the only suitable emotion. That flood of gratitude made something else stir inside of me. I felt a chill and the sense of jadedness that weighed on me for the past couple of months. Something was covering my conscious mind and not allowing me to connect to my heart space. I felt a weight in my throat, and that message was louder than I could have imagined.

If you’ve been following me, you’ll remember that in my piece, “It’s my birthday.” I wrote about the feeling of a wet rag that I felt in my throat. This feeling spoke to me then, but during the eclipse, it shouted. 

The night of the eclipse, I drank the Ceremonial Cacao that was gifted to me on my birthday. This was quite special because I no longer have much community to enjoy ceremonies and rituals with, so doing this alone marked a milestone. Before, I would create full moon and new moon ceremonies. I'd create groups to help people connect with the power of attracting or releasing something they deeply felt. This now was my turn to do it solo. 

I prepared the cacao with oat milk and honey. I allowed myself to feel the potency, but this ritual was about giving myself the sweetness and the deliciousness that I deserve and love.

I prayed over my cup.

Universe, thank you. Allow me to open my heart. Allow me to heal to be a more loving wife and a better mother. Allow me to feel life as the romance I know it can be. Return to me the dreams and fantasies of life’s splendid experiences and may we be blessed with the gifts of the gods. Help me to know myself and connect back to myself.

I fell into a deep sleep. 

When I awoke, I thought it was done. Petition sent and dream returned.

I was wrong. 

It was the start of me looking into the darkness. The pitch black heavy dark energy arose with the loom of the past and it followed me straight into my marriage. We all know we have family patterns that we need to break, and mine and my husbands are a perfect match. We have been raised in a similar way that was not conducive to unconditional love instead, it was conditional and critical. Needless to say the laws of energy and karma all work in the same way. Out with the old, in with the new. If you don’t learn from the mistakes of the past, it comes around again and again, until you learn. Let’s say that George and I had some big aha’s and some leaps and bounds of connecting family patterns within our marriage; Specifically the parts of ourselves we liked the least. We have one similar loop that drives us both crazy. It’s a very triggering behavior for both of us and we are the perfect actors in the retelling of what we always said we didn’t want in our lives. The scene looks more or less like this.

He tells me that something I’ve done or said upset him. He internally thinks I should have known better. I forget about how upsetting this first-time offense was and behave as if it is unimportant to me. I don’t think there is anything to apologize about.

Often, there is some level of importance towards whatever he has mentioned but he either gives an un-detailed one-liner about it or holds it in. This means he has just been triggered. Meanwhile, I have little or no idea that something is wrong until I do it again. I’ve now committed a second offense.

My husband is deeply triggered by repeating offenses, it’s worse than a pet peeve, more like it strikes a nerve. It’s a part of him that I value. I appreciate that he values learning from mistakes and when he apologizes, he rarely repeats the same issue. I on the other hand don’t consider all things to be equal value in terms of offense.

For me, throwing cardboard in the recycle bin is a small yet forgivable crime. For him, if it’s been told and repeated, it goes into delinquency. This is the perfect mold for me to play the opposing force and go directly into defense mode. I put up all walls, I might even go into believing I’m being gaslit. Maybe I even gaslight him as I dumb down anything he is feeling invalidated for. The aforementioned actions and reactions are a recipe for disaster. 

We play an unconscious game of who is the lesser partner and just to call it even, I match the level of red-hot anger that is being demonstrated. I refuse to admit or give any kind of validation towards what he is hurt by. I avoid that anything is to blame on me and may even start to tell him that he needs therapy.

When he is triggered, he often puts me in the hot seat and begins his defense. He reminds me that conflict is not one-sided and that I can’t blame him entirely and then take no responsibility for anything, yet I am doing this and making it all his fault. I hear him say this in a cold standoffish way and I might go so far as to say he is an ass.

He will then return the jab and say something condescending or belittling. At this point, I come to a limit with how much chaos and dysfunction I can tolerate. I’ll stop and take a break. I need time to cool down because I can see that we are beyond the fixing. We are just fighting for the ego and our level of anger is so explosive, we could blow a fuse with our reactions. I typically stop the argument mid-fight and walk away. It could be the dead of winter and this repeated cycle leaves us with boiling blood. 

Not fun, right? It came out more after our daughter was born. This was the hardest pill to swallow. We were no longer working together, and we couldn’t see that we were on the same team. 

The epiphany came when the latest battle of the sexes came down to the final straw. 

The night of the eclipse I drank the Ceremonial Cacao that I was gifted on my birthday. I opened my heart. I had deep profound dreams of my ancestors and I saw that there was a pattern in my family that had never been broken. The next morning, the energy wound up so tight that it exploded. We started tiptoeing around the discomfort. He was aware that I was upset, but trying to make nice. I was making a savory dish that resembles veggie pancakes for our daughter. 

The loop took effect. 

“I don’t like you right now.”

He said it. Just dropped it amongst the hard feelings.

“So what, I don’t like you lately, but I still love you.”

I rebutted him with a backhanded retort.

We continued for a while. Things didn’t get much prettier. 

I stopped. Handed Esme to him and said-

“I just can’t. You feed her, watch her, and put her to sleep for her nap. She’s had milk, and she is good. I’m not ok. I just can’t do this again.”

I walked out of the house and ran as far as the lawn in our community building. My shoes flew off. I needed the Earth to ground me. I was spinning. I called one of my best friends. She is also a mom and has been through some massive self-healing. I needed to cry and not be alone. 

“Hi, I need help. I just got into it, I feel so ashamed to spill dirty laundry. I don’t want to call like this, but I need to talk this out.”

I talked…….and talked. 

She listened.

She continued to listen.

“My friend, listen to me.” 

Her voice soothed me. 

“You are hearing me right now, but I need you to come back, your body is here but you are far away. You need to come back.”

I was away. The person talking was not the version of me that I wanted it to be; the mother of my daughter, or the wife of my husband. It was the little me inside. A version of me that watched my mom’s side of the family belittle her and invalidate her. A version that thought they were so mean to us for nothing. One that got defensive and hurt, easily. 

The old feelings flooded me. I felt total and complete despair. This wasn’t the life I wanted. How could we continue forward? What would I do if we had to separate? This was not who I married, this was not the future I’d give to my daughter.

And then she said, 

“No, you’re right. It’s not who you married and what you’ll give to Esme. It’s not even who you are or who you wanna be. But if it needs to play out for both of you to see it, then you decide what to do about it after you decide that it’s no longer your story. He and you are both being triggered. So now, you have to come back together to figure out what you are mirroring in one another.”

My friend spoke to my soul.

 The lesson was that we needed to conclude a distasteful family dynamic that we both had experienced firsthand. This ugly loop was familiar, and now it was in the light. 

No more monsters in the dark or double-headed dragons that could spew words and throw tempers into our emotional fire. 

It was time to come back and recognize the hurt and the distaste we mutually agreed we had for this behavior;  And finally, it was time to make our way back to the path we had initially begun together.

It is time to do better, together. 

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Hi, I’m Misha.

This publication is a mixed genre experience. I write essays, creative non-fiction, poetry, and life musings. I also have a podcast, mostly for my paid subscribers, but I open one episode monthly for everyone. 

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1. Artwork by jetsyart