The maiden marching into March, in like a lion, out like a lamb. Painting by Briton Riviere, 1890
There is an old saying that says March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, and it seems to me there never was a time when we needed this expression more. We all need to be lion-hearted when faced with the reality of the world our society has created. If we tune into the human airwaves, there is fear of illness, fear of lack, fear of difference, and then there is the literal destruction of our natural world and resources growing ever more serious, a train heading for a catastrophic wreck, full speed ahead. Our leaders are not pulling on the emergency breaks. It can feel numbing and heavy. The Pluto/Saturn conjunction was not so long ago, and the darkness of winter is still close, though the days are longer and the is Sun warmer. This Full Moon is opposite Neptune, so my dreams have been vivid and strange, expressing fear, but also confidence in the new birth that will come. Venus was recently conjunct Uranus, so perhaps we are walking on the Earth in new ways in terms of our relationships, our self-love and sensuality. Yet all this newness and change can increase our fear. What to do? Where are we headed? Everything seems scary and uncertain.
Fear
This undercurrent of fear feeds the media, but the solutions that are proposed seem more inspired to feed our fear than allow us to process it and get through it. Stock up, stay home, don’t touch each other.
It seems almost funny to me that at a time when we have never needed community, support and togetherness more, we are being told to lean into the very behaviors that have gotten us to this place of disconnection from the Earth and each other.
What is fear? Wikipedia defines fear as an “emotion induced by perceived danger or threat, which causes physiological changes and ultimately behavioral changes, such as fleeing, hiding, or freezing from perceived traumatic events.”
Courage
What can we do in the face of fear? We can be like a lion, courageous, living big and open hearted. Courage comes from the Latin word cor for heart, in Old French it was corage, meaning the seat of inner life, of lived emotions. What does it mean to be courageous in the face of all this fear? I think it means to experience the emotions that arise within us and live through them. The moon, which pulls on the Earth and on our inner beings, can help us shine a light on those emotions that we are refusing to feel.
I lived with rabbits for a long time, and watching them - as prey animals they were often in the emotion of fear - I learned what it is to embody fear. In the body work I did to face my own repressed fear from physical and emotional childhood trauma, I also learned how I had stored fear in my body, coming to understand how it erupted at times, destroying the carefully built connections around me. I either froze or lashed out in rage. Storing fear in my body instead of allowing myself to live it, to be the fear, was more dangerous than the fear itself. My rabbits taught me how to BE the fear.
Gratitude
I think we can choose to see the hysteria around the coronavirus as a reminder of this. How can I take this fear of death, represented by a virus, an entity that lives by rules of its own that are strange to me, into my own being? A friend wrote that you can BE the coronavirus instead of fighting it, and I like this response. I also like the answer of gratitude. Gratitude takes us out of fear and into the lived experience of the emotion. In my fear I can be grateful for my breath, grateful for my life, grateful for the Earth and the elements around me. I can notice the small details of things, since fear makes me hyper-vigilant and alert.
The Energy of Virgo
The Virgo Full Moon - Virgo is the sign of the maiden, the priestess, the healer - shines a light on this, allowing us to be careful and diligent, aware of ourselves and those around me, aware of the Earth. She gives me an abundance of gratitude for the healing that is all around me. In the Fall, a huge White Pine almost fell on my house, and its lesson was, through the fear of watching it fall, the simple availability of healing that is all around us. Last night I took the last of the salt bath mixtures I had made of its pine needles, and it reminded me of the abundance of healing that I have around me, not in grocery stores and pharmacies, but in the Earth medicine the plants offer me and the human connections that are there to help me on my journey. I spent the day yesterday sorting through my local herbalist friend’s bountiful apothecary of tinctures. I am sure there is someone making medicine for you in your neighborhood, or that a plant is growing not far away just waiting for you to look down and connect to its medicine.
Strategies for Feeling and Releasing Fear
The old and dying trees near my house drew my attention to their own passing, without grief, acknowledging that there is so much change happening now that a new guard needs to move into place to face the profound alterations the Earth is experiencing in her climate, soil and atmosphere. I understand this when I look at my nieces and nephew. They will be doing the work of living and preserving the Earth long after I am gone. I can help them by preserving knowledge, teaching them to love themselves and each other, and sharing with them my lived sense of abundance. And showing them how to live through the emotional states that will inevitably confront them. Some concrete ways of doing this are:
EFT Tapping
Sacred Bathing
Gratitude Practices (Journaling, Ritual, Prayer)
Body Work
Singing and Dancing
Every Full Moon is wonderful for shining a light on what we need to release, that which has been completed, that which we are ready to let go of, and I suggest that we take this opportunity to acknowledge, feel, and let go of the fear frenzy around us. You can learn to tap. You can take a bath and let it all go down the drain. You can write down all that you are fearful of followed by all that you are grateful for. You can sing or dance to express your fear and embody it. But be sure to allow yourself to really feel your fear in your body. Where is it located, what does it look like, how can you describe it using all of your senses? If you need any help crafting your own pattern of feeling and releasing fear, I’d love to talk to you about this! Make a free appointment with me here.
Flower Essences also help us face and digest difficult emotions. If you would like some help from the plant world, a wonderful one for this moon cycle from my apothecary is Gorse, which you can buy here. Gorse allows us to be strong in the face of our fears about our lives. She makes us lion-hearted.
For precision and self-expression, two qualities you may want to embody on this Full Moon in Virgo, I’d turn to Self-Heal, and if you need something softer, look to Phlox, who builds community and compassion through play.
I’m sending all of you love and the strength to face and feel your deepest fears. It can be a wild and fun ride along the way!
In the spirit of the Almost Spring,
Amy