Pisces New Moon

According to Greek mythology, Aphrodite and Eros were casually walking along the riverbank one day. Unbeknownst to them, Gaia (AKA Mother Earth) sent her son Typhon to wage war against the gods. Why? I haven’t the faintest clue. Zeus, being the protective Father that he is, turned both Aphrodite and Eros into fishes, tied them together, and threw them into the river so they could safely swim away from the winged, snake-like creature. This is giving me some serious Sword in the Stone vibes. Merlin turned himself and Wart into various animals in order for him to understand different ways of life, viewpoints, political philosophies, and attitudes toward war. This was made much more clear in T.H White’s The Once and Future King, a book I highly recommend if you are into this sort of thing.

Two-Headed Dragon by Ben Yolton

March 2, 2022 brings us our Pisces New Moon, with the corresponding Pisces Full Moon on September 10, 2022. They tend to be approximately six months apart, giving us plenty of time to realize our dreams. This is not to say that everything we hoped for would come to fruition in that time frame, but we could potentially get a wonderful head start. This is assuming we are willing to take that leap. Pisces season also marks the end of the zodiacal year, planting itself directly into the 12th house, which rules our subconscious. This is a time to become a diver, to go into those scary dark places of our souls and bring them up and out so that we can release the hold it has over us.

Thalassophobia

I never realized how much of a fear of deep water I had until I played the game Subnautica. Although a super fun and enjoyable game to play (It’s on Steam, if you are interested.) the deeper down you go, the bigger and scarier those monsters can be. This can be true when we are spelunking in our own underwater caves. I know from personal experience that the more I have tried to shove things underwater, and by that I mean stuffing them down to try to avoid them, they actually become bigger problems for us to solve.

I didn’t know how to deal with the terrifying events of my past. As a child of emotionally unavailable parents, I was more often than not left to defend myself on the streets of the double cul de sac I grew up in. Staying outside until the streetlights turned on was pretty typical. It sounds great on paper, but the lessons I actually learned were that the people who were supposed to be in charge of keeping me safe, couldn’t. Yes they gave me food, clothing, shelter, and all the things I needed in order to survive as a human being on this planet. What they didn’t give me was the security of knowing that I could come to them for anything.

Every person on this planet needs two things in order to feel that basic level of acceptance. That is to be seen, and to be heard. As a child who was told to either go away or to be quiet, I learned very quickly that my needs were secondary to that of my parents, that their emotions mattered more than mine. This gave me horrible self-esteem, and also taught me some equally destructive co-dependent habits that I am still trying to untangle myself from to this day. I learned that in order to feel safe, I had to predict the behaviors and emotions of others. I then had to twist myself into a metaphorical pretzel to accommodate them, all whilst abandoning myself.

The Trauma of It All

Once you go to therapy and begin your own healing process, it becomes very apparent who else in your life needs therapy. It’s basically everybody. We are are traumatized to some extent. I looked my therapist dead in the face one time and told her that I felt like I was in these sessions because my family of origin refuses to deal with their own traumas. She told me that a lot of people feel that way. I also know damn well that those people won’t actually get the outside help that they need.

There is still a stigma around mental health. The Brits still use the phrase, “keep calm, and carry on,” which just makes the trauma run deeper. There is actually a phrase for that; it’s called emotional bypassing. This behavior has led to my anxiety diagnosis, my depression diagnosis, and my PTSD diagnosis. It has contributed to my overall lack of what love really looks or feels like, as it was rarely forthcoming and more often than not, a transactional experience. I have fucked up a lot of relationships in my past due to this basic misunderstanding.

I don’t share these things simply to place the blame at the feet of my parents. Shit! I could blame so many more people for my problems. There was the initial attack that resulted in me refusing to wear dresses for a big chunk of my childhood. There was that guy who assaulted me on the school bus in fifth grade, the other guy who assaulted me in seventh grade, another guy who wanted to “hit it and quit it” in high school. I could go on. The worst part about these events is that I never felt comfortable enough to go to my parents, or anyone else for that matter, to tell them about it. I honestly didn’t think anyone would care.

A Fool’s Journey

The Fool in tarot is numbered as zero, and that is for a reason. We are all the fool stumbling along through the rest of the tarot, these universal life experiences. None of us know what we are really doing. And that is why it is more important than ever to get help along the way. We humans were never meant to do any of this alone. We grew up in tribes and communities for a reason, because we need that sense of belonging in order to survive this crazy thing we call life.

I have personally never been 100 percent sure of anything. I let my fear of the unknown take the driver’s seat way too often (something I am actively working on) even though I know that fear is only pushing me against my own comfort levels. That’s called growth, and it would behoove me to step into it, to take the leap and have faith that the Universe, or whatever we are calling it these days, isn’t going to let me fail. It’s that whole thing about how God wouldn’t give you anything that you can’t handle. Although I’m still not sold on this whole God thing, I can appreciate the sentiment.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

William Shakespeare

We all come to a point in our lives when we realize that our own minds are out to get us. Some of those invasive thoughts are planted there by others, yet we believe them, mostly because we are young and stupid and don’t know any better. Trying to rewire those neural pathways is a long and arduous path, more like an overgrown trail in the woods. We have to keep taking our machetes out to keep the trail clear, with every step going deeper into the core of our lives. It becomes our job as adults to free ourselves from the obstacles of our minds. We only hold ourselves back by maintaining these self-imposed prisons. Feel the fear, and do it anyway.

Mad love, Jenna