Rolly polly magic

I’m just a pill

June is always hard for me. I mean Gemini season. Shit I mean June and July, Gemini and cancer season are the pits for me. I go full black nails, neon hair emo and wear my emotions on my sleeves because it’s the only way I know how to experience them.

My chart is all earth and fire, you see. I can feel -down any situation but it’s my lot in life to discover my emotions. If your star chart is a map to what you need to learn in this life, then I must needs discover how to be one with the water element of existence. Need to learn to live and love like Mother Oshun and the Moon.

When my grandfather died five years ago (today actually, pouring one out!) grief was a fire blanket for the anxiety nest of my mind. Turns out, when the thing you fear the most happens, the absence of that fear is curiously silent. That was not the first time I had lost a close loved one, but I was only twelve when my grandmother died and our relationship was complicated back then…this time it was different. Much more whole, much more complete. But also, somehow, much less final.

For once, somehow, I understood that death really is just a threshold to a new state of being. Doesn’t mean the grief hurts less, but for me, it did become a tangible thing to hold and wield for its magic, rather than a metaphysical fluid drowning me with its power.

So this time of year, I am prepared to wallow and be raw. I acknowledge the instinct to curl up in a ball and activate hermit mode! But in recent years, I have not been afforded that privilege. Dare I say necessity. And the strong, but delicate balance I’ve built has been played upon. I found myself thinking “I wish I could just curl up into a ball and take a break from the whole world for a time.”

And a few seconds later my kid walked into the room with a rolly polly bug in his hand! I laughed my shock at both the bug and the confirmation.

Sometimes life is actually ganging up on you with the punches. It doesn’t just feel that way, it IS that way. The safe and wise thing to do is curl up for protection but also for rest. Reflection. The opportunity to regain strength. That’s not weakness and it doesn’t have to be strength, it just is a fact.

Pill bugs are waste cleaners. They make the soil better than they found it, render it able to germinate and sustain creation. They look tiny and unassuming but they’re crustaceans, not insects, who came out of the sea to help terraform the earth (my words) over 3 million years ago. Like! What a gift!!

They also need moist environments to survive because instead of lungs they still basically have gills which I think is important when I think about water as the emotive state. Makes sense that if I have to be in rolly polly mode I’m probably also in a high-emotion experience.

You may also be seeing signs of needing an internal respite for grief and recovery. If not our conglobular friend the pill bug, perhaps hermit card paired with the 5 or cups, or strength in reverse paired with eight of cups in reverse. Don’t fight it. Give yourself what you need. Lean into the death season of life’s cycles. The sun will rise again.