What Loss Gives Back

Pisces, the Beauty of Surrender & the Gifts of Rest

photo sold as a greeting card on my Etsy store right here

Cliché or not, Pisces season makes me want to take to bed and write poetry.

Pisces rules poetry, imagination, retreat. Pisces turns chaos into creativity, inertia into inspiration, and the subtlest shift of perception into a main event.

A shift in perception is what heals and liberates us all. Pisces, always swimming in opposite directions, teaches us this—through art, music, hypnotherapy, spirituality. But sometimes, perception shifts only through resistance: illness, isolation, loss, the places where Pisces lives.

Sometimes, we don’t even realize we’re resisting—until the body speaks.

Feminine Healing

I have a story about this. After a period of being “in the world,” I needed to retreat.

For days, I didn’t feel well. And while I consciously wanted to simply use this down time I now had in different ways, an unconscious part of me was triggered by the experience of feeling unwell. It is the part of me, from thirty years ago, who remembers being sick for so many years.

As I felt into this, and acknowledged where it came from, I recognized how culturally conditioned my perception still is about needing time to rest. How:

Instead of embracing rest, I waited to feel better.

Instead of surrendering, I searched for what I had done wrong.

Instead of softness, I reached for self-judgment.

I don’t think this is unique to me, although given how dedicated I am to the feminine processes of allowing, accepting, surrendering, feeling, flowing, cycling and transforming with all seasons of life, I am surprised that this conditioning still comes up! It’s conditioning that I’d love to shift.

One way I do this is by reminding myself that the feminine, within remains radically undervalued in our world, feminine qualities of gentleness, softness, intuition, feeling, knowing… including our innate knowing that balancing output, action with retrospection, rest, is necessary for true health.

I also think about what I’ve been told health ‘looks like’: There is a cult of physical strength and youthfulness in our world, but this is not a balanced picture of health. For instance, physical strength is not adaptive in the ways that emotional and spiritual resilience are. And the physically ‘strongest’ among us can be the most dysfunctional -since they are way less sensitive.

Pisces, Illness, Loss & Removal

Thirty years ago, when I was sick, some close to me feared me, others judged, and absolutely no one knew how to help me to truly heal. It was a long road, and one filled with immeasurable hardships.

If I had lived in a world that honored feminine healing then, I would have suffered less. Emotionally, I could have. If those around me had the ability to hold psyche and soma in a generous, curious, non-judgmental and compassionate light… how differently I would’ve treated myself!

Yet today, I can clearly see how this shaped me into the person I am now.

Loss gave me so much: time spent alone, away from external demands and pressures, gave me the ability to dive deep into myself, time to learn astrology, play with poetry, read, and create my first (rough) pieces of art.

What is loss but the most radical rebirth that humans get to experience?

Few teach us to process loss in this way. We must learn on our own.

I now see this down time as a necessary rebalancing, eventually allowing the deeper meaning of health to take root and ultimately flourish inside of me. It birthed the healer in me. In some way, I owe everything I am to that dark night of Soul—the loss of friends, of school, of the life I once knew.

So, what is sickness? What is health? What is ‘strength’? What is loss? Pisces questions! The sign for which nothing is- ever- what it first seems.

In a world that’s not easy, go easy on you. Be gentle on yourselves, friends.

Health

There’s a world of re-discovery inside of you:

A painter who doesn’t think she can paint.
A poet who has never put pen to notebook and sat in a garden, waiting.
A historian who doesn’t have time to visit the library’s dusty archives.
A candlemaker who won’t buy the beeswax.
A chef who has never followed through on attempting that perfect soup.
A baker who admires confections, too afraid to try.

Looking outward, lost in ‘I don’t have...’ You feed your dreams well-practiced lies. You forget to take the healing time to re-create yourself.

The world is out of balance: you are out of balance. The world is sick: you are sick. The world is aching and in misery: you are miserable. Life won’t stop…

So, you take to your bed with warm blankets and hot broth. You watch others, from your window. You imagine the sun shining brightly on their lives.

This is how you finally discover where you are. 

Here.

In the removal of Self from world, body from busy, distraction from feeling.

In the slowing down of time, you find yourself in perfect stillness.

This is yours—this healing time. The kind the world seems to have forgotten is necessary. The kind that brings all of life back to balance.

(They prefer sickness and disease. It pays better. ‘There is no economy in healing, in stillness. Who will pay for it?’, they say. Some “body” will.)

This is a chance to rest, recover and rediscover yourself. Claim it. 

Use it to be vulnerable and tender with yourself, if this is what you need. 

Use it to be honest. To have a real conversation with yourself, perhaps courageously realizing: "No. I don’t want to keep doing that in this way.” 

A No, a firmly closed door, always leads somewhere else. 

Maybe: the garden. The moonlight. A library. A guitar. 

A quiet place where you remember who you are.

Use this healing time to remember:
You are not small.
You are rich. 
So, enrich yourself with whatever it is you need to feel joyful and well again.

Learn how to turn nothing into everything. 

Do this, and health will know you.

---

For Veronika

I, too, thought by now I’d be better at being sick. I’m not.

That loss, even the mere thought of it, would be less painful. It’s not.

Having lived through many seasons, and understanding the necessity for each, I thought I’d prefer neither over the other. No. I still love summer best.

Surprisingly, the things I don't want still hit me—brand new.

Instead of less, I need more time to heal.
More patience for anger, fatigue, sadness.

If anything, I'm even more aware of all the subtle ways I’ve learned to be annoyed with, and resistant towards, these experiences that make life, life.

(I don’t know if I’ll ever stop resisting the things I don't like: death, isolation, time apart, exhaustion, sickness, decay, degeneration and disease.)

I may never master life’s natural storms.

But if nothing else, I am better at this—
Allowing what I feel to simply be.

---

Closing Invitation for Reflection: Take a breath. Soften your shoulders. Allow your mind to stop reaching for answers. There is nothing to fix, nothing to force. Just this moment—and the gifts it holds.

Next, ask yourself:

If loss is a portal, where might it be leading you?

If rest is a gift, what would it take to receive it?

photo sold as a greeting card on my Etsy store right here