It’s a full moon in Virgo we get a glimpse of land in a season of sea, a call to become a vessel that can hold the waters of life, an invitation into our capacity to heal, with the reminder that healing doesn’t look, talk, or walk the way we thought it would, because healing, in our capitalistic, patriarchal world, isn’t so healthy. 

She comes to you when you need someone to snap you out of the state of overwhelm. Life is a lot. Overflowing with beauty and hardships. There are depths of despair to plunge into. And vistas of undeniable magic to revel in. You’re always at least one foot in crisis. And things keep piling up. But you’re never not part of a universe pulsing with possibilities of repair. 

You are the breath of life. The world receives you as it inhales. You are the exhale of a continuum of being. Your inhalation is never in isolation. And when you breathe out, what you thought was yours becomes everyone else’s. 

You are held.

You are a holder. 

The pain of humanity isn’t skipping you. Deforestation isn’t separate from that sense of disconnection that settles into your thoughts too often. When you feel bombarded by self doubt, when you can’t stop questioning yourself, and what you said, and how you said it, and “why the fuck did you let that come out of your mouth?” it’s because you are so acutely aware of how inseparable you are from the rest of the world. And you know that on the one hand, your little words make no difference, while on the other hand, they change the world. 

So in that moment when you feel like you just can’t take it anymore – the news, the war, your mind, the injustices, the financial distress, the dishes, the patterns of behavior you’ve adopted, the piles of laundry that will never get folded, the upcoming election this year, the drawers and closets you really want to organize, but when? the aging parent who is losing it, the children’s schedule that suffocates you, the homelessness in your city, the house you gotta keep fixing, or the stress about whether you’ll ever be able to afford buying a house – she comes to you with the demand that you strengthen your container. 

Virgo sits on the opposite side of the spoke from Pisces on the astrological wheel. We are in the season of Pisces right now, swimming in the waters of an archetype that carries us into the depth of the cosmic ocean, uninterested in everyday, worldly affairs. Pisces is inspiring in their fluid capacity to deeply feel and know in their fish bones that they are a part of everything else. They are followed by a shadow that keeps pulling them so far into their oceanic oneness, that they might lose themselves. 

Virgo shows up to shine her light through the radiance of the full moon during Pisces season, and says: “Nope! You don’t get to escape the mundane. You don’t get to dissolve the boundaries of your individuality until your last breath, baby! You don’t get to transcend, to dissolve your essence and merge with the infinite. You’re never not the infinite! Make the container stronger. Stay in the game. Live who you are! And clean those drawers, will you?”

Virgo’s love for order, and her talent for building structures, can help us sort through the mess we find ourselves in. And let’s face it, being a human is messy, and existence is not gonna hand over a perfectly neat life for us to live. Whether you like it or not, you will inevitably sound like an idiot sometimes, make a fool of yourself yet again, hurt someone’s feeling without intending to, spill a freshly made coffee on the outfit you were so excited to wear today, bleed on your favorite pair of pants, and end up telling your kid something that will wound them. That wound will be an integral part of the shaping of their personality. But so will the ways that you show up to the process of repair. 

With her cleanliness, Virgo brings health and vitality. She speaks words that help the heart stay open so it can grieve, even though it wants to shut down. She helps the wound turn into a scar that then allows us to show up in a situation remembering all the lessons we learned from the pain. She’s the part of us that can work through the things that don’t make sense. 

When the moon is full we get to arrive at a peak, to see something coming into fruition, to remember our own wholeness, without forgetting that wholeness shows itself in parts, in phases, through brokenness and putting together, through falling apart and reconnecting, re-becoming, coalescing into new formulations of being.   

Virgo reminds us that healing and wholeness are part of the tapestry of life – individually and collectively. This archetype tends to forget that brokenness is also part of the tapestry. They want it fixed, whole, and perfect. And they can sometimes forget that imperfection is the breath of life, that the twists and bends are how the tree stands strong, that a shattered reality gives birth to new possibilities.

The fullness of this moon invites us to plant our feet in soil, filled with wisdom that comes from ages of breaking and making, and to let our roots intertwine with an ecosystem that is diverse, commingled with differences and ambiguity. It asks us to not fall prey to the rigidity of perfectionism, to see the way that the cracks is how the light gets in (to quote Leonard Cohen for the billionth time).

Virgo is thought of as a medicine person. And because their shadow is perfectionism, perhaps their most potent healing power is to show up to the tender places without trying to fix anything. To sit with our own vulnerabilities with gentle presence. To tend to another’s wounds with our willingness to be with them in their grief without attempting to bring them back toward the light. 

Perhaps the fullness of this moon can invite us into a journey of learning how to build a strong vessel by gathering and putting together, by showing up and dealing with a broken world and an imperfect self, and also by allowing the discomfort of sitting in the midst of scattered pieces, and breathing with the currents of the unknown. To hold. To be held. 

May this moon bless your life with the strength that you need right now. A strength made of softness, laced with mistakes that become opportunities, and cracks that allow new possibilities to emerge. 

So much love,

Hagar