I woke up this morning to a text from my mom telling me that my dad had a bad fall from weakness and was taken to the hospital.

He’s tested positive for the wonderful virus that we have been contending with all over the world.

As I write this, perhaps to help me metabolize some of the grief, it feels hard to breathe. And, lungs are associated with grief.

Life.

Breathe.

Love.

Grief.

It’s not an anticipatory grief, the kind we feel before a loss happens. The grief we usually what we push away, what we feel scared of. The kind that makes us hold our breath, which freezes up our bodies into a holding response.

Rather, this kind of grief I’m feeling today is that of letting go of a lot of plans, hopes, and surrendering again into the unknown.

I’m moving across the country and was planning on spending the holidays with my parents, which can’t happen now, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to see them, squeeze them again.

It breaks my heart to know my dad is in the hospital alone, that my mom and brother might also be sick.

I have always had a deep desire to help facilitate a good death process for my parents, who have survived so much hardship and deserve peace. I want to be able to be there. To sing the songs, pray, offer ceremony, hold hands with them, talk them through the process, and guide them across to the other side.

And, now, I’m not sure I will be able to do that.

The unknown.

My old friend.

There’s a deep demand on me, on all of us right now, via 2020’s rich medicine and textured scorpionic teachings—to let go. To let go even more. And, then even more after that. Then—even more than that. Then—yes, let go even more.

Letting go, over and over, feels like one of the art forms of life we must learn to master. Or, master letting go of ever thinking we’ve mastered anything—and in this letting go, there is a particular kind of space of gnosis, of knowing the love, benevolence, and holding of something beyond everything we are grasping to. A glimmer, a place that is truly a place one can take refuge in, trust in—regardless of what is going on.

It thrusts us headlong into what matters the most in our lives—the humans, values, places, love, pleasure, and purpose we all strive for. Illusions that any “thing” or “person” can give that to us. But in letting go, life unfurls a purity to our hearts—when we learn we are allowed to grow in love and trust. That the letting go is a part of life, life is a part of love, love is a part of our breath—and we receive and let go of our breath as we live.

It’s always a good time to let go.

Not only of what doesn’t serve, but of whatever ideas or things or places or concepts or fears or traumas we may be subconsciously holding onto that keep us from experiencing more of the life, love, and breath that is trying to find its way into the core of our beings.

Eclipse or not. Dark moon, new moon, full moon, or not… it’s always a good time to cultivate a discipline in the art of letting go. For, we are then born again a million times in this one life and, in that, we find that gnostic experience that gives us fresh possibility for a kind of world over the horizon that will become clearer when we let go of this one.

To letting go.

To the life that wants to be lived through us.

To the love finding its way into our hearts.

To the grief that opens us up to all of it, so we may live more love, life, and freedom.

~