Since the 1980s I’ve been a big Laura Branigan fan. Saw her twice live in concert and was heartbroken when she died at 52 of a brain aneurysm. It’s sad people think of her only when they hear “Gloria,” that she wasn’t around to forbid Trump from playing it at his ridiculous rallies. She had so many beautiful songs: one of my favorites was always How Can I Help You Say Goodbye, though it’s a cover. Even as a kid I felt the haunting beauty of that song as it walks you through life’s stages of loss, but having been through them all now as an adult, it’s more poignant.
In the past decade, I’ve lost two siblings and my mother this year. I lost my job, my home on the island and the museum I started, and my kids have grown and gone. And I came out under the beautiful queer spectrum because I was in love with a woman. I also lost several close friendships. I’m not recounting this to be melodramatic, it’s simply an accounting as I look ahead: what’s the point in looking behind for any reason besides nostalgia?
I believe in astrology. As a little girl I used to read my horoscope in the Philadelphia Inquirer every day— in fact, I read two and chose the one I liked best since I was born on the cusp of Taurus and Gemini. I read with interest the significance of the celestial events of yesterday and today: a lunar eclipse in Pisces and full Sturgeon blood moon bringing drama in the universe.
What’s going on upstairs around us signifies a massive cosmic purge, bringing deep-seated emotional truths and hidden relationship dynamics to light. Lunar eclipses represent the culmination and closing of chapters and this electric energy marks a point where we can’t ignore energy that had been swept under the rug: long-buried attachments rise to the surface and our emotional radar is active. The eclipse is expected to bring nervous system fatigue, sudden relationship reckonings and karmic shifts of authenticity.
Metamorphosis is in the air—but in the tarot, we know that the death card signifies transformation, necessary endings and new beginnings versus true death. In life we write our own books, it’s not a script that’s handed to us— and it’s a choose-your-own-adventure book, so if we don’t like how it’s going, we can flip back to an earlier page and choose a new ending.
I’ve never been good at goodbyes. Ever since my first best friend moved to Michigan in second grade, I have textbook abandonment issues— but after years of work I realized the only one I needed to be afraid of abandoning me is.. me. I don’t have control over people who walk away or don’t prioritize having me in their lives. Would I keep them in mine if I could? Usually, yes.
I have friends who walked away that were so toxic people would tell me it was the best thing that ever happened, even as I cried for weeks. Once I love you, I love you forever, I’m just a ride-or-die person to a fault, I’d never let you go. How you show up to me isn’t something I can control, “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I’ve made,” said Franklin D. Roosevelt. If someone isn’t in my life anymore, it’s not because I didn’t try.
But lately, I realized that’s exhausting. I got burned out. I’ve stopped chasing. I want to be in places where I only have to walk half as far because I’m met halfway, where there’s equality. I’m too old to chase and my joints require too many cortisone injections for running anymore. I’ve started to evaluate, acknowledge and appreciate my own worth, I won’t have it questioned while someone lashes out in projected anger because they question their own. I’m a good friend and a sexy girlfriend. I want to dance and sing, fix up an Airstream and travel around.
Eclipses aren’t for manifesting, only letting go, so I’ll save my wishes for another day and focus on how I can help say goodbye to negative self-talk bullshit, scarcity mentality, fear of abundance and success, lack of joy, and feelings of unworthiness. May it be so, moon and spirit guide Laura Branigan, old gal pals.