on crying on the sidewalk during a virgo eclipse

Mar 14, 2025

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This week’s lunar eclipse occurred at 23* of Virgo at 2:54am Eastern on Friday, March 14th.

Conjunct responsibility-bringing Saturn and idealistic Neptune, this lunation is an explicit snapshot of the challenge that is balancing the mundanity of daily life with our hopes and dreams.

This has been so literal for me this week, and is the reason why this newsletter is late. I’ve spent most of the week on the phone with the New York State Department of Health figuring out if I do or do not have health insurance, being told different things by different representatives, thinking it was figured out only to arrive at my doctor’s office for a Very Necessary Appointment and have my insurance refused. (It’s very fun to spend an hour on the phone with the government in a waiting room only to be told they aren’t going to be able to give the receptionist the information she needs.) I’ve filled out more forms and uploaded more paperwork than should ever be necessary and still don’t have a concrete answer one way or the other. Suffice it to say, yesterday was a “this 12th house Capricorn moon breaks down on a midtown sidewalk crying” kind of day.

And the terrible thing is that Eclipse Season makes such behavior entirely predictable. Of course the mundanity and responsibility of daily life would domino its way through my schedule on a Virgo eclipse. Of course my best hopes for getting work done on my novel this week would be shot.

Eclipses can be black holes of energy, demanding our immediate attention for something that has to be fixed or let go of or otherwise changed. Sometimes, this shows up in a really big way: the deaths and rebirths of life. Sometimes, it’s spending hours on the phone with the government to ensure that your healthcare is, you know, there. These moments demand our attention, and this is why eclipses are so loud: the small becomes large, the previously procrastinated becomes urgent.

This morning, I woke up with an emotional hangover and decided that the government could wait until Monday. This morning, I did like Mary Oliver in her poem “I Worried,”

And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

Eclipse season is upon us, and so the following topics will likely take center stage for you at some point over the next few weeks, depending on your rising sign.

Whether they are great in scope (the emergence of a project; the loss of a loved one), or simply a soul-sucking mundane chore like calling your insurance provider, be sure to treat yourself with as much kindness as is possible, allowing the inevitable to move through you and back into the earth beneath your feet.

Aries Risings: your day job and/or the labor you exchange for money/benefits; daily scheduling; chores and errands; physical health - the maintenance of; chronic pain and illness; pets; activism for labor rights and/or healthcare

Taurus Risings: your erotic energy; creative work; sex; more casual dating/flirtation/erotic relationships; relationships with significant children in your life; your children themselves, if you have them; sports and games; pleasure and play

Gemini Risings: home - the literal space, also what it emotionally is; family, and who counts as family; parents, grandparents, and primary caretakers; direct, recent ancestors; cultural heritage; roots

Cancer Risings: your local neighborhood; your regular/daily writing practice; everyday communication; K-12 education; relationships with relatives, siblings, and friends who feel like family

Leo Risings: your relationship to money; material/liquid resources; less tangible resources like Time; income streams - developing or consolidating

Virgo Risings: your self-expression, through anything from hairstyle to gender identity; energy levels and a general feeling of vitality (having it/not having it); new regimens for the physical body/health

Libra Risings: subconscious dreams, beliefs, and desires made more clear; mental health; old, forgotten ancestral patterns and traumas; visiting, working in, volunteering at, doing involuntary time in hospitals and prisons; finding spaces of spiritual retreats, such as at ashrams or monasteries

Scorpio Risings: friendships & relationship to community; professional organizations; the internet and digital organizing; volunteer work

Sagittarius Risings: legacy work; “what you’re known for”; showing up as an authority in public, or reacting to authorities in public (e.g. bosses, parents)

Capricorn Risings: higher education - pursuing, teaching in; systems of organized belief, e.g. organized religion; astrology; traditional publishing & legacy media

Aquarius Risings: shared material resources, such as inheritance, taxes, alimony, child support, royalty checks; shared emotional/psychic resources, such as grief, mediumship, and liminal work with the dead; client work; professional collaborations that are more project-based

Pisces Risings: long-term relationships, typically that involve contracts and paperwork (marriage, literary agents, business partners); your beliefs, values, and practices around such committed relationships

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