With eclipse season coming to an end and the solar eclipse coming up this Wednesday, I am reminiscing on this year's earlier eclipse season. The one where I lost my mind. So many parts of that story are aching to be told, but today, I sit back and thought of just how much grief I was dealing with at that time.
When I lost my sister in August of 2022, I was 7 weeks postpartum with my youngest daughter. I went into shock and my soul left my body. I thought I had processed my emotions, but man was I WRONG.
When the eclipse season rolled around, the universe ripped me open, and told me it was time to sit with this grief. I kept avoiding it, and when I thought I was dealing with it, I was only barely grazing the surface. My guides were having none of it. I wanted change, I wanted transformation, I wanted expansion. And I was about to get it.
I received signs for weeks, and finally, when I stopped running and turned to face my shadows, things were revealed to me that forever altered my brain chemistry. After this I set out on a mission to find my sister. I wasn't afraid of the dark anymore, I knew I'd find her this time.
So I went off to the bar, the bar I had been to just a few weeks earlier having one oft the craziest spiritual experiences of my life (but that's a story for another day.) I asked the bartender to make me a drink with fireball. It wasn't the same bartender that served me the first time, so I had no idea what was coming. I got my drink and it was definitely wasn't the same thing as before, but I didn't care. I was drunk texting someone I definitely shouldn't have been drunk texting, but I see now why things happened that way. (Yet another story for another day.) I sat there with the same letter in my hand I read the first time I walked into this bar. I just kept reading it over and over. Finally I opened my notes app and started writing:
"So I sat there, no idea what I was drinking, just that I could taste the cinnamon whiskey. It definitely wasn't what I had last time. It seems like I never truly know why my life has transpired this way, while at the same time knowing it was all going to happen either way.
I sit here at a 2 seater table. With an "empty" seat in front of me. Except this time without a shot for my sister. See I always thought I was looking for her, to have a conversation with her. I didn't realize it was because I was searching for the part of me that only came out when she was around. At the end of the day, she was my little sister. I was supposed to take care of her. I used to think it's my fault she went down the path she did. I set a bad example. But once she was a teen, I saw the way everyone treated her differently. The way they all demonized her and even had me believing their words at times. I used to think that I had to somehow make up for not being the big sister she needed when the world was against her. In a way I still do.
You see when she left this physical world, I knew I could find her in the astral, and take care of her the way I should have. And I did. I cared for her spirit, I tended to her grave, I spoke her name often. I checked on her friends, I wore her hoodies, and I searched for her in the place she spent most of her time. In the alleys, through the railroad tracks, in the old and all but forgotten graveyards. And I found her in those places. The places no one else would look. My family looked for her in the house, in the store, in the boxes of old belongings. But that's not where the version of her I was looking for was. There, everyone saw an innocent child, as she once was. A child robbed of her innocence all too soon. Made to bear the weight of things that were never hers to bear, it created a monster that she likely didn't recognize.
This was the person everyone tried to hide, tried to bury. They were ashamed of what people would think if they knew the truth. The truth of how she met her untimely death."
Looking back on everything now, I realize that grief is complex and everyone was just projecting their own guilt, shame & regrets because that is where they were in their grief journey. I realize now that my journey required me to "pull an Angie" and do something entirely unhinged and out of character to get the answers I was seeking.
With that being said, I looked for her at the bottom of a glass of an unknown drink.
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