No one is dying on the table

I said I’d show up in your inbox once a month on each new moon, but it turns out I’ll be reaching out a little more frequently than that. I figure if I’m going to write about trusting what unfolds over following the plan, I should probably practice it.

I also have something new to share.

There's a certain type of person who values efficiency above all else. They don't like to waste energy, so if they're going to put effort into something they need to know it's going to go somewhere. But they get caught up spinning in the void because they don't want to waste energy throwing a piece of spaghetti at the wall that they don't know is going to stick.

While this may be easy to write off as strategic discernment, more often than not it's coming from a place of self-protection that's rooted in a fear of failure.

And I'll be the first to admit I'm one of these people.

The resistance isn't really about efficiency. It's about what it would mean if the effort didn't pay off. If I post and no one responds, what does that say about me? If I put something real out into the world and it lands in silence, what does that prove? It's easier to call it strategic restraint than to sit with those questions.

But the thing we're actually protecting ourselves from isn't wasted effort. It's unwanted information about our own worth.

This pattern surfaced during a conversation with a client who’s South Node is in Virgo, and it’s also a collective pattern we’re facing in the aftermath of this past Virgo eclipse.

The South Node in Virgo carries the tendency of having to get everything exactly right. Not just as a preference, but as a matter of survival. People with this placement experienced roles in past lives that required precision—usually something in the healing or medical field. And in a field where the stakes were life or death, you learned to treat every deviation from the plan as a threat.

So in this lifetime, it shows up as an almost compulsive need for order. A sense that your survival depends on things unfolding according to your very specific vision of how they should. When things go according to plan, you feel confident, capable, in control. But when something goes sideways — even something small — your nervous system response is wildly disproportionate. It feels bigger than an inconvenience and closer to the feeling that someone is going to die, and it’s all your fault.

Over the past month as I had to help my team navigate unexpected change after unexpected change, I found myself repeating “No one is dying on a table” in an attempt to encourage them feel calmer under the stress… and as I’m writing this I’m realizing why those specific words made such an impact.

That perfectionism, that discipline, those high standards are your subconscious way of protecting the people around you. But at what cost? When is the last time you felt joy, trust, and ease? That is what you’re sacrificing if you wait for conditions that are controlled enough to feel safe.

A danger of this pattern is that it’s self-reinforcing. If you only move when the outcome is guaranteed, you never build the evidence that you can survive an outcome that isn't. You stay in the planning phase. You refine that email but never send it. You call it not being ready and take another class so make sure you know what you’re doing. And you stay safe, and small, and waiting for a certainty that was never going to come.

And it’s such a shame—because not only are you missing out on joy, but the world is missing out on you.

The South Node in Virgo is challenging us to accept something that feels dangerous when we don’t know what the plan is. Because the universe wants to show us that it’s version of how things unfold is infinitely better than ours. It wants to play with us and show us that something going wrong is never failure — it’s just the detour that leads us somewhere we never would have gone if we stuck to our plan.

I don't have this fully figured out. I'm still mid-experiment, but I've started asking a different question before talking myself out of something. Not will this work — but what am I risking if I don’t even try?

What are you calling efficiency that might actually be fear with better posture? And what are you hiding behind it?

— Marissa

Libra is the sign most attuned to other people — the one who reads the room the moment they walk in the door, who instinctively knows what someone needs to hear, who can find the common ground in almost any conflict. That is the gift of Libra.

But Libra's shadow lives in the same place as its gift. The same attunement that makes Libra so easy to be around can become a habit of self-erasure — saying yes when the answer is no, softening an opinion until it disappears, keeping peace at the sacrifice of your own values. What looks like harmony from the outside can be a form of disappearing. And this full moon will help to illuminate that.

Where have you been so focused on what the other person needs that you've lost track of what you actually think?

What is true for you if you weren’t so worried about being “fair” or keeping the peace?

Where in your relationships are you working harder to be agreeable than to be honest — and what has it been costing you?

What might it look like to be brave enough to lead with what you really want, think, or feel?

I am now taking clients for astrology consultations. The work has evolved and is now designed so that we can sit together over time to track the patterns and rewrite the beliefs that are running on repeat in your subconscious.

It starts with a short application to make sure this work is the right fit for what you need, and if it is, I’ll send you a link to book your new client consultation (even if you’ve worked with me in the past, you are a new client to this version of my work).

And because you’ve been here with me on this ride, you get $100 off your first consultation. I am only offering this to subscribers — offer ends April 30th.