So what happened next?

I wrote the previous post a week ago. The next morning, I woke up feeling out of sorts and decided to stay home from work in order to fend off whatever malaise was encroaching. By late afternoon, I was in a state of high anxiety--and I'm not prone to anxiety. I called my therapist and made an appointment for the next day, and I called two friends to come be with me. By the time my friends arrived, the migraine had begun. The migraine that lasted five days.

I know the moon was full in Virgo, shadow to my beloved Pisces. (I have two planets, sun and Venus, and the north node in Pisces, above the horizon in the 11th house. I have fateful Pluto and the south node in Virgo, below the horizon in the 5th house.) I know there was a lunar eclipse. And I was just about to start bleeding. A Witch knows what these things mean.

I began getting migraines in my early 30s. For a while they were quite disabling, coming hard and often, but then I met an acupuncturist who all but cured them. I stay on a regimen of Chinese herbs, and I get few migraines. The ones I have aren't severe.

But this one: the aura of high anxiety at its cusp, the pain on the left side of my head, tight muscles throughout my body, sensitivity to light and smell, heat rising through my body, time distortion, upset stomach, vomiting, no appetite, extreme fatigue. I pretty much spent three days asleep with an ice pack on my head. I did get to see my therapist, who talked me down from the ledge o' anxiety, as I lay on her couch with an ice pack on my head. Oh, and my acupuncturist? She's in India.

Emotionally, I was just miserable. (What am I doing with my life? What's the point anyway? Why don't I take better care of myself? That sort of thing.)

I started to feel better on Sunday and was able to take a walk in the sunshine. By Monday afternoon, back at work, I could feel that the energy had shifted, and I started to feel more like myself, a bit more optimistic. I took a dance class last night and got to stretch all my muscles, which is such a relief after the thick, turgid tightness of a migraine.

One of my friends who came over to help me during the eclipse, herself a healer, said something that helped me:

"To be a healer just means to be willing to be in healing, with yourself and with other people. To be a healer means to be willing to be in healing."

My therapist said something else that helped:

"Hope is out there, even if you don't feel it right now. Just because you feel hopeless doesn't mean there is no hope."