The Shadow of Having Something to Lose

Sometimes our fears are simply pointing to what we value the most.

What a privilege it is to have something to lose.

I’ve been sitting with that perspective a lot lately, as I’ve had to navigate what feels like every fear I’ve ever had surfaces to shore in giant, crashing waves.

So much of my life has been spent worrying—my bills, my health, my family’s well-being, the world. It became a burden to care. I was already exhausted.

I’ve become familiar with a very specific kind of grief. Not the what if one day this happens kind. Not the sudden kind, either.

It’s the one right in between. The this could get really bad kind. The which direction is this about to go kind. The one with no certainty either way—just a steady stream of unwelcome reminders that control was never truly in my hands. Not when it came to the things that actually scared me.

Throughout my life, I’ve been continuously asked to do one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn how to do: let go, and trust that I’ll be able to handle whatever comes next.

I’ve had to let go of a lot in my life. I had to let go of the idea of being “normal,” of trying to fit in, of trying to figure out why I saw the world differently than the people around me and what that meant.

I’ve had to let go of the church, of what I thought to be God, of my connection to anything beyond me, because for a long time it felt like there wasn’t anything or anyone in my corner.

I’ve had to let go of protecting people who enjoyed their own suffering, relinquishing the misdirected role of the savior for people who didn’t want better for themselves.

I’ve had to let go of friends who turned out to not really be friends, careers that I thought were my dream come true, and lovers who were never meant to stay.

I’ve had to let go of my family who were thousands of miles away, in a country I never got to truly know but is embedded in my bones, and trust that we’ll get to spend more time together someday—even though she’s constantly under attack.

I’ve had to let go of who I thought I was, who I thought I was supposed to be, who I thought people expected me to be, to figure out who I actually am.

So much of my life felt like letting go, and anytime I thought I’d found some solid ground to exhale, something else happens, and I’m back in it.

The Pattern app actually called this out. It labeled it Accepting or Anxious:

At your best, you’re flexible about change. You can be willing to let go of creature comforts and deal with chaos or even extreme, illogical circumstances. It’s like you’re able to accept that everything doesn’t always have to feel good or be pleasurable.

Alternatively, when you’re struggling, you feel unable to get satisfaction in life - it’s like you can’t truly relax or enjoy yourself. When you try to take it easy, something often disrupts you. You may not feel safe or secure, financially or otherwise.

It could be hard to cope with everyday life.

The accuracy was both perplexing and liberating. It’s part of the reason why I love astrology and do the work that I do. Reading something like that made me feel like perhaps there’s a method to the madness.

That maybe I’m not just cursed or have bad luck or am bad at doing life. Maybe this is on purpose, something I’m meant to learn from and grow through.

At least, that’s what I would tell myself. The alchemist always turns pain into purpose, but there’s still the part of actually feeling it all, and that can get heavy.

For a long time, I handled the chaos by always bracing for it. Expecting it. Maybe even unconsciously choosing it. It felt safer, oddly enough.

When you’ve been knocked down enough times, hope can start to feel dangerous. You tell yourself that assuming the worst will at least prepare you. That it’s practical. Even protective.

That’s a lie.

All you’re actually doing is grieving in advance—and it doesn’t make the real grief hurt any less. It just steals life from right under your nose.

That is the trick of the past. It fears being forgotten, so it pulls at your strings for as long as you let it.

What I’ve come to understand is that this in-between grief is what arrives when you’re fully present inside a difficult situation. There’s no certainty in sight. Just an empty canvas, waiting to see what picture you’ll create to fill the space.

Sometimes we paint something completely different from what we see. Most times, we paint what we already know.

I’ve had to reckon with all of this—and what also feels like an onslaught of ancestral wounds—alongside everything happening in Lebanon right now.

My father’s safety is the first and last thing I think about. Each day, I pray and hope that he is alive, that the last time I saw him won’t be the last time, and that God is going to show me just how powerful faith truly is.

I’ve often said that my heart isn’t breaking down, it’s breaking open, and just when I think there couldn’t possibly be any more walls standing, something happens that invites me to crumble what I forgot was still there.

I sat with my shadow, and you know what it told me?
It told me I needed to open my heart if I was truly to be free.
I scoffed and laughed, “It is open! See!”
But my shadow always knew better than me.
My shadow always knew what I wasn’t ready to see.
That the depth of my love even frightened me.
Because if I could love this much, then what about the grief?
Grief is the cost of love. It would take everything from me.
I wouldn’t survive it. I’m not strong enough.
So I’d pull closer, then push back, and we’d do this dance just long enough...
Until it’s just me again.
Hi.
See.
This was my own self-fulfilling prophecy.
If I never had you, then you can’t be something I lose.
But what a privilege it is to have something to lose.

Throughout these last few weeks, I’ve had to truly embody the work I’ve been building for years, while also staying open to the higher wisdom coming through.

Like the fact that keeping people at arm’s length felt safer than letting them all the way in, because the only guarantee in this life is death, and I didn’t know if I’d survive a loss like that.

Like the fact that I wouldn’t let myself receive the love being shown to me, because then I’d have to break away from the story that it doesn’t matter if I’m here or not, so I don’t have to commit to sticking around.

Like the fact that sometimes our deepest fears are actually pointing us toward what we value and desire the most. And it’s easier to build illusions around why we can’t have it than to carry the weight of what comes with letting it in.

This is hot girl math at its finest.

All of this is happening while Saturn and Neptune transit my fourth house of home, family, ancestry, and roots in Aries, while Pluto tiptoes next to my Venus.

It’s not lost on me that this is also happening while I dismantle the limiting beliefs that have quietly convinced me over time that I don’t deserve to be here. That I shouldn’t take up space. That there’s no room for me. That the life I deeply desire is available to other people—but not me.

But why not me? Who else, if not me?

What a convenient trap for those of us who are the variables of change. The ones who see what has been quietly hidden and have the courage to actually do something about it.

The Aries energy at the foundation of my chart has embedded chaos in my roots, but it has also been the fuel that keeps me going when I have nothing left to give in order to rebuild what was never stable to begin with. A true warrior mentality.

And I am, if nothing else, a stubborn motherfucker. I won’t apologize for that.

I’m sharing all of this because contrary to popular opinion, there is no finish line to this work. Life will keep throwing plot twists and disruptions that feel disorienting and destabilizing. And maybe, if you’re anything like me, you once told yourself that your real life would begin once you were healed.

But that day never comes. Life just keeps moving, while you wait to decide whether or not you want to play.

I wasn’t an active participant in my own life for a long time. I spent years on the sidelines—too scared to get involved, attached, hurt, or anything.

But I was missing it. I was missing all of it.

Even now, with days that begin anxiously checking my phone for a good morning text from my Dad, and nights spent talking myself out of a spiral—I am still living my life. I have somehow, some way, learned how to hold the tension of the opposites.

Because what a gift it is to feel everything. To have a life that evokes everything out of you.

What The Pattern named as Accepting or Anxious isn’t just a personality quirk. It was pulled from my moon in my chart—the part of myself that learned, early on, that safety and satisfaction were never guaranteed, so it became easier to brace for loss than to rest in love.

The moon doesn’t lie. It just shows us where we learned to hide.

And hiding looked like pushing people away before they could leave. It looked like minimizing my needs so I wouldn’t be a burden. It looked like telling myself that I was fine on the sidelines, when really I was just terrified of being on the field.

But there’s another side to this that I’ve been sitting with…

The same placement that made survival feel like the goal is also what makes me so deeply feeling, so attuned, so capable of holding space for the full spectrum of human experience. The wound and the gift have always lived in the same house.

That’s the work. Not fixing the moon. Not transcending the pattern. But learning to let both things be true at once—that you are still healing and you are already whole. That you can be terrified and still show up. That love can be the most dangerous thing you’ve ever let yourself want, and still be worth it.

If anything I just wrote felt personal to you, then maybe your moon is holding some secrets that are ready to be revealed to you.

Dark Side of the Moon is an immersive workshop for anyone who’s ever used their mind to survive their feelings—and is ready to let the body lead instead. We go into the shadow. We sit with what’s been hiding. And we find out what’s waiting on the other side.

You don’t have to have it all figured out to show up.

That’s kind of the whole point.

Xo