When Things Fall Apart
Life during Eclipse Season
“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” – Pema Chödrön
We are at another important fulcrum of the year, the Autumn Equinox. We have just passed through two eclipses (on September 7 and September 21), and however gracefully, awkwardly, or painfully this process unfolded, we made it. Now the question arises: what’s next?
As I prepared to write this—usually in those in-between moments of showering, driving, or doing dishes—my mind kept circling back to the phrase …*when things fall apart…the title of a book by Pema Chödrön, one that oddly resurfaces for me in key moments throughout my life. I’ve come to notice I rediscover this book about every nine years, which aligns astrologically with the cycle of the lunar nodes.
Zhou Xun. Qing Dynasty. Ink and Color on Silk. 1684
The nodes of the Moon are not planets but points…places where the Sun’s path intersects with the Moon’s. Twice a year, they join to create eclipses, those forceful, fated, epic thresholds where energy gets unlocked, and something hidden can suddenly emerge. Sometimes this feels disruptive: like a fire-breathing dragon rising from the subconscious, or the very structures of our lives crumbling before our eyes.
“When things fall apart in your life, you feel as if your whole world is crumbling. But actually it’s your fixed identity that’s crumbling. And that’s cause for celebration…” – Pema Chödrön
That phrase —when things fall apart— feels perfectly suited to eclipse moments. Whether through loss, endings, or radical change, something is dismantled. And yet, as frightening as it feels, that dismantling clears a path for reorientation. Even when we know a job, relationship, habit, or way of seeing ourselves is outdated, it can still be excruciating to let go. We may resist, bargain, or cling to what is slipping away, even if it no longer serves us.
Like a riddle in a fairytale, eclipses often demand something in exchange: an investment of extra resources, a willingness to stand alone, or the discipline to resist old reactive patterns. They create a temporary loosening of the old groove so that a new one can form – one that can be more supportive, more life-giving. What falls apart gives way to a chance at greater wholeness.
It’s like breaking a mug in the kitchen: you clean the shards and the spill, but in the process, you may also mop the floor, reorganize the cupboard, or rediscover a forgotten mug you love more. On a larger scale, a broken-down car could push you to finally learn how to care for your vehicle in a new way, an illness could wake you up to helpful ways of caring for your body, or a communication breakdown could reveal how you might approach loved ones with more patience and intention. There’s a signal in the noise if we’re willing to look for it.
And now, here we are at the Equinox, day and night perfectly balanced, while the Sun makes its annual passage through Virgo. Virgo reminds us that healing doesn’t come through grand gestures alone, but through attention to detail, through daily rhythms, through the care and tending of what sustains us. This Equinox invites us to notice where our systems, habits, and environments need re-ordering, so that we can move forward with clarity and integrity.
As the seasons shift, may we welcome the medicine of Virgo: discernment, devotion, and the reminder that even in the midst of things falling apart, there is always an opportunity for re-patterning, for alignment, and for beginning again.
Every nine years, the transiting North and South Nodes meet the Nodes in your birth chart. Every ~18 years marks a full nodal return, while in between, the Nodes switch places—South meeting North and vice versa.