You Can't Cut All the Flowers
The Vernal Equinox hits differently this year. It's even more powerful.
Hi, doll.
Today is Ostara, the vernal equinox, the first day of spring. It is the year’s most powerful burst of energy, a stupendously roaring fire. In the pagan and astrological calendars, it is also the first day of the new year, when Mother Earth officially bounds back to life.
Traditionally we celebrate this hallowed event with revelry and pageantry—flowers, feasts, costuming, wine, dancing. But so far 2025 has been devastating, there’s no sweetening that shit up. The evil and entitlement of the Trusk regime and the millions in its thrall have wreaked profound damage, danger, and destabilization.
I am struggling mightily to not let all this harden my heart, and I am far from the only one. Many of us are furious and capsized by fear. The overwhelm is profound.
So this year let us embrace the vernal equinox as a softening—of the soil, the air, our hearts. No matter what wickedness the billionaire class brews, what injustices and erasures are institutionalized and normalized, the Earth continues apace, glorying in the cycle of life, dancing in her rhythms around the sun, sowing new seeds.
We may eventually make this planet uninhabitable for ourselves. But if there’s one thing the lush regeneration of the region around Chernobyl reveals, it’s that Mama Earth always finds a way to flourish, even while she cannot host us.
It may sound odd, but it calms me to know that this planet will continue to rotate on her axis, that the sun will continue to rise. That something powerful and beautiful remains impervious to human folly.
It also reminds me that aligning with this holistic magic makes it possible to outshine the shadows. Just look at how the sunflowers planted at the site of nuclear disasters help us heal.
The veil between this world and the next is unusually thin during equinoxes and eclipse seasons, and blueprints and tools are more easily delivered from guides, ancestors, and the divine intelligence of the universe.
Though it is cold and rainy in New York today, I am going to a nature preserve to thank Mama Earth for my blessings—for we all have them, so long as we have air to breathe. I am going to thank her for always, always springing again. Then I am going to visualize what I wish her to seed.
If you have any time today, join me in this act of faith. Go outside, plant your feet in the ground, and imagine what world you’d like to bloom. Ask yourself: How will I support freedom, ease, equality, and joy? How will I serve my highest self and the highest good? How will I be braver than I’ve been before?
Send those seeds into this stirring soil, and pray that they may grow.
You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming.—Pablo Neruda
Readings around the vernal equinox are impactful, and this year they are even more powerful since we already are outside of space and time due to eclipse season and the Mercury and Venus retrogrades. Book a session for yourself and/or a loved one to intuit how you may align with this magic, and share this newsletter with whomever it may serve.
Because it is real breakdown-breakthrough energy, this double Mercury and Venus retrograde moment is also proving potent for creative projects and emotional healing. I’m seeing this on my own path for sure.
Here is Foxhole for One, a recent essay I wrote about one of New England’s most haunted cemeteries and the wilds of my 1980s Greater Boston witchy adolescence. It is shaped from the raw material of a memoir I’ve begun writing again, and I have posted it on The Flaneuzy, my new, nonastrological Substack about walking and talking. (Subscriptions are free.) I also recently was interviewed by Naomi of GenXXX about midlife and female sexuality.
I look forward to seeing what your hope will grow.
With waggling eyebrows and slow kitty blinks,
Felt so good to take a walk today!
I loved this! Thank you for sharing your wisdom. Here’s to spring 🌸