Scorpio Full Moon: Life Lessons on Letting Go

I never saw it coming: The moment that changed everything.

When I woke up on that crisp Minnesota morning in the fall of 2014, it was a day like any other: ordinary, unremarkable. I grabbed my coffee, took a shower, brushed my teeth. I barely noticed my feet beneath me – or the vibrant leaves from our ancient maple tree in a continual free fall, offering an unspoken message on how to let go.

Less than 12 hours later, everything would be different for me. But that watershed moment – which I now recognize in hindsight – was a slow, steady drum, arriving over years, beat by beat; an interminable number of days spent realizing that although my right foot was still attached, it wasn’t holding me up. The container of my body – which used to work so effortlessly – had suddenly failed me.

The following months and years would bring me back to a question I heard frequently as the pandemic unfolded: “When will things go back to normal? When does this end?”

Let’s hop into the way-back time machine and surveil that autumn morning: There I am sipping my coffee, clearly understanding that life is headed in a new direction. Two days prior, I’d announced that I was leaving Ampersand Families – the nonprofit I’d co-founded that finds and supports adoptive and permanent families for teens in foster care – in order to take a sabbatical year. I’d spent 21 years working in child welfare and wanted to pursue other dreams.

I had plans and expectations. And I grasped tightly to both.

So, I knew I was on a journey. I just didn’t realize I was heading into a five-year Cosmic Waiting Room, on a life-changing path that would be physically and emotionally demanding. Sometimes I wonder: Should I have stayed safely at my job and not taken any risks? Perhaps then the signature of time would have progressed differently, and the horse that stomped my foot instead would have moved two inches to the right – thereby missing my boot-clad extremity and relieving me of the nerve damage that’s left me worse for the wear while I struggle to walk. Or would it?

There I was, propelled into something deep and messy and uncertain.

Journeys don’t always turn out the way we think they will. But sometimes, how we view the journey changes. And sometimes our outer journeys transform our inner ones, instead of the other way around.

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The Full Moon on April 23rd, 2024 (6:49pm CT) is at 4° Scorpio and – like all Full Moons – offers us a chance for examination, to see what is in front of us fully illuminated.

Powerful Scorpio is the zodiac sign of transformation. Of magic. But also – of letting go, of release, of death. This Full Moon calls us to observe: What is life showing you? And how can you align yourself more closely with your authentic self?

With steward and waymaker Mars in benevolent Pisces: How can you compassionately go after what you want, standing in your own power while also empowering others?  Are there better ways to deepen and embrace your interrelatedness to the world around you? Can you stretch yourself in new, healing directions?

Meanwhile, the Sun makes its trek through Taurus, representing our material needs, our physical form, and the ground beneath our feet. The comfort-seeking sign of the Bull nudges us to focus on our resources: What do you have, and what do you own? What beauty surrounds you, and how can you cultivate a mindset of gratitude?

Adding oomph to this chart, the lights are squaring penetrating Pluto in humanitarian Aquarius: Where do you feel out of integrity in your life? Can you be more substantive in how you think and communicate, how you innovate, and how you participate and move through the world?

Can you release what’s no longer the remedy?

Sometimes, for new things to begin, something else must end.

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I know a thing or two about endings, although letting go has never been easy for me. As David Foster Wallace wrote, “Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.”

Born with lots of Scorpio energy – as well as other tenacious planetary traits – I’m a person who has lived life with determination, intensity, and at times the difficult task of figuring out life’s expiration dates: Will I ever walk around the block again, on my own two feet?  Will I ever walk without pain? Is it time to stop striving toward an unreachable goal?

At this Full Moon, we’re being offered the opportunity to balance the tangible with the intangible; the mysterious with the known; the practical, earthly realm with the unknowable things beyond this world we cannot see. It would seem the cosmic mandate is to discover and care for the bounty around us and to grow-grow-grow, in tandem with lessons in non-attachment and non-grasping, urging us to let go-let go-let go.

How can you transform the parts of your life that are ready to be released?

It’s been a hard balance, this idea of sitting in uncertainty, holding my plans without clinging to them – having them in mind yet allowing for the unexpected. As someone who tends to see things through to the very end, I’ve learned that the trick is knowing when the end is. 

We never know how things will turn out, and as Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön teaches, “Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think 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… Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all.”

Following the injury to my foot, I struggled to walk 50 steps per day – even now, nearly ten years later, daily physical therapy is an important and time-consuming part of my life. I still can’t walk around the block, but slowly and steadily, I’m hoping one day to hit that milestone – step by step, one foot in front of the other.

As we face this Scorpio Full Moon, perhaps what we’re being invited to consider boils down to this: How can you release your expectations of what this moment should be, and instead notice it – in all its sacred, earthly glory – for what it truly is?

When will this be over? As for me, I’ll make my plans and have my dreams.

Concurrently, I’ll pause outside my door, put my face to the Sun, and take one step into this beautiful world. I’ll let go of wondering whether I’ll make it around the block tomorrow.

Like the wise October maple tree, I’ll bear spring in mind, while releasing what no longer serves.

Essay ©2024 Jen Braun, JJ Boots Productions LLC

Artwork ©Carol Braun

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I’m delighted to bring this article home to my website, but a special thank you to Big Sky Astrology for sharing the original version of this essay, and to the Organization for Professional Astrology for publishing this piece in the September 2022 edition of The Career Astrologer magazine!