#31: Covered in Ladybugs

Under the Tuscan Sun, retrograde edition

Coming to you at 2 am, under my weighted blanket, typing in my notes app 3 inches from my face. As one does.

I watched Under the Tuscan Sun for the first time with my Mom tonight (judging myself for not having seen it sooner) and was pleasantly surprised.

I was expecting a sappy rom com, which in many ways it was, but there was also a distinctly magical undertone (and a very young, very hot Sandra Oh).

The main character’s life seemingly falls apart, only to fall back together again in a much more aligned way. She finds the perfect home, though extremely rundown and in need of some serious TLC (no doubt a reflection of herself) and begins the work of knocking down its impossibly strong walls (the metaphors just keep coming).

It’s a generally predictable storyline, but with a few monologues (and my dream hat, iykyk) that feel on the nose for the current astro weather.

One of the supporting characters, a glamorous and lively older woman, tells the protagonist that when she was little she used to lay in the grass and look for ladybugs. She would lie there for hours and hours, searching through the endless blades of grass and eventually just fall asleep in resignation.

When she awoke, she said, she would be covered in ladybugs.

The pep talk mirrored the plot of the movie and sure enough, when the protagonist just sat down, content with her life and no longer desperately chasing anything…everything changed.

This concept, of course, is foundational to spirituality and the law of attraction- but it was refreshing to see it portrayed creatively.

I’ve decided to deem these occurrences “ladybug moments” in my life and maybe you’d like to do the same. Surely there’s been a time (many, probably) that you can recall scratching and clawing at something and it just didn’t. seem. to. work. no. matter. what. you. did.

It’s hard to stop, because you want whatever that *thing* is so badly. And Americans, especially, are raised to believe that if you just push hard enough, you can have whatever you want. This leads to copious amounts of unintended results…with burnout, depression, and lowered self-esteem among them.

It sucks to feel like no matter what you did, it just wasn’t enough.

So, when you’re finally at your wits end, exhausted from all the TRYING, you throw in the towel. Fuck it! You say. You redirect your energy and try to forget about the disappointment.

And then, eventually, maybe, it happens.

Something, or someone, lands in your path that makes it all finally make sense. Of course you’ll question it, because something must be wrong that you just can’t see yet, or it’s too good to be true, or it’s so “random” and there’s no way you could be that lucky.

Self-sabotage at its finest.

What if, instead, when a ladybug landed on us…we just, let it?

What if we didn’t question what it meant, or what was going to happen next, or why now and not back then, or why now and not in two more years when we’re ready…what if we just acknowledged that after making so many wishes, one had finally come true?

A real life ladybug moment!

I wish I could share an elaborate tale of my own right now, rather than outsourcing one from a 20 year old movie, but I know there are plenty of ladybugs in my future…and I know they’re in yours, too.

Mars is opposing Neptune this week and Mercury stations retrograde on Wednesday, overlapping with Venus’ Rx for awhile. It’s potentially confusing and frustrating astrology that feels like prime time for lounging in the grass and taking a nap (metaphorically, but ideally, also literally).

I can’t take a nap! You say. It’s a workday! And I don’t blame you for that reaction. Our culture has groomed us to be output machines. It prioritizes our attention and productivity over our well-being. But how has all that work worked for us so far?

The answer, of course, is that it hasn’t.

So rather than doubling down, what if we tried going with the flow? What if we believed that we don’t, can’t, and shouldn’t control everything…and then that trust equated to realizing that life really doesn’t have to be so hard all the time?

Idk about you…but a nap in the grass sounds perfectly splendid right now. Who’s to say what will greet us when we wake up?

Through time and space,

Erin River Sunday