Lunar Eclipse in Pisces: The Shadow of Service and Self-Care

To function at a baseline level in life, we must do certain things repeatedly, even if they are boring or annoying.

House cleaning. Laundry. Exercise. Cooking. Grocery shopping. Eating. Washing dishes. Taking a showers. Washing your hair. Doctor’s visits.

If you take care of other humans or pets, you also have their needs to tend to. Carpool. Child care. Walking the dog. Emptying the cat litter.

The Endless Repetition of Daily Chores

These are not once-and-done actions. Their results don’t last. No matter how well you do the laundry, you’re going to have to do it again. You clean the house, it gets dirty, you clean it again.

This is what makes them annoying: we must constantly do them again. The endless repetition can turn them into drudgery. For those of us with ADHD, they can be a form of modern slavery.

How to deal with these chores is a constant topic of conversation in the ADHD world. People seem to be in two camps:

Either a strict adherence to a structure for getting it done, or complete chaos and free-for-all where bouts of energy are spent over-cleaning or organizing until you’ve worked yourself to exhaustion. Then it devolves again.

To escape the drudgery, we might find ourselves lost in daydreaming or other forms of escapism — including busyness.

It’s a perfect encapsulation of the Pisces/Virgo axis, which pulls our focus with the full moon in Pisces on September 17 (10:34 pm ET, 25º41’).

Full Moon in Pisces Opposite Sun in Virgo

At a full moon, the Sun and Moon sit at opposite signs of the zodiac. This lunation pits the Sun in Virgo against the moon in Pisces, illuminating the apparent opposition between the practical routines and chores that set the foundation of our daily existence and the higher realm of spirituality and intuition that serve as sources of meaning.

The Virgo/Pisces axis brings attention to the apparent conflict between

• work vs wellness
• detachment vs emotions
• structure vs flow
• the details vs the big picture
• strategic planning vs following our intuition
• practicality vs spirituality
• sorting vs oneness
• results vs process
• structure vs chaos
• routines vs free-flowing

We tend to see these elements of life as being at odds with each other; binaries where one side of the scale is up and the other is down, as we frantically try to find the balance point.

Full Moon: Mediate the Polarity

Full moons invite us to explore and mediate the apparent polarity of the axis — not to find an illusory “balance point,” but rather to find where each contains the other.

• How does structure facilitate flow?
• How can we get the results we want while also enjoying the process?
• How can we be diligent about our work while also incorporating time for rest and daydreaming?
• How can we honor our daily responsibilities while also giving ourselves permission to dream, rest, and feel?
• How can we honor our boundaries while also forming deep connections with others?
• How can you be a strategic planner and also heed your intuition?
• How can you refine the details without losing the bigger picture?
• How can you maintain the structure of your routines while also harnessing compassion and intuition?
• How can you find practical approaches while also embracing a spiritual perspective?

Lunar Eclipse: Explore the Shadows

This full moon is not just an ordinary full moon, however. It’s also a partial lunar eclipse.

In a lunar eclipse, the Sun, Moon, and Earth align in a way that causes the Earth to cast a shadow on the moon, blocking out its light.

This invites us to explore our own shadow, in this case, the shadow that may drive us to live at the extremes of the Pisces/Virgo axis. When we live at the extremes, we tend to cycle back and forth between shunning one side in favor of the other.

• What leads you to escape your work — or to escape your life through your work?
• What fears around spirituality lead you to shun anything that might appear to be “woo” or spiritual? Or what is your allegiance to spirituality that causes you to shun the practical?
• What are your fears around loosening the structures of your life to embrace more intuitive flow? Or what fears around structure keep you from implementing more routine in your daily chores?

How Does Your Service Hinder Your Self-Care

On the most fundamental level, the lunar eclipse in Pisces invites us to look at the ways in which our sense of duty and responsibility prevents us from engaging in the activities we need to do for our own well-being.

Specifically, how does your service to others, and to the chores and routines of life, interfere with your own self-care?

In what ways do you use your responsibility to others as an excuse to escape from your self-care?

Or, on the flip side, how do you use your self-care as a way to escape the drudgery of your daily chores and responsibilities to others?

The Integration Point: Creating Ritual

The invitation of this lunation is to explore the forces that are driving our habitual actions:

• the emotions that drive us to overwork or over-give to others
• the physical or emotional pain that causes us to escape work or self-care
• the emotions that keep us from the chores and tasks that set up our future selves for a better tomorrow

With awareness, we can create new choices. We can turn our drudgery into a purpose-fueled action through the power of ritual.

With intention and consciousness, we can turn rote and routine actions into meaningful rituals that drive us with a sense of purpose and meaning.

Through the magic of ritual, we can infuse the practical with the spiritual.

The Opening of a New Story

Eclipses generally mark times of major beginnings and endings. They can bring unexpected events, catalyze big changes, and give us radical shifts in perspective that reshape our trajectory.

This is the first eclipse in a series that we will have in the Pisces/Virgo axis through 2026.

This is the opening chapter in a new story that is just starting to unfold. This story will ask us to explore our relationship with work and rest, with service and self-care, with practicality and spirituality, and with structure and flow.

What outdated scripts are you ready to write when it comes to the way you approach this tension?