Eclipse eve: What are you finally ready to release?

The worthiness wound don’t always look like what you think it looks like.

I made it halfway through the 30 days before I caught myself.

You may or may not know this about me — but in addition to running The Story Temple and working with private clients, I do contract work on the side. Virtual assistance, editing, that kind of thing. It pays the bills while I build what I’m actually here to build. My goal — the one that’s been sitting on my chest — is to quit that contract work and run The Story Temple full time. To serve the Black writing community and do spiritual shit with my friends. That’s my dream.

So when I decided to do a business run I was calling “Return to Lineage,” I meant it. Content every day. Show up and teach. Build momentum. I had a whole system going — essays, notes, podcast episodes, threads. I was executing my ass off. And every morning I woke up tired before I even sat down at my desk, I told myself that was just part of it.

That’s what building something looks like, right? That’s what doing the work means.

Except somewhere around day sixteen or seventeen, I looked up and realized I hadn’t raised my prices. I had an offer out there — real, good, transformative work with testimonials — priced like an apology. Like I was asking permission to be taken seriously instead of just being serious.

And that’s when I caught it.

I wasn’t building a business. I was proving I deserved one.

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The worthiness wound is sneaky. It don’t always show up looking like low self-esteem or shrinking in a corner. Sometimes it shows up looking like hustle. Like discipline. Like a woman who is clearly working very, very hard.

It tells you that reciprocity is something you earn. That you gotta log enough hours, produce enough content, show enough consistency before you get to ask for what you’re worth. It tells you that ease is laziness. That if it ain’t hard, you probably ain’t doing it right.

I had been running a 30-day content sprint — a content machine — and underpricing my offers at the same time. I knew my work had value. But some part of me was still waiting to have proven it enough.

The worthiness wound don’t always look like low self-esteem. Sometimes it looks like a woman working herself to the bone and still not asking for what she deserves.

I looked at my birth chart recently and saw something I’d been living but hadn’t said out loud. Sun and Venus both in Capricorn, both tucked away in the 12th House. The 12th House is the house of self-undoing. Capricorn is the sign that equates worth with sacrifice and labor. And Lilith — Black Moon Lilith, the part of you that got exiled for refusing to shrink — she’s in Capricorn too. In the 12th. Buried.

I’m not telling you this to get deep in astrology. I’m telling you because sometimes you need to see it written in the stars to finally believe it’s real.

The wound was always there. I just kept calling it a work ethic.

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Tuesday, March 3, there’s a lunar eclipse in Virgo, my moon sign.

A lunar eclipse is completion energy. It’s the universe turning on every light in a room you’ve been navigating in the dark. Whatever has been operating below the surface — whatever you’ve been doing without fully seeing it — an eclipse will make it visible. And then ask you to let it go. That’s what eclipses do.

For me, I’m releasing the belief that things have to be hard to count for something. I’m releasing the content machine version of myself that was running on fumes and calling it momentum. I’m releasing the underpricing, the over-explaining, the doing-too-much-for-too-little that I dressed up as dedication.

I am not a content machine. I am a writer, a guide, a priestess of this work. And I deserve reciprocity. Not someday. Now.

That’s what this eclipse is asking me to put down.

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So I want to ask you something before the eclipse gets here.

What have you been calling dedication that might actually be punishment?

What story have you been writing — or not writing — because some part of you is still in the process of earning the right to tell it?

Where is the worthiness wound showing up in your writing life, looking like something else entirely?

You don’t have to answer out loud. But sit with it. Let the eclipse do what it came to do.

Something is completing. Something is ready to be put down.

Let it go.

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BEFORE YOU GO…

The Story Temple is the container for writers who are done doing this alone.

If this essay named something you’ve been living, paid membership is where we go deeper. Every month: essays, office hours, resources, community and me — in the room with you. That’s what reciprocity looks like from my end.

The door is open. Come on in.

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