The Day I Locked the Door

Solar Eclipse in Aquarius — February 17, 2026

On February 17, the light will fade.

A solar eclipse in Aquarius.

The Moon crossing the Sun.

A brief dimming.

A quiet rearrangement.

I’ve been thinking about another kind of dimming — the afternoon I locked the studio door for the last time.

It wasn’t dramatic. No music swelling. No one watching.

The faint scent of lavender lingering on the walls. Light slanting across the wooden floor where, for eight years, bodies moved together in breath, heat, and devotion.

I stayed longer than I expected.

Hand on the key.

The room was empty, but it didn’t feel empty. It felt imprinted. Filled with mornings. Whispers after class. With the woman who cried in the corner one winter and came back stronger in the spring. With my own voice repeating, inhale… exhale…

When I finally turned the lock, the sound was small.

A click.

That was it.

No thunder. No collapse. Just a quiet ending.

Eclipses feel like that to me.

People call them cosmic events—portals, catalysts, turning points. And maybe they are.

But mostly, they are a shift in light.

Something once steady turns briefly dark.

The day moves on.

This eclipse arrives in Aquarius — the sign of community, collaboration, the spaces we build together. It makes me think about all the rooms I’ve stood in.

The stage, years ago, when I was still dancing. The heat of the lights on my face. The moment after the final bow, when the applause swelled and then faded. That strange, tender walk back to the dressing room, half in costume, half already gone.

There is a particular silence after applause.

It’s not empty. It’s echoing.

You hear your own heartbeat again.

You feel where the performance ends and the person begins.

Aquarius lives in that threshold.

It cares about the collective—the audience, the ensemble, the shared field—but it also asks what remains when the lights go out.

When I recorded my first podcast episode, I was alone at my dining table.

No studio floor.

No stage lights.

No bodies breathing beside me.

Just a microphone. A glass of water. My own reflection faintly staring back at me on the dark screen of my laptop.

I remember pressing record and feeling the same flutter I used to feel before stepping onstage.

But this time, the room was invisible.

I wasn’t projecting outward. I was speaking into space, trusting someone I might never meet would hear it.

It felt terrifying.

It felt honest.

It felt like Aquarius.

Community without walls.

Connection without choreography.

An eclipse in Aquarius feels like standing in the middle of all the rooms you’ve ever built and asking:

Which ones are still alive?

Which identities were costumes?

What wants to be created next—not out of habit, but out of truth?

When I locked the studio door, I thought I was losing something solid.

What I was actually releasing was a form.

The essence—gathering, moving, exchanging, building—didn’t disappear. It just needed a different structure.

That’s what eclipses do.

They don’t destroy the Sun. They don’t erase the light.

They interrupt it long enough for you to see what you’ve been organizing your life around.

On February 17, the sky will darken for a few minutes.

Maybe you’ll step outside. Maybe you won’t.

But somewhere inside you, there may be a small click.

A recognition.

A sense that something you’ve outgrown is ready to close. Or that something quieter is ready to begin.

Aquarius is often described as detached. I don’t see it that way.

To me, it feels like the courage to grow in public.

To let people see you change.

To build community not around who you used to be, but around who you are becoming.

After I locked the studio, I stood on the sidewalk for a long time.

The world didn’t look different.

Cars passed. Someone walked a dog. The sky was painfully blue.

But I was different.

Not broken. Not lost.

Just reoriented.

That’s how an eclipse works.

The light returns.

The Sun is still the Sun.

But you have felt the shadow.

And once you’ve felt it, you know you can survive the dimming.

You know that identity isn’t the room.

It’s the current you carry into the next one.

On February 17, the light will thin.

And then it will come back.

And somewhere—in a studio, on a stage, at a kitchen table with a microphone—someone will be building a new kind of space.

Maybe it’s you.

Warmly,

Nancy