When I first broke out of my 9-5 (my 4am – 9pm where sometimes I got calls at midnight and was expected to never turn my notifications off and always answer any message at any time actually) I thought the moon would be an answer to the chronic burnout I had felt for the past… forever?
I wanted to wax and wane. I wanted to NOT hustle. I wanted to look into the stars and have the luminosity of the moon give me direction like a compass I so desperately needed.
And then I got tired again.
Because instead of throwing myself into corporate meetings and obsessive “you go girl” planners, I was desperately trying to peel away layers of myself like too many acid skin peels hoping that somewhere someday I’d reveal a shiny clean authentic self underneath.
Every new moon, I asked myself: Well, what are you working on now?
And every full moon, I asked myself: Well, what’s no longer serving you?
A continual loop of self-refinement, self critique, and a toxic picking apart more akin to my high school eating disorder than anything resembling “healing”.
I was so tired.
But I do love the moon.
I love when I see people write poetry about it and the archetypes and themes.
I love the permission to just be– it’s just that most people don’t often take this. They are often so hyper aware of the moon that they think they must be changing all the time– quickly becoming, unveiling, discovering themselves again and again.
But the moon JUST IS.
She is not discovering. She is slowly turning in an ever-changing world, feeling the waves of the ocean and the rays of the sun and the movement of her rotation. She is not constantly wondering: Who am I? What do I need to stop being in order to be the best moon? She is always the best moon. At her darkest and at her brightest and everything in between.
What would our lives be like if this was the lesson we took from the moon?
I think that is its intention. That some where some time this is what people were talking about when they tried to share this glorious communion around the moon.
We’re just people living in a capitalist world and it can soak into everything we do– yes, even our spiritual practices.
You’ve probably seen the (very quotable) line that loving yourself is a radical or rebellious act. But I think that the real rebellious act is to love yourself enough that you don’t feel the need to repair yourself all the time.
You know. So you can actually enjoy the life you’ve worked so hard to not hate?
I love the moon.
And I want to be tired because I spent all day doing art or laughed too hard or my muscles ache from being in the sun.
I don’t want to be tired from fixing myself. After many, many (way too many) years- I really like me.
So while I know I’m not perfect, I can’t waste my time writing in my journal about everything I need to fix in order to be happy or wondering who my most truest, authentic self is.
Because she’s right here already- bathing in the moonlight.
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