new moon dreams
what is it going to take for me to know my free?
How is it September?
How has Labor Day come and gone?
How has another new moon cycled through?
How am I so blessed?
As the crows sing on this beautiful day where fall can definitely be felt in the air—like you can sense summer making her way to a close—it kills me. Yet, like most things that do, I have to trust it—the timing, the season, the trajectory of knowing that nothing is permanent and learning to live in a way that honors that truth.
Yesterday marked the Virgo new moon, a period of darkness, a time of focus, to reorganize, and believing in all that is possible. My dreams of Costa Rica, service, advocacy, creativity, and care—my hopes are harvested. Hopes for a more loving and just world, a more conscious and connected mentality for all, a more generous and gentle way to be.
I believe in all of that, which means I also have to believe in me.
Right now, I’m feeling the stretch—the elasticity—of what it is to hold, hope, and believe in my dreams and all that is possible, while also being as honest as I can about the deep grief I feel for all that suffers and is unjust, simultaneously alongside me—even within me.
We’ve been watching “Chimp Crazy” on Max, and every episode brings me to tears. How humans engage with the notion that we have a right to own anything other than ourselves, and that we believe we benefit an animal’s well-being by bringing them into our homes and away from their natural habitats, is hard for me to understand. Maybe I’m not meant to. The indoctrination of domestication, and the expectation that they’ll fulfill those means, and when they don’t, their lives suddenly become disposable—it just kills me. We are all meant to be free—all of us are destined and designed to be free. To see the sadness in those beautiful creatures' eyes when they know their life is limited to a cage, as well as someone’s ideas that they can provide and care for them as they need, breaks open my heart, shatters it completely.
Animals and humans are meant for so much more than being trapped in a cage, tethered and bound to limits. When we lack freedom, we all suffer in some way, and with this new moon’s darkness, it’s becoming clearer to me that I just want to do my best and play my part to alleviate that suffering, to heal it, to remedy it. This means I must first look at myself and the ways I trap and cage myself.
Where do I lock myself away? Where do I limit my own opportunities to know and grow into freedom? Where and when do I deny myself the care I need—both big and small, self-serving and in service to all? All of it matters, and I matter too. I wonder sometimes if that’s part of the message I’m receiving when I feel the sadness shatter my heart. When I hold the ways we’re caged and create those conditions for life outside of our own, I must find my way out of any confinement—how I show up, how I take up space, how I create, and how I allow my heart’s wisdom to flow.
I must honor the animal in me as well as the soul—for I am both primitive and purposeful, flesh held by the fullest of faith. Where have I, no, when have I forgotten who I am? How have I been domesticated, indoctrinated, ignored? And how will I continue to awaken and move past the acceptance of these ways that only wound me and deny me of all my wild, my free, my most natural self?
With this new moon, I feel the pull to allow myself to be seen—but before I can let those outside of me see me, I know I’ve got to be able to see myself more clearly, more kindly, more fiercely, first.
I’ve got to take that look within and make the changes from within. And I feel I am ready to. I know I am ready.
My prayer, my hope, my practice is to keep showing up as the most authentic version of me. In all my vulnerability, all my emotion, all my sensitivity, and all the mess and makings that I am, may you find yourself able and open to release the cage, cut the cords, and cease the conditions that have defined versions of you that are no longer true. I dream of a world where expansion and freedom reign, and we flourish with freedom—every child, every creature, every part, every pore.
There is nothing my heart wants more.
