What Are You Making Room For?

If you’ve recently looked at the inky canvas of sky in the early morning or night, chances are you noticed the very beautiful, very large moon. I like to use lunar cycles as a rhythm for my own life: new moons for dreaming and setting intentions, full moons for reflection and release, and the in-between for doing. On February 12, we had a full moon that corresponds to its new moon 6 months prior. It’s a good time to pause, perhaps outside, and ask: Who was I six months ago? What has changed? What lessons have been presented, and what have I learned?

Six months doesn’t seem that long ago, but when I started looking back, I was surprised by how much had unfolded. In August, I was buzzing with hope and excitement. My podcast was one month old, I was deep into my journal project, mapping out ways to grow my consulting and coaching practice. School would soon begin, and a close friend was about to have a baby. Life felt expansive, full of momentum, alive.

And then, life did what it does—it stirred, twisted, stretched. We are universes unto ourselves, orbiting through sunlight and darkness, noise and silence, expansion and contraction. Since then, I’ve navigated a tremendous amount - the excitement and challenge of a new job, applying discipline to continue pursuing my dreams in an already packed schedule, and maybe most importantly, sitting with grief and heartache. I resumed therapy, and I can only describe the experience this way: it was like I booked a ticket to London and ended up in Tokyo. Not where I expected to land, but actually where I needed to be all along. Untangling unconscious patterns and learning to feel emotions like anger, fear, and sadness instead of just thinking them has been hard. Habit brought comfort and destruction; interruption brought expansion and release.

When I started this reflection, I didn’t think I had made much progress. That was the heaviness talking. While some of my goals unintentionally paused, it’s a reminder that like a seed, we can grow in the stillness, in the dark, in the watering. Like a moment out of the movie Moonstruck (so good) where Cher slaps Nic Cage and yells ‘Snap out of it!’, reflection jolted me awake and lit a spark. Time to jump back into the ring. Let’s be real, I’ll probably get knocked around again, but I’d rather fall and get back up than sit on the fence, watching life go by.

If you’re open to it, ask yourself: What do you want to make space for? What needs to be released to make room for it?

And howl at the moon - can’t recommend this enough.

xoxo,

Meghan