Hi dear friends - I’ve been thinking a lot about the moon (always and especially) as the year comes to an end. I’m feeling a quiet pull to pause, look back, decide how I want to enter. I’m at a threshold and have no use for ticking clocks. The moon opens a different kind of time. One that is tidal, luminous, patient, cyclical. It reminds me that I can become, refine, release, begin again with every phase into eternity.  

The Moon was but a Chin of Gold

A Night or two ago—

And now she turns Her perfect Face

Upon the World below—

– Emily Dickenson –

Because I love a prompt, I’ve decided to devise eight sets of prompts for you - one for each lunar phase - that are an invitation as we sit on the cusp of whatever comes next. Use them as you’d like - to reflect in concert with the phase of the moon in the sky, all at once, spread out over time, over and over, or in this dreamy moment - whatever resonates and feels good.

🌑 New Moon (The Dark that Knows the Seed)

Here a dark sky, a clear field, and yet influence is still being exerted - things are still working, germinating, being born in this fertile darkness. 

Prompts: What mattered most this past year and what do I want more of? What small first step signals the direction I’m choosing? What longing has been patient in the dark? 

🌒 Waxing Crescent (The First Shiver of Light)

As the first sliver appears, momentum builds. The beginning might feel fragile, but it is more than enough. 

Prompts: What support makes my intentions easier to sustain? Where does the light return, even when I almost missed it?

And a mirror gives the moon back to the moon

Home is an epilogue:

Which came first

Memory or words?

– Fady Joudah –

🌓 First Quarter (The Courage of Half Shadow) 

Half-lit, half-night, the moon holds contradiction and dissonance without apology. Growth embraces this friction, asks us to stay when it would be easier to vanish.

Prompts: What tension am I noticing and what adjustment strengthens me rather than derailing me? What feels uncertain and still calls me forward?

🌔 Waxing Gibbous (The Nearness of Fullness)

The world glows, breathes in, refines, iterates, finds its heart line. 

Prompts: What wants to be sharpened? What wants to be softened?

You can find me on the moon waxing and waning. My heart full of petals, every single one begging 'Love me, love me, love me. Whoever I am. Whoever I become.'

– Andrea Gibson –

🌕 Full Moon (Radiance Without Disguise)

Everything is visible here - the beauty, the mess, the courage we forgot to count. 

Prompts: What did this cycle reveal about my capacity, limits, and desires? What deserves gratitude? What in my life is asking to be witnessed, not improved?

When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know

any of us, what happens then.

So I try not to miss anything.

I think, in my whole life, I have never missed

The full moon

Or the slipper of it coming back.

Or, a kiss.

Well, yes, especially a kiss.

— Mary Oliver —

🌖 Waning Gibbous (The Gift of Sharing the Harvest)

The light begins its return to shadow and wisdom ripens into offering.

Prompts: What do I know now that might nourish another? What does generosity look like?

🌗 Last Quarter (The Art of Letting Go)

Release is a craft. Think about a clearing of altars or saying a soft goodbye to what has finished. To let go is also to trust the future.

Prompts: What am I consciously retiring so something new has room to grow? What story have I outgrown?

On the surface of the black

lake, a swan and the moon

stayed perfectly 

still. I knew this was

a perfect moment.

Which would only hurt me

to remember and never

live again. My God. How lucky to have lived

a life I would die for.

– Leila Chatti –

🌘 Waning Crescent (The Holy Silence Before Beginning)

This is the exhale before a new beginning. Rest is not withdrawal; it is preparation. The next cycle waits with a gentle patience that feels like love.

Prompts: How will I honor my need for stillness? What is the soft animal of my body asking for right now?

O second moon, we, too, are made

of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

We, too, are made of wonders, of great

and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,

of a need to call out through the dark.

– Ada Limón –

I’ve been thinking a lot about this quote from Megan Falley in one of her recent newsletters. She said “Listen — I revere language. When someone says, ‘There are no words,’ I think: try anyway. Find them. Here we are together, at the lightless bottom of the well. Don’t tell me there’s no rope when your eyes haven’t yet adjusted to the dark. Reach, fumble, grab onto something. Anything.”

And so, even in the dark of a new moon, I hope this season and this new year offers you a language large enough for your becoming. If this framework stirs something, I’d love for you to reply and let me know. Tell me the phase you’re living inside. Share a line, an image, a dream you’re carrying into the next lunar light. See you in the new year.

As if you were on fire within

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.

— Pablo Neruda —