Lessons From The Moon: Be Whole in Every Phase | 065

Oh, Elizabeth, I am so excited to have this

conversation with you about the moon and what she has taught you

and what you're learning as an older woman.

We start with the prayer that you like to share.

I would love to start with prayer. And

the first thing I want to say is, this

is a Native American teaching, and there's different versions

of it, you know, depending on the place in the country that

you're in. But the gist of it is, is that grandmother Moon

teaches us quality of life, because when she's empty, she

fills, and when she's full she empties. And within that

quality, that that paradigm is the concept of enough, that we

have enough, and that we will always have enough, and that's

what actually creates quality of life, that way of of being

content and with also trusting that we will wax, we will wane.

We will be full, we will be at the dark times, but the cycle is

never ending. We don't have to worry that we will get stuck in

a particular place. And what I find so comforting is when I go

outside at night and I just look at the moon, it reminds me it's

constantly moving. It's constantly changing. It's a

little bit different every single night. And that reminds

me, nothing stays the same. So I don't have to get all twisted

about where I am right now. And ask yourself, when we think

about quality, do we ever look at the moon and say, Oh, she's

not so beautiful tonight? Yes, I think that was one of the

biggest lessons I took away from the moon teaching, because in

our culture, we focus on the bigness and the brightness, what

I would call the fullness of the moon. But I know I never go out

at night and say, Oh, it's only a crescent moon. She's not

enough. I've never in my life said that. I've always said

she's beautiful, right where she is,

yes,

and that's about the contentment and about

the trust. And I guess what I'll just start with is is, as you

know, the last oh, what would I say? Decade plus of my life has

really been a challenge, and that's why this teaching has

kind of helped anchor me, because I had to completely

reorient my relationship to time, my relationship to

success, my relationship to achievement, all of that within

the last decade, and that coincided with going through

menopause, and I didn't have a lot of psycho spiritual support,

you know, with within that. But I did have this teaching. I did

have this particular teaching that I got from a friend of mine

who is what is very grounded in Native American teaching and

spiritual understandings, and it's something that I would just

say I hold onto, because it creates trust for me, it creates

trust, because no matter what phase of the moon is happening

at the moment, it's going to change so I'm not stuck. It's

always going to be beautiful, right where I am, even if it

feels hard, and I will always get another chance.

Oh, that's an important thing, isn't it? Yeah,

yeah.

Because we tend to get in our culture, we

tend to get really caught up in I have to do the thing now, or I

have to achieve the thing soon, because I'm not going to get

another chance. But if you think about it, the moon goes through

a full cycle every 29 and a half days, and so in 29 every 29 and

a half days, she is big and bright and beautiful and just

full full full full full and it comes around every single month,

as it does for women, whether you're

menstruating or not.

Yes, we we know that in our bodies, we have

a just an automatic. Connection to that cyclical nature. And so

I'll just back up a minute for everybody, everybody listening,

and you know you, Tess, I just want to acknowledge what a

beautiful presence in my life you have been and a support as

I've gone through this. But I had just started. This was back

in 2013 I had just finished an advanced degree. I had gotten a

job in the field that I was so excited about in academia. I had

research that I was doing, I had a book that I was going to

publish. I was teaching at a university that I loved. This

whole new career was opening up, and it felt like this is the

career I've been meant to have my whole life. Yes, and I was

already 50, I'd had actually several careers before, but this

was the one that felt the most like me, the most like this is

where I belong. And then I was in a car accident, and it was a

really bad car accident did a lot of a lot of physical damage,

and the reckoning that I had to go through with that car

accident is what brought me to this teaching and has completely

reoriented my way of looking at who am I now at this phase in my

life.

Yeah, I remember the accident. I remember how

happy you were in that teaching job because you are a born

teacher, and you're still teaching, and you will always be

teaching as you are now. And that was a huge trauma, a huge

loss, a huge moment of grief for you. So what was it in you that

allowed this teaching in when it was presented to you, because

that was a choice. It was a choice to let it in. It was a

choice to embrace this perspective and this way of

moving through this new chapter. You could have stayed in another

place of grief and denial and anger and all the things, but

you chose to really step into this. So can you pinpoint that

moment where it just really resonated for you, when this was

presented to you?

Well, I've known this teaching for a long

time. Actually, it's but, yeah, there was actually a very

specific moment with another woman. I think I want to say it

was, maybe might even been three or four years after the

accident, because I did continue teaching. I did continue working

for a couple more years, and my body just couldn't do it. It

just couldn't do it. I was in too much pain, and I knew that I

couldn't be the teacher, the academic, the writer, that I

really wanted to be, and that I needed to step back and just

literally take care of my health and and take care of my body.

And I remember, I was sitting with a woman who actually is

much younger than me. She's She would be now, she's at least a

couple decades younger than me, but she was, she was visiting my

husband and I at our home, and she herself was really

struggling. She had just let go of a business that she had

started in a really good way. She had sold it to someone that

she felt good about it, but she was sitting there going, I don't

know what's next. What do I do now? And she was in this real

anxiety about not knowing what was next, and what should she

be, and what should she do. And I just remember, you know how

sometimes we just get downloads from the universe. I don't know

where they come from, but I was just sitting there, and I went,

I actually said this to her. I said, You are me. You are a

younger me. And I said, Let's just really sit quietly with

this for a minute and take a look at why we get so anxious

when we're in between, when we don't have a project, when we're

not achieving when, and particularly when there's an

unknown, when we don't know what's next.

And you know, I am terrible with that, you

and I have done the same thing, where we've

sat and you've and you've just been like, Elizabeth, I don't

know what am I doing, or you said, I want more. I want more.

I want more.

Concept of enough. When you were saying that

before, I was having a visceral reaction to that, going, oh

gosh, that's a daily, hourly by second by second practice for

me.

And so I in that moment, sitting there, what

I. Realized, I don't even know why this teaching popped into my

head, but I realized we were both sitting in the Dark of the

Moon. Yes, we were both sitting in the dark time when you can't

comfortably, right, right? We know she's there, but we can't

see her. And we live in a culture. We live in a post

modern, capitalistic culture that worships achievement,

money, fame. Why do so many teenagers want to grow up to be

an influencer? You know, that's just that's the epitome of the

culture that we live in. And she and I were really at the effect

of that I'm nothing if I'm not doing something or if, and even

worse, I don't even have a plan for what I'm going to be doing,

you know? And what we realized in that moment both of us, was

we actually got a real insight into who we were as people, and

what I noticed was that if I allow myself to sit in that dark

phase, the Dark of the Moon Phase, I am not a person that

creates out of nothing, like there are plenty of people that

are just bursting with ideas that they can just, you know,

something is born out of whole cloth. That's not me. I tend to

be somebody who looks around and then chooses something that I'm

going to follow. And what I realized is that's what the dark

time of the moon is for, yes, and if I sit in anxiety, and I'm

sitting there beating myself up that I don't know what I'm

doing, like I was sitting there going, when is my body going to

heal? When am I going to feel better? When am I going to be

able to get back to the career that I lost? You know, When?

When? When? When? Instead of taking it as an opportunity to

be, to just be sort of like, let me just rest here and take a

look around. And what she and I both realized is because we are

people that are really good at noticing what would be a really

great something for us to hitch our wagon to. And when I had

that insight, I thought, oh, then I'm a person that really

needs this dark time. I need this slow time. I need this rest

time. Because here's another thing that I saw about myself

through listening to her was that once I do decide this is

the thing that I'm going for, I go all the way I'm going to go

back to school and get the degree I'm going to or the

certification. I'm going to get really well trained and well

versed in it, and I'm going to find a job, or I'm going to

create a job that just really gets in there and makes a huge

career or success out of it. And I do that with projects too,

even even personal projects, but it takes me a little while to

find the thing, and I realized I can't be discerning about that

unless I give myself that grace of sitting in the quiet, sitting

in the dark and just looking around,

and that is challenging. I know, for

somebody like me and you and I have spoken about this, that I

see the dark moon as nothingness, as Yes, as

emptiness, as failure as inaction. I mean, you know,

there's all these things that I attach to that place, and I want

to

exile that place. So it's uncomfortable.

It's so uncomfortable because, you're

right, we have this, this desire to be seen, to be successful, to

be doing something. So what would you say to someone

listening right now, who's going, Yep, that's me. Yeah,

yeah. How do you consciously remind yourself of the value of

the dark moon phase.

Well, it helps me when I remind myself

that the moon is still there. I just can't see her. It's the

only reason I can't see her is because of the way she's

orbiting around the Earth. At the moment, she's just in

shadow. It's not that she's gone, and that's the myth that

we have told ourselves. Is because she's that we can't see

her, that she must be gone. It's, it's, it's a void, and

she's never coming

back right. Opportunities, never coming

back. The person's never coming back the right. Love, right

connection the

I never or the or, you know, like in my

fallow time when I was healing my body and dealing with all the

aftermath of of this horrible car accident and trying to

figure out, you know, where do I go from here in the new body

that I have? I have a new I have a menopausal body that has now

been injured in a way that's left me with some, you know,

some minor disabilities, and things were shifting in my

marriage, and we had moved a couple of years before, and

there were just so many things that just kind of needed to

settle, and I wasn't allowing things to just settle, and

that's what the Dark Of The Moon is for. Let it just settle. Just

rest. Rest is medicine, and again, that's another thing in

our culture, rest is seen as a waste of time. We brag about

how, yes, there's a bazillion articles all the time about how

to get more sleep, how to get better sleep, but really we're

proud of how sleep, Western culture

seen as a proactive activity. Yes,

exactly. That's kind of a means to an end.

It is I need to get rested so that I can

go out in the world and suit be a super achiever and do all the

things. And by the way, what I'm talking about this focus on

achievement and constant motion and fame and all the things that

go into it. It's called internalized capitalism. We've

taken an outward system and we've internalized it to the

degree that we think this is who I am, and this is the way I'm

supposed to be, when this is actually a culture that has been

taught to us and there's an agenda behind this culture.

Because, of course, the harder we work, the more we produce for

the people who make all the money and own all the

businesses, and you know all of that. And even if you're a

business owner yourself, as you are, as I was at one time,

there's still that hustle mindset of, I can't stop for a

moment. I cannot stop for a moment, or I'm going to slide

backwards.

So what do you do in those moments where you catch

yourself in that net of internalized capitalism? As a

somatic practitioner, someone who is constantly reminding

yourself to be in your body in experience. What can you give us

to remind ourselves? Oh, it's okay to enjoy the dark moon. The

rest

well, the first thing I do is I, usually,

I usually have to giggle at myself a little bit because I'm,

I'm able now, and I'm able now in a way that I wasn't in the

past to recognize, oh, that's the narrative that's running.

Yes, I'm, I'm at the effect of internalized capitalism right

now. And so I can have a little laugh at myself, which actually

right there that softens it a little bit. Yes, and a practice

that I I really love, is just sitting, closing my eyes and

just saying to my or asking my body, what are you feeling right

now? What are the sensations right now that are going on? Is

there like a tight stomach or it? Or is my throat feeling

constricted, or is there a swirly feeling in my solar

plexus? Are my legs feeling jittery in some way, just

noticing what is showing up in my actual physical body, because

that energy is a manifestation of my thoughts and feelings, and

just allowing that to be there, and just breathing with it, and

being able to say, Oh yeah, there's that, that weird swirl I

get right in my Solar Plexus. And you know, if I put my hand

there and I just breathe into it and just allow it, just allow

it. Because, like you said, the dark time or the fallow time,

when we're in between, or we don't know what's going to

happen next, or we're trying to figure out where we should go,

we see that as a void, and we see it as passive, but it's,

it's actually got its own energy.

It and it's an engine. It is. It has. It has

that quality, if you allow yourself to yes, that

way, and that will show up in your body.

If you pay attention, you will feel whatever energy is. Is

moving around in your body, even when you are feeling at that

effect of you know, anxiety is going to show up in your body.

Anxiety, fear, concern, all of that, it is going to show up in

your body. Most people say you have things like, my throat

feels tight, my stomach feels upset. But sometimes it's even

really subtle. Sometimes it's like I was saying, like, I

notice I do a lot of like, clenching and unclenching my

hands when I'm anxious, yeah? And I never noticed that until I

started really paying attention to I stopped eating. I stopped

breathing. I do too. I'm a breath

holder for sure, yeah, remind myself breathe.

Take a breath. Yeah, I just stop breathing, yeah.

And I find that just acknowledging and

allowing whatever I'm feeling in my body, also just noticing

what's the quality of my mind right now. Is it racing? Does

it, do I feel kind of numb and foggy? Am I? Are my thoughts,

you know? Or are they roaring and rushing like a stream, like

even that? And it kind of gets me out of my head, because I'm

on now paying attention to what's the quality of my mind,

not the particular thoughts, but what's the quality, what's the

tone of them, what's the texture?

Noticing, not a yes, just

a gentle, a gentle, just noticing and an

allowing and an acknowledging. That's the beautiful work you

can do during the dark time, because it's also cleansing.

It's also a way to go. What, what has been going on with me?

Because I know if I've been really, really busy, I can get

disconnected from my body, my thoughts, my feelings. And it's

only in the quieter time, in the dark, time in the fallow time

that I have the space Yeah, pay attention and to recharge. Yes,

because otherwise you burst, and you really taught

me that through our conversations about this in the

past, yes, yes, but I am an introvert that presents as an

extrovert. I don't recharge from other people. I recharge on my

own, and I'm exactly the same. Yeah, that dark moon is my

recharging, my refueling, my my regrouping, my catching up time.

Yes, catching up, I love that. It's

also a catching up. It's a catching up with yourself,

yes, and thank you for helping me see that in my

life, because I wasn't valuing that. That was time well spent,

yeah,

yeah, and I wasn't either. And it's so

ironic, because I was forced to be in a very prolonged, like,

years long, dark time like, Yeah, almost 10 years of healing

my body, you know, trying to figure out just my limits

physically. And, you know, I would do something and I'd have

a setback. I won't go into all that, but, but just the it was a

very prolonged dark time, and then put menopause on top of

that, and the craziness of now, today, I feel this way.

Tomorrow, I feel this way. My hormones are all over the place.

I can't sleep. I feel like a 13 year old with my emotions. It

just felt, in fact, now that I look back on it, I'm actually so

grateful that I was able to recognize, oh, I'm in a dark

time, because there was actually a lot happening. It just wasn't

happening in what we value, which is the outside world,

outside achievement. And what I was able to see with sitting

with this woman who was basically completely me 20 years

but just 20 years younger, was that we cannot find our next

thing unless we go through that dark time. Yes, there has to be

a pause, especially for someone like me that needs that chance

to kind of, you know, scan the field and see what would be

really great to do next, knowing that I'm going to go all in on

it. And I did make some mistakes during that time, to the degree

I was able, I did take on some small volunteer opportunities. I

ended up being the chairperson of an organization, and I did

them because I felt like I should, like I should be doing

something. It's not enough to just be home and be quiet and

letting my body heal and figure and just sort of scanning the

horizon for what might pop up that might look interesting

next. I felt like, no, I need to get out there and create and do

at least a little something. And I ended up joining

organizations. That were not they were fine, but they weren't

deeply aligned. I remember,

and I remember when you gave yourself

permission to exit that I really loved what you were saying a

moment ago about it being a pause.

Yes, it's a pause, a sacred pause, a sacred

pause, and there's medicine in that quiet, that quiet space,

there's deep medicine. And we as a as a culture, have really

stepped away from that. We give lip service to rest, but it's

exactly what you said a minute ago, for the end result of then

going out there, and, you know, becoming full again,

being stronger and even better than you were

yesterday, and being able to do even more, and expanding your

capacity to the point that everyone would just be amazed at

how much you could achieve.

Exactly, yes, exactly it's it's like the

rest. The rest is only to be even bigger and better when you

when you re emerge from the Dark of the Moon. And so if you think

about it, that's not how the moon works. She comes out of the

dark, and she's just a little sliver. She doesn't burst out of

the dark and is immediately full and bright. She very gradually

emerges from that fallow, what we would call a fallow resting

phase. And it's a very gradual but steady. And that's one of

the things I love about the teaching, is it really taught me

to value the steadiness and the discipline of taking your time

getting to whatever the thing is that you hope will be full and

bright. Oh,

I love the word discipline within the context of

this conversation, because life is a practice and a discipline.

Yeah,

yeah. And you notice how the moon it's

she's just a little bit bigger and a little bit brighter each

night, but it's gradual, and she doesn't rush. And, like I was

saying, I'm not walking out there going, Oh, she's not big

enough yet. I think she's beautiful in every phase. Yes,

absolutely every phase. And so this what we call the waxing

phase, this deliberate, disciplined, slow growth. What I

saw about that, because, especially now, as I reflect

back and even in this conversation with you, I'm

reminded of how just even my recovery, my physical recovery

from that car accident, it's been a slow, steady, disciplined

I had to do all the things you know, physical therapy and I had

to do some somatic therapy around the trauma, the emotional

trauma from The accident. I had to do a lot of practices to stay

steadily on the path to recovery, and it was very slow,

very slow and very deliberate, and it was a discipline that I

had to give myself over to.

Yes, I love what you're saying about this. What's

coming up for me, as I'm listening to you about this

phase, this gradual, slow and steady. It's a really beautiful

phase, and invitation to check in with your capacity,

absolutely, absolutely. And it's also a

chance to check in with do I need to reorient? Do I need to

perhaps change a little bit in how I'm approaching this thing?

If we go too fast? That's kind of what happened with me. With

You know, I wasn't, I wasn't working for several years while

I was healing my body, but I felt like, oh my gosh, I need to

be doing something, because I'm I'm not. I don't have a purpose.

I'm not useful. I'm not a value. So I joined all these volunteer

organizations, chaired one of them, and sure enough, I made

mistakes, because I rushed in and said, Oh, I'll do that, or

I'll do that, or I'll take that position. And I couldn't always

come through as my best self, because I was it's still in a

certain like, my physical capacity wasn't always there, or

I didn't take the time to really suss out, in one instance, who

were the people that I was really going to be working with.

And it again, it turned out, okay, okay, in the end, but it

wasn't the the full experience that I would have really

enjoyed, because I didn't take my time.

Yeah, but what I'm hearing is I'm listening to you

is we're gonna make mistakes regardless of which phase we're

in, what speed we're going at, how many, how many. Skills we

have, and that's how we learn and grow. But what I love about

this teaching and being in this slow and steady phase is that

you allow yourself time to keep catching up with yourself, to

keep scanning, to keep readjusting, to keep

reorienting, and you have that time to keep deciding if you

want to keep staying in this testament

Exactly, and that's really key. You know,

in the context of the moon, of course, she's going to be full

at us at a certain point, but in the context of our life, not

everything is meant to come to fruition.

Oh, gosh, that's an really important point,

because we expect that it's supposed to, or we believe

that's that internalized capitalist again, that if you

study then it must be because you're going to do a career with

it, or you're going to make money. It can't just be for the

pure enjoyment of the discipline of learning and the fulfillment

of learning and growing and being in the process of study.

It has to be for something else,

exactly, exactly. And it became very

clear to me at a certain point, and I think you and I even had

to talk about this, that I even though I really did have, I

really had respect, like for the organizations that I was

volunteering for, it wasn't that I, it wasn't that I was just

grasping at anything. I mean, I did do some due diligence, but

my my fear of being nothing because I wasn't working and I

wasn't producing, I I just took what was in front of me without

a lot of discernment, and and then once I was in, I didn't

feel like, Ooh, I should back out, because now I've committed

where, if I'd gone a little bit slower, or maybe just done one

at a time, and let me, you know, let me, let me, let me volunteer

for like six months with an organization. Let's just even

feel how it feels to be a volunteer. But no, I took on

like five organizations.

I remember, I remember,

but the discernment piece that you're

bringing up is so key, and you helped me see this, that you can

have more discernment at the slow and steady pace.

You can because you're gonna you're

gonna have a chance because of the slow and steady pace, it

gives you a chance to us, like you said, assess as you go,

reset as you go, and it gives you a chance to back out if you

need to,

because you pay to back out, yes,

because, like I said, not everything is

going to turn into the full moon. Or the other thing that I

really learned is we tend to, in our capitalistic way of

thinking, that there's only one version of what

full is. Oh, that's an important point. Gosh,

but there may be many versions of what

full actually is. And what I've really been seeing, particularly

in the last few years, is that I may start that waxing journey

toward a particular something that I'm interested in or that I

hope to achieve, but it may change along the way, but if I

go too fast, I won't notice that there's an opportunity for

change and that, and it doesn't give me the chance to say, you

know, I think I'm going to change my version. I think I'm

going to tweak and I'm going to go toward this version of

fullness rather than the one that I started out with. And a

perfect example of that is when I did go back to school. I went

back to school in in my 40s for an advanced degree, and it

started to get a degree to teach high school. I was going to get

the state certification to teach high school. So I had to get a

degree. I had to I had to get another bachelor's. Because of

the bat, the two bachelors I had before didn't really count for

teaching subject matter in high school. So I started that. I

found a great program, started the program, and I just, I would

say, maybe a semester or two in. And this is the beauty of act of

taking classes, is you're kind of forced to go slow and steady,

because you can only you have to take the class, you have to do

the class, you have to finish the class before you can go on

to the next one. So it does give you some time. It's a nice

pacing. It gives you some time to assess how you're doing. And

I remember I had two professors tell me you shouldn't be

teaching high school, and I was devastated because I had been

substitute teaching in high school. For a few years, and I

loved it. I was like, This is what I meant to do. Yay. I found

my thing. And they said, No, you should consider getting a

master's degree, and you should teach at the college level. They

said, I think, I think we, they both told me, We think you'll

burn out at the high school level, that you'll that you'll

feel there's a freedom in teaching at the college level

that you don't have in K through 12. And they said, We think you

would really thrive there. What do you think? And I thought,

wow, but I never would have noticed that coming my way if I

was only focused on this is what my fullness is going to look

like. It's getting the high school it's getting the

bachelor's and the high school teaching degree. But because I

was kind of going slowly and steadily, and I had remained

really open to my professors and my colleagues who were also in

school and just taking feedback, I was really assessing as I was

going, I was really able to hear that. And I switched course and

entered the master's program, and I did end up teaching at the

college level, and they were right. I loved it. It felt more

like me than teaching at the high school level. So that's a

beautiful example of when we just slow and steady,

disciplined and be open to perhaps changing course a little

bit along the way. What could happen when we reach the full

phase,

yeah. And what's coming up for me as I'm talking

to you, is we're able to dwell in possibility, to be open to

all possibilities. Yeah. And you know, you and I've spoken about

this before, but I my natural depot position is to be tied to

one outcome and one outcome only, like you were talking

about,

right? And something that capitalism

teaches us this is this, or maybe there's more than one, but

there's a very limited range of acceptable outcomes that are

allowed, and so you have to pick one of one of those,

and that also comes from our family of origin,

too. Oh, sure, in family systems, there are a system of

rules in every family, and that's how we're conditioned to

then play out that set of rules as we continue to grow and go

out into the world, and then we have, you know, what you're

explaining is internalized capitalism into the mix as well.

And then the aperture continues to narrow unless exactly, keep

it open

Exactly, exactly. And that's why I so

love this idea of the moon just very slowly and steadily waxing

a little bit at a time. So as human beings, that gives us that

little bit of space to pause, to course correct, to reassess,

before we get in so deep that maybe we reach a fullness, and

we realize this isn't really what I wanted, that can happen

too,

yes, and that has happened many times to me as it

has to you. And yes, no, I'm sure you can relate to us.

Yeah, let's

talk about the full moon, because you really

helped me shift my perspective, or, as we've been saying, open

up what my view of it is and what it can look like. Because I

was only seeing it as full achievement, full joy, full and

you helped me see, well, Tess, it can also be full pain, full

drama, full Yes, explosive. Listen, if you are, what does

that feel like in your body? You said to me and and I'm gonna

burst, yeah, and you will if you stay there, because my natural

inclination is previously, until I had this initial conversation

with you and started really diving into this, that I was

only comfortable in full moon. Yeah, full full, full

achievement, achievement, success, success in the light,

in the light, you know, and, and that's exhausting.

It is exhausting, and it it also

doesn't allow room for anything else. I remember, I remember a

conversation you and I had where you were in so much distress

because you just wanted more, more more more more you. You

were, you were you were like, Elizabeth, I'm so full, but I

want to stay here, and I want more. And I said, and you will

blow up because you can't fit

anything. I anything, and I remember you

said to me,

so where's the room for the new then,

exactly, exactly, if we stay, if we stay

at that peak fullness, how is there room for anything else?

And how is there room for change or growth, or if, or if we're in

a real even if it's the most wonderful high achieving, like

where I was, I was just I was so happy I'd gotten the job of my

dreams. I'd, you know, I'd completed my career. I had a

book that I was working on all these things going on, there

wasn't room for anything more than that. And in some ways,

that car accident, in taking all of that away from me, it created

room for what the perspective that I have now, I never would

have gotten this perspective if I had continued on that path. I

never would have. It would have, and especially in academia,

where it's about continue to research, continue to publish,

continue to, you know, get a better job, get a better, higher

teaching position, your students should do better every semester.

Again, more, more, more, more. I would have just stayed on that

track until I probably burst until I that's what burnout

really is to me. Is it bursting? It's a bursting. We are holding

too much. We're too full,

yeah, but what's the beauty of the full moon?

Well, the beauty is that we get a chance

to shine our light on other people for one thing, and that

was something that came to me going back to that conversation

I was having with the woman who was younger than myself, when I

shared my insight with her about that we were the kind of people

that need this fallow time in order to discern what our next

move was, because we were probably going to pick from

something that was offered to us rather than generate it

ourselves. So we had to be very discerning among the offerings.

What were what were we going to take? When I shared that with

her, she said, it makes me cry. She said, I want to just come

sit at your feet and worship you as an elder, because that just

completely changed her perspective of who she was as a

person, and I was and I just thought, I have something to

offer that isn't an achievement,

but it is,

but it's not the kind of achievement like

look how much money I Make, or look at the job that I have, or

look at the product that I created that everybody wants, or

I'm the teacher that everybody wants to take the classes from.

It was literally just something that I came to an insight about

for myself and for her, and I found a way to share it in a way

that she could understand it.

But to me, the way that you've taught me about

this, that was you being in your full moon, yes, yes, and at the

same time, that's

what I mean by shining my light on somebody

else, absolutely.

And I mean, I think that's a really important

part of this conversation is that we're not only just in one

phase, just because we're cycling throughout the day of

rest and activity and waxing and waning, likewise, throughout the

month, in our own internal cycle, and then we are cycling

through these various cycles, and It could all be in one day.

We're not sitting in the one phase. So these epiphanies that

we have while we're sitting in this quietness, in the

stillness, either with ourselves or in conversation and

relationship with others, we then get these these openings

and these experiences within these other phases to remind us

the of our capacity to be all the

things exactly, exactly. And like I was

saying earlier, the fullness can look so many different ways. It

could be. It could be achieving a goal, or, you know, such as

getting the big job that we wanted, or making the amount of

money that we wanted, or, you know, buying the house that we

wanted, or getting the relationship that we wanted. It

could be something like that, something that we've been

reaching for, something that we've been grasping for. It

could also be internal work of say you've been in therapy for a

long time and you finally, finally, you have a breakthrough

on something that's a fullness, that's a fullness that serves

you.

We don't. So we can look fullness, do we? No,

we don't we? Again, we internalize

capitalism, right? We. Look we look at only outside

achievements, and especially achievements that can be noticed

by other people. We are so hooked into. Am I getting

noticed by other people? Am I getting approbation and

accolades from other people for what I've accomplished, because

what do we do when we see a full moon? Oh, my God, she's so

beautiful, she's so big, she's so bright. We praise her so

highly when she's at her peak.

Yes, and it's on the news, look at the full moon

right? Everybody's outside, only looking at the

right, right, right, exactly. And we

name, we name the full moons, the Wolf Moon, the super moon,

the hunter's moon, but we don't name, well, if you're in us, if

you're in the world of astrology or astronomy, yes, there are

definitely names for all of the different phases and all

throughout the month, but as just a cultural, public

recognition of the full moon. Yeah, it's only the full moon

that is, that is only recognized. And that's what

sinks into our, our, our psyche. Oh, the full moon is the thing

to be celebrated, because that's what is paid attention to.

Oh, gosh. And as you're saying this, what's

coming up for me is and then we wait. We're waiting. It's almost

like we're we are in a holding pattern until the next full

moon, exactly, until the next accolade, until the next

Exactly. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Exactly.

And we end going back to what you were saying about the Dark

of the Moon, we see that as somehow a failure of void and

emptiness. We see the loss of the fullness as, again, a

failure, as as as a loss. There can be grief around that. Now I

also want to point out the we were talking a little moment

ago, you mentioned about that maybe the fullness of the moon

is pain, like there's something really painful that you're

moving to and you're just in the thick of it. Now there's two

ways to look at that. You could look at that as this is the Dark

of the Moon, but you could also definitely look at it is, this

is the full This is the full moon. Because the pain may be

something coming to fruition that maybe you've ignored or has

not been dealt with, or that you've been feeding in a really

unhealthy way, and now it's showing up in its fullness. And

so we also have to be willing to take a look that brightness

shining down on us can be the signal of, oh, this, this is

what I've created. Is this really what I wanted? So I think

that's important. And there's another piece to the full moon,

and I have a personal story about this too. While it's

wonderful to be in the full moon and feel like, Oh, I've achieved

and everybody's loving me, and I'm, I'm the greatest ever.

What's the what's that saying that James Cameron said, you

know, I'm on top of the world, or I'm the best in the world,

something like the world, the king of the world, right, right?

I'm the queen of the world. What can also come up during that

phase is imposter syndrome, oh God, somehow we don't deserve to

be here. So I really want to speak to that. And this, I have

a very vivid memory. This was back when I was in my 30s. I had

a I had a big, fancy job in finance, and it was a great job,

and I was really good at it, and I really loved it. And one year,

I got this giant Award for Performance, and it was the

first year that my division for the company I worked for had

decided to give this particular award, and I found out later

that it was my performance that made them want to create this

award. So they based the parameters of how you get the

award on my performance for subsequent years, so I was and,

but thank God. I didn't know that quite at the time, but I

got the award because it was presented at a year end

conference where they showed the company numbers. And, you know,

yeah, yeah, yeah. And yay, how great we are. And I get the

award. And I was so surprised, but also really proud, because I

had worked really, really hard that year. I just put my head

down and worked really hard. And so it felt so good to get the

recognition. But I remember the next morning, I woke up and I

said to myself, Oh, my God, they're going to expect. Me to

do this every year from now on.

So that was the the flip side of being in that fullness and

getting all that recognition and deservedly kind of basking in it

for a moment. But this inner critic came in that said, now

you have to repeat it every single year. And of course,

that's impossible,

yeah. And another part of that is what's next,

exactly. So I got to the top of the mountain. Now, what? Right?

Oh, where do I go? Now, there can be a lot of anxiety right in

that, right?

Yes, and I, and I know that was also

something for me, because, as you know, I've had, you know,

several careers about a decade each, and as each one was

winding down, and they usually wound down, either not through

my choice, because I lost the job or circumstances, or just

life changed, and it just wasn't a fit anymore. But yes, that

anxiety of what's next, what's next, what's next, and then

going back to the Dark of the Moon, I just did not recognize

that I was waning and heading into the dark, but that that was

actually a very fruitful process, because when we're kind

of coming down off of that fullness, just like the coming

into The fullness, the waxing gives us a chance to go slowly

and to kind of reassess and maybe recalibrate as we go. The

Waning Phases give us a chance to assess what we've just done,

or what we've just been through, like, for instance, if the

fruit, like we were talking about, maybe the fullness is a

is a really painful something that, you know, an aha, or a

very painful situation or very painful episode, something like

that, as it begins to soften and wind down, we now have a chance

because of the slowness, the slowness and steadiness, The

discipline there is to learn to let go. Learn to sit with the

feelings of letting go. Because often, why we want to hang on to

the fullness is we fear how it's going to feel when it's not full

anymore. Yeah, it's it's not even sometimes it's not even so

much the loss of the thing that we achieved the brightness, the

fullness, it's what we're really afraid of, is that we're going

to feel bad once it's gone. And we don't want to feel those

feelings, so we want to stay in the fullness. Yes, a way to

avoid getting to those feelings.

And as you were speaking, you were saying, you

know, the gradual winding down, I was sitting, going, No, it

feels like a crash, but it's

me. So

you talk to me about that, because that's what

was coming up in my body as I was listening to you, is that,

you know, when you're you've achieved, you've achieved,

you've had the big night, or you've had the big wedding day,

or you've had the big whatever it is, and then the adrenaline

sort of leaves your body, and you go, Whoa, and you feel a bit

woozy and light headed and cool, boom. It feels like you're in

the abyss of the nothingness of what do I do now? Oh god, it's

over. I've lost it, or whatever it is it feels, or it can feel

like a crash. So help me find my way into the perspective that

it's a winding down, and it is a gentleness, just like the

ramping up from the dark to the full, that the ramping down from

the full, and then cycling into the invitation to rest and

regenerate and regroup and catch up with the storms in the quiet

that to remind how can we remind ourselves that we are in a

gradual transition?

Yeah, well, what really helps me is first to

acknowledge, on a somatic level, there can, there can be an

actual crash because of the like, you just said, the

adrenaline, the cortisol, of what, like, let's say it was a

big event, like, like, your wedding or, or, right? The

exactly, the oxytocin, like, like, let's say it's the

fruition of an amazing relationship, or you just went

on an amazing vacation with your your loved one, and it's just,

oh my gosh, it's just the most amazing, loving, yummy,

delicious time. And now you're home, and it does in it, and

yeah, there's an actual physiological where the where

all of the the hormones and all of the chemicals in your body

are readjusting, and

it literally falls. Like, the DT,

like, exactly like, and so, yeah, you

kind of have to just see. Here's the other thing. When we're in

the fullness, we also want to, because we don't want to feel

the crash. We pretend like it's not gonna

happen. Such an important point. Styling of

those particular feelings and emotions. I say we don't

prepare. We don't prepare. We don't create a

soft landing for ourselves after the fullness

that's important. Yeah. So how do we do that?

Well, again, one of the ways is what I

just described, when you start to feel that, that let down is

just acknowledging what are you feeling in your body, what are

the sensations, and just giving them room to just be. It's okay.

It's normal and natural, especially as the as the all the

hormones and all the chemicals are readjusting themselves and

also allowing the feelings to be there, to acknowledge, I'm a

little sad that it's over now. I'm really sad that was so

great. I'm even acknowledging I'm not really looking forward

to the next phase.

Oh yeah, because you can go into judgment, but

because you're having feelings that are uncomfortable or you

perceive as negative, you're not allowed to have them, but

somehow you're ungrateful, the gratitude and those other

feelings can exist together, right? And especially power in

harnessing them together

exactly. And especially if the fullness

was around, like achieving something really important, or,

like I said, this beautiful vacation with a loved one, then

to feel sad or perhaps even angry that it's over, that it

can't continue. We don't if we don't allow those feelings,

they're going to get stuck in our bodies somehow, and they're

going to make the transition to equanimity a lot harder, and

they're going to make the let down feel even worse. But you

notice, what our grandmother Moon does is she does it slowly.

She wanes very slowly, a little bit at a time and again. I don't

go out at night and look at the moon and go, Oh, she's waning.

She's got a little sliver missing. I don't think of her as

having something missing, because she's getting smaller.

I And again, that's our perception, because

of the way that she's orbiting the Earth,

just as full as she always was, or she's exactly

the same size, exactly the same size.

I remember you and I barely over laughing when you

were sharing that with me.

And it's, as you were saying early on in our conversation,

it's so important to remind yourself that it's exactly the

same size, and it's all the things. It's just the orbit,

right? And you're just, it's, you're just

seeing, you're just seeing a different slice of her. That's

all and that's just kind of even in in our lives, as we move

through our lives, anything that we're doing or witnessing at the

moment, that's all we're seeing at that moment. It's, it may not

be the whole thing. It's just that little portion that we're

that we're seeing, and even the full moon, it looks full to us,

but we're only seeing one side of her. She's a whole round

sphere that we're not we're not seeing the other side that is

so important. To acknowledge Yes.

So, you know, so I've really, I'm so,

I'm so grateful for this test, you know, over the last few

years, just having to sit with this idea of, what does the moon

mean to me? What is my relationship to time now that

I'm not able to the degree that I was before, to be out there,

you know, hustling, I just sometimes have to laugh at

myself to be because it's like, Elizabeth, you're not seeing the

whole picture. You're only just, you know, just be, take comfort

in that in some ways, you can only see what you can see, and

there's actually a lot that you can't see that's just waiting

for you. And that's where the trust comes in. So going into

the waning phase, she's just very gently, just peeling off

layers and layers. And if we look at like, let's say we

achieved something. A big or there was a there was a big

difficulty that we just that we got through, that was the

fullness we got through a difficulty and but there's still

a resonance there. It's not like it's completely over, like when

you go on a great vacation, for example, you still talk about

it. You might talk about it for weeks afterwards. That's part of

the waning. What you're doing in that phase is you're allowing

yourself to integrate the experience, allowing it to

really become part of you, to sink into your tissues, to sink

into your psyche, and particularly if it was something

difficult, this is the period of time that you you can say, what

did I learn from this? What am I taking away from this? How did

this change me? How am I different now? How does this

help me to walk forward in a different way than I used to?

And you can't do that if you just jump from thing to thing to

thing, if you're just always full and then jumping to the

next full moon and then the next full moon, you never learn the

lessons. You never really integrate what you've learned.

That's That's why we make the same mistakes over and over a

lot of the time, and

that's why people have heart attacks and strokes.

Exactly. I mean, your body cuts you down

if right, it's right, right? That's why

people burn out emotionally and mentally, is because they're

just jumping from Full Moon to full moon to full moon, and

they're never getting themselves a chance, giving themselves a

chance to gradually wind down. Like, even if you think about

like, let's say you're crying about something, like you're

just sobbing over something you don't just all of a sudden say,

Okay, I'm done. You know, it's a gradual, it's a very gradual

crying less and less and less and softer and softer and softer

until finally, you know your body goes okay, I'm done, I'm

done, I'm done. Or even if you've done something really

hard, physically, even if you collapse down on the ground,

because, let's say you've done a big, hard run, and you've run

out of breath, and now you have to stop and you just collapse on

the ground. You aren't just immediately back to normal. You

lay there and you breathe hard for a few for for quite a while,

and it takes a while for your breath to come back to its

normal rhythm, and it takes a while for your body to relax

into its normal state. It isn't instant, and that's what the

waning phase is for. It's to give you a time to process and

to come back to the reset period gradually, because if we did it

too fast, we would blow out our nervous systems first of all,

and it gives us a chance to savor if it was something

wonderful that that happened, if that fullness of the Moon was

something wonderful, it gives us a time to continue to remember

and integrate and savor it and just the deliciousness of the

thing that happened, where, if we're looking for the next

thing, we're not savoring. And that was a mistake I made for

years, because I was just, what's the next thing? What's

the next thing? I didn't even give myself credit for what I

had just achieved. Yeah,

I didn't even acknowledge what I had just

been through. If it was something difficult. I was just

like, nope. On to the next thing.

Yeah, this is so key that the celebration doesn't

just occur in the moment of the fall, right, but that

integration, that reflection, that remembering, that savoring

is still part of Yes, lingering experience that exactly use and

informs the next

experience exactly, exactly, and

particularly it gives us a chance to I love that word

lingering. What lingers with me is maybe something that I do

want to take forward into whatever the next thing is that

I pursue.

Yeah. Oh,

notice what lingers if we go

slow, yes, yes,

we can't notice what's lingering if we're

going too fast,

yeah, I want to ask you about your perspective,

about holding the wanting more, because the desire for more is

there and it will be there, and you've really helped me see and

hold my wanting more, not as a monster. Or a demon or something

to exile, but something to befriend, and that I get to

choose how I hold the wanting of the more, because I was viewing

it as a defect, as as as a form of greed that I always wanted

more and then I could never be satiated, you know, by that

achievement or that achievement. So can you share that?

Yeah, I'd be happy to the wanting more,

the word it brings up for me the most is yearning, which has a,

how do I want to put it? It has a really sweet it has a love in

it, like when you think about when you yearn for your lover,

there's there's such a feeling of, of, it's, it's, it's really

hard to put into words, but it's, it's a, it's a that desire

is what's drawing you forward. It's an energy drawing you

forward, or drawing you outward. I hesitate even to use the word

forward, because we have such a concept of time as always linear

and always existing on the horizontal plane, when actually

time exists on a vertical plane as well. We can go up and down

within this particular moment. And so that yearning, that

desire is what carries us. It's the magic carpet that we're

flying on. But it doesn't mean that we can't enjoy the ride

while we're on it.

Yeah, I do love that word yearning. Thank you

for that, because, yeah, does have a yummy quality about it,

yeah, yeah. And if we didn't have that

desire, if we didn't have that yearning, we would stay stuck a

lot of the time. And that was something I really struggled

with. You know, going back to the Dark Side of the Moon, I

didn't see that. Actually, I did have yearning and desire. I

thought I was just nothing, that I was just like in a numb phase

or something like that, when really there was yearning and

desire bubbling underneath the surface. I just wasn't in touch

with it, because I didn't value that time period, to let the

discerning, the desire in the yearning bubble, kind of like

lava deep down in the mountain. You know it's you've got to let

that bubble and cook and create itself before it comes up,

before it comes up and out. And I just didn't recognize that.

That's what was going on with me in the dark phase, and that I

needed to rest and allow that to happen. Because that takes, that

actually takes a lot of a lot of energy. So I think what I had

said to you was, could you allow what you're naming as greed?

Could you name it as a desire and yearning and let that carry

you without expectation.

Yes, that is what you said. And it was, it was, it

was so helpful, and it really shifted things for me. So thank

you, and thank you for sharing that with with everyone. Oh

gosh, Elizabeth, I could talk to you about this all day. It's so

nourishing. It's such a beautiful way to look at, at at

life.

It's been a it's been a gift for me,

especially as I shift into my elder years, because there is a

there is a sense of on one level of waning. There's still a lot

of full moons to come. And as I was saying in the beginning, we

can trust every month there's going to be a full moon. So I

completely trust there's going to be many full moons that will

show up in my life, but just within my lifespan, if you look

at it, I'm I'm heading more into the into the waning phase, and

what I'm so grateful for Tess is to such a degree I've been able

to once I understood what internalized capitalism was, to

be able to recognize that that was a false thing that was

imposed on me, that that way of being was taught to me, imposed

on me, expected of me. Me, and to be able to say that's not

really me, that's not really where I want to go, and

particularly because I'm a person that is has a has a gift

of recognizing what is the valuable thing that I would like

to pursue in front of me with another person on my own,

whatever that looks like, giving myself that space and time to

practice that discernment instead of just grabbing

something for the sake of doing something. I'm so grateful to be

in that place, because, as you know, the studying that I've

been doing the last several years around somatic

facilitation and embodiment work and all of that, I feel no need

to hang out a shingle and say I'm a somatic practitioner. Come

and pay me money, you know, to work with me, to me, if that

shows up organically. Lovely, lovely, lovely, but I'm not

going to push for it. I'm not going to push because that's not

honoring that slow and steady waxing fullness waning dark

time. It's it's pushing and forcing. And right now, the way

I feel is it is a gift just to be a person who takes what they

know and shares it with those they love.

Oh, gosh, and hopefully we all can feel that

way, because one

of my greatest joys is just sitting

and talking to you and sharing our sharing our insights,

likewise,

the laying at

each opposing ends of not opposing the each end of the day

bed or curling up on the couch or sitting opposite in the

living room, or all the spaces sitting outside near the

fountain, and all the places that we've had these beautiful,

nourishing conversations, and that that is not only enough,

but it's everything. It's so beautiful, and, and, and it has

been such a source of nourishment in my life, and will

continue to be so. Thank you so much for how you show up in the

world and how you're choosing to show up in the world. I always

close every episode with the same question. I'll ask it

within the context of this conversation, when we don't feel

like we have what it takes to make it happen, or that the

moment isn't enough. What do you say to yourself?

Well, the first thing I say to myself, and

that I would say to anyone else, including you, is drop into your

body and notice what are the sensations in your body at this

moment, as you contemplate that question, or as you contemplate

that dream that you have, and just notice, What is your body

telling you through its sensations you Yeah. And another

thing I would say is just ask a lot of questions of yourself,

starting with if I have this dream and I'm feeling like I

don't have what it takes, maybe asking, Is this really my dream,

or was this a dream that was given to me by somebody else? Or

is this a dream that I think I'm supposed to have? Or what other

versions of this dream might be a possibility, rather than just

the one that I'm focusing on, there can be a lot of ease in

recognizing that the dream may not even be worse in the first

place, and in that case, you can just drop it, and then you don't

have to feel bad, or that it's partly you, but partly something

that was imposed on you, or that maybe you Have a very like we

talked about that there. We often define what is fullness.

We have a narrow range of what do we define that as? So the I

think the questioning is a really important part of the

process, and it's always been my experience that when I allow,

when I allow myself, the space to ask those questions that

whatever needs to be learned, whatever the answer is, it just

comes on its own. It's when we clamp down on this is what it

must be, and I must make it happen, and then get caught up

in the anxiety of. But I don't have what it takes. And you know

all of that, that's when that's when we limit ourselves. It's in

the questioning that we actually see we have to ask the questions

or we're not going to get an answer.

Yeah, I love you. I look forward to it.

I love you too. Tess, thank you so much for

inviting me. I could I too? Could just talk to you for hours

to do this again?

And we will do that. We certainly

will. It's truly been my pleasure. Yeah.