The Buck Moon Will Be Holding Me
Mercury has gone direct, but energies are still low…
Last night the moon was half full, dark red, hidden by passing clouds and very low in the sky.
I hope you managed to see her. We had an honest chat and I came to the conclusion that next week I shall be letting the Buck Moon hold me. I will not be holding a Women’s Circle as intended.
This wasn't an easy decision.
I know several of you were looking forward to gathering, and so was I. There is a part of me that wanted to keep going, to make it work somehow, to pour from a cup that has been whispering for weeks that it is almost empty.
But the medicine I keep speaking about has finally asked something of me.
To live it.
I've been trying to hold so much.
Organising events.
Planning work trips.
Teaching my ten regular yoga classes every week across four studios.
Trying to be a present dog mum.
Seeing my beautiful clients for healing.
Keeping the house clean and tidy, having another clear out.
Finding pockets of time for friends and family.
Trying to sit beside my fiancé and actually watch an episode of our series without interrupting it to show him another flower arrangement for our wedding next year.
And somewhere amongst all of that,
answering phone calls from the hospital.
Booking more blood tests.
More scans.
Trying to understand what is happening in my body.
Life is great, I can’t complain, but, why am I always so tired?
Why do my periods arrive like tides that seem to take so much from me?
Why do I keep getting visual disturbances?
And now, as if my body wanted to underline the point even more,
I have a heavy cold.
This week I haven't made it to a class for myself.
I'm lucky if I’m able to get up before 9AM.
My throat feels threaded with thorns.
My body is speaking in a language that can no longer be ignored.
Rest.
I wonder how many of us are hearing that same whisper.
These past few weeks have felt intense.
I've watched so many of you arrive in class carrying invisible weight. Eyes heavy. Shoulders tight. Spirits willing, but bodies asking for something entirely different.
There is something moving through us collectively.
Perhaps the Earth is tired too.
We've become so fluent in overriding ourselves.
We know how to push through.
How to squeeze one more thing into the diary.
How to answer one more email.
How to say yes because we promised we would, even though the woman who made the promise was standing in the bright optimism of ovulation, and the woman living the commitment has arrived in the dark waters of menstruation.
We know how to scroll long after our bodies have begun asking for sleep.
We know how to silence the womb's whisper.
Not now.
Later.
When everything else is done.
But the whispers do not disappear.
They simply become louder.
Until eventually they arrive as exhaustion.
As illness.
As tears that seem to come from nowhere.
As bodies that refuse to carry us at the speed our minds insist upon.
Nature has never rushed herself.
The oak does not apologise for winter.
The moon does not mourn her waning.
The rivers do not force themselves uphill.
The deer shed their antlers when the time comes, trusting that what is needed will grow again.
Yet somehow we have learned that our value lives only in our output.
That to be worthy we must always be creating, giving, producing, responding, showing up.
We have forgotten that every ecosystem depends as much on dormancy as it does on bloom.
The Earth has been whispering too.
Through cracked riverbeds.
Through changing seasons.
Through birds whose songs are growing quieter.
Through ancient forests asking us to remember relationship over extraction.
And I wonder if the way we treat ourselves is simply a reflection of the way we've learned to treat the living world.
Always taking.
Rarely replenishing.
Always asking, "What more can you give?"
Never asking, "What do you need?"
Maybe the new world so many of us long for isn't waiting somewhere ahead of us.
Maybe it begins each time one woman chooses to honour her body's no.
Each time we choose sleep over productivity.
Presence over performance.
Enough over more.
Perhaps we won't be the generation that heals everything.
But we could be the generation that remembers.
Remembers that we belong to the seasons.
That we belong to the moon.
That we belong to the rivers and the trees, and the birdsong.
That we, too, are part of nature, not separate from her.
And nature has never expected endless summer.
As I read this back to myself, I'm crying.
Maybe because this isn't really about cancelling a circle.
It's about finally surrendering to the truth that I can't do it all.
I've spent so much of my life believing that if I just tried a little harder, became a little more organised, a little more resilient, a little more perfect, then I'd be able to hold everything and everyone.
I wish I could.
I wish I could say yes to every invitation.
Hold every circle.
Teach every class.
Be the perfect partner, teacher, dog mum, business owner, friend, healer and daughter.
I wish my body would simply keep up with all the dreams my heart has.
But she isn't asking me to become more.
She's asking me to become more honest.
To stop measuring my worth by how much I can carry.
To stop believing that rest is something I have to earn.
To trust that even in stillness, I am enough.
Maybe this Buck Moon isn't asking me to gather women around a centre piece.
But, to tend the parts of me that have been quietly calling for my attention.
To trust that this, too, is sacred.
So if you're reading this and you've been waiting for permission to take the nap, leave the dishes, step away from your phone, or simply admit that you're tired, perhaps this is your invitation.
Not from me. But from the same moon that reminds the tides when to rise, the deer when to shed, and the trees when to let go.
She is reminding us, too.
That there is a season for blooming.
And there is a season for becoming still.
This Buck Moon, I choose stillness.
And for the first time in a long time, that feels enough.
Lots of love, Siân xx
