homecoming
How the moon can bring us closer to ourselves and each other
“Anyone who’s interested in making change in the world also has to learn how to take care of herself, himself, their selves…in terms of mental self-care, corporal self-care, spiritual self-care…longevity is important and not simply individual longevity.”
There’s a thought that I keep coming back to: if you are a person who wants to do good work in this world, if you believe in a more compassionate future, you must build a relationship with your Moon. You must find the tools and ideas and people who steady and nourish and sustain you. To play your part in our collective story, to share the gifts that you uniquely are here to bring—you must tend to your heart, mind, spirit.
Many healing and liberatory traditions echo this notion. Disability justice principles remind us that part of making change in the world is about ensuring we sustain ourselves. Womanist values recognize our own well-being as foundational to social change. Collective somatics consider being with our bodies as portals to transforming the structures and systems around us.
All these teachings suggest that we must find ways to sustain our physical, emotional, and spiritual selves.
Your Moon can show you how.
The Moon in our natal chart turns us back to our bodies and how we inhabit them. She tells us how to best be with our feeling bodies, to tend to our emotional selves, to care for and love our bodies and our whole selves. She points us to what and who help us to feel safe, grounded, comforted, nourished. And she can show us, too, what gets in the way.
Our Moon helps us to be in relationship with other bodies too. She shows us not just how we can nourish and feed ourselves, but how we naturally do that for others. She can point us to how we can care for each other, how we can help our people and our communities feel safe and whole. The Moon reminds us that when we can feel a sense of grounding and safety, it makes it more possible for us to show up for others. What helps us feel anchored and safe has effects that ripple out beyond us individually.
“We commit to our own healing in part because the realization of what we are dreaming of rests on it. It is our responsibility to one another to do our internal work, not so that we feel good alone but stay an active part of the whole.”
The Moon then not only brings us back to ourselves but also pulls us closer to the world around us. Building a relationship with our Moon can help us to stay connected to our values, to the ideas and causes and people we care most about. It can help us to be in relationship, to be in community with others. Feeling nourished and grounded can help us to share ourselves and our gifts, to do the sacred work we’re meant to do in the world. In helping us to feel and stay whole, she can connect us back to each other.
Sources
“10 Principles of Disability Justice.” Sins Invalid, n.d. https://sinsinvalid.org/10-principles-of-disability-justice/.
Jasiewicz, Ewa, Farzana Khan, and Sarah Al-Sarraj. “An Introduction to Politicised Somatics.” Healing Justice Ldn, January 2023, https://healingjusticeldn.org/methodology/we-are-portals-towards-liberation/.
Morris, Michael J. “Astrology and the Moon: Engaging Ancient Traditions with Feminist Insight.” Cowitchcraft Offerings, September 2022, https://www.michaeljmorris.co/store/p13/feminist-astrology-moon.html.
“Womanism.”The Womanist Working Collective, n.d., https://www.womanistworkingcollective.org/womanist.