Lunar Love Letter 🌒 - January 11, 2024 — Wolf Moon*
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Important dates this cycle (in EST):
Lunar Cycle Duration: 1/11-2/8
New Moon: 1/11 ← we are here
First Quarter Moon: 1/17
Full Moon: 1/25 Wolf Moon*
Third Quarter Moon: 2/2
Happy new moon, beautiful 💜
How have you been faring over these last few weeks? Were any celebrations delightful? Did you find anything interesting in the transition of the Winter Solstice?
If you care to share, I’m open to reading 💌
I’ve been experiencing a definitive shift, yet I can’t seem to communicate about it well. And perhaps that’s part of the point. I still feel in the transition. My birthday is coming up, and this is a powerful time of year for me — evocative of lots of reflection and internal sifting — so I’m excited to see what happens next. Stay tuned.
Today is the first new moon of the fresh calendar year, and is dedicated to the Wolf Moon* 🌕
This one seems like the beginning of a very magical journey – one that makes me very curious where this year will allow us to go and grow. #2024vibes
Most of us are probably familiar with that lone wolf trope — howling at the moon, wandering solo on the prowl, but that’s not what I see at all. I see the crisp, untrodden snow in a forest of pines supporting frozen winter with branches that seem too thin for the job, and the pack of wolves sauntering together along the landscape — moving with surefootedness and confidence. That energy feels so tangible ⚡
What springs to my attention is the sense of community — the closeness that bonds the pack so that it becomes a larger organism in itself, thriving as a whole. There’s a sense of trust unparalleled to most anything I think I’ve honestly ever experienced personally.
For this lunar cycle, that’s the energy I want to tap into — one grounded in community and love, that trusts explicitly and naturally, that honors our very nature as pack animals.
I’ve lived a lot of my life solo, by many definitions of the word, and I’m kind of just through with it, you know? Our culture promotes that lone wolf paradigm as something honorable, but it’s really a survival tactic. And while yes, there are many things in this world that make us feel like we’re just trying to survive, that doesn’t have to blanket everything. But thriving in your own corner of the world with your pack absolutely can.
Maybe you already have a strong pack, or maybe you’re like me and you’re just really in the novice stages of understanding how this manifests in your life. And whatever that is, there is strength in numbers — that’s just a real truth, no matter how you hold the crystal ball 🔮
And I find this to be just as true in yoga practice.
We can practice solo, and that’s great — I do this myself the majority of the time. Yet it’s a different experience to be in a group setting sharing a practice, whether that’s in-person or virtually. The vibe is somehow bigger, and it’s invigorating in a different way. All of these people showed up from different lives and with different motivations, and they all landed in the same space and time as you — to share a communal experience with all these different recipes of human in attendance — and that is potent magic ✨
There’s power in communing with like-hearted people and building a clan of loving beings that share interests and passions and emotional investment in all that you are. You can learn so much more from multiple sets of eyes and ears. You can extend your essence out into the world with more arms and hugs and smiles. You can help someone’s heart grow and do unimaginable goodness by joining their pack.
All this just by intersecting lives — bumping into each other on this sphere of elements and spending time, being curious, and choosing to be in community, regardless of distance. And that’s 🔥.
So maybe this lunar cycle, you play with how you can grow your own community. Perhaps you take an honest look at what you consider community already around you. How does that feel? Is there room to grow or something to add that would feel supportive and enriching? Maybe you take an off-schedule adventure to see what and who is out in the world waiting for you to discover it/them. Maybe you bring your magic to someone else and see where it takes you. Let's brew something good.
🪄May this lunar magic wander through us and between us, and meld our energies into a community that forges goodness in the world ✨
From my heart to yours 💜
**The moon names and phase details given here are as given on the Farmers' Almanac and Time and Date. There are many other moon names and stories from other cultures that are not included here, but I encourage you to do your own research. It’s fascinating!
All resources mentioned in this newsletter are included for research purposes only and are not affiliated with Zenful Mindings LLC.
photo credit: Yannick Menard on Unsplash
