Lunar Love Letter 🌒 - June 6, 2024 — Strawberry Moon*
estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Important dates this cycle (EST):
New Moon: 6/6
First Quarter Moon: 6/14
Full Moon (Strawberry Moon*): 6/21
Third Quarter Moon: 6/28
Happy new moon to your wonderful heart 🌑
Today we embark on a new lunar cycle adventure toward the Strawberry Full Moon* on 6/21, and this is one of my favorite lunar cycles of the whole year. Last year this cycle was all about slowing down and savoring the experience, and this year I’m tapping into nourishing nudges — specifically with supportive language.
The season of the Strawberry Moon* is the one where berries get luscious and vibrant and sweet and eat-right-off-the-vine-able. They’ve had time to use the sun and the water and the nutrients in the soil to grow and flourish and bloom and swell to this juicy nugget of nature candy 🍓
And they wouldn’t get there if they didn’t have that nourishing input.
🌱 It’s not dirt — it’s an earthly home that allows growth, strong roots, and stability.
🌧️ It’s not a rainy day — it’s quenching water that literally falls right down into their (leafy) laps.
☀️ It’s not a hot burning fireball in the sky — it’s a catalyst for a life-changing process.
This language changes the experience so much.
What if we applied that to ourselves?
These words we wield — they are crazy powerful. If you’re a parent, a friend, a person, you know the impact that the right or wrong words can have at any single moment. Nothing works faster to ignite change. These verbal vitamins feed our lives in profound and intangible ways with effects that can last a lifetime.
We’re probably all familiar with the practice of reframing things in a more positive way or looking at the bright side of things, but sometimes (if you’re like me) this feels forced, which feels gross, untoward (I’m excited this word came out!), and just plain not helpful — slapping a bow on it doesn’t make it prettier.
I don’t know about you, but when I don’t like the language of something, I experience immediate resistance. I dig in my heels. Hard. 🛑 Have you ever had someone say something to you, and the focus became on how they said it instead of what they were trying to say? The message gets lost.
And yet we do this to ourselves, don’t we? Because we’re using the language we’ve experienced or because we don’t have more supportive language yet.
In with support, out with force ✊
I fall into “I need to” language pretty often: I need to sleep more. I need to rest. I need to make time for fun. I need to blah fuck-ity blah. Insert all the middle fingers here >>> <<<.
It feels like a life sentence of awful, which = instant feet stuck in cement 🪨 I don’t want to do it. I hate being told what to do by anyone, and here I am telling myself what to do. Unhelpful, party of one 👈
I found myself doing this right before I did a morning workout the other day. The words starting creeping in: I need to put more focus on leg work. Instant yuck. I didn’t want to do it, and then — a word miracle! I didn’t just shine it up, and I didn’t bypass the thought — instead I used fact: I would benefit from more focus on leg work.
Wowsa.
That’s some gold in my world. I can’t argue with the logic of it. I absolutely would benefit from it. Do you see the magic that’s happened here? I used my language to gain my own agreement and disarm my insta-resistance. My inner academic is proud AF.
And so this lunar cycle, let’s outsmart and outgrow the old versions of ourselves by using our words wisely 🧠 Our brains are primed to take in the luscious nutrients the world has to offer, and we know what language nourishes us now more than when we were those old versions of ourselves.
What’s your love language? How can you shower yourself in it?
Make it fucking rain 🌧️
Let me know what words spark you up! Hit reply or message me on social media
✨ May this lunar cycle help us see what we’re capable of ✨
With loving energy, from my heart to yours 💚
*The moon names and phase details given here are as given on the Farmers' Almanac website. 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: Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
