the new moon in cancer for writers
on trusting the (creative) body
Hi everyone,
Just a reminder! My upcoming 6-week container, Roses & Thorns: A Venus Retrograde Cloister for Creative Recovery, begins this Saturday! Registration closes very, very soon!
Also! There are two scholarship spots for Roses & Thorns for BIPOC, trans/non-binary, and/or disabled folks being selected at random. Enter here. Everyone will be notified this Wednesday.
And now, for the New Moon!
Jeanna
The body knows.
When the body is provided with safety, with the space to unfurl. When we take even the slightest bit of time away from phones and turn our attention inward, to what we want (what we really really want):
The body — so mistrusted, so controlled, so legislated — is wise.
What is your body telling you that you need?
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The New Moon arrives Monday, July 17th at 2:31pm Eastern at 24* of Cancer. It is a rather brilliant new moon, astrologically speaking: the moon, which speaks to our emotional and physical bodies, is already strengthened at home in nurturing, protective Cancer, but it is doubly so for arriving on Monday, the moon’s day, and also during the moon’s hour.
New Moons speak to beginnings. In Cancer, we are invited to initiate a season of restoration. Of rest. Of attention to the material body, to our spirits as well as our hearts.
The thing is, Cancer energy is quite protective. She is the crab, after all: don’t get caught in those pincers when she’s guarding what she cares about. The question that we all face when sheltered under this energy is, do we protect ourselves — our time, our energy, our hearts, our spirits, our bodies — as much as we protect those we love, or those we work for, or [insert here]? Do we allow ourselves to?
Who do we go to in order to get our own needs met? Who shows up for us? How do we show up for ourselves?
This New Moon invites us to initiate a new cycle of self-care. And not self-care as in self-isolating shopping sprees and baths, “I don’t need anyone” meme bullshit. Self-care as in, we are meant to live in community and we invite others into intimacy with us. Self-care as in, we are setting boundaries with those who do not respect us and we are moving deeper into relationship with those who are our support system.
Self-care as in, we are pursuing that which nurtures our hearts and our bodies and our souls and we are protecting those spaces and those relationships with a ferocity.
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Sometimes, listening to the body means that we end up saying no.
In a big way.
In a scary way.
Yesterday, during the dark moon, I shared on social media that I’d had another book — a nonfiction memoir project — ready to sell right when my memoir Heretic came out. This is the advice nonfiction writers often are given: have the next one ready to go.
But then, as many of you know, the Harper strike happened, with much of my team striking, and my agent and I decided to sit on the project and not submit it in solidarity with the workers.
But as the strike went on, the project — which had already been in the works for six months — started to shift and change. As projects that have a long time in the oven tend to do. By the time the strike was over and spring was underway, it was a very, very different book.
And my body knew. Over the last month, especially, my body has been veritably screaming at me about this second memoir — primarily, through dread. Not fear, even. Dread.
I know something about creative fear, about writing into what frightens me. Heretic scared me shitless the entire way through, but it was exciting in both craft and content — a roller coaster I built as I rode it. It was also accompanied, for six whole fucking years, by an urgent need to get it out of my body. There were times when it was devastating and difficult, sure, but there was always that urgency, driving me toward the freedom on the other side. It was never as if someone had attached an anchor to me, cursing me to the depths of the ocean with no recourse for salvation.
Which is how the second book began to feel: as if I knew exactly how to do it, and that Dana and I would sell it easily, so money, great! but that there was no lift, no wind beneath my wings, no thrill for the craft — just a sinking feeling of dread, and beyond it, emotional and spiritual heaviness. Rather like the prospect of completing a dissertation had felt, all those years ago, right before I left my PhD program.
But this had been the plan. This was the book. For a few months, the sunk cost fallacy ruled supreme: I’ve already spent so much time on this book. Why would I put it in the drawer?
I was ignoring, of course, that in all this heaviness, another project had already arisen, one markedly similar in theme to the memoir project I was so desperately clinging to, because Creativity will rarely leave us so high and dry. Even when all our attention is laser focused on what we think we should be doing, she’s there, at the edges, leaving gifts and offerings. Here, what about this, do you see?
Today’s initiatory New Moon makes a helpful trine to dreamy Neptune (at 27* Pisces), inviting us to further lean into and nurture those creative wanderings that are so profoundly nourishing for the body, heart, and soul. This is deeply non-structured energy that encourages play and anything that feeds (literally or metaphorically!) the inner child.
Music is especially helpful for channeling this if you are in a structured environment (like an office) that you can’t get out of. If you’re home, or for later today, Sphere & Sundry’s Luna in Cancer, Fomalhaut, or even Exalted Venus (in Pisces) series would be especially jubilant choices. (Here’s my referral code — you can get $10 off your first order of S&S; here are some excellent ones to get started with if you’ve never ordered before.)
This is less “productive” energy and more enjoying story and connection for the sake of story and connection energy. Music, dancing, going out in nature, cuddling with beloved pets, games (including video!), and other embodiment practices are all *chefs kiss* today. As is, of course, reading.
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Right now, I am in a state of rest, of homemaking, and also of slowly — ever so slowly — diving into a new creative project that is exciting in the way beginning Heretic was exciting. Terrifying, but like I was building the track one step at a time. The kind of scary that is good scary, that I know feels right.
It is a slow process, to learn to trust desire, and also to learn to trust (certain kinds of) fear.
The body always knows.
And that is a good thing.
Writing Prompts for New Moon in Cancer
What cycles are you initiating, or being initiated into? How do these feel supportive or challenging?
How can you care for and prioritize the needs of your own animal body in this moment? What has your body been saying it needs lately?
Who, or what, feeds you? Cares for you? Shows up for you? Is this a moment to check in about revising those patterns or procedures?
What does your inner child and/or creative self need in this moment? How can you make space for that?
P.S. You can register for Roses & Thorns here. Registration ends this Friday:
Thank you for this, for prompting me to consider where I am ignoring my body's needs. I'm in the middle of The Rebis editorial project and this part of the creative process is so murky and complex. It's a really good reminder to slow down, to listen attentively to my own needs, and to trust that nurturing myself will nurture the project, too. Happy new moon!
So far this new moon has been very good to me, I hope the creative energy keeps flowing!