The topic for Day 2 is "What is important to you?" ...What is important to me? Heck - what ISN'T important to me?! Caring too much is the cause of most of my worries already. But I'll tell you what I care about right now at this moment: the moon. Tonight is the new moon - the supermoon of 2015! When I was seven my parents divorced. They were very conscientious and probably read all of the "how-to-do-a-healthy-divorce-when-you-have-kids" books. Anyway they did their best. One day, according to my dad, I said to him that I felt better when I looked at the moon, because I knew it was the same moon he was looking at. I knew, even at 7 years of age, that the universe kept us connected. Maybe not in the magical new-agey way you might think, but we were together nonetheless.
The moon has always been special to me. I've resorted to a few whispers directed at that light in the sky. Sighs, secrets, straight up straight talk. In times of need there's been at least one night of ululation, if not more - howling at that moon for pain, pleasure, direction, liberation.
And every month, for almost the last twenty years, the moon has had more of an influence in my life than I'd like to admit. Women anywhere can tell you their cycles are synced with one another and the planet. And why not? The moon pulls the oceans and creates the tide, and humans are also made of water. That means physical and emotional experiences that are as real as fifty feet of water flooding the Bay of Fundy every day.
"Periods syncing? That's not scientifically proven," a man once told me. But I don't need statistics to tell me what I've known since I was seven. Whether it's spiritual belief or connection with nature, we are human animals, we are connected with the universe and each other, and it's that blessed mother of a moon that tells me so.
You see the moon at night, when darkness comes - the same darkness that plants and roots need to grow and ground. The same darkness where sleep and dreams heal the body and reorganize the soul. I've always been a bit afraid of the dark. I even avoid it in my photography - I stay safe and warm in the sunlight. But now it's a new chapter. Time to play in the moonlight and see what happens.
