🎧 Listen to the Essay and/or Meditation 🎧
Why, yes, those are 2 separate audio links – 1 below, 1 above. || My reading of this essay is right before the opening Hi friends. 👇🏾 || A guided meditation is at the top of this email. 👆🏾 || An archive of meditations lives here.
Listen to me read this essay:
Hi friends
Thank you to all of you for being here. I feel humbled and honored that you continue to choose to receive my ramblings. I ground all these offerings in a spirit of generosity (there is absolutely no paywall for anything!), with an ongoing intention to write non-prescriptively (i.e. only from my own experiences, not telling anyone else how to think/be), and rooted in love.
In case you don’t know, I send emails on New, Full, and Last Quarter Moons. Fun fact, each of these three missives go out at the exact time of their lunations—to the minute (today’s Libra Moon was full at 8:22pm ET). This means you’ll find me in your inbox about three times a month—that’s an approximation because the Moon does not care about our silly time systems. Thus, once in a while, certain lunations appear more than once in a given month. A second Full Moon in a month is called a Blue Moon (we won’t have one of those again until May 2026), while a second New Moon is sometimes referred to as a Black Moon (next up, this August).
These New and Full Moon newsletters contain essays and meditations. The Last Quarter Moon email features links to various things I’m exploring. On the day of the First Quarter Moon, I’m in the Substack Chat, where we all share words and photos connected to my New Moon essay (you can check out the last one here). Linking remind me to love to these primary four phases of the Moon means I touch base with you about once a week and that we all stay connected to La Luna.
Looking to the sky, learning about the magic of celestial correspondences, and remembering we are all intimately connected to the cosmos helps me build perspective in the midst of earthly challenges. Despite our best attempts to destroy this shared home, Earth keeps spinning and the stars and planets accompany its movements in this gigantic galactic dance. I hope these newsletters help attune you to the magic of the Moon.
How are you holding up? What’s supporting your well–being these days? I’m relying on good sleep/good food/good self-talk, moderating my media intake, and getting direct sunshine. Also, allowing myself to fall apart when needed and lean deeply on my friends.
Even though my marriage imploded over two and a half years ago, I continue to adjust to being a single, middle–aged lady without a strong family structure. I no longer have a partner to mirror my life, to process the past and plan the future, to share challenges or triumphs. I do not want to in any way diminish how loved and cared for I am. I am blessed with great friends. I hold no doubts about this. Also, I have always relied on more than a romantic partner for a sense of belonging. However, I continue to adjust from fourteen years of sharing rhythms and routines with one person. I am cultivating new cadences for myself, including how I navigate needing support from others.
As someone who has been leading for most of my adult life (groups of teens, entire organizations, meditations, classes, retreats), I sometimes often have to encourage myself to let go and let others “lead” me. This week has provided plenty of practice! I continue to traverse the ups and downs of physical pain and movement issues (and how that can trigger emotional suffering in me). It can feel like I’m on a journey of sadness and frustration. When I cannot confidently navigate the terrain alone, I depend on others to lead.
In 2013, I went with my friend Aaron (and our now ex–husbands) to see choreographer Reggie Wilson’s, Moses(es), at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Reflecting the depth of Wilson’s research, the work references everything from Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain to the fractals at the center of African design while exploring how we lead and why we follow. Generally, I don’t have a great memory for performances, but this one has stayed with me for a dozen years. I continue to ponder Wilson’s primary question of whether we benefit from a Moses (one single prophet to lead us) or if, as Sweet Honey in the Rock sing, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for... The pluralization of leadership in the title Moses(es), is exemplified to me by one song in the piece (the 90’s house music classic Follow Me by Aly-Us) where the dancers take turns “playing” leader.
Aaron has been one of the people leading me this week. He (and others) are supporting me through my vulnerability and fears. I’m sure like for many of you, this period has been filled with personal and political turmoil. For me, the personal distress is directly related to this physical pain I’ve been experiencing. And, of course, the political anguish is because of the bullshit currently being spread everywhere—which may be an insult to actual bullshit which at least can serve as fertilizer (but perhaps these current calamities eventually will be composted for the beautiful world we long to build). There is a lot going on. None of us can traverse this in isolation. With the kindness and compassion of friends, I am better able to find my way back to my own heart, able to show up for others.
As I mentioned last time, during the first quarter of 2025, while on my unintended pain sabbatical, I realized I should not be running online classes this year. As much as I love teaching those courses, I know I will benefit from leading a bit less and focusing on cultivating my creative practices (hopefully for a new book). But I also don’t want to abandon all the good things in those curricula into which I put many hours of research and development. If you’ve never taken a class with me, I’m a nerdy teacher who loves to make rabbit hole connections and include multi media references. I do quite a bit of prep for each lesson including slides, music, quotes, poetry, and video clips. There are journaling prompts and reflections and meditations. It’s a whole entire vibe. Instead of letting all that content go to waste, I’ve decided to “serialize” my courses here on Substack.
Over the next nine months I’ll be sharing the themes and lessons from courses I’ve created over the past two years, including: Love Club, Soulful Cycles, Let It All Out, and Ancestors to Elements. Obviously this will not be the same experience as live sessions, but my aspiration is that 1) this material is not left unused, 2) I am supported in my own writing by the structure of planned themes, and 3) this content is made fresh by connecting these lessons to whatever is currently happening for me. We will begin on the April 27th New Moon with the first lesson of Love Club: first, choose love.
Until then, I wish you opportunities to lead and follow, to support and feel supported, to flourish and fumble. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for…
With love,
Sebene
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