Creative Rituals for Magical Humans: New Moon in Libra

I cried in an appointment yesterday.

Not a therapist appointment, or even a massage (although I've cried in those).

It was in an appointment with someone from an agency that could help me access training by paying for it.

As I find in most situations, people out in the world do not know how to make space for people who are neurodiverse, MAD, traumatized, disabled...and the list goes on.

I used to not understand why I would get overwhelmed and emotional in these kinds of moments. For years, well into my twenties, thirties even.

Then I started to peel away layers: first it was discovering the way I had been using substances was as a medicine or balm for my inner conditions. Then it was coming to terms with the idea that I experience chronic depression, or what they call "treatment resistant depression". Then it was an awakening to what it means to be a mixed race, white and Asian person, and from there to start to identify with anti-oppressive ways of viewing the world. Then it was identifying with being AuDHD with the help of friends and tools of self-diagnosis. Simultaneously it was embracing my "witchiness", my connection to the land and my connection to the more than physical: my conversing with spirit.

For the last fifteen years, I've spent increasingly less time in the fabricated, colonial, material realm, less time within systems that don't understand me, and less time with people who don't understand me.

But, survival demands that I spend at least some time in those systems and with those people.

There was the time I got a job in a supportive seniors housing facility, and somehow on the first day was brought to tears by my supervisor when she took me into a private side room to tell me how taken aback she was that I couldn't work the very next day. (I had not been informed of any schedule, I had a child and no child care for him, and had submitted an availability schedule that did not include that day). After I started crying, she backtracked about how well I fit into the organization, and how impressed she was with me (she had also used me at an earlier meeting that day as an "example" of one of the "impressive" new hires in front of upper management). I ended up contacting HR about what happened, and after a few weeks of investigation they decided that their organization was not the right place for me.

This example is just one, but it is one that came to mind yesterday. It had the same feeling, the same sensation in my body. Shame, confusion, disempowerment, overwhelm. A feeling that I couldn't ask questions, or that if I answered a question I would not be believed. A tightness in my jaw, lock down on my lips over my teeth, eyes retreat into my skull, my vision becomes less focused, my legs squeeze together, my arm pits and forearms hug my torso, my hands and fingers are constricted and moving in measured bird like movements.

The thing that has changed over the years is that I've developed methods for dealing with the kind of condescending, white woman in middle management, so that I don't take it on. Yesterday, I was so confused in the appointment, I managed to simply extract myself and agree to schedule a follow up (because I do want that fucking funding) and then took myself somewhere that it felt safe to cry fully.

I went to the river, I prayed, I talked to the trees and the water. I laid down and watched the waves lap against the shoreline. I felt the sun on my skin. I called my partner and he reminded me that when I go into situations like the one I was in, those aren't spaces that are built for me and my lived experiences.

None of this makes the fact that this happened go away. And far worse happens to others. But it helps me to not go into a spiral of shame, to not become depressed for months, to become grounded in what I truly want to do, not act out of a wounding that I reject.

Because I reject the idea that I don't fit into the box, or that I need to be fixed, I send back that energy because that lady who sent it my way is the problem. The system she upholds is the problem. It's not me.

My part is what do I do with this.

I have many creative rituals I have worked with over the years, and this Libra New Moon week I decided to begin sharing them with you.

Here is one:

Yesterday (five days after the New Moon in Libra, Moon in Sagittarius, Crescent Moon phase) I took a ritual bath, I brought in culinary sage, calendula, mugwort and yarrow, all which I grew in my garden except the yarrow I picked outside my door. I lit a red candle.

I sat in the bath with no lights other than the candle. I held a piece of one of the herbs in my right hand, feeling it, smelling it and waiting to see what came to mind that I should be asking it for. When some words formed, I spoke my requests out loud, stirring the bath water with my right hand in circles.

From the yarrow, I asked for delicacy, balance, and a cleansing of my lungs, the air of my vocals, my voice.

From the mugwort, I asked for clarity.

From the sage, I asked for cleansing and protection.

From the calendula, I asked for sweetness, to bring love to my life and myself within it.

Then I lay in the bath, cleansed as I usually would, until I was done. I left the herbs in the bath, and returned them to the earth later.

When the Moon is New, it is dark. When I start to see the Moon again is when I have been actively working with the New Moon. I've been tracking when the Moon rises and sets, whether it is above or below the horizon.

The New Moon in Libra this year cannot be separated from the Venus Retrograde in Scorpio and Libra later, as Venus is its ruler. We are also moving towards a Full Moon in Taurus, which is ruled by Venus but will be in Libra by that time, a better position for it.

Venus in Scorpio can feel like inadequacy, not fitting in, needing to prove to others and ourselves our worth, deep feelings of low self worth. This is even more exacerbated by the fact that it isn't just in our heads, it is backed up by the way society sets up its hierarchies. That is a problem we must tackle collectively.

But individually, we can become self aware of when we are running on ideas that are actually doing the work of the oppressors inside of us. We can then do the work of processing through this, and transforming it. This is not a love and light, toxic positivity, spiritual gaslighting take, this is the inner work of liberation. There is privilege in it as it requires the resourcing of time, and I believe those of us who are privileged to have even a small amount of time have a responsibility to do this work.

For example, for me to understand and name the hurt, the harm, the shame that these experiences mentioned created in me is so valuable and important. It helps me to understand how someone might feel who has less resourcing than me, and how I could be oppressing them. It helps me to unravel another thread of how I attach myself to outcomes of success that colonialism has created. I think there are likely many subconscious ways that I have embodied ideas of power, domination, control, that come from the kinds of experiences I mentioned in this post. There is much that I can say about the obvious effects, but I think there is more than what I can even comprehend with my mind. I think it goes back into the generations of my ancestors and brings them healing, and helps them to support me in even more radical ways.

If we are not doing this work, we continue the same patterns in our relationships over and over (Venus Retrograde is showing us!) and relationships are the core of how we tackle the societal problems. If we don't do this inner work, we cannot meet conflict and the opportunities this brings us. If we don't take the time to intentionally work with our internalized oppression, it will do work to us without our consent. That's a guarantee.

It is of course not the responsibility of anyone more marginalized to meet conflict with people who have more power. The work I do on the inside is what helps me navigate all of the nuances and complexities of this.

Questions of who do I want to deepen with and who is not in a place to deepen? Where do my edges begin and another's end? What are my expectations and what are other people's expectations? Can I hold many truths at once, like "I love this person, and I hate this thing they're doing"? What actions do I need to take around that thing they're doing? Does it look like a conversation, or is it a stepping back? Where is the power in this relationship? What is the balance of giving and receiving, both between us as individuals and in the historical, multigenerational sense?

All of these questions I don't have easy answers for, but I can meet them better when I am making space for ritual and intentional prayer, when I am speaking to spirit about it all.

I hope that this creative ritual is helpful to you or someone you love, and I hope you have a magical time until I share the next one.