Black Moon Beginning

A New Moon Memoir

A few months ago I facilitated a memoir writing session so rich and wonderful that it was a truly moving experience. When the session was over, several people asked when we would meet again. I reminded them that the class was a one-off, but everyone wanted to keep going, so we decided to meet monthly. Each time, we have a timed writing session, then anyone who wants to can read their words to everyone. It’s really quite remarkable how truthful and poignant the readings are, and how strong the writing is; nearly everyone says they write much better in the company of other writers. The eros of shared creativity is a powerful factor in any endeavor and especially in the work of writing memoirs.

This weekend we had a little collision of events; my grandkids arrived just as I was leaving to facilitate our New Year writers retreat. I invited them to come or stay home, which they decided to do, but I jokingly told them I expected them to have a chapter of their own memoir written when I got home. Two hours later, my darling granddaughter showed me her ‘memwaw’ and it still makes me smile every time I look at it. Her story is as cheerful as her own sparkling spirit, but what I brought home is…not.

Black Moon, New Moon

Sometimes writing simply flows for me, but this time it took me the whole 15 minute session to write a paragraph:

This dark tide time of the year is always one of reflection for me. New Year’s Eve was a dark moon night, a Black Moon with no light at all. They are quite rare-between the old moon and the New Moon, a rest, a full stop. It doesn’t happen every year and it feels especially right to be totally in the dark right now. I don’t know what will come to us in the new year, come to all of us, to the broken world. Nobody knows, really, but this bubble of quiet feels like a hanging droplet, not quite full enough to fall yet but swelling slowly, pregnant with the future. The waxing moon gains a little light every day, first a mere sliver, then gaining light faster, growing fuller each day. The future feels suspended but certainly it will fall and I wonder what will be washed away in the rush of events that are building strength and gaining energy. For years, I’ve vaguely waited for an earthquake, a tsunami, an atomic bomb blast striking at Ground Zero just a few miles away, but now I’m waiting for war. So many possibilities….