At the moment of writing this sentence, the beaver moon has begun to wane. But I do hope that you got to see it in its full brilliance. Sunday morning, I could still see it still through the clerestory at 8:30 in the morning. It was more like a ghost of a moon by then—a pale silhouette of the one that ruled the sky the night before. It was stunning, this fourth and final moon of the year.

During this full moon, we attended a sound bath at our yoga studio with one of our favorite teachers. She spoke a long while at the beginning about the moon, as well as other astrological details that I tried to hold in my understanding. But these were mostly lost on me due to my weak understanding of the symbology in astrology. She did talk about the auspiciousness of the current time. She didn’t shy away from addressing the political turmoil threatening to sap us of our energies right now. She talked about resilience and creativity and transformation. She told us on our way out the door that we could choose one rock from one of two water-filled bowls that were sitting out to absorb the vibrations of the sound bath—one to represent resilience, one for creativity. It was up to us to decide what we needed.

During the lengthy and moving ceremony, my attention turned to a huge pale yellow leaf flapping in the wind at the end of an otherwise bare branch. At one point, a bird came along and picked a fight with it. The leaf won. It was still hanging on. I couldn’t stop watching this leaf while I tried to absorb our teacher’s words.

Eventually, we settled onto our backs, covered ourselves in blankets, and closed our eyes. I can only know what happened for me during the sound bath. The initial waves of a gong stirred up all my attention, pulled me out of whatever mundane tracks my mind was running on, and beckoned me to come along. And that is just what I did. I traveled a while through sound, and if I had any coherent thoughts, I certainly don’t remember them. I saw some flashes of images, felt different vibrations and temperatures, and relaxed deeply into my body.

There were a few chimes to signify a reawakening, giving some time to stretch and pause before we sat up again to close the session. The very first thing I noticed upon sitting up was the bare branch—the pale yellow leaf gone. I shivered with what it meant to me in that moment: a sign! Feeling giddy and preoccupied by this unexpected gift, I made my way back to an upright seat, gathered my things, dipped my hand into the creativity bowl to select a pink crystal on my way out the door.

A couple of hours later, I hosted an in-person writer’s group with some dear friends. I placed the pink rock on the table next to the flowers I’d picked up at the grocery store. I’d been drawn to the flowers by the small pink roses, the sprigs of red berries. While we ate fondue and talked about our writing (which also means talking about not writing sometimes) one friend held that rock, tossing it in her hand as if to measure its weight over and over again.

This same friend co-teaches a twelfth-grade Language and Literature class with me. Mostly, we spend mornings deep in planning and grading, but sometimes we’re able to fit in a reading from the Wild Unknown Archetype deck created by Kim Krans. This is a deck I’ve taken to in the past couple of years. It’s the first divination deck I’ve used that has really stuck. That symbology, rooted in archetypal patterns, dovetails well with my lifelong study of literature. Post-election, we put any unnecessary work aside for a few mornings to do a reading. I suppose we were both looking for some direction, some answers. At the outset, this friend made a joke about hoping she didn’t draw the Eternal Child card, one that had been haunting her in the last many readings. We laughed. She laid out her cards. The third card? Eternal Child. Next day? First card: Eternal Child. On the third day she said, “I better not get the Eternal Child.” First card? Eternal Child. We chatted a bit each time about what this might mean for her. I think (and if she reads this blog post I hope she sets me straight if I’m wrong) that she made peace with that Eternal Child, even figured out why it was following her around.

The next morning, I dragged my tired, reluctant body to my favorite Sunday yoga class. Usually, Chris and I go together, but he’d tried to sign up too late and the class was full—not even a waiting list! So, it took a little more resolve to get out the door when he was still sitting on the couch with the dogs, sipping coffee. The class happened in the same room the sound bath had been in the previous day. Midway through class, while I’m standing in tree pose, my teacher made said, “just like the trees outside, we shed our leaves.” I looked to the right to see that same tree, now completely bare. For a second I saw that huge, pale yellow leaf in my mind, and smiled in recognition.

I am now in my age of sign-seeking. But I was not raised to look for signs. Growing up in an evangelical household, I was encouraged not to look inward for guidance. The rules were written for me. The work was to mold my own rebellious spirit to those rules. The stakes were high: hell-fire and damnation high. There were hard lines around what was true and what was not. Trusting my own signs, making my own meaning, is a practice that has evolved gradually over a lifetime. While my programming tempts me to enter in here and say something self-defeatist about how I don’t know whether I’ve got any of it right, and I don’t know anything in a way that throws shade on the whole enterprise, I’m not going to do that.

So what that I don’t know whether I’ve got any of it right and I don’t know anything. Last winter and spring, I followed a string of blue herons into summer where, during a trip to Panama, I marveled at their white-feathered cousins as I traveled down their river in a boat I was trying like hell not to fall out of. I received those messages and hold them close still, trying to cultivate more peace and stillness.

I’m laughing now because while this is a new iteration of this idea in my life, it is also one I have been writing about since I published Hallelujah in 2017.

After that sound bath, I chose my rock from the creativity bowl. In my mind, creativity is resilience. We take the raw threads of our experience, and we weave them into something meaningful for ourselves and others. What is more resilient than that?

I also work as a writing coach and love helping writers gain confidence, set goals, and develop their work. For more information on coaching, email me at eatyourwords.lizshine@gmail.com.