Knowing this volume would arrive in the wake of last night’s full moon and lunar eclipse, I’ve been reflecting on fullness over the past few weeks... on the permission we can give ourselves to take up space, time, and pleasure.
Often, when the momentum of spring kicks in, I can feel my to-do lists getting longer, pressure building, and my inner voice whispering, "time is short, you’d better move fast!" It’s almost as if my initial spark gets a taste of oxygen and wants to immediately start blazing.
Momentum can certainly be a gift sometimes, but it feels less so when it’s tied to a sense of fear of supposed lateness or scarcity. I want to invite myself — and you — to continue to gently rethink this idea.
What if the hours, days, and years actually stretch out in abundant cycles? Could we then allow ourselves to be full in all the ways the word and the lunar phase implies: trusting our timing, savoring moments and sensations, and feeling our wholeness even as we reach for new light?
Here’s a song, a podcast, an article, a TV show(!), and a poem that encourage me to be in (and with) my own fullness… and hopefully, you in and with yours…
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“The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” By Simon & Garfunkel
Another classic, this time one that calls us to look underfoot and be present for the small moments and sensations of our lives. Even as we’re enjoying getting swept up in our big ideas and the big places we’re going, we can also choose to be joyfully right here, right now.
“I got no deeds to do, no promises to keep I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep Let the morningtime drop all its petals on me Life, I love you, all is groovy”
Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus
If you saw our Instagram post about it last week, you know I’m enjoying this new platform where Julia interviews women over 70.
I love the way she’s making room for older women’s voices and their unique insights — including on life, work, and what blossoming has looked like for each of them. Each conversation invites us to reframe getting older as “getting wiser” — something to savor and look forward to — and to appreciate the power of women sharing with women, which is one of the main reasons ALTAR exists.
You can listen to Wiser Than Me here.
“To Anyone Who Thinks They’re Falling Behind,” by Jamie Varon
When we approach our spring theme of Late Bloomers, "late" always comes with implied quotation marks: because we are challenging the idea that one can ever be late for one’s own life. There is comfort, and even power, in accepting that certain things come to us when we’re ready for them, whenever that may be… and that for now, we can just “show up as [we] are in this moment and let that be enough.”
You may also want to check out the author’s memoir, Radically Content: Being Satisfied in an Endlessly Dissatisfied World.
I cannot stop thinking about this show with Toni Collette, based on a 2016 book that garnered rave reviews.
The premise is that teenage girls and young women around the world suddenly develop the power to create electricity within themselves. Sparks fly from their fingertips and suddenly the balance of power in society shifts as women are able to defend themselves and fight on equal terms with men. I’m only halfway in, and I expect it may take a complicated and dark turn, but it has captured my imagination with the idea that the young women developed this evolutionary power, readily shared with older women, because they literally needed it to survive. Let’s discuss…
“Now I Become Myself” by May Sarton
This poem’s deep wisdom feels so present to me that it’s amazing to remember Sarton wrote it in 1948 (when she was 36)… in an era when patriarchy was that much more entrenched and rigid in its ideas about women’s possibilities — especially around age. Yet she still had, and shared, such a powerful realization: What if, even inside whatever our personal ambition happens to be, we can still live in present time? And when we can claim the space and time to really be with ourselves... our lives can “become the song, made so and rooted so by (self-)love.”
Now I become myself. It’s taken Time, many years and places; I have been dissolved and shaken, Worn other people’s faces, Run madly as if Time were there Terribly old, crying a warning, “Hurry, you will be dead before —” (What? Before you reach the morning Or the end of the poem is clear Or love safe in a walled city.) Now to stand still, to be here, Feel my own weight and density. The black shadow on the paper Is my hand; the shadow of a word As thought shapes the shaper Falls heavy on the page, is heard. All fuses now, falls into place From wish to action, word to silence. My work, my love, my time, my face Gathered into one intense Gesture of growing like a plant. As slowly as the ripening fruit Fertile, detached, and always spent, Falls but does not exhaust the root, So all the poem is, can give Grows in me to become the song, Made so and rooted so by love. Now there is time and Time is young. O, in this single hour I live All of myself and do not move. I, the pursued who madly ran, Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
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