Hello lovely friends. Happy Leo Moon!
I have been wanting to start this for a while, but it never felt like the right time or like I had the right words to say for 'bb's first blog entry...' but this Leo moon has us all feeling all the feels and speaking the speeches, so here we go.
I'm not great at intros (if you bring me to a party when we're allowed to party again, I'm counting on you to take me around by the hand) and even worse at goodbyes...so tonight I'm starting in the middle. Pretending I've been writing to y'all this whole time and we're in the middle of a great discovery together (which I suppose in a lot of ways we are).
I'm normally not great with Leo times. For an actress, I have a weird aversion to the spotlight.
For those of you not in the biz (gross to read I know, but that is exactly how it feels), the way to get hired here in the UK is a casting site that is in fact called Spotlight. You are fairly invisible to agents, auditions, etc without a membership essentially, so as you can imagine I spent a lot of time hustling in that particular Spotlight to try to carve out a space for myself in a more literal and creative one.
Now, if you've been with me a while (and I suppose even if you haven't) you know that I don't actually consider myself a witch, no matter how witchy my tendencies and practice may be. I have always considered myself more of an alchemist and now that I am returning to my heritage, a Cantadora...a word smith really using my body to meet character and Spirit to change lives in what little ways we can as performers.
One day in lockdown number one (so sometime in April), when I had no visa and no agent and no way to work, I decided to build a little home for my practice. A one page website to just feel professional...sometimes the going through the motions is enough motion to get you started...and on this particular day, when I chose to cancel my Spotlight membership and take down my actors website (a no-no for any 'professional') in order to use the money I could spend to give Seedling Spiritual a little cyber-home, I truly and deeply wept.
I wept at the thought of leaving all little Nicole's dreams of an Oscar behind (having been intoxicated beyond rescue from the 1995 and 1996 ceremonies on a small TV on fuzzy cable in Wyoming) because 30-something Nicole didn't have a job or a way to contribute to a home or seemingly a hope...
...but when I clicked the little button to link the domain for this community, my first spell was cast and I had no idea how powerful that could be.
I cut the cord (even though it was only silly and in my head and on the internet) between the person I thought I had to be in order to just open the door for maybe someone I could get to be. Big magic is in small places, bbs. And I say that as someone who has had to learn that over and over again as I watch my dreams of my 'big' life fade further away in lieu of this life full of small things I am HUGELY obsessed with.
Every life is a big life.
No seed knows (really) what it is destined to become or how long it will take to get there...it just goes towards the light. Lets itself crack and keeps on doing what it does best.
Water.
Grow.
Light.
Grow.
Rest.
Grow.
Repeat.
My acting wound is a grand one that I don't often talk about. I am great at it. I love it deeply. It has taken me around the world and back again.
But it was also, strangely, keeping me from growing into who I am supposed to be. I know without doubt I will find my back there (as all roads lead home after all), but there is some sort of medicine...some sort of conjuring happening here that I would like to stay curious about. Some little spiritual witchy bread crumbs I cannot help but follow.
My amazing friend Trace told me that in South Africa they say 'same same but different,' and my partner has said that to me for years...that we're all same same, but different.
I know now and humbly offer that to you all this Leo Moon as a spell you can keep in your pocket to remind you of the selves you have been, and how they may feel SO far away...or just out of reach...but they're here...same same you, just different.
My spotlight has changed...digital to lunar...membership to solitary practice...and yet I feel closer to that win than ever before. That little gal in Wyoming didn't know what it took to feed the industry monster, but she did count shooting stars...and leave her window open for Peter Pan every night (you know, just in case he made it across the pond)...and cast little spells and pretend to be a fairy...so really...
I am same same, but different. We're all same same but different, and I know now that allowing that to be, allowing those people to both exist IS the magic.
That's what makes this standing in the Leo bearable. I used to think full moons were tough because everyone could see your nakedness. Now I know it's more about seeing your naked reflection in the waters of your heart space and not recognising the face looking back. It's a reminder, every few weeks, that we're moving closer and closer to who we're becoming, but in that same murky watery fluid reflection we are so bluntly confronted with the fact that we're never going to be who were again.
--because that's just time, right?
It is a grieving. A little death (borrowed phrase from another dear friend, Jou Jou), the leaving behind of the you's you still love. No one likes to be caught crying in the moonlight...but sometimes you're not done grieving when that big moon rises...and you have to see yourself healing. Walking through those emotions...and standing in the dark but weirdly still in the light.
And it's painful and confusing and a nakedness like you've never felt before because how could you?
So I suppose the medicine this triple water not-witch-witch is offering in this blinding and firey full leo moonlight, is to feel it.
Feel the naked.
It might be more freeing than you realise.
And when you have clear enough eyes to be able to look in that water,
you might see someone so similar to you it's comforting,
but also just different enough to be intoxicatingly inspiring.
All the love, bbs and thank you as always for hanging around.
-See you when I see you.
