Moon Mondays: Out of Balance is the New Normal
Tomorrow’s equinox has me questioning: what’s normal?
The first time I got high, I was twelve. That’s not normal. I was at an Aspen Community School overnight, and the teacher supervising us didn’t “bogart” the joint; she shared it with all the middle schoolers.
My girlfriend and I just got a hit of the resin-soiled paper at the end. We delayed joining in while we debated “should we or shouldn’t we.” We did, and I’ve never been that high since. For the first hour, we laughed hysterically, rolling around on the gymnastics mats. For the next hour we bawled our eyes out because we didn’t have boyfriends, like the other girls, now all making out.
My parents, like most of the adults in our lives, were doing drugs right in front of us. Ah, the “good old days” of Aspen. I remember catching my dad freebasing and understanding, for the first time, what was happening. He’d answer “experimenting” to my previous questions, until that day, when I called him out, “I know what you’re doing. You’re doing drugs!”
My mom had repeatedly told me that whenever I was ready to try pot, to come to her first, so it would be safe. Upon returning from the school sleepover, I proudly exclaimed, “I got high last night! But don’t worry, a teacher gave it to me…”
Come Monday morning, that teacher was gone. I never saw her again.
Looking back now, what strikes me, almost as much as a teacher giving a bunch of middle schoolers marijuana, is how normal the whole thing seemed to me at the time.
The adults around me did drugs. My mom had told me to come to her when I was ready to try them. I came home and announced that I’d smoked pot — with a teacher, no less! What could possibly be safer?
It’s funny how “normal” abnormal can feel when you’re living inside it. Which brings me, oddly enough, to tomorrow’s equinox — autumn’s official start.
At the beginning of summer, I dread winter ever arriving again. Then September rolls around and that first chill in the air feels so good in my body. I’m excited to see the first snow up high.
Astrologically, the equinox is a moment of balance. The sun rises due east and sets due west, reaching the fulcrum between the solstices.
I’ve been wondering: how do we recognize when we’re out of balance, if that has become our normal? The equinox invites us to identify where equilibrium lies in our own lives.
Balance has been up for me, big time, the last couple of weeks. I finished my two-year life-coaching program and suddenly have an opening of time in my life. I thought I’d slide right into it with work and writing. But then I got a UTI (sorry if that’s TMI) and spent the first week mostly in bed, slug-ing it out.
As I improved, I noticed this weird dread about getting back into the groove. I wondered, what is going on? Then it dawned on me: I haven’t had this kind of open space in years. And I’ve definitely never let myself just take it.
I’m accustomed to a certain amount of stimulation and busyness. Without it, I feel anxious. The space feels foreign, maybe even unsafe. My nervous system seems to be asking, shouldn’t we be doing something right now?
There it was again — something can feel completely normal simply because it’s what I know.
At twelve, I couldn’t see how bizarre it was for a teacher to pass me a joint because drug use was part of the world I knew. Now, I’m discovering that I haven’t fully recognized how accustomed I am to busyness because that, too, has become normalized.
Maybe that’s the invitation of the equinox for me this year: not to evenly balance all the pieces of my life, but to question what I’ve gotten so used to that I no longer recognize it as out of balance.
That’s why the sun’s movements and astrology matter to me. They give me a way to anchor into what’s happening in my life — and sometimes help me see what has been there for far too long.
If you’re in Aspen for the Literary Festival this week this week, come see me! I’ll be doing free 3-minute astrology “lightning” reads at Eddy’s(across from the Wheeler) Friday night. Come find out where this equinox balance lies in your own chart.
Sheridan🌙
Moon Sisters Circle, Astrologer, and Astrology for Real Life Coaching