In early April I left on a twelve-day voyage to Italy, where I spent almost every minute in motion: hiking, sight-seeing, listening to audio tours, eating amazing food, talking with my partner, and a thousand other things. It was amazing and stressful and exhausting and expansive.

I returned home six days ago and was immediately smushed into the ground by a feverish cold. Today I am finally beginning to feel like myself again.

We all have times when all is well, and we think we “should” feel happy and good, and still we do not. I am coming out of one of those moments now.

The moon in April is sometimes called the Egg Moon. This time of year brings baby animals, new life bursting out of the ground, out of the trees, in ourselves. This week is going to take a different shape from previous blogs / newsletters: I’m going to walk you through my process of dyeing eggs, along with why I do it this way and how the process itself is magic. This will be a picture-heavy week, so if you love books with lots of pictures in them, this one’s for you.

The spring equinox (tomorrow, March 20, at 5:01am EDT) is a moment of perfect balance between light and dark. Can you feel how this balance comes through without us even trying?

I’ve found myself delightedly broken out of the pattern of pushing and overwhelm that I spoke about in my blog last week. (Oh! As I’m sitting on my porch writing this, my neighborhood barred owls are calling back and forth to each other in the loblolly pine stand across the street.)

I have always gone through times where I am holding too much: started too many projects, committed to too many social engagements, put too many things on the schedule and taken on too many assignments.

There’s a moment during the leap between one thing and the next when we question all our decisions: the new thing isn’t here yet, so what if leaving the old was a terrible mistake? What if I’m not able to complete the new, or it fits even worse than the old?

This week has brought a lot of positive, earth-shifting movement, and along with it, the necessary humility and awareness to make such changes happen. When we grow, we outgrow old skins, and the process of wriggling out of them, or splitting them open to crawl out of them, is . . . honestly, uncomfortable feels like an understatement.

I’ve been blessed with people in my life who do strange and unusual things, and thus make it feel safer for me to do the same.

We all know things are fucked right now, so I’m not going to spend time listing how. If you want some alternative news outlets besides the ones that make money from giving certain messages, here are my current favorites…

January has become polarized for me. There’s deep, meaningful work: therapy and journaling, reworking my business to match my need and values, taking care of my rabbit’s health issues. And there’s escapism: watching Hallmark movies while cross-stitching, reading A Court of Thorns and Roses, playing the Sims.

If you, like me, struggle with seasonal affective disorder (SAD), this time of year has a particular flavor to it: it’s a time of wanting to do more than just maintain, but struggling to remember the feeling of fun and invigoration.

So far, the January stillness and Cancer full moon have brought with them humbling revelations, as well as promises of liberation from old patterns, if I can grow my strength. Does any of this resonate with you?