Between the Moon - Ep 31: Sensing endings with the moon cycle, merging the waters of love, grief, and renewal

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

“Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.” — Thich Nhat Hanh How To SeeOn today’s episode we explore the themes of navigating life transitions, big and small as well as rituals for renewal within the lunar cycle. We delve into our connection with impermanence, focusing on the theme of sensing endings. If you loved these themes and want more, you’re invited to join me tomorrow Friday Nov 21st from 1-2:00pm Pacific for the New Moon Workshop for Scorpio: https://themoonismycalendar.thrivecart.com/new-moon-mandala-workshop-in-scorpio/I share insights on how the lunar cycle can support us in navigating these transitions and the importance of creating space for new beginnings. I also reflect on personal experiences illustrating the cyclical nature of life, like dealing with a difficult landlord and the recent passing of my beloved grandmother. Throughout this heartfelt episode, I invite you to trust you intuition and the wisdom of cycles to find balance and continuity in your lives.These time stamps may be a little off due to editing:00:00 Introduction to The Between the Moon Podcast00:41 Exploring the Theme of Sensing Endings01:41 The Importance of Recognizing Endings01:51 Personal Stories and Reflections on Change02:20 The Concept of Impermanence03:49 Practical Examples of Sensing Endings06:29 The Role of the Lunar Cycle10:16 The Practice of Letting Go11:33 The Intersection of Love and Grief17:30 Cultural Perspectives on Cycles21:50 Final Thoughts and Invitation to ReflectThis episode is a farewell to Scorpio Season as the sun enters the sign of Sagittarius Nov 21st. It is a reflections on the lessons of life and loss and how to practice saying goodbye with the moon. My hope is that there is sweetness and insight that flows through this transmission to offer a sense of belonging within cycles; to yourself, to nature, to the cosmos.“A linear society that thinks in terms of ‘cradle to grave’ will have an endpoint. It won’t be sustained. However, a culture that thinks cyclically and reinvests all ‘waste’ into its livelihood will continue like a circle, it will never end.” - Dr. Lyla JuneVisit https://themoonismycalendar.com to purchase you Lunation Journals and Lunar Wall Calendars today! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themoonismycalendar.substack.com/subscribe

Before we dive into today's episode, I just want to say out loud. I'm trusting the transmission of this episode. There was something that has been fermenting and germinating and gestating beneath the surface for a long time that just wanted to come out. So I let that emerge. And as I went back to edit out the extra long pauses and the extra ums, there were some words where I was like, oh, I could have said that differently or that differently. and that fear of being misunderstood that many of us might feel if we put something out and we're not quite sure how it's going to be received. Trusting how it's going to be received and knowing that if we're waiting for something to be completely perfect, that no holes can be poked in it, not that anyone here is going to do that, things can always be better and sometimes getting something out that have chances to refine. and each version that comes out, I feel like, is this further refinement. And also knowing that there's room, there's totally room to grow.

Okay, so number one, trusting the transmission. Two, I'm going to host a New Moon Workshop. If you're listening to this in November, it's Friday, November 21st from 1 to 2 PM Pacific, and that's online. There'll be a link in the show notes to join Sliding Scale. And then number three, the lunation journals and the lunar wall calendars are all available in the shop. I've been shipping them all over the world from where I am in Northern California. So if you haven't yet, please visit the moon ismycalendar.com and you can order your copy.

There's a Moon sister special if you want to get two lunation journals so that you're practicing alongside a friend. And you can have a chance to share what you are learning through this process. this episode, if you are somebody who has a hard time, like if you have a hard time saying goodbye at parties, for example, or getting off the phone, any of those kinds of things where it's transitioning from being engaged in one activity to then end that and go to the next, this episode might be particularly helpful. I think in the past I was more of that kind of person that would just feel like, oh, well, I don't want to say goodbye yet. Things aren't over yet. I'm just going to wait till the end or past the end because of not wanting to like let go of the moment

and something that the moon cycle teaches us is letting go and that letting go allows for renewal. So yeah, thank you so much for being here and let's dive in. Welcome to today's episode of the Between the Moon podcast. I'm your host April McMurtry. And if you are a regular listener, welcome back. Thank you for being here. And if you are new to this podcast, I just want to share that this is an opportunity to be in conversation with our relationship with cycles. And the moon is one of those transmitter, teacher, mentors that helps us to entrain ourselves to understand the cyclical nature of life.

So these podcasts explore, some are astrology based, some are nature based, some are menstrual cycle base, there's a whole range. So today's episode, we're going to explore this theme of sensing endings. And sometimes I just hear words in my ear. And then I sit with them and they sort of move throughout my body and mind and start to join together with other thoughts and ideas. And this is one of them, sensing endings. It's really about how we pick up on and know when there's a certain timing that something is coming to an end in our life. And it could be like a sixth sense. It could be like if you have experiences of precognition or premonition of just this knowing without quite knowing why, but it makes sense in hindsight. This is something that connecting

with the lunar cycle and all of the phases within the lunar cycle can help each of us deepen or even just connect with this knowing. And why is this important? Why is it important to know when something's going to end? I think really changes hard. Okay, so we'll just start there. Changes hard. This morning, I was reminded of a beautiful quote that really spoke to me, especially early on in this journey of connecting with the moon and sharing lunar circular calendars. This is a quote by Ticknauthan. I don't think there's, anything that he has said or written that hasn't resonated, but this speaks to this theme today. And here it is. Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Thanks to impermanence.

Impermanence and change can be feared or dreaded, especially if they're kind of going well, then we can often want to push away anything that would cause a disruption. I think change is often seen as a disruption. And impermanence is this. expression of nothing lasts. And that's so hard because through even just like relationships, we can get attached and connected in such a deep way that the idea or the thought of that relationship not lasting can be really challenging and really hard. However, if it's a relationship like with a boss or a landlord or somebody maybe who used to be a part of your life and things just aren't clicking anymore, that idea of an impermanence could be a relief. So the impermanence part is

neutral. Things are going to change whether we like it or not. This theme or this idea or these words of sensing endings came to me probably like at the end of the summer. And the timing felt like now was the time to share that. Sensing endings could be a whole body of work within itself. And I just wanted to add this piece or this part to the conversation of self-study in relationship with cycles. It might resonate with you in some way. It might shine light on something. You might have another piece that I don't have to contribute to this conversation. I think another reason why it's important is that sometimes we put things in our life,

on life support. So something that may be a project that we're working on or it may be a job that we're at, something that no longer feels like it has life and we're just keeping it alive, keeping it going because what comes next hasn't presented itself yet or isn't clear yet. Or maybe we stay, for an example from my life is, you know, stay in a rental with a landlord and a situation that's not great because it's like, well, where else can we go? There's the feeling of, well, there's no other options. So I'm just going to hold on to what I have right now. And in that case, the last rental where we stayed, we had to just not sign the lease and not know what was next.

And trust that really honestly, I thought we would maybe move in with my grandma, as my parents did when I was a baby. So in the case of not signing a lease and not knowing what comes next, there was a shifting that needed to happen and a shifting out of this desperation for finding a place to live to rising to this. what if we were able to buy a home? And could everything gather around that to not have to be uprooted over and over with our kids? And it felt impossible, completely outside of anything that had ever been considered even. And so just sharing that of like the ending of something that can open space, especially in moving through any discomfort of not knowing with a job, with a relationship, what comes next? There can be this opening, like Tickna Haan says, where everything is possible in that impermanence, in that shifting and changing of forms. I contemplate this a lot.

And to apply to creative work and creative practices or creative projects. You know, I see this sometimes in the 100-day projects, which I've done before and are amazing for some people. and for others I see there's like this life support kind of thing of I'm just going to do this and keep doing this because I don't know what else to do and that's totally fine. But when it doesn't have the like life and juice in it, then maybe pulling the plug on that project because doing it for the sake of doing it is occupying the space where maybe in that impermanence something else wants to come in. But the space needs to be made first. And that's what I've seen over and over. And so, many of you who work with the lunation journal and work with lunar cycles, you probably have this sense, too, of once things are emptied out, once there is this void space that's created, it leaves room for something new and possibly something completely unexpected. The lunar cycle over and over teaches us this. The new moon is, that is between the moon. That's what this podcast and this substack is named after. The Between the Moon is that in between the old cycle and the new

cycle, the Moon herself, the Moon themselves, is not visible, is gone, is like dissolved in this spiritual sense of merging with the source and the Sun so that for three days there's no moon. That's the between the moon space. That's the something has ended, but the next thing has not yet begun to sit in that space can be so uncomfortable and so powerful because of what is possible. Okay, pausing for a moment to gather and regroup. Sometimes I start these, like my eyes are closed as I'm talking because there is some transmission that wants to come through to share. And when I show up and just be present, then often that can just come through without having to write out bullet points and I never write a script because even if I had a script I wouldn't

follow it and it wouldn't feel alive to me and I know some people need to do that or or even do that well to have a script to speak from but for me it's not and I have to trust that that is my process and that this has some value to come through because sensing endings it just was one of those things that that wouldn't it wouldn't leave me alone it kept sitting with me because of these questions around how do you sense that something's ending? How do you know? And are you trying to prolong something that really wants to transform into its own next phase and stage of life or death or rebirth? We see this in the seasons and we see how trees don't hold onto their leaves. And yes, it's a beautiful metaphor, but it really isn't a metaphor.

It really is the essence of life. That release is necessary. A couple weeks ago, I had a big burn pile. I have like an old sort of metal. It's not really a barbecue pit. It's a fire pit. A little fire pit on wheels that I got from my dad. And I let the neighbors know there would be smoke, so not to call the fire department. It just had that feeling of, I just need to burn some things. There were plants that I'd harvested that were, dried, some sages, and some other things, some papers, really like a whole bunch of things that I was feeling particularly stuck and just needed to move energy. And working with the elements is one way to do that. And having a burn pile that is an intentional practice of release. And sometimes it's not logical. And sometimes it doesn't make sense like what is this energy that wants to be released? It doesn't necessarily even need language. a name, but there was just this feeling of this sensing of endings and sensing of shifting and sensing of opening up space for something else. And I tended to the fire kind of all day long

adding things to it and just really being in a space of contemplation and being okay as I could be without the knowing. The sensing endings is also like end of life. For those of you who've had loved ones or people who are close to you or even a neighbor when the end of life comes sometimes for some people come suddenly and it comes young and it comes seemingly out of the blue but I know there's many stories of people having a sense before that happens a sense of the shifting that precognition that pre-knowing pre-knowing pre-monition does that mean you could do something to like change it or stop it not not usually I don't know know. I'm putting this out there just as a question. I think because in connecting with the moon,

there are these teachings of letting things flow and unfold and noticing when something wants to flow and you are putting up the resistance to that energy or that thing flowing in whatever the direction that it wants to or needs to take. You know, it will find a way to flow around that perhaps. But maybe there is a big dam. And maybe there are like stuck emotions that are holding something in place. And is there someone or even a practitioner to work with to like remove some of those rocks over the geyser? Whatever the experience may be, for me there's been this deep well, this deep well of love.

And this, it seems like the waters in the well of love are the same waters as the waters of grief. And when they come up and rise up up to the surface, through tears and through that feeling and tapping into that. There's times in life where that is more pronounced, perhaps, or more intense in different moments. And seeing of my grandmother, the matriarch on my maternal side of my family, my mother's mother, I've been a granddaughter for almost 48 years of my life. And so this sensing endings, now that I'm recording this and have had this kind of thought or idea moving around within my body. Now, I don't even know that it makes sense,

but that sensing was there. And it wasn't a surprise or out of the blue. And yet still, it's still shaking me and not in a bad way, but this shaking of this vibration of anything that doesn't feel essential about really tapping into that well of love and connection that's just shaking away. There's a feeling of a kind of a rawness. And sometimes, as I'm saying this, I'm like, I see why it's, you know, one would be hesitant to share something like a death in the family. For me, really, it's because I don't, I don't want to hear, I'm sorry for your loss or condolences, you know, the things like that the nurses at the hospital said. And they were really well-meaning.

Most people don't know what to say in the face of death and loss. So those are the kind of socially acceptable things that are there. But it's so present. And to share and just have that be a witnessing of loss that we've maybe all experienced and all the different ways we journey through that, that threshold. And this is something that I've been practicing with the moon consciously for the last 12 years to practice letting go, to practice saying goodbye. When I was young, when I realized, wait, people I love won't be here forever.

And most of the time you don't have to think about it. And yet that awareness kind of can awaken you into presence to the impermanence, really. But as a young person, I thought, I don't ever want to lose my grandma. ever, ever, and knowing that I would was incomprehensible. And so I would practice with the moon. I would practice saying goodbye, saying goodbye to everything at the end of a cycle in that balsamic waning crescent, that last visible smile of light, that closing eyelid of light of the waning balsamic moon. That would be my practice. And I would go out. You can only see that phase before sunrise. So that in itself is a devotional practice.

Devotion to the moon, devotion to cycles, devotion to the renewal, devotion to practices that support the flow and the way that we're a part of a continuity. And yet that continuity has endings and beginnings that sometimes overlap and sometimes have this gap. and that's what the new moon is and that's what between the moon is, is that gap in between. And so saying goodbye to a cycle and having that practice over and over, going out and just like crying for whatever it is that I loved that I knew that I would have to say goodbye to, this tricky place of really being attached. I would never not want to be attached to my grandma or those who I love. And so non-attachment, maybe there's some other language that's more, I don't want to say appropriate,

but, you know, language that speaks more clearly to that acceptance of impermanence, other outcomes could be, well, I'm not going to get attached because I don't want to lose this person, this thing, you know, this whatever, maybe this is too good to be true. So I don't want that fall to be farther the more. and maybe there's a better word than attached, but that's what I'm using for now. The more attached I am to that. And so then that distancing, but in this case, the waters of that well are completely merged, the love and grief, deeper love, deeper grief, and all the waves.

Ah, yes. So sensing endings, having practices with the moon, of saying goodbye, of releasing, of bringing in cycles of renewal. Endings don't have to be like what feels like this final death. That is the transformation of anything throughout our lives, all of the small endings, where we go through a process where something changes form, whether we like it or not, whether it's the desirable outcome or not,

seeing what unfolds as there's continuity between endings and beginnings of one thing because I left that job, because we didn't sign the lease, because of that, something else came along and seeing what that other thing that came along, what form that was. And maybe it's a couple days later, but maybe it's months or even years down the road. Working with a circular lunar calendar helps to ingrain that sense of continuity. There's another quote that I want to share. This quote comes from Lila June, who is a dengue. artist and activist works with reclaiming indigenous practices. I appreciate her words and teachings.

And this quote says, a linear society that thinks in terms of cradle to grave will have an end point. That's that straight line. This is my commentary here. The straight line of here's the beginning, the birthday. Here's the end, the death day. And a society that only prescribes to that linear sense has an end point. Okay, here's her words again. It won't be sustained. However, a culture that thinks cyclically and reinvests all, quote, waste into its livelihood will continue like a circle. It will never end. That's the continuity. How can we bring more continuity into more areas of our life, our society, and our systems, this understanding of the wisdom of cycles, how the moon transmits that and gets us off that railroad track, linear point A to point B way of

being. They exist simultaneously. It's like being bilingual in the realm of time to understand a kind of linear sequential way that things may move. Or if you're laying out an essay, like there is a starting point, the first word and the last word of the essay. But there's a also this other weaving and sense of how the moon moves, how the cycles unfold with each unique phase and that certain things that connect with certain phases have this natural affinity, fullness matching with fullness and feeling that in whatever phase of life that you're in, those moments where this is fullness, this is a moment of fullness. Whether or not the moon is full on that day or not, it's like recognizing like, oh, this is emptiness. This is a feeling of emptiness.

This is also a part of the cycle. And there may be ones that you have a preference for or feel better. Like when I was leaving the hospital, I was bringing my daughter home and this was the night that my grandmother passed. I was bringing her home because it was late. And she had a long day and I'm like, you got to say goodbye. And as we were leaving, there was a woman walking slowly, gingerly, yet very quickly at the same time in very active labor. And that is that kind of overlap of here we were in this space of this really like monumental

ending within my family, passing by somebody who. who was in this monumental beginning of theirs. They coexist. And when we can identify for ourselves and name where we are within the cycles of our life, I feel and I believe it can help us to be really in season in that moment with ourselves. Instead of fighting against that, resisting it, putting something on life support when it really is.

The time for shedding and the tree is like, no, I'm going to hold on. to all of my leaves forever and ever and ever and it's like then spring spring really spring won't come spring won't come so it's trusting in that stage where you are to be there and to get glimpses of other stages you know i don't think it's ever we're 100% in an ending or a beginning or a full point or a new point there's so many different there's the crossroads that are in between and there's so many other phases and some that overlap. So this the language that comes from lunar tracking and the language that comes from listening to the moon and listening and sensing endings and how the moon can

help us, I would say like feel like it's okay, feel like it's a part of how things are supposed to be. There's this invitation for a kind of trust that I'm not saying any of this is easy. I'm just sharing it because it's things that I've tried to, that I continue to try to make sense of in being fully present with what is. And how it is that sensing endings gives us a chance of an appreciation for that phase, that waning balsamic. And yes, there's the one thing that I wanted to add to that is, for me, there's this fear, this worry of, well, what if I, what if something ends, I'm like cutting something off too soon?

Like the idea of I have the lyrics of Lenny Kravitz in my ear of, you know, it ain't over till it's over. When is something over? And that overness is actually something that transforms itself into something else. But that's not always clear. This whole conversation, stream of thought, transmission has been brought to you by Scorpio, bringing in these themes of death and rebirth, and whatever is hidden in that trapdoor, the things that are taboo to talk about, especially like death, because it can bring up so many feelings for people that are uncomfortable and they don't know how to feel with them so it's better not to even go there. Totally understandable but with the Scorpio energy, Scorpio's like, let's just go there. Let's go open that

track door. Hopefully, you know, prepared with maybe you have like a headlamp or maybe there's some mantra or words that you're speaking into the space of the unknown. And that place does have a lot of power. The place of the unknown, the place where all the fears get buried away, boxed away. And sometimes that's okay. Things go and boxes and get stored in the attic for a reason they don't always need to be open and out or out in the open but there are moments in times in life where maybe those boxes get opened on their own or there's some event that opens them or there's just the it's like the covering over over the well or over the trapdoor that gets taken off or removed and those those things that come up to the surface

there has been much comfort in the practice of lunar tracking and feeling held within the cycles when it seems like things are falling apart or when there's a huge loss to be held by something. And it doesn't have to be the moon. That's just what I've found in my way of sharing and expressing one entry point into the natural world is showing us visually, energetically, this thing. cycle, the same cycle the seasons go through, how spring is possible because of fall and winter, how fullness is possible because there's also emptiness, that yin and yang and the impermanence and the change that comes through things not being static. So I hope there's some piece of

wisdom that something that you've heard that helps to spark some kind of a connection within yourself with deepening practices of lunar tracking. Maybe there's some other insight that you have as well. Again, we each hold our unique piece of a much, much bigger puzzle. And so here on between the moon, I like, I almost feel like sensing endings wouldn't let me be and maybe wants to become something else. But for now, I'll just leave you with this invitation to listen, to see and notice signs of endings that may only make sense in hindsight, but to not put them into the under the rocks or under the bed or in that trapdoor because it's difficult when things change or when we're faced with impermanence. But trusting your knowing, trusting the wisdom of

cycles and being an apprentice to the moon and the lunar cycles that bring this wisdom forth. Thank you so much for being here and sending many, many blessings.