A new moon

A new moon teaches gradualness and deliberation and how one gives birth to oneself slowly. Patience with small details makes perfect a large work, like the universe.

What nine months of attention does for an embryo forty early mornings will do for your gradually growing wholeness.   – Rumi

The new moon signifies a time of transition – the passing of how things were before and the beginning of something new. Every new moon also reminds us that these continual transitions are how life is – however much we carry a notion of things being fixed, change and impermanence keep bubbling up. Sometimes we resist, clinging to the old and familiar, and sometimes we open up and embrace the new and uncertain. With the birth of a baby comes the birth of a mother, and a brand new family. But this beginning carries inside it the endings of the old life – the woman on her own, the couple before parenthood, the connection with the baby in the womb.

Mindfulness teaches us a way to navigate the transitions of new parenthood. Tuning in to the ebb and flow of our breathing, we dwell in the present moment. As we breathe our babies into the world, we accept the new and release the old with each breath.

Every inbreath a new beginning, every outbreath a letting-go   – Mark Williams