The Moon is my Calendar with April McMurtry

Discover how to powerfully harmonize with the moon. In this interview with April McMurtry, Cyclical Living Guide and creator of The Moon is my Calendar. Honor yourself, celebrate your strength, empower your transformation with your Yin-care®. This is the Yin-care® Podcast, and I’m your host, Margaret Jacobson, The Mother Rising.

Hello everybody and welcome to Yin-care®s podcast. I’m Margaret, Yin-care®s Mother Rising, and I am so excited to introduce you today to April McMurtry, who is the founder and facilitator of The Moon is My Calendar. It’s an incredible product and it has, it is a whole lifestyle. So, without further ado, let me introduce April.

Hi. Hi. Thank you. You’re so welcome. I’m so glad to have you here today. So let’s go ahead and just get started if you could just share with everybody a little bit about who you are, and then we can just kind of flow into how you came into the moon is my calendar. Yeah, I, so I really thank you. My whole life I’ve been interested in teaching, facilitating.

I feel like even as a young person, I would watch the teachers in my life, kind of study them in this way of like, how do you share, how do you open people up to learning? So I actually became a teacher, a classroom teacher for many years. And then after having my second child, I realized I was teaching part time, I was facilitating other workshops. I was doing consulting work, everything to think that there was, this I could do it all and that’s when everything kind of came crashing down, but it was really this moment of like I had to step away from almost everything to go back to basics This was about 10 years, maybe eight.

So eight years ago, when I started with The Moon is my Calendar, my youngest was two years old. And so this work really came from a place of, I mean, it’s overused to say burnout, but it was this very solar way of being of like, always the outward focus. And my second child really brought the inward, the more yin, and the more lunar way of connecting that just had to slow everything down.

And so that’s when The Moon is my Calendar was birthed really through an early on practice with a dear friend of mine, and colleague and, and fellow facilitator, Sita Davis. We would meet on the new moon with each other as just this way of reconnecting as young moms and really wanting to anchor our own practice at a time with lots of transformation. And from there I was like, I think I need a tool to record and to hold this work, that this is really sacred work that goes into very, like, it deeply connects us with ourself and with cycles and rhythms in nature.

And so that’s how the, the New Moon Calendar and Journal was sort of born from all of that. Awesome. That is so great. That is really neat. Now, how old were both you have? It sounds like two Children. Is that right? And how old were they when you develop the calendar? There was two and one that was about four years older, so six, seven. Okay. Yeah. Just so people get an idea of kind of what was going on and then you were trying to balance a career in education in some way as well.

Yeah, so I was, I was full-time teaching before my first child was born, and then my second child, the due date was on back to school day. Oh my goodness. Like teachers, like the day you report back. And I was like, hmm, I’m a newborn. And so, okay, I’m not, I can’t sign the contract. I don’t know what’s next. And it really started this journey of like almost the shedding the layers of the identity attached to my career and my work of like, I am, I have a master’s in teaching and I work at this amazing school and all these parts of my identity that would make sense to tell somebody about.

Yes. And this journey of like, how do I talk about, I publish a moon calendar. Even the language around it continues to reveal itself even to me, because it wasn’t something I set out like that I knew I was going to do. It really came from having to shed everything else. Right. And so, yeah, it was having a two year old who was in preschool and that feeling of is there enough of me to go around? Exactly.

And even as children or as a caretaker in any way or just you know, whatever relationships we have in our life Like having two kids and a partner, thankfully, and I do have extended family. So I have a very, like, four generations of family that I live close to that’s a part of, raising me and raising my family and all of that.

So I feel like I have a lot of support. What I found is being in the classroom the kids, the students, the needs that they had of me, the needs that my own children had of me. And so there wasn’t anything left at the end of the day. Like I had nothing left to give. I was not getting out of bed in the morning.

It was, it was a dragging myself through life kind of time. So, on that note, just to segue, I, because this is about Yin-care®, sometimes it’s those little things, like, how, did you, what were the little tiny things that you did? Or was it just that this meeting, this monthly meeting kind of got you through?

What were the things that fed you enough to get you so that you had that realization that you had enough power internally to say, I can’t sign that contract. It’s such a good question. It almost, I mean, it came from the surrender. It came from the having to admit like, this is not failure. This is an initiation of surrendering and that feeling of, of loss of identity or of purpose or, whatever it might be, meaningful work. To actually have to surrender. And it came through both my pregnancies I was very ill for very like non, you know, even just sober at all. I’ve been there. Basics, it like tore down everything of like, I’m a very capable person. And on my own, all my own, like, I just that feeling of I can rely on myself, I can take care of myself, I don’t need anybody else actually opened the space for my partner in our relationship, what is it to say, like, I need help. I can’t do this on my own. It was a necessary, you know, tower breaking down or just the, that, surrendering and trusting, because I didn’t know how it was going to, how it was going to unfold.

I mean, it sounds like you had some support there, in multiple places, but I do find that that’s, a big piece, right, is that there has to be or not, not that there has to be. But that certainly makes it a little bit more mentally, emotionally manageable to make the leap. So was he supportive of you of that or?

Well, I mean, it was this going from feeling very independent and very sort of like on equal standings in terms of career. And I actually thought, he thought he’d stay at home with the kids. And he’s , you care about teaching, you love your job. If you want to work and keep do that, right, you know, whatever, take it or leave it or figure something out.

But for me, that passion of teaching, has just always, always been with me. And he knew that. Right. And yeah, he has been supportive and things have worked out magically, miraculously, just, yeah, along the way, but it gave this sense of going from feeling very independent to actually, the interdependence.

Yeah. And like the codependence or other kinds of dependence. Exactly. This inter, interdependence, um, and yeah, just having a little bit of a, a grace period to do that. It’s beautiful. So much of your work is that, is that trusting that unfolding of, I don’t know what’s next. I’m going to keep, following these threads.

Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, I think it’s really beautiful. I’ve been part of this womb container right now that is really been going into the depths of exploring like the hiros gamos, inner masculine and feminine. And of course, that’s expressed externally as well, like understanding how that works.

But, it’s interesting how when we start to come into right relationship with our own inner feminine, how the masculine almost comes up to meet it, like, okay, I can be there for you, you know. So anyway, it’s just interesting to hear your story. And I mean, along those lines, and just seeing it through that lens of solar and lunar, which are, sometimes mapped onto masculine feminine. And it’s almost, it’s the energies too, of the yin and yang. So whatever name or label that it’s given, there is a solar way of being that I think was, that was, you know, what was only modeled to me was how to live in a solar way.

Exactly, for sure. To the extreme, and I’ve told this story before, to the extreme, I was a competitive swimmer growing up, from, you know, seven, and I loved being in the water, and I loved going fast, and I coached the swim team and was the mascot for the swim team. Oh my gosh. Wow. Which was Solar Man.

Solar Man. Solar Man? No way. Were you from the Bay Area then? Were you from the Bay Area? Yeah. Which school or where? This was Sun Valley. So it’s the summer. It’s a rec, there’s Right. Yeah. The private rec teams or whatever. Yeah. Club team or something like that. Exactly. Yeah. And, and in being in Sun Valley, this team was called Sun Valley.

So that was the mascot. And that was energetically like much more of a match for me at that time of my life. So, it’s, so here we have this one extreme. Wow. To then come back around. And definitely going through a journey of denying, suppressing, seeing anything that was feminine as weak. Even when I would, I used to wear a yin yang necklace.

As a teenager and I was like, why is the feminine, why is that associated with a weakness? Like in a very, not even surface level, but just a misunderstanding of the energy. Absolutely. And so that’s been a journey too to come back to how the moon really can invite us into that relationship in a very gentle, unconditional, loving way.

Yeah. To explore that. That’s that, that weaving, because it’s not just solar or not just lunar, right? Those, the sun and the moon, they weave together. Mm hmm. And the moon is reflecting the sun’s light, right? So what might you say about that? Have you explored that in your? Yeah, it’s almost like how, sometimes that solar energy is almost too powerful, like overpowering.

And when it comes through and is reflected back through the moon, there is more of a softness that can help with being more receptive. You can’t even look at the sun. It’s blinding, but to be able to access that light in a way that is nourishing. Possibly more, you know, some traditions describe it more, , nectar like, or dew like, or just the dewy light. It nourishes on a different, in a different way than, that, brightness. Right. Of the sun. Exactly. So that’s an awesome segue to your incredible calendar. So you have The Moon is my Calendar. It is a calendar journal. It is a book.

It’s nine by nine or something like that. Yeah, it’s about eight and a half by eight and a half. And actually, I can hold it up so you guys can see. It’s a really handy, easy calendar to carry around. It could fit in a bigger purse. It’s not too heavy and I say that just because there’s lots of different options for different calendars.

And I like this one because I like them all. I like anything that is going to connect you to your cycle, just so everybody knows, these are all great tools and everybody’s going to find the perfect one for them. But this one is great because it is small and it has all kinds of interesting pages to start with, but let me just show some of these pictures.

This is the circular calendar that, do you want to say anything about that? Like it’s divided into, or how it’s mapped out a little bit. Yeah, it’s mapped out by each cycle starts at the new moon. And so that’s the new moon at the top, and then the days go around the circle clockwise.

And that version, it only had the four main phases drawn out, but now, it’s a little bit more robust. Now it has every day, oops, sorry, let me go here. That’s okay. That one didn’t, that one just had the four main phases. Right. So I can hold up this one. Okay, cool. So before we hold it up and we can show it, I mean, this is the general gist of it going from new moon to full moon.

And then you’ve got the quarter in between, just a pic. This is a picture of mine with, some mugwort and pomegranate flowers. And all of these, the space for the notes is, it’s almost like deciding what to track. And in the calendar itself it has some symbols and ideas about tracking moods and emotions, tracking body and sensations, tracking lifestyle and habits.

So it’s open in that way and flexible for a personal practice. And mine has evolved over time. This is the eighth year. I write something almost every day, and if I don’t write something, it’s usually gives even more information about why didn’t I have three minutes to sit down and just make a note.

So I actually leave my calendar, I have a little bedside table altar that my practice is in the morning to sit with myself and to take a couple notes from the day before. Some people do it in the evening or different times of the day, but it helps to create a rhythm. Right. And mine has a bunch of numbers and it’s funny because I’m not really a number person, but this does have like, I do take basal body temperature.

To have just have a sense of where I am in my cycle. These are your temperatures. Can you see my cursor. Okay. Yeah, so these are your temperatures and that’s such a good point because that’s a great segue to I just want to mention that it’s such a misnomer that we have to go through people, I’m trying to totally like, it’s, it’s not even in my vocabulary anymore, which is great. But this is fertility awareness, basically, is, , making yourself conscious of when you are fertile. And that you don’t need any, that it’s actually quite incredibly accurate. There’s only a tiny window in the month.

If you are concerned and not ready to have a baby and be pregnant, there’s only a small window that you really have to concern yourselves with. So all this hubbub and to do that’s put on by the pharmaceutical industry that’s totally screwing up everybody’s cycles doesn’t even need to be there. So this is a great tool to use for you know for documenting your fertile cycles and that basal temperature is a tool that is used for that for those of you that are watching this that don’t know about that.

Do you want to explain that just a tiny bit? I didn’t even know about it and I will say I started tracking that after I was done having kids and it was really about I want to know about my energy. When am I going to have like highs and lows in my energy? To be able to support myself so I’m not running on empty or burning out, but then I’m ebbing and flowing with my menstrual cycle.

So I didn’t start tracking that. I would say my own journey of having been put on birth control pills, because of having two weeks of hemorrhaging as a young teenager and knowing I want to get off of these as soon as possible. Then not having a way to understand my own cycle, other than putting a dot on a calendar and trying to count days, none of that made sense to me.

So basically I always was in this state of like, am I pregnant? Am I coming? Am I going? It is such a chaotic experience for everybody. Yes. And then, and then men don’t, I just want to add this little tidbit because this comes to me. I don’t believe that if there are any men that are watching for women, when we think we might be pregnant, we actually mentally go through the entire scenario, like, okay, if I have this baby, when is it going to, you, we’ve already mapped out like nine months later, we’ve mapped out how, you know, what’s going on in our life in nine months, are we going to be able to handle it like this whole thing?

And then it ends up that maybe we’re not pregnant, but we’ve totally gone through this whole it’s really exhausting. It’s exhausting and it’s energy that doesn’t like to know and be in just attuned to our own inner workings it’s so beautiful and I didn’t have access to any of this.

It just wasn’t like nobody shared that with me in my life and growing up and it really wasn’t until I started connecting with the moon. And when I was no longer concerned about pregnancy, I was more about the energy of creativity. And so how am I going to work with this, like energy of ovulation? That is so fleeting, so fleeting.

And so like that, for me, at least that feeling of like, I can do anything, anything is possible. And understanding that is a phase of a whole cycle and that it’s not, almost the tendency towards, oh, there’s something wrong with me. Like, why don’t I feel that way all the time? Right. But to understand, oh, this is something that is cyclical.

And so, yeah, basal body temperature, is one of those like super simple. And I know there’s apps for all of this menstrual cycle awareness and tracking. And for two reasons, like it’s very personal information and I think it’s also, not, information that I would want somebody else to have access to.

But there’s something writing with going through the steps of writing down those numbers, whenever we’re writing something with our hand and this is why I’m a very, I’m an advocate for paper pencil. It connects with our brain. It, actually is physically registering in a way that digitally, almost anything on my phone

it’s almost like it’s out of sight, out of mind. And so this practice and having a tool because I went down the road of developing an app, people were encouraging me and then I was like, I don’t actually want an app. I actually want paper and pencil. And for other people who do love that and want that it’s just the time to , it’s a way of connecting in a way like I said kind of registering on a deeper level. I agree. That that it just can sink in and in a different way. It creates like I’m i’m feeling as you’re saying that that when I have done that for myself in in a variety of scenarios, not just with the calendar, but it creates a feedback loop it creates a feedback loop in the system of recognition of the quality of energetic quality of what’s transpiring.

And therefore, when I’ve made that connection, I can come back and recognize it again next time. And if you’re just putting it in an app, which of course, I use sometimes I use that too, just to, you know, for cycle tracking for just numbers, like quickly, like, oh, where, when was it? You know, where am I at? You know, I need it there.

I just have a quickie thing. It’s totally not the same. It’s just a, it’s just a number of days that pass by. There is no recognition of what’s going on energetically in that moment at all. I mean, another beautiful part, and it’s interesting because my work isn’t centered on the menstrual cycle and I’ve actually been intentional about not having that in the forefront.

And that’s really because it is really rooted in connecting with cycles, all cycles. And that starts with the breath, the breath cycle of experiencing that, that very intimate relationship that once I could see how the breath cycle was related to the lunar cycle of expansion and contraction, that awareness and that very embodied and somatic awareness of, oh, all cycles are moving in this way, that there’s something that comes into form and expands and grows and opens up.

And there’s some kind of a peak, and in the menstrual cycle that can be understood as ovulation, that from there, then, like with flowers, the petals drop, or the moon begins to wane, or the exhale begins to come, and then things close up again. And that pulse and that rhythm is so healing. The more that we have that and cultivate that in our life within our body, with our breath really fully inhaling and fully, fully, fully exhaling but also throughout our day of I’m waking up, I’m having activity, I’m, like, present and in action\. Or just in a state of, alertness, and then there’s the times where that also needs to wane.

And so, the daily cycle and the menstrual cycle is one of those, and it’s not one that everybody experiences. We don’t all experience it in the same way. And there are a lot of women who’ve said to me, thank you because I thought I couldn’t connect with the moon because I don’t bleed almost like it’s exclusive.

And that to me was so beautiful because It’s almost allowing that access for anyone at any age or stage of life, any gender as well, to see like this rhythmic, cyclical way of being is healing. Yeah. Been severed and ruptured in many ways and that’s part of just the being out of sorts as a human. We’re like, I know I’m a part of nature, but I don’t feel like I am What’s what’s happening?

What? Gosh, I know I know. We have a product in our clinic that was like a fragrance, like a essential oil spray. I think it was, we called it Emperors Forest. And I’ll have it for sale on the website at some point but it was, it just said to remind you that you are nature. You are nature.

There’s no, it’s not, you’re out in nature or you’re going to nature or you’re connecting with nature. You already are nature like mm-hmm . And to find, to find that. Really that connection with the breath and the lunar cycle for me that is what, that’s when things really clicked into place of oh, it’s not somewhere outside.

Like I’m not looking for somewhere it’s everything that’s outside. Is this is a mirror that’s reflecting back what’s also inside. And really it’s that breath. And that’s part of, some of the practices that I host a, there’s a monthly moon circle with Sita and I, and some of those practices will be just really sinking into that of experiencing the breath.

In this way, as if it were the lunar cycle, or as if it were this, the seasonal year, the solar year of this waxing from spring to summer. Right. And then the beginning of that waning. Yeah. As we’re recording this, we’re heading towards that, that equinox point. We, we have it, I’m in Wyoming.

And so, my daughter just headed back to college and right before, you know, the you, you can see in the tops of the aspen trees, like a little patch will turn yellow, you know, and, and so I don’t know, we were outside somewhere and I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, I’m not, I barely got a Summer. Don’t say it, mom.

Don’t say it. We just all had been working so hard all Summer. And, you know, but, but yeah, it really is. And then we notice in our clinical practice that my husband does Chinese Medicine instantly, everyone starts getting sick, everyone. And he sent her off with a bunch of herbs and said, you take these as soon as you get to school.

Cause everybody’s going to get sick. And she said, mom, you wouldn’t believe it. Everybody’s sick, but it’s true. And it’s something that I was so curious about, both as a teacher, right, the going back to school, and then with my own kids going back to school, why is everybody getting sick around this time?

And what I started to see really was like, oh, how are we taught to transition in this way, especially with Summer to Fall? And Where there’s kind of like a downshifting and yet going back to school is like getting back into gear. Exactly. So there’s these , it’s brutal energies to also working with the lunar cycle and really like working with a circular calendar of Yeah.

Phase by phase. And the eyes, just this movement of this circle, there’s something that happens and I don’t even, I don’t know how to describe it with words that it helps to entrain us to not resist change, to actually be able to change. It’s huge, really big. It’s huge. And when we have a calendar that’s set up with these grids that are really just these boxes. There’s no relationship to a cycle that goes through an opening up with waxing and then like closing up shop like, okay, clear the plate, make some room in space before beginning again. It’s a way of relating to time that I know all of our ancestors, it was just natural.

It was just already there and present. That understanding that for many of us has been ruptured that really has been through the way that that time is presented is something that has this measured accuracy that’s not in relationship with the earth. Yeah, it’s removed. It’s extracted. It’s absolutely extracted and it’s funny that you mentioned the grid because the grid of the calendar because I think I’ve been staring at these circular calendars for several years now that I mean, I have a physical calendar.

I don’t generally use it like that. I use lists. I am like a list gal. I’m a total Capricorn, like, you know, classic everything’s as best I can in different sorts of lists and things. But when I look at a calendar, I’m fairly used to looking at this circular nature and you’re right, it absolutely is when it has such a sense of this like massive control over your life when you look at the grid system of a traditional solar calendar.

So tell us, though, about, why don’t you flash up a picture since I don’t have that of the circular calendar looks like now, because there’s a couple things in there that I think are super cool that you didn’t have on the original. So I could show there’s the wall calendar, which is in full color, or there is that, the Newman calendar and journal.

It’s printed in black and white, really, so that you, the person that’s working with it, fills it with the color of your life. Well, we’ll do both. But let’s start with a journal with the calendar journal. So, and just to quickly go through so each lunar cycle has a space for a mandala. Yeah. So, that’s that.

I also, and if you don’t want to talk about that right now, if you want to come back to it, or now is good. It doesn’t matter to me, but I would like to hear how, why you decided to pick a mandala as your choice words and a choice of encouraging people to use too. Yeah, well, it’s the, I mean, my understanding that it can loosely translate to circle from Sanskrit of the mandala, that being a container and the moon is a container and the calendar and time, like what holds us.

And so for each lunar cycle to have a space to create a whatever kind of representation, visual, I mean, it could be collage, it could be just a word, it could be color and symbol, something that’s almost like this guiding light, for that lunar cycle. So it’s, it can be putting into form I like to think of it, this is one from a couple cycles ago had a yellow highlighter, so it was very fun.

Right. But it just had symbols that were meaningful to me. And so when I have it up on my altar, I’ll look at this as a reminder throughout the cycle of what my intention is or what the energy is that I’m calling in. Some are more like, I mean, most of mine are, symbolic. Sometimes they’re more like collages that I’ve done in other calendars, are more literal.

Perhaps this one has sometimes too, if you work with like, Oracle decks or, sort of the animal, the, the snake. Spider and salamander and different flowers. Like there was a flower essence for me that I was working with that had some elements to it that I just wrote and would read to myself each day reminder.

This is what I’m working on and this is, I’m reminding you wrote that it, did you do the mandala at the new moon? When do you, yeah, initially this page was called the new moon mandala. Like as if to create it on the new moon. And what I found sometimes it helps because if it’s not like around that time, the cycle begins and it’s like, oh wait, I’m already, everything’s in motion already.

But sometimes things sort of form around the full moon. So I don’t, there isn’t like a pressure of, you have to do it this time. Otherwise it’s too late. So once things get clear, but I do, even, so I would encourage setting that side a time, time aside around the new moon for that practice, just to have almost this aligning, attuning, anchoring, so that when the lunar start cycle starts, it’s like setting out on that journey with knowing sort of like, this is what I’m being guided, like, this is what I’m putting my energy towards or wanting to bring in. And you sort of cover that, I think, a little bit in the beginning, right?

Yeah, because you have a creating moon mandalas in the beginning of the book. Yeah. There’s a little bit of guidance just for those of you who are watching are like, I’m not an artist and I don’t know, you know, I’m feel very that’s out of their comfort zone. Really not about a beautiful picture. It’s about pouring your heart into the moment of the intention.

Yeah, and it’s the feeling that goes into it. And again, it could be just a word and whatever that’s really guiding you and just even decorating it. And that’s, I mean, part of that healing practice of, of having it be about the feeling and, Sometimes, I would hesitate, this is my personal, this is my personal journal, and I think for someone to see, oh, well, she’s an artist and I’m not, so I can’t do that, there’s, for many years had a moon mandala circle, where we would just do the creative practice with lots of exploration to kind of free up those old narratives and stories.

Awesome. How something is supposed to look, in fact, I know you’re thinking about doing some of these little classes, but that would be a new topic for one, you know, yeah, yeah, freeing up that freeing up the inner, just that, that means so much of this is the creativity of like, life wants to create like life creates and recreates itself in so many expressions over and over.

That, yeah, each. This blank page with the mandala of and actually haven’t made one for this cycle yet. Well, that’s okay because you’re not beholden to setting aside that time. And just and putting something down because then what I found is for people, people who’ve worked with this calendar, like I have for the past eight years, but there are people who’ve worked with it for seven or six or, like who found it and now have these records to look back to, that almost in the future, looking back, there’s other things that are revealed that maybe at the time, wow, I didn’t know how significant that was actually going to be.

So that’s the space, the Mandala page, and really. Like it’s open ended so it can be some people collage over the whole thing, it’s really hard to see on there But just so that people can see it’s a very light like circle that you will create within Yeah, or without you could go, you can go out of the edges and then from there there’s a page.

I’ll just show a blank one. A page for seeds of intention and this has four dots up across the top again that could be used for, you know, it could be one for each of the main phases of the lunar cycle. If you do work with Oracle cards or something that like. Pulling four cards for cards for those.

There’s also a page for sample symbols. I love this page. I love this page because in our Chinese medical practice that I manage for my husband and women are coming into understanding their cycles or they’re having physical issues that they’re dealing with, vaginally or, you know, or other.

It could be that they’re, you know, breastfeeding issues or whatever, but it’s a really great way to kind of have quick, easy symbols to document what’s going on. Yeah. And there’s, these are samples, right? Just to work ideas, but there’s circles up top to write your own. And those four circles on each page could be.

If it helps to have very concrete, I’m going to choose four things to track, right? So I’m going to choose sleep, how many hours I’m sleeping. There’s a little thing with Zs. I will write even more, literally what time I go to bed and what time I wake up again, there’s an app for that many apps, but if I’m not writing it, then I, it’s not real.

It’s not real. But if I have to actually, what the moon and what this calendar can help do is reveal things that maybe we’re even hiding from ourselves, right? It’s not like I didn’t sleep last night, but really, once there’s a pattern that shows up, it’s like, oh, this leads to this. And now I see the connection, whereas often it’s hard to see that connection and what you’re talking about of that.

Even just the physical health to see like our digestion of yeah, when it’s moving when it’s not moving like having yeah. How do a lot of that with dietary issues or people moving from one removing foods from their diet, et cetera. So it’s also a great way to monitor those types of things. I love this though there’s a couple of things like the moods, inner, inward energy. There’s a spiral going inward and outward energy spiral going outward. I’m just going to read a few of them off. There’s, you know, for moods and emotions, we have kind of things that you would think of anger, anxiety. But there’s bliss, breakdown, breakthrough, clarity, depression, gratitude, grief, happiness, intuitive, again, this inward energy, moody, outward energy, spacey, visionary, so, she, and, April’s given you some really cool little symbols to put within that calendar to document that so that it’s easy to look back when you’re comparing months, what time of month that is, or we can go to the next level, which is that you also include the astrological signs that the moon is in. So there can be some correlates if this is really a scientific inquiry into your internal system and how you’re functioning within this. Outer meets inner world. The outer, the outer meets in there, right? Those two symbols that you mentioned that, that inward spiral and the outward spiral, those are almost like the baseline beginning.

Can I notice and reflect is my energy feeling like it’s flowing out and

often because we’re not really taught to honor that if it, especially when it’s flowing more inward, then we can get into, and I, this is my experience too, of just overriding, overriding those, so I’m drawing inward, but I said I was going to do this, and this, and this, so I have to follow through, otherwise I’m flaky, or irresponsible, or whatever the things are.

It brings such, It connects us with such a subtle awareness to start to really to have language about that. And especially with symbol to say oh, I’m just noticing myself drawing inward. How can I honor that? Even if I have to show up and lead a training or whatever it might be, at least I know that for myself.

So I can modulate or just sort of acknowledge that. Yeah. So then the end of the day, it’s, then it’s not like overriding that to the point of getting sick or, whatever it is that, if we’re not paying attention to this outward and inward, and when that flows, if it’s a daily thing, if it’s a cyclical thing, right.

That’s a really beautiful beginning place. It’s just working with those because it’s subtle. Absolutely. And I’m thinking to myself, like when I, when I noticed that I’m, I am fortunate that I have at this moment in my life, I have not, trust me, I’ve had insanity in my life, commuting back and forth between Denver and California for years and, raising kids that were, you know, their dad was in the Bay Area, but I was in Denver, it was just a nightmare.

So I’ve finally in a space where I have this very lovely, beautiful flexibility to really be in touch with that. And on those days, I will definitely, you know, if I know I need to go sit with the Aspen trees, or if I know that I should make a cup of tea. Camomile tea at the end of the day or make time for a bath or know that I have to stretch that night, you know, like I, I, I just, um, I plan, I, I accommodate for those for, for kind of connecting in with the energy of that day.

Because you can arrive, right? You can arrive at the day and think there’s X, Y, and Z on the schedule. But then when you wake up and you feel the energy of that moment, it’s like, how are we going to accommodate the energy of the moment? Okay, I’m not feeling like doing all of that. How do I honor that?

I might have to cancel that event or that thing that’s going on because that’s not gonna work out. And then, and this is what you and I were kind of talking about in the potential of doing like in a more an expansive like summit on this topic, which I believe we will be doing because I’m feeling it, you know, but, we need to all start to move out of this level of expectation around this gridded calendar with each other so that we honor the fact that if April calls me and says, I can’t do the interview today.

There’s space for that. Yeah, I don’t want April to get sick because I asked her to do something that’s out of her comfort zone or whatever. Anyway, sorry. I just wanted to add those. Yeah No, it’s helpful because I what I hear you describing is that kind of grace both with ourself and then with others to say like I thought the timing would be would work and because like when we’re planning for things in the future sometimes that moment comes and it’s like oh, this doesn’t actually feel like the alignment is there or whatever it might be and I found that I’ve been able to give myself like allowing myself to show up differently and especially because the menstrual cycle has such, at least in my experience, such extremes in terms of the pace that I need to move at, especially during the bleeding days, I need to move slowly and to give myself that grace to ask for others to delegate more, to try not to pack those days.

And sometimes the reality is this isn’t really ever, it’s not about perfection and It’s about learning and there’s trial and error and to see, okay, this I’m going to set things up differently just so that being able to show up for our lives and being able to live full lives and also being able to have, to know how much space we need around things, for ourselves so that we can function.

And, and yeah, I mean, I’ll say there was a point where I was like that overriding, right. Of like early on when I, creating this calendar is because I needed this, and because I was in that place of not being able to show up for my life, not being able to get out of bed, overwriting, there was a point where I was sick for almost three months.

Wow. Respiratory, like, this was about, probably, maybe even six years ago. Wow. And, for three months, and just, I wasn’t able, like, then really other people had to come in and my husband and my like family just to really have things the bare minimum because I was not I couldn’t get a bit and that like really important powerful realizations about all of this. And knowing that I need regular acupuncture like the things that are like it’s It can’t be just when things are, have gone, I don’t want to say wrong, but just when there’s an illness, then I need support.

It’s like, actually I need the support so I don’t exactly like, I’m not wiped out every winter. And that was something I was able to shift, but it came through a really challenging time where things, I was just pushing myself past limits. Right. And you were using the count or you were creating the calendar right within that, right?

And I was, so I was seeing it happen in real time and being like, wow, there’s just some way of being that I need to, it’s like with the neural pathways. It’s like, I don’t, I didn’t know another way. I know how to push myself. That’s what I do. How to do. I didn’t know, I hadn’t created the groove yet for another way.

And that actual, that illness is what helped to like really. This is, that just that it was critical. And so it’s the kind of things that are like the unwinding of. Patterns and ways of being once we see them play out over and over. It’s like, oh, this is the broken record. I could just play this record the rest of my life, or I could figure out how to even just put on a whole new record.

And that was really revealed through, in this circular format to be held, to be like, okay, I got sick. I can’t, I could blame myself. I could get upset with myself. Like I know for some people who are like seeing even getting sick as some kind of a failure, it’s it’s information. And so we can really reflect on that and work with it in a way of okay, there was some breakdown in the system and what, what needs to be in place, what shifts are there. So this, yeah, I have those calendars from that time and there’s a symbol for illness, right? And so there was sometimes full cycles that was the only symbol I was tracking. And sometimes that feeling too of when something some way it feels like it’s going to last that, like it’s going to be that way forever.

It’s just, I never, yeah, whatever, even with young kids, they’re never gonna stop coughing. It’s gonna be like this for the rest of time. And having it here and tracking, it’s like, oh, it does change. It’s not forever. I know. It’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s amazing. I always say to people, and I was just telling this to my daughter last night who was dealing with some stuff, but the the divine has been the only thing that has been a hundred percent that I can depend on.

Divine energy, Divine Mother, Father, God, however you want to describe that, I can have friends that aren’t there to depend on. I can have partners who aren’t there to depend on. I can have family who’s not there to depend on, but inevitably the universe shows up for me. Always, always. Sometimes it takes time.

It’s cyclical, like you said, and that’s the beauty of documenting it is that you get to, you get that feedback, right, of, you know. Yeah. But show, show on there the astrology, tell us a little bit about why you decided to add the astrological symbols and anything else that you added on that circle too? Yeah, so moving from the seeds of it. Sorry. That’s no, that’s fine That’s a good segue just what it is that you’re tracking in this place and it’s supposed to take notes as well as things come along but if there’s any specific symbols there that then can get transferred.

So again, it starts with the new moon. So I’ll put sometimes, like here, I just have the symbol for Mercury going direct on the outer, like if there’s other, for people who are following and, and wanting to follow the movement of the planets, I sometimes I’ll just for myself, I’ll draw this on there.

It’s like, okay, so Mercury is going to go direct. What’s that? September 15th, just to let you know. We’re all waiting because it’s just going into it right now, right? This will come off the other side. Exactly. Natural pattern and it happens regularly. It’s another kind of a rhythm. Time for slowing down.

So here has, these are all the, if you can see the moons to the first quarter and the full moon. And so it has the oh no, this is when the month starts. So that’s October, but the equinox is in here. So it has that marked as well. And then the last quarter and here, these, I do a lot of color coding.

So this, purple, I color in my birth moon phase, which I have a blog post about, and I have more teachings that I’m going to share, but it’s basically the day you were born, what phase the moon was in as your like personal signature lunar phase. What is yours out of curiosity? Mine’s the disseminating.

So it’s, it’s the phase of the moon, not the astrological moon sign. Okay, cool. So there’s, I know that I’ll have to read your blog post. I’m not sure I know mine. I’ll send that. And I have the links to there’s, uh, a site called Astro Seek, which is basically like an encyclopedia of the moon. That you can search up any year, like anything.

So, in the beginning, I didn’t have the astrological, so there’s a, this gray band in here. And on the wall calendar, it’s in color. It’s color coded by yes, it’s super cool. By the element, because each of the ooh, I didn’t even realize that. Yeah, I know. There’s all kinds of hidden cool stuff.

The earth signs are green and the air signs are yellow. The water signs are blue and then the fire signs are red. Wow. So this inner ring then, if you saw whatever that date might be so the full moon looking up here then you can see that it’s right. The full moon is in Pisces because that’s where it falls in that in the ring.

I love your cheat sheet on the right there on the yes It’s like I love that thing. I can just go right it’s right next to my door so I can see, okay where am I at and you know once you have the a lit if you know a little bit of, well, once you just start documenting internally, like what’s going on for you during those signs, you get a sense for how your physical being responds to the moon being in that sign.

What are the things that come up for you? What’s your energy like? What, uh, or what’s your energy not like? Are you going to collapse in a puddle on those times or what? But then the cool part about getting to know that is you can start to plan creatively a little bit more around what makes sense for you to do or not do within your cycle.

And it’s a relationship and I think that’s I started getting curious about astrology and, and as I learned more, I was like, well, I want to have it in one place so I can see where, what the correlations might be. And it’s subtle enough that if that’s for somebody who’s using this tool to track their experience, if you want to ignore it and you can just write over it, and it’s Tropical Astrology and not everybody practices Tropical Astrology.

There’s Sidereal, Vedic Astrology So there’s different systems. But this is one that I found I’ve just found really fascinating over time the relationship when the moon is in each sign. And I found for a number of years that I would menstruate when the moon was in Scorpio. Wow. It wasn’t about what phase it was.

It was actually about menstruating in Scorpio for several years. And so I could look back and I’m like, oh my gosh, what an interesting pattern. And then decide for myself, what does that mean? To me, rather than searching on the internet, what does it mean if blah, blah, blah, because I could then see the patterns, right?

Exactly. And then, and, things shift, right? I mean, I know for me, about, I would say a year and a half, it might have just been a year, year and a half ago, I was I totally shifted to just menstruating on the new moon, but before that it was not always like that. It would flip flop a lot of times.

Yeah. And what’s neat about, about tracking that with the moon and with the circular. So I will just draw it in the red when I’m reading and see for myself, okay, I’m bleeding in this phase before the full moon, it moves around the clock, the moon clock. Are like stay around a certain phase, right?

To see what our own patterns are and oh, that’s cool Yes, that’s interesting because each page starts with the new moon at the top so it is like it does create a clock in a sense. Yeah, that’s cool. So then if you want a little more room to write there is like a day by day and phase by phase. Again, it’s just a snapshot.

It’s not like in depth. I’ll write symbols from my dreams. Some people will just write like have it be a gratitude practice. It could be like a food journal. Really what, and it doesn’t have to be the same each month. Like it really is how to tailor it to support your journey. Exactly. Yeah, and and we all have different things that we’re taking on as part of our journey so it’s that’s why it’s just so cool.

There’s so much flexibility and yet so much opportunity for creativity. Yeah, and so much depth in learning about who we are so it doesn’t get old, and some things cycle back around, and then other things, it’s like, wow, okay, I’ve moved on from that lesson, like I’ve actually, I don’t have to keep repeating it. Somewhere it’s like, oh my gosh, I have to learn this lesson again.

Oh my God, right? It’s part of just, it’s the viral nature of everything. And then the final page. So, after the two pages for daily observation, there’s a reflect and release page. And again, this can be like notes to self. I just wrote here, like lessons from this cycle. It gives a place to reflect back and see, okay, wow, the cycle’s really full.

Here’s some lessons that I. Oh, laughing at something you wrote. I think. Oh my gosh. This big lesson that came back to me and I was like, I thought I was done with that. Oh, no. But I wrote to myself, the silent treatment is bad for my health. Emotions need an outlet. I’m giving voice to my truth. Aw.

Yes, the silent treatment is not good. I’ve done that many times myself. I thought I was done, and then I saw myself almost trapped in this pattern, and it was, I actually got sick, like I, I couldn’t speak after I gave my husband the silent treatment. It was this old pattern that I felt like we were possessed.

It was so strange. And I was just like, it’s almost this power in withholding, which isn’t true power. Right. That then I got sick and I couldn’t speak. And thankfully, the sense of humor that my husband and I have now around it. Was like, okay, well, I wasn’t going to talk and now I can’t talk. So, unless it needed it almost like it needed a deeper level to really find another way to whether the feeling is anger or that feeling is like I need to express my power in a way that to help shift a dynamic, that feeling of, if I do that, it’s going to make it worse.

So I’m just not going to say anything. And I saw it all play out in front of my eyes. And so I can just, this is, it’s very personal and intimate. And that’s the beautiful part of working with the moon is that lunar energy is different than the solar energy. The lunar energy is what is more intimate, more private.

share. I’m used to now more having what’s intimate be shared in a more solar way because I want to share this work and this tool so that people can have a place to connect with themself that is within that context of nature cycles, time as a relationship with nature, as a relationship with change, all of those things, to.

It helps to hold us. Yeah, really is a way of feeling held through. Oh my gosh, here I go. I can’t believe I’m doing this again. But here I am showing up for myself, and I’m reflecting, and I’m learning at deeper levels. And making the shifts towards health, making the shift towards showing up for our lives and ourselves and the people in our lives and the planet and everything.

It’s really a practice about repair. Exactly. Exactly. Well, I’m super excited. I’m trying to think, there’s so much more I want to cover too, but we’ve been going for all close to an hour. And you and I talked that we may will do another chat that we’ll probably do another podcast around this as well.

But because I’m just feeling we got some good energy moving around this here. But, just to, we’ll get a few more things in there, but just to let people know that for the course that I’m going to be offering, coming up here in October, which is how to cultivate a trusting relationship with yourself and your healthcare, practitioner to amplify your womb health.

And actually I can see if I can show that. This is, dun dun dun dun. This is, we are, this is the back end of my website, guys. We’re going to be launching the Yin-care® website, but here and we will have a sign up. April has agreed that she will be offering, we’ll be doing another interview, and we’ll be featuring some tools, some very practical tools that you can use to go more internally around connecting with your womb.

And just your whole internal systems, really not just your womb. And again, the course that I’m offering it, it’s not that you have to have a womb. You can have had your womb removed. It’s about going into the womb wisdom that we all have as women and accessing that to really evolve your relationship with yourself so that you can have a good relationship with your healthcare practitioner.

And this calendar is just a fabulous tool for going into that. So, but let’s continue a little bit more in that. I don’t want to leave without you sharing about your monthly circles and the tools that you have evolved to at present. I know that and then you can kind of, if you feel like sharing some of your ideas of what are coming down the pipeline.

But if you’re not ready, don’t feel pressured. But, yeah, tell us a little bit about what you’ve got going on monthly. Yeah. So there’s a monthly New Moon Circle that I host with, my dear friend, sister, colleague, Sita Davis. And that’s the Saturday that’s the closest to the new moon.

So sometimes it’s a little before, sometimes it’s a little after. And that involves an embodied practice, the themes of that cycle. So I share the lunar astrology, I share in an elemental way of how , for example, the fire sign, like just how we can connect with the elements. And then from there, sometimes we have breakout rooms where there’s this ping pong of just having a prompt and just being witnessed and sharing back and forth, like very structured.

I think women who’ve come to it and they’re like, I don’t want to talk to a stranger. We do have the option of a silent breakout room for self reflection for people who process more just through like writing and journaling People who found oh my gosh that was such an amazing experience to have just like the structured prompt to share back and forth to generate ideas to then create either an intention. From that, or just create a deeper realization of where they’re at.

Those all have themes and those, yeah, they’re listed on the website. And that’s ongoing and it’s taken different forms. So, with the next, the 2024 calendar, which will start in January on the new moon, January 11th. They’ll, yeah, there’ll be an opportunity to join as well. But yeah, I’d love to have even just like an open house.

I’ve been thinking about putting that on the calendar of having just an open house just to come, and, explore and see ways of working with this tool because it’s very it’s personal but it’s also so beautiful to share in a collective space. So so how does that work then? So when you say so it’s not something you can just do you ask people to sign up for a whole year or No, you can in the beginning of the year for people who knew they wanted to be a part of it the whole year right opportunity to do that and then now because it’s more than halfway through the year, there’s just an option for dropping in.

Got it. Okay. So after a six month period, then you start dropping in because there’s people that are just getting turned on to it. So for example, like we’re selling your calendar on our website at Yin-care.com. So for those folks that are like, hey, I’d really like to just check out one, they could go to your website and sign up or .Yeah, there’s a button. There’s a button for drop in. Let me show that to them. So let me see if I can pull up the website, and the website right now has a little preview for the artwork for the 2024, which is going to be the theme is the harvest cycle. Okay. I think I’ve got, let’s see if it’ll let me do, here we go.

So beautiful. So on the website, you’ve got the digital calendar. You’ve got moon letters. Links. Links is where they go. Yeah, and any of those buttons will get you sort of behind that in. Okay. I see. So the past one so I’ll update that. That’s the Moon Online Circle. So is this what they, so is there always, does it say, this just happened?

You just had one the other day. So that’s my podcast. So there’s 11 episodes from the first season. So that’s a fun place. There are some lunar wisdom and themes. And then you’ve got, these are from last year, last year. So those are sold out. So the digital calendar is a printable version.

This is this calendar where you guys, I cannot express to you enough. I know you’re probably going to want the journal, but honestly, I should probably, yes, these can, when you get the new ones in, I should probably get some of those because they’re cool. They’re so amazing to have up on the wall. Is there anything else here that I should, so this is the monthly New Moon Collective, yeah.

So then it’s funny, we just had a retreat in Oaxaca this month . You did? I know. It was amazing. It was very spontaneous. No way. It was beautiful. Yeah, there was 13 and just working with the calendar and working with cycles and being in person. Yeah, it was magical. Yeah, and there’s yeah, there’s some other there is a course I have on that, it’s called the Lunar Zodiac Series.

So I, it’s not up on the website right now, but I have recorded an audio for each sign of the zodiac when it moves into that. It’s really cool because it does, it gives that sense of like, it’s continuous that one sign moves into the next and there’s these themes that unfold and this wisdom from each of the signs of the zodiac and the archetype and the element that it’s like it’s comes into play and to be able to have the language to name that oh this energy that I’m experiencing whether or not the moon is in that sign or something like without even knowing it there’s this archetypal energy that to be able to recognize of oh, wow.

I’m really in this space of whatever it might be. So they’re very they’re short audio so it’s a very short and sweet experience to journey through. That sounds great. It’s almost like a visualization or like a guided imagery in a sense or a guided or medicine and I mean almost on it. It’s almost like a it’s like a transmission that that speaks to the energy and there’s definitely like a yeah, a transmission communication that goes through that’s totally on an energetic level that you know, the words describe a particular feeling to help really embody and relate to it as a, as being in relationship.

And so whether you know something about astrology or not, I feel like it’s can meet many levels. And when will you put those up? I know. It’s funny. I’ve been working on other projects like going to Oaxaca for the retreat. Right. I’m surprised that it’s not up on the website. And I’m speaking of technology, I’m switching, like I’m moving email.

From one platform to another and so you reconnect the automation so that it’s all kind of Sure. But yeah, I’ll let you know when that goes out. Yeah, let us know because that might be another cool thing to to chat about and we would love to know when you have your pre order for your 2024 ones so that we can have them in stock as well. Yes, and just let everybody know. And it’ll be soon.

I will let you know. It’s going to be, it’ll be very soon. Awesome. Fantastic. Was there anything else that you feel like needs to be coming through to complete this for you or? Yeah. I think anything you want to share with women too, like about an important message that maybe needs to be said that still anything like that.

There’s, I feel like what’s important is trusting our relationship, trusting our connection as something that’s very personal and intimate. That it helps us to, that it can help us to go inward when we’re connecting with the moon and listening to the moon as this almost like a companion and to see that the moon is in the sky at different times, not always in the night that can bring a sense of belonging.

It can bring a sense of just wonder and mystery, but also that importance of the rhythm to see that even with the fluctuations, even with the change, even with the seeming unpredictability, that there’s actually a steady rhythm that unfolds cycle after cycle. And working, especially with this tool, because I didn’t know this before.

It was actually through creating the calendar that I started to have a sense of, oh, this rhythm is something that my body has forgotten. And so for somebody who’s listening that feels just like out of rhythm or out of sync or just out of sorts, connecting with the lunar cycle can help us to come back into relationship.

I’m doing this with my hands. I’m like, just like, no, exactly. Uh, really just even how the ocean moves. Yeah. It’s what I was thinking. Yeah. This, this lunar way of connecting that weaves itself alongside the solar that it’s not like one is replacing the other that both are needed but the solar is so has been so dominant, that so much has come out of balance because of that.

Absolutely. As you were saying that too of course, I’m reminded that we are water, you know. And so It’s a perfect example of why we’re so affected, right. Deeply affected by the moon. Yeah. Awesome. That’s so great. So everybody go check out the moon is my Calendar. You check out her website. You can also purchase it at yincare.com. We have a handful of them left and they are actually on sale right now, since it is the end of the year, as soon as we launched the website here and which would probably be when this comes out. They are normally, let’s see here. Normally $44 and we’re offering them for $30. So, so check it out, go to yincare.com and then also check out The Moon is my Calendar. Check out April’s podcast as well. We will have April back and, you’ll also get to know her if you sign up for the course that I’ll be offering. She will be featured on one of the weeks so that you can really get to know yourself a little bit more intimately with the calendar.

And with that, we just like to, I like to leave everybody, in remembering to honor yourself and celebrate your strength and empower your transformation. And we will see you again soon. Thank you.

Hey everyone, wishing that you enjoyed that interview that I did with April McMurtry in the fall of 2023 and just wanted to give you an update on what April is currently up to as I was unable to post the interview due to some personal family circumstances that I’ll definitely go into in some of the other podcasts. In any case, April continues with her podcast called Between the Moon, which you can find on iTunes, YouTube, and other. She also has an awesome Sub Stack that has links to both her podcast, which is open to the public.

And then she has a behind the paywall subscription to her written content. And that is, substack.com at Between the Moons. And we’ll have the links, of course, to these in the show notes and description, et cetera. She continues to offer her New Moon Circles where she explores your relationship to the moon in community with others, which is an amazing opportunity.

And she’s currently taking pre orders for her 2025 journal and calendar. So head on over to themoonismycalendar. com and sign up for updates and place your pre order. We just, we are, I think we mentioned in the episode that Yin-care® was carrying her journal. We don’t have any more at this time. So definitely go to her website if you’re interested in checking out what she’s got for 2025.

Looking around to see if I’ve got mine. Her 2024 journal is absolutely gorgeous. Again, these just beautiful paintings that she does that the artwork that is throughout the wall calendar and the journal are just amazing. So, definitely something that really perks you up, keeps you connected to the moon, and really helps that introspection. And again, this calendar is not designed for necessarily tracking your menstrual cycles. It is for people even without a womb, it could be for men if they want to deepen their relationship with the moon, can be for women who are post menopausal, or, who menopausal, I should say, or for women who have had their uterus removed or are not menstruating for other reasons.

It is just a beautiful way to really tune into the subtleties of the galactic energies really through accessing the moon as your first order of business. So I think it’s a beautiful practice and I highly recommend it. And please go ahead and check out, like I said, April McMurtry.

I’m hoping to have her back again and discuss some other topics. It’s at The Moon is my Calendar, themoonismycalendar.com. And I’ll definitely have the links in all of the notes. So thank you so much for tuning into the Yin-care® podcast. If you did like this video, be sure to do all the things like, subscribe, review and share.

And I look forward to seeing you all in the next episode.