Libra: I am beauty
Nurture your creativity and refill your cup: A guide to Libra Season ♎⚖️🎨
This letter is part of Creative Contemplation—rituals and practices to help you harmonize with the energy of the season and remember your connection to spirit, nature, and each other. ✨💗🌿
“and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you.”
-e.e. cummings
Hello.
Earlier this week, tears poured down my cheeks as I sat and listened to Ray Lamontagne perform his song “Let’s make it last” live. The song opens with an aching, heartfelt yearning, “Stay.”
To me, that’s what Libra season (September 22nd- October 22nd) encompasses this year. A tender invitation to stay. Stay in the beauty, in the vulnerability of relationship with self and other, in the unknowing. Stay with the longing, hoping, and meticulous work of mending.
Ruled by Venus, this cardinal air sign is connected to our heart chakra and the bonds we form with others in partnerships and communities. The first of the trans-personal signs, our focus begins to shift to how we relate to others. Is it fairly?
The scales of justice represent our need to evaluate the distribution of resources, wealth, energy, and time. Are we taking more than we need? Are we giving more than we have? The solar eclipse on October 2nd (a new moon in Libra) is a beacon for creating new relationship patterns. Activating the South Node in Libra (our past or comfort zone) the new moon offers a chance to re-envision how we can live in harmony with others and all of life.
Will we intentionally create beauty? Will we recognize the beauty within and express it more fully in the world?
Our affirmation this month is “I am beauty.”
Download your free copy of the Creative Contemplation journal and lunar calendar with all the monthly affirmations below!
The sign of diplomacy, equality, and harmony, Libra is innately tied to social justice. When I was a college student, someone explained social justice to me as “How we love in public.” How do we create systems of equity, celebrating each other’s differences and re-balancing power dynamics of privilege? How do we do it with love, care, and beauty?
Keep reading to learn how this season’s archetype, tarot cards, and creative inspiration can help you harmonize with Libra energy.
Archetype
The Advocate recognizes that, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr). It says, “Never again,” and takes action toward ensuring that promise protects future generations. It’s willing to stand with. It is allyship at its best. It centers women, people of color and underrepresented folx, using privilege as an amplifier for voices that need to be heard.
The Advocate is a life-long calling. It is committed to the long-haul. It keeps working to create systems of care, long after the hashtags are trendy. It paces itself—this is a marathon, not a sprint.
The shadow side of the advocate uses social causes for personal gain, leaping from one movement to the next as a way to fuel their social value. These are virtue-signalers, platform chasers, and folks who take up too much goddamn space in the room.
Being an advocate can mean using your voice. It can also mean working in silence, in quiet resolution without outside recognition. It can be the loud work of dismantling systems of oppression or the soft work of dreaming new systems of collaboration and connection into being.
This monthly guide takes hours of preparation, meditation, and writing. It is 100% human-generated (no AI here!) and made with love. Please share this newsletter or become a paying subscriber. Your support is appreciated! 💖
Creative Inspiration
Read
“I touch my own skin, and it tells me that before there was any harm, there was miracle.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by Adrienne Maree Brown is a revolutionary book. I sent a screenshot of the title to a few of my friends with the question, “Book club?” several years ago and it sparked an ongoing, standing phone call between us that’s been so soul-nourishing.
Read this book with your friends, family, co-workers, allies, comrades, and neighbors.
Visit
A flower farm. It may sound trivial but watching the sunlight soak through a prism of colorful petals, seeing the pollinators fly from one to the next, gathering nectar is truly blissful. Our little family visited a local farm this weekend and I learned that sunflowers are actually capable of sequestering harmful radioactive material and cleaning the soil.
In fact, there are fields of sunflowers planted near sites of human-made disaster like Fukushima and Chernobyl. If that doesn’t make you tear up with gratitude for the power of nature, I’m not sure what will.
Support
Your local artists. One of my favorites is my friend Jordan Eudaley who’s creating a life of beauty for her little family in Arkansas and sharing it with us. You can buy her vibrant, expressive prints, request a special commission, or read about her life as a creative mama when I interviewed her for our Pathfinders series.
Pathfinders: Art as a way of being
I was first introduced to Jordan through a mutual friend years ago, when I moved back to Kansas City.
Attend
October kicks off the holiday season with multi-cultural celebrations around the world! From Diwali to Rosh Hashana, Masskara and Halloween (or Samhain), there’s nothing better than getting together with others to honor the rich offerings of life. When we pause our day-to-day, interrupting our routine with ritual and community, we open ourselves to experience beauty, connection, and gratitude.
Here are a few to explore! (Even if you can’t visit the country of origin to celebrate a specific festival or religious holiday, many are observed by communities worldwide, so see if there’s a local celebration near you).
Listen
Have you listened to the new Heartbeats podcast yet? Here’s what one friend had to say, “I love your first episode I’m so sad it’s only 16 minutes!! I’d listen to your voice all day!” (Thanks, you know who you are 🥰).
Listen on Substack (full transcript available here only)
If you’re interested in sharing a story about creativity, community, or living an authentic life that will inspire others, email me for the chance to be interviewed at thebarefootbeat(at)gmail.com
Revisit this conversation between
and I last year as we contemplated the question, “How do we decide?” and entered into a deep, listening presence with one another.
If a podcast isn’t your jam right now and you want some heartfelt music with all the fall feels, check out our playlist for last year’s new moon in Libra!
Gather
For folks local to Chattanooga, TN, I’m hosting two in-person tarot events in October.
Tea + Tarot will be October 12th from 10:00-11:30am (I’ll have a variety of teas and tasty treats to share!) hosted by Society of Work—Northshore via The Chattery. Get your ticket 👇💖
I’ll also be one of several tarot readers offering sessions at Blue Sun Fusion Studio, October 13th from 12 pm- 4 pm. Come and say hi in person! 👋
Tarot Reading
The Tower
The Tower is coming in to liberate us from how we’ve confined our self-expression to please or convenience others. Hiding in a tower or locking ourselves away to avoid risking discomfort is no longer an option. The world needs all of us, in our imperfect, beautiful, fullest expressions of grief, joy, pleasure, and pain.
All the ways we believe we’re keeping ourselves and others safe are actually just stealing our life force. It’s robbing us of our right to aliveness. To being embodied souls with all of our senses. Perfection isn’t possible and convincing ourselves it is costs us connection.
The Sun (R)
One of the most positive cards in the deck (even in reverse), The Sun is an invitation to remember our radiance. To let ourselves be vulnerable enough to feel joy and pleasure. To coddle our inner child and take them out on a play date. To trust our own desires. To trust our softness, our innocence, and our imagination.
The Two of Swords
This card is a reminder to calibrate to our inner knowing. No matter what’s going on externally, we have the capacity to choose our perspective. We have the responsibility to envision a reality that’s just and equitable.
The Two of Swords calls us to linger in the liminal. To feel our way toward harmony. To trust that our unique skills, life experiences, and wisdom gained are enough. We don’t need someone else to show us the way, we create the way.
If you’d like additional clarity or guidance I have a limited number of personal tarot reading sessions available! ✨Here’s what a recent client had to say about our reading.
“Mariah is a very insightful Tarot card reader. Her reading really helped me connect deep with my intuition to discover options relating to on going issues. With Mariah's gentle and intuitive reading, I was able finally to hear myself think with crystal clarity.” -Alexia from Cypress
Notes from Nature
I have to admit I’m behind in sharing our monthly nature journaling workshops! There was an issue with the recording for August and I haven’t had the time to sit down and finish the one for Virgo season (yet!) I’m hoping I can work on them and share them soon. Until then, I’m holding off on announcing a date for our workshop this month. Thanks for understanding! 🙏
Journal Prompts
Do an energy inventory. Take a sheet of paper and write columns for heart, mind, and body. Where are you giving? Where are you receiving? Is there balance or reciprocity?
Sing. In your car, at church, in a community choir. Can you listen for the harmony? What are the notes teaching you about your own voice?
Take stock of your closet and look for the beauty. Maybe it’s a certain color, texture, or scent that you love. Can you enhance it? Can you use the beauty around you as inspiration to cultivate more?
New Moon Blessing
May you trust your voice and the possibility of finding harmony with others. May you notice beauty in unexpected places and dedicate yourself to creating more through honest expressions of grief, joy, sorrow, and pleasure. May you reach out your hand in the tender darkness and find another reaching for you.
All my love,
Mariah
Heartbeats is a community for spiritual creatives, mothers, and messy humans who believe in the power of community. By financially contributing to Heartbeats you are saying yes to collaboration, connection, and creating sacred spaces where we can heal, learn, and honor each other with care. Thank you for your presence here. 💞
"We blame society, but we are society," really hits. Thanks for all the food for thought, Mariah; it'll enrich my forest meandering today!