Image(s) captured by me over time and layered for illustration
I’ve always been drawn to the moon.
Its phases, moods, waxing waning.
Me a silent witness, without apology.
Over time, returning to it.
Different nights. Different moods. Same skies.
I captured the moon in its many phases and layered those images into a single frame, creating an illusion that feels truer than any one moment alone.
Because no life is lived in one phase.
A crescent becoming a promise.
A half moon holding its breath.
A full moon arriving with that familiar, unbothered certainty.
Then the slow unravelling.
The gentle retreat.
I interpret the waxing and waning as a language I was born to understand.
Before productivity made us forget.
Before we learned to praise only the bright parts of ourselves.
Isn’t it amazing how the moon never begs to be the same twice.
And neither should we.
My body is a body of water.
Yours too.
We carry tides in our blood and salt in our stories.
Some seasons we rise like a sure thing.
Some seasons we recede, and the world calls it absence, when it is simply gathering.
There is something deeply feminine about this rhythm, even when it is not named as such.
A power that does not perform.
A wisdom that does not announce itself.
A knowing that darkness is not a failure.
It is a phase.
Ageing has taught me this quietly.
The body changes.
The face softens where it once held sharp lines.
Energy shifts / and moods too \ ;)
Recovery becomes a slower conversation.
And still, there is beauty.
Not the beauty of perfection.
The beauty of truth.
Waxing is not better than waning.
Thin is not better than full.
Visible is not better than hidden.
We have been taught to chase our full-moon selves, to live as if illumination is the only proof of worth.
But isn’t life gentler, and more accurate, than that.
Life says you will be bright.
You will be quiet.
You will overflow.
You will empty out.
And you will return.
That is not inconsistency.
That is nature.
When I look at this layered image I birthed, I don’t just see an illusion.
I see a reminder.
That the self has seasons.
That the heart has tides.
That rest is not laziness, it is lunar logic.
That becoming is not linear, it is circular.
And maybe that is the moon’s greatest gift.
No matter how many times it disappears,
it never forgets how to come back.
Are you phased?
🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌓🌔🌙