Hello Dearest Ones,

Until this year, I hadn’t visited that place of suffocating, inescapable fear since late 2012 when I took medical leave then went on short term disability because of overwhelming anxiety and paralyzing panic attacks. At that time, I thought most of the fear that had surfaced was a response to attempting to change careers and rebuild my life in a moment of complete and total breakdown. The burnout was so intense that I had nothing left to give to society, or to myself. I was truly living on the edge. 
​
At the onset of 2025 it felt like my spaceship jumped to warp speed, and it hasn’t yet come back into this time space continuum. I’m on the other side of some worm hole at this point, having jumped through several timelines in the process. The journey has been rich with fear, trust (a new house with a loving partner) and love (a beautiful grand baby), and lots more fear. It has been a fear heavy year.

Back in 2012 I was under the illusion that the dharmic yet forced career change, at a time of intense financial and emotional vulnerability, was what had challenged my faith and trust in life. I had so much fear for my material safety that I assumed it was because I was no longer able to provide for myself in the way that I had for decades. It felt obvious that what that particular dark night of the soul was there to teach me was how to feel safe in a world when your livelihood has been taken away. And there is no doubt a central belief of mine, that I was only safe and provided for because I made it so, was up for dramatic restructuring at the time.

Now, in light of new information and experience, I realize that an equally potent catalyst for my fear at the time was knowing that my father was dying, and his subsequent death. I can see clearly now that my collapse in 2012 wasn’t only about losing my professional identity of twenty years. However, the clarity didn't come until April of this year, when my mother passed away, and I became acutely aware that losing a parent completely blows up your sense of safety in the world. The contrast, and hence the ability to see it so clearly now, is that I am emotionally, professionally and financially stable at this stage in life. My material situation doesn’t merit a breakdown or loss of trust and faith in the mechanisms of life. I am actually safe, in the most expansive meaning of the word. So why do I feel so unsafe? I mean besides the social crisis of our current administration.  

Apparently when a parent dies, likely even more when the last parent dies, they seem to take a big chunk of our trust in life with them. Temporarily, until we recalibrate, remember all of the anchors we have to this life and finally find our way through the emotional fog that is grief. I felt all these same fears and loss of trust when my dad died. And even though I could literally feel myself floating away with my dad when he passed, I didn’t realize that it was because my parental tethers had been cut. I thought I was empathically experiencing the severing of his tethers to this life, not my own.

If you have lost one or both of your parents, what did that grief teach you? With the loss of my first parent, I feel it was a lesson in self-love. I learned to love and accept myself in a critical world, as a person with a very vocal inner critic. Maybe that lesson was specific to what my father was here to teach me. He suffered from a lot of self-loathing (his words) in his lifetime and maybe didn’t want me to continue down that path after him. Or maybe self-love is just the lesson with the departure of the first parent, regardless of which one it is. Or maybe it was just my lesson.

Since my mom passed away, I have been challenged to accept and feel worthy of the love of others. I previously thought self-love was the same as feeling worthy of being loved by another human. I have long held the belief that if I love myself, I am automatically able to accept love (true, unconditional, high-quality love) from others. I now believe that to be untrue. It seems that to show up in the world authentically we have to learn to love ourselves. However, to love ourselves enough to show up authentically, allowing others to see and know us as we are and trust they will choose to love us, that is a whole new level of love. A completely different kind of feeling worthy in the world.

Is this new or modified lesson specific to losing my mom? Maybe. I can’t say for certain whether my mom felt unworthy of love from others. She didn’t ever verbalize it, as my dad did with self-loathing. There may have been indications of her not feeling worthy of other’s love, but I can’t confirm that she felt that way. Maybe learning that we are worthy of love from others is just the second part of the lesson with a parent passing. Or again, maybe that is just my lesson, and the loss of my mother is simply the teacher.

What is your experience? I really would like to know.

Ultimately, the final and complete lesson, at least for me, is that I’m being given the opportunity to tie up loose ends. To find closure with any karmic contracts or soul lessons I specifically had with my parents in this lifetime, but also soul lessons that I personally am here to learn. Is this a parting gift that parents give their children? I don’t know. Maybe the opportunity for learning is present with the departure of any connection we have that is karmic in nature. In my experience, after losing both parents, I feel I am being given the opportunity to learn those lessons that haven’t yet been fully integrated into my personal evolution. Maybe this is just what takes place for me as important people in my life transition to the other side.

With so much unconditional love, for you and myself,
Tawa

P.S. I feel inclined to offer a couple of classes starting in late winter. One would likely be a healing through writing class and the other having to do with helping us to find center, self-regulate and connect with our spirit/ cosmic support within the instability of our material lives. Please let me know by commenting here if you have any interest in these topics or if there is something else with which you are longing for support.

​​Tawa Ranes is a writer, healer and astrologer. She is in awe of the communicative and connective potential inherent in words and languages and loves to use them as an entryway into deeper understanding and communion with others. She writes in a candid voice with deeply philosophical undertones. Tawa is a leap before you look extraordinaire and the creative founding spirit behind Solar Moon Press.

The Healthy Empath
One of the many reasons I love talking to people so deeply and honestly is that conversations often unearth or provoke interesting concepts for me to explore. When a friend recently mentioned that they would love to read anything I might have to say about how to navigate life as an empath, a list instantly formed in my head. That was interesting because lists aren’t my typical style of writing. I’m more of a stream of consciousness person, with a heavy bent toward thorough organization of whatever came out in the stream. That’s because it’s really important to me to make sense to all of you. I love to philosophize, it’s kind of my thing, but what really lights me up is to be understood well enough to have you say, “that really resonates with me” or even “that’s not my experience at all.” I like to create connection through mutual understanding or through open curiosity about diverse views. Both are equally creative and joy producing for me. If connecting in that way also creates joy for you, please share your thoughts with me in the comments.

A couple of things before I get to the list. Synchronicity (love the magic) put a beautiful short video on my screen this morning about how some of us become empathic. It was from the Jungian perspective, and it reminded me that many of us come to our empathic abilities as a critical skill developed in childhood when our situation requires hypervigilance to enhance safety, and sometimes even to ensure survival. Two other points the video made that I find central to this discussion are that: 1) because we were denied the “sacred selfishness” stage of normal development and individuation in childhood we are likely very uncomfortable with the idea of being considered selfish -ever, and 2) those of us who came to empathy this way are very susceptible to burnout. Both of these tendencies are strong indicators that we are likely still in a chronic state of hypervigilance and that our nervous system never truly gets to rest.

I personally believe some of us come to our empathic self through a highly sensitive nature and the fact that we never shut down our childhood connection to all that is, and the wonder it fed in us. However, this does not mean that we don’t have the same misconceptions about ourselves and the need to repattern the same behaviors as the hypervigilant empath. Whether you came to be empathic in the former or the later fashion, let your opinion that you are selfish (very unlikely), and your awareness that you’re burned out (very likely) be messengers that you are an empath who needs help harnessing your skills and learning to eliminate self-harm from the practice.

Don’t let any of this dishearten you, many important life skills come out of necessity and should not be underrated because they come from traumatic, overwhelming or isolating life experiences. I believe empathy is an amazing superpower. Even if, up to now we have used it in a way that is self-denying. At a certain point we just have to reclaim and finetune it so that it doesn’t drain us or continue to be a way in which others deplete and abuse us. I hope the following list of practices helps you to live a freer life, more attuned to your own needs and less so to those of others.

Helpful Hints for Empaths:

• Don’t do anything for others that they haven’t directly requested of you. I know you can feel what they want from you; that’s not the point. Most have probably learned that they can sneak their requests and desires into your psyche without having to actually acknowledge they are asking something of you. This will help them repattern as much as it will help you repattern.  
• Practice saying “no” anytime any part of your being isn’t 100% on board with what is being proposed or asked of you (verbally, nonverbally or in any other way).
• You can soften or explain your “no” initially, but it will become important to eventually say “no” without explanation.
• Do one thing every day that is solely for you. It doesn’t have to be big; it just needs to be prioritizing yourself. And when the voice in your head yells “you’re being a selfish asshole,” tell it to shut up.
• Ask clarifying questions. If you can feel that something is up with someone and you don’t clearly understand their intentions and actions, ask. If they don’t want to be clear and forthright about what is going on for them, they don’t get to benefit from your empathy. This is not selfish or unkind. It is setting healthy psychic and emotional boundaries.
• When you feel shifts in your mood or wellbeing that don’t seem to fit your current situation, it is likely that you are carrying someone else’s stuff. Let it go. I use a simple statement such as: “You are not mine and you don’t have permission to be in my energy field. You must go.”
• Simply put, we are allowing ourselves to read the room (i.e. be empathic), we just aren’t responding to any of the unspoken demands that the people present are making on us.
• Finally, the more fully we allow ourselves (the true, sovereign, healthfully selfish, authentic us) to inhabit our life and our energy bodies, the easier it is to not absorb other people’s stuff. This will initially feel incredible counterintuitive. It will feel like we are being unkind and giving up our ability to read life, and that will feel scary. I promise you that if we are practicing healthy empathy, our empathic superpower is fully intact and will activate if ever needed. And even more importantly, it will be tuned toward enhancing our own life instead of burning us out chasing the illusion that we can ever satisfy the desires of others.

We truly are the main character in our own life, and it’s critical to know that we count. We are important. When we give ourselves what we need in life we create sovereignty, wholeness and a deep understanding of our worth. This is healthy engagement with sacred selfishness. This is how we reclaim our lives. I’m still and will probably always be finetuning my understanding and my practice of healthy empathy and sacred selfishness. That’s why it’s such a relief to know that it’s only by practicing these skills with self-kindness that I find my truth and my wholeness. No perfection needed or desired. Those who would harm us by way of this tender skill will likely push back hard, criticize and maybe even end their relationship with us when we start to set these boundaries and act from a place of self-appreciation. It’s okay, we just keep doing what is right for us. Their reaction is none of our business. We are only responsible for finding our wholeness. They are responsible for finding theirs.  

If you are interested in empathy, boundaries and the afterlife, check out this video. 

​Tawa Ranes is a writer, healer and astrologer. She is in awe of the communicative and connective potential inherent in words and language and loves to use them as an entryway into deeper understanding and communion with others. She writes in a candid voice with deeply philosophical undertones. Tawa is a leap before you look extraordinaire and the creative founding spirit behind Solar Moon Press.

An inner contemplation about how we embrace or reject differences within our human family came up for me during Donald Trump’s first presidency; in the context of observing and feeling the impact of a lot of extra racism, classism and misogyny in our world at that time. Prejudices that were being openly fed and encouraged by the president of our country. Now, in a second Trump term, the topic comes up strongly for me again. So, let us look at it, and him, and me and you, and explore what might be happening within each of us that creates our prejudiced beliefs and behaviors in the first place.
 
Let’s look at how we each internally respond to things in our outer world that we deem as different from us or unfamiliar. I write with the hope that it will build awareness within each of us and show us that the onus of discrimination is actually on those who feel prejudices. In the eye/heart of the beholder so to speak, and not on those who are experiencing discrimination. In this time of encouraged polarization and divisiveness let us be extra mindful: Take the opportunity to look inward and see why we are thinking and feeling in a less trusting way. Look at what is creating the need within us to vilify another, and another’s way of life. See ourselves more clearly, understanding where our ideologies come from. Stay alert to our human tendency toward prejudice and judgement. See comparison as the distorted, patriarchal, white supremacist tendency that it is.
 
In particular, I would like to look at how we develop the unkind and inhumane values and beliefs we each lean toward. In a neutral world there is only variety, not good and bad, inferior and superior. The fact that some sort of difference is even registered within us is a great indicator that the information coming in through our eyes, ears and hearts goes through a filter. A personalized internal apparatus that categorizes and labels our experiences and the people we come into contact with, in a way that makes sense to our psyche. Ultimately our ideologies reflect back to us who we are inside, not who the other person is that we feel justified in judging and marginalizing for their ‘difference’.  So, it’s important to understand how we come to have our values and prejudices.
 
This is by no means an exhaustive examination of the topic, but it is a sincere exploration of one of the possibilities of how we become afraid, intolerant and prejudiced against people and ideas we deem in some way different from us. I have observed that we have difficulty honoring, celebrating or even tolerating anything that is different from how we perceive ourselves to be when we have a fragile sense of self. In other words, when we don’t fully know or like who we are. It is impossible to be at peace with another when we are not at peace with ourselves.
 
When something causes us to experience difficulty with our self-image or our ideologies, our reaction is to distance ourselves from and marginalize that thing or person. In other words, we create prejudice around it or them. We often experience people living differently or making different choices than us, as a challenge to our identity or to our resolve about a similar situation in our own lives. If we don’t trust ourselves enough to navigate the situation or the ‘difference’ intact, we will alienate and separate ourselves from that person or situation. This can also happen internally when an encounter forces us to see something in ourselves that we don’t want to see. We push that characteristic or experience away, deem it different and bad. We discriminate against and marginalize it within ourselves so that we don’t have to look at it. Then we externalize it by making the same judgement about everyone around us. Because if we can’t accept something in ourselves, we will never be able to accept it in others. Notice this repeating theme: it can't happen outside of us if it doesn't happen within us. 
 
At times in my life, I have been rather curious about others and the world, especially that which is in some way unfamiliar to me. I have sought out experiences that put me into contact with a wide range of humans and lifestyles. I'm sure you have each had this experience as well. I believe this desire to explore variety comes from the innocent part of me that feels whole and safe in life. This open curiosity seems especially accessible when we are free from feeling the need to defend ourselves or justify who we are. I have learned that the childlike curiosity that is necessary to explore the world with an open heart and open mind is dependent upon me feeling included in the human experience, loved by my community, and particularly, feeling love for myself.
 
I have found that when I feel I am not enough, unloved or unsafe, I cannot access that unprejudiced curiosity. Sadly, too many of us walk through life feeling precisely that way. Much of the time we move through life feeling judged, and like we constantly have to prove our worth. We often live heavily defended, forever trying to convince ourselves and others that we are lovable and good enough to belong here and be included. This makes it difficult for us to feel safe enough to be curious about the variety and 'differences' around us.
 
When others look, sound and behave in ways that are different from how we look, sound and behave, our mind subconsciously moves to comparison. Patriarchy will always ask us to compare and judge, to place people and experiences in a hierarchy of good and bad, superior and inferior. It is my sense that following this social model, we unwittingly do this as individuals, with the intention of creating a feeling of wholeness within ourselves. However, with comparison, an unhealthy ego and low self-concept will always ask us to make the other wrong or bad in order to make ourselves right and good. But the judgement never bolsters us in the way we hope. Our judgement of differences and perceived inadequacies in others never leads to self-acceptance. They only lead to a mirrored judgement of self.
 
An attitude of wonder is not readily accessible when we feel defended. I believe we feel defended a great deal of the time. So how can we learn to approach difference with curiosity instead of defensiveness and prejudice? As we build a stronger sense of self and learn to love ourselves as a sovereign and autonomous being, we are more able to embrace variety. When we feel whole, difference no longer threatens our sense of identity. The work starts here. As we learn to feel safe, whole and loved within ourselves we can start to challenge our biased and defensive ways of seeing others. We can become curious about each other and the world.

Let us become innocently curious and find our way free of prejudice in all its forms. After all, our differences don't actually place us in a hierarchy, that is just a white-supremacist, patriarchal construct, we are all on equal human footing. The fact that I carry beliefs that align with me and my needs doesn’t challenge, invalidate or make your beliefs and needs inappropriate or false for you. May we all find enough self-love and acceptance in our lives to be able to offer that love and acceptance to all of humanity. And finally, may we elect leaders who have enough self-love to help them release their prejudices, from their hearts and their policies. Practicing unconditional love toward ourselves is deeply healing, while giving it to others is truly magical in its transformative power. 
                                                                                                                                     
Tawa Ranes is a writer, healer and astrologer living in Colorado, USA. She is fascinated with healing and the ways in which healing manifests in human experience. Deeply enriched by her study-abroad experience in Spain as a teenager, Tawa’s lifelong love affair with culture and literature naturally led to advanced studies in Contemporary Literature and Literary Theory. She is in awe of the communicative and connective potential inherent in words and language and loves to use them as an entryway into deeper understanding and communion with others. She writes in a candid voice with deeply philosophical undertones. Tawa is a leap before you look extraordinaire and the creative founding spirit behind Solar Moon Press.

​I admire my father’s smile it was equal parts cool, brave, humble, it was dimensional. He reminded us to “be cool,” bravely step out there live, meet that person’s eyes and be authentic in your interaction. His smile was pure people could see his light before knowing his name it was felt. A brush with greatness.
Comforting heart like the fluffiest comforter, a soft place to fall and send all that you carry release from it all do they ever ask if the order is too tall?
Mother a word that by nature encase what kind of shape will we each take it to mean? The lineage of what ours was to us the passing on and the new passage creating always with heavy roots informing.
Harsh tones clank and squeak before we can hear an image of what the colors look like mixed against the gently perceived flow. Sand blows the colors mix chalk pastels that slap your scheme against the illusion of control.
The knowledge of our elders is one of our most sacred gifts. This knowledge is communicated through time shared, stories told, movements, feelings, energetic exchange, may we be listening.
Light like the breeze free through the see clear and received. Hear and being heard easy communication.
There are so many forms of love we are swept, sometimes the sweepers, sometimes we’re kept and sometimes the keepers, some hold so tight it never can grow but sometimes the light is too bright there are burns. But the one that creates space within you them its generative, nourished easy to sit with beside and not resist is the sweetest of all gentle love.
                                                                                                                                                                                                     ~Danielle H.

1. Cozy comfort crafted controlled, contorted, causing collapse.
2. Breathing deep, care and comfort in the space to create more space and fill it.
3. Safe space signifies success-simply being.
4. Learning always, everyday language, laughing, switching styles simply. Limitless and light, always
5. Hug hard, hold me tight, tight fierce, squeezing deeply, igniting the embers of my heart
6. Nurture in nature—never neglect, nervously needing, napping and night lights. Always needed, naturally.
7. Winter death changes coming and going—all ashes to ashes and dust to deploy.
8. Unknown ancestors always asking—give homage to honesty under light. They’ll lead the way.
9. Simple flow getting in tune with needs and enjoying the comfort and ease.
10. Be careful with yourself, brilliantly beautiful—you know the way. Learned lessons, light inside, in the DNA, need space—significantly satisfied singing myself to sleep.

                                                                                                                                                                                               ~Vashti T-W.

​10 Words to form a life
Work harder. Achieve. Stay in control. Take care of yourself. This has been a successful method of ensuring my safety. I will not need to rely on the concept of family which may or may not be there for me. That loss is inevitable and people eventually leave you. Living this way with reservations always, leads to a permanent loneliness.
However with more deep breaths and acceptance of the love that does currently exist in my life. I am able to realize that what is present is actually more of this for me: more love, more belonging, close friends and a cherished family. I am fulfilled and comforted and held. My cozy house with central heat, my successful life, has brought security and safety. This has been the symbol of success that I needed. And what it symbolizes is the actual love and acceptance and belonging that truly fulfills me.
                                                                                                                                                                                              ~Lori K.

10 Words Become 10 Ideas/ Feelings
Mom confuses me. She claims such deep love, and yet I feel, not only unloved but unseen. Life is tricky, and full, and joyous. Sometimes it can be so pleasing to be human. Although, I often feel vacant. Animals always seem to have more substance.
I like to feel good. I want to feel good. I really love people. And they scare me a little. I’m never sure I can trust them. I suppose many have harmed me. Wouldn’t it be nice if life was just easy? Love helps, unconditional love heals.
                                                                                                                                                                                             ~Tawa R.

Sunshine hits my face every day, every morning. Like a dawn breaks the sky in the morning, same way the consciousness breaks the dawn in your mind. Make sure it’s not cloudy so the sun can shine all over it.
Doom, the doomsday*, that’s what’s on my tongue*. What I want to say is, feel the moment, feel everything you can because you don’t know how much more you can feel before you move on, and all you do is try* not to feel what is, but to feel what isn’t. And that’s madness, it doesn’t work that way. If you’re sad, you feel the sadness even if you don’t want to ‘cause that’s what makes it go away, move along, then you create more space to allow anything else to come your way and there might be other things queued to feel, before there is open space to just be and allow what you want in there. In another words what is more desirable to you to feel.
Beautiful is the life we live in, wonderful is the river you bathe in, spiritual is the chair you sit in, it falls in together in to 1 light Its all the same, no reason to judge basically if you just could see everything like that
Home is the plane you’re in. It really is a feeling, but it is also a location, of time and space, Whatever you make of home that’s what it is. Make your feelings your home, whatever you’re feeling inside of you at any moment, is where you want to be, that’s what you came here to do. So who or what is deciding what I want to feel, what feelings I want to come my way? That is decided even before you were born, it was created by you, your soul if you wish, by whatever that asked to be created, it is that way for a reason and you can decide to just follow your heart, which is connected to this path of desires and feelings that ultimately wants to happen throughout your life time, and just go with it. Or you may do whatever you want. But ultimate if is the depth of feelings and purpose that you’re after, you follow the heart, there is no need to consciously come up with specifics, or even rough ideas to do anything, it all comes your way. That feels scary, so like I don’t create anything on my own? Yes and no. you did create it all just not the small you that you’re referring to. You can create as your small self on this plain if that’s what you want, but you know, it’s not what you want, you opened up for something bigger than yourself, so that means you sit back and follow your heart. But it feels like I don’t have a say, like I am NOT, I’m just in for a ride, I’m not holding the rains. That is not true, it means that you’re actually taking your higher rains in your hands and becoming your higher self. It’s your small self fearing that, and it’s because you spent most of you life operating from it, which now feels like that’s who you are, but it isn’t. You just practice to be your real you and the more you do it the more it’s gonna feel like you. Thank you.
Unheard off is the cry of weeping trees, or the scent of fallen leaves not what humans do, that’s all expected, that’s why they are what they are. Don’t worry about what other people are doing, you’re of nature, you answer to the nature, not humans.
You constantly feel or thing like there is a place to get you with your life, once you are there, everything is good and set, you’re fine with everything. But the promise land isn’t a place or destination, rather it is a state of mind. So how do you get there, I still feel like something is holding me down where I am in my mind, like if I just get somewhere good, somewhere where, where I can continuously do productive things to bring myself up as opposed to bringing myself deeper down, I just would feel better about life and myself. There is such a place indeed, but it’s already there within the reach, you just reach for it. How, what do I do? You accept the consequences no matter what they are. Like you created them on purpose to feel them. 
Venture out, into the heaven into the space, no need to be confined within your mind and body just go out and have fun.
A classic example of tolerating pain is miss-perception that that’s what is needed to become strong, but the opposite is true, become so sensitive that you don’t let any spectacle of pain to go unnoticed, unfelt, so it has to come again stronger.
Generally within oneself is all the answer that needs to be there, there is no more reason to look anywhere else once acknowledged this truth.
It is inevitable that some things naturally fall off, sometimes it might feel like all or many are, tho let them, don’t intervene necessarily, no need to hold on to what’s not needed. 
Dracula is the world trying to come out, why you ask? No reason it just does. The WHY and the reason isn’t always as important as you think it is
There could be a lot to say about the masculine portion of ones growing up, it essentially is needed for a specific reason and that is to learn how to operate on the go, on the action, if this masculinity is not going for it in life and it doesn’t serve as an idol or something to live up to then one is left wandering about, to seek the heights possible. If one has already reached the heights of maturing that were observed and doesn’t feel like they are fulfilling, one must define their own heights and levels based on one's basic ability to learn grow.
                                                                                                                                                                                                  ~Kristián C.

This blog post is the wonderous result of the class Solar Moon Press co-hosted with Healing Sun Energetics. It was a magical experience from which came much healing and many beautiful word creations. 

By Tawa Ranes

Solar Moon Press was recently speaking with a writer’s group about what we are trying to do as a publishing company, and ways for writers to get involved. In that particular moment we were talking about the kinds of voices that Solar Moon Press would like to help to ‘be heard.’ The question came up as to whether Solar Moon Press was open to trans voices. It felt like a very interesting question. Interesting because it made it very apparent that forums, outlets for storytelling, and the avenues by which marginalized voices can find their way to the public, have become increasingly ‘specialized.’ You could also read here; separatist and divided. I learned a new word when trying to define (in my own mind) what I mean by this. The word is fissiparous. An adjective, meaning: inclined to cause or undergo division into separate parts or groups. It appear we are becoming even more fissiparous in contemporary publishing. I don’t ignore the fact that historically we have always been so; yet it seems to have a slightly different flavor in its modern cultural iteration.

It could be that the question came up in response to my very own fear, that I had vocalized in the group, of getting pigeonholed as a publishing company, as a “me too” publisher of only female voices. The fear came up in response to having just released our first book as a publishing company. It is a “me too” piece of literature. One that felt very raw and vulnerable to put into the public domain. One that also felt very necessary, and important to honor, as the first voice we offer to the public. Especially as a publishing cooperative claiming to represent those voices that are still being silenced as a regular cultural practice.

As the author of the book, there was a deep urgency inside of me to tell the stories, that the book includes, in a very public way. I believe this is because of the deep healing that I know to be possible when we expose our tender spots and allow them to be ‘aired out’. So to speak. I also believe that, as an author, it was the first story I needed to tell. Because so much of what I do and how I engage with the world has to do with healing, eventually most of what I want to share with you all will also have to do with healing, and be very solution/ evolution oriented.

The problem with jumping right into all that feel good/ move forward stuff, is that it doesn’t honor the very real, lived and survived, shadows of the human experience. This might very well be why so many attempts to heal, as individuals and as a society, fail. In my experience, you can’t gloss over the shit, the muck, the horror of it all, while at the same time fully understanding what happened, how it affected us, and ultimately healing from it. Exposing it to the light, airing it out, and telling the story are critical steps in the healing process. In fact, they are the steps that draw out the poison that we carry within from experienced trauma. This may seem obvious, but we can’t heal if the poison is still inside of us. That is why, when treating poison wounds, you have to first draw the poison out.

As a writer, I know that drawing the poison out and using it as the ink to write my, and other’s stories, have had miraculous healing benefits. As a publisher, I know that I must bravely stand with those who are engaged in (and maybe engulfed by) the healing process. Those evolutionary pioneers who recognize and honor that we must speak the uncomfortable truth (our uncomfortable truth) if we are to ever move beyond it. Solar Moon Press encourages and supports those who choose to make beautiful, sometimes angry, and always impactful literature, from the festering inkwell within.

If you have words that needs to be heard, want to be healed, and are forward moving (toward revolution, resolution, solution, and evolution), then Solar Moon Press is likely an avenue you will want to walk down, a website you will want to peruse, a vocal stream you will want to dip your feet into. It matters not the lens you look through. We all perceive and receive life through our own lens, and that lens reflects our experiences on planet Earth. Our lens will likely reflect the color of our skin, the gender fluidity or rigidity within, our relationship with our kin, our beliefs around sin, and how those experiences have shaped and molded us. It will also likely tell us whether the experience has been painful or peaceful. We want to hear what you have to say. We can’t wait to see it through your unique lens and hear it in your voice.

As we have said before: “Come to us as you are: sweet, powerful, sensitive, grumpy, sensual, creative, and irate.” We will not put up a gate. We think it’s so important for you to create, and in doing so, clean the slate. But not before allowing yourself to feel irate and express the need to get it straight. No glossing over or gas-lighting, just straight up reality biting. So whether the story you have to tell is “me too,” he too or they too, whether it’s in your face ‘I’m tired of being treated this way because of my race (sex or class),’ or if it feels an urgency to no longer be defined by traditional concepts of gender and sexuality; please share with us your reality. And if you are battling the raging waters of the toxic masculinity within, are tired of being lumped in with that din, yet aren’t being offered a place to begin, to unravel the cultural patterns that hail from our kin; yes, that too is a sin.


Tawa Ranes is a Transformative Release Therapist living in Colorado (USA). She is fascinated with healing and the ways in which healing manifest in the human experience. Deeply enriched by her study-abroad experience in Spain as a teenager, Tawa’s life long love affair with culture and literature naturally led to advanced studies in Contemporary Spanish Literature and Literary Theory. She is in awe of the communicative and connective potential inherent in words and language, and loves to use them as an entryway into deeper understanding and communion with other. She writes in a candid voice with deeply philosophical undertones. Tawa is a leap before you look extraordinaire and the creative founding spirit behind Solar Moon Press.

by Angela Meyers

I woke up this morning thinking I would write the Anatomy of Sadness. Then I opened my laptop and read a Mark Twain quote. It altered me…dissolved my self pity and called on my warrior heart. I want to hear that call everyday.

The question haunting me this morning: When will I meet someone who really sees me? I have this feeling, only I can fill these shoes. I am a little confused, but I am not disappointed.

Prologue

Permission: this poem is a safe place
To explore the Anatomy of Sadness
I try to remember that I am a circus performer
I am about to dive into a tiny pool, in a big tent, surrounded by a great, grand world
My audience is none but myself
After I jump, and I climb out of my tiny pool,
I will take a bow, only to myself
 
It is an extraordinary thing to do
To fall so far with so little a safety net
Many climb to their own platforms,
and just smoke cigarettes and drink up there, nursing addictions, never braving the lonely fall  
 
For many that jump, the shock of the experience takes their life-breath away
They either never come out of it or they come out smuggling fear in their heart
Many never try again
 
But if I know myself at all
I will keep climbing and jumping, until the whole circus fades away
And I am standing bowing in honor to the experience of my life

 The Anatomy of Sadness, A Single Story
 For me,
It has dark edges
A wildness
A brutality that startles me awake in the night
In the morning
It is merciless with its endless interpretations
 
Imagination can turn it into a sort of high-speed tumbling into oblivion
Like a rocket man at the edge of the atmosphere
Falling off a proverbial cliff into no-gravity
It disorients the navigation system
 
For me,
it is an uprooting
It reminds me of trying to save my mother from herself
It reminds me of the girl I thought I was
It reminds me of the girl I never was
 
It reminds me of hitting the bottom only to realize I am still floating
No gravity, yet carrying all the heaviness of the world on my shoulders
 
Learning to love myself, from watching myself love others
 I looked at you, and I am sure that I saw you
And saw brilliance where so many, even you, suspected plainness
Your words were alchemy
They felt like a fire in my belly
They felt like an old friend warming up my soul
Your beauty took me by surprise, delighted me 
The way you fit so tenderly in my arms
It was as simple as gravity
It was a reverence
It was an honoring
It was like coming home
It did not belong to any interpretation in this world
Yet it was so fragile
So overwhelmed and drowned out by karma
 
Learning to love myself, from watching myself diminish others
 When it happens
There is a judgment that startles me as I watch it leave my body
An idea born in my mind that feels like betrayal 
My brain cuts the other down by categorizing the expression of their heart
The way I do to myself all day, yet never shudder
But when I watch it pass to another, I am startled by its ugliness
I have this imagining that they feel it
So each time it happens, I say a prayer that they are immune or that they are protected from it
For I suspect angels may offer that protection, even from ourselves
At the very least, I hopefully imagine that they are unaffected due to lack of interest
Then I try to remember that I have a choice
That maybe my heart knows that love, hate, judgment, beauty, ugliness is only filtered through this human experience
We must choose every day what to let in, knowing karma will require us to transmit it back into the world 

Angela Meyers lives in northern Colorado and works as a Physician’s Assistant. She enjoys the creative process of writing, and has a beautiful way of using metaphor and descriptive voice.

by Tiffany Higgins

Make enemy of no woman. This is what I hear. I doubt that it’s a new message, rather one that has been whispering in my ear for …years. I can honestly say that I’ve just turned the corner. In this time where the collective feminine is growing louder I accept that Trump Supporters, Plaid wearers, Coffee drinkers, Child Bearers, Single Screamers, Sign Holders, Hate Mongers, Abortion Lovers cannot be -The Other.

There can be NO Other. The new Club has to include Every Woman. It is a beautiful Club, an easy one to belong to when I’m across the table from a dear friend espousing our wonder at how well tea tree works as an antiseptic.
My left eye starts to twitch when I hear a Her say, “that’s just the way he is.”
Or “it’s just a kiss, Tiffany”… the perfunctory “kiss” on the neck….my private space, as opposed to a handshake when arriving at work. I wonder if tea tree works for this too.
And still I hear, make enemy of no woman.

It’s a zesty club, not unlike a family, where there are a bunch of misfits trying really hard to love each other. That’s what’s most important, that we try really hard to love each other.

We each have our spikes and thorns, sharp tongues, or no tongues. In our own way we are each venturing into the caverns of unexplored places within. Yes, yes, yes, sometimes those places are isle three of the grocery store where nestled there is a new and improved brand of earl grey lavender tea promising to soothe the soul ….only like lavender can. Then there are pockets of women following an impulse to awaken sexually. Explore the greater erotic Intelligence and creative life force energy, our inheritance to birth life into the world, human and so many other forms. This, an arena full of light and so much shadow billowing with shame. Both are zesty and pleasure-full. The soul soothing, nourishing, earl grey tea with lavender and my vulva’s connection to aliveness. Can I grow my capacity to be with all that this means? It’s so messy this “make enemy of no woman”.

Belonging…. to a greater whole both internally and externally.… This is where the dance of Belonging to this Club begins.
Some suggest that we must belong to ourselves first. The path to sovereignty lies in this relationship as primal, vital and critical. I don’t disagree. It is all of these elements and more.
I also believe that each woman has her own access point to excavating, re-mantling her own wholeness, untamed, influenced but not bound by this human experience. It doesn’t always come through our own hearts first or lips, neither the ones below nor above. Sometimes we need a gentle hand, holding our bums in support, as often a toddler needs a little boost.

What we need is acceptance, a real and strong-enough container to work our inner material out loud. All of the material, not just the material that fits into a new construct, even a deeply held, Best version, sacred construct. Ultimately any construct will create The Other. That Woman, She who is too _________________ Conservative, Fat, Flat, Fucked up, Unconscious to be worthy of The Club. Therein lies the sneaky and often seductive stronghold to a paradigm that we all know, hierarchy, power, a binary version that requires ‘less than’, ‘not enough’, ‘whore’, ‘bitch’, "goodie too shoes”.

It’s like any fire…it feels magical while sitting where the heat from the flames can bathe our skin, warm our bones, and the soft breeze at our backs encourages the smoke in the other direction. However, toss some gasoline in it and it is That Woman who wears the white t-shirt that shows the outline of her nipples or That Woman who defers to the man of the house. It’s so messy.

Make enemy of no woman. Can I grow my capacity to be with all that this means?
Otherwise, I’m complicit in sustaining a ‘Less than’ albeit shinier version of wholeness that makes a worthy member of The Club. Tricky.

It is a subtle form of rehabbing the current patriarchal culture by the very means that has nourished it. Power over…One up…Better than. I understand our deep desire to have an impact, change the course of and empower the feminine. Belong. To ourselves. To The Club of the Feminine -the collective conscious. I just don't think it will ever (nor can anything) be sustainable while there is The Other. When it is leveraged against, with or by another people or even concept. You see, for me love doesn't need a stepping stone or any form of power paradigm...no matter how seductive. And righting oppression IS VERY seductive.
It’s so messy.
Make enemy of no woman.
Can I grow my capacity to be with all that this means?
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Tiffany Higgins, M.S., has 20 years experience in working with people as a facilitator, life coach, teacher, and experiential educator. She has designed and led experiential team building, leadership and trauma recovery programs for thousands of people.