All the Fucks We Are No Longer Giving

“If anyone tells you that your hair is too big, get rid of them. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life." — Dolly Parton

Today, Friday, March 9th, the Moon goes into Last Quarter, half dark, half light: the glow falling on the bottom crook of your left hand, when held like a "C." In a few days, it will be Daylight Saving Time—an hour lost to gain more light. In a few days, the light of the Moon will begin getting smaller to our perception, as she moves counterclockwise East around the globe. In this workbook, the main themes we are examining at the time of the Waning Moon are release, recalibration, wrapping up, detoxing, examining our lovely shadows and our blocks, as well as turning inward—strengthening our intuition, connecting with rest, listening to our subconscious and dreamtime alike.

As we are in the transition month of March, this time that summons Spring, the month the Earth warms, consider what old ways of being you are still holding wrapped around you like so many woolen sweaters of comfort and complacency. One way to get lighter is to stop giving so many fucks. Stop putting your energy and attention into areas that do not correlate with all the manifestations you’ve planned for yourself.

Stop giving so many fucks about people who you cannot control. And, by the way, that’s all of them— except for one very important one: yourself. Do not let the fear of being isolated or unloved leave your identity, behavior, experiences, and dreams at the mercy of others, a puppet on a string.

Leave that pie on the windowsill for someone else to grab and get full on.

Stop giving so many fucks about what “the community will think” if you change, if you speak up for yourself, if you quit the job to go back to school, if you say no thank you a little more often. Stop being controlled by the fear of another’s judgment once you decide to truly focus on what you came here to do, in this one beautiful imperfect creaky body on this planet.

Kick all those heavy fucks off the cosmic cliff and watch them get tinier and tinier, silently tumbling through the air on their way down to the pyre of transmutation.

This is not to say don’t care at all. Care about others. Care about those who care about you. Care about other communities, the planet, those you’ll never meet who have less privilege than you, care about that which inspires you and demands real questioning and engagement. Care about that which threatens to shift you and promises to take care of you in equal measure. If you have done the work suggested in this workbook so far, you’ve made some promises to yourself about love. You’ve done some work on figuring out how to tune into your intuition, and what your dreams and goals are for this year and beyond. You’ve considered mindfulness, protecting your energy, protecting your magic, protecting your source. This is all in service to carving your dreams out of the rose quartz marble clouds in your heart. This, in turn, lies in service to the collective, to your ancestors, your angels, and your offspring—metaphoric, or actual.

This is not a free pass to act like a selfish garbage person. Being a functioning, compassionate member of society and your peer group, co-workers, friend group, family members, the collective, children, animals, and the Earth, requires all of us to make excellent, caring choices that will benefit those around us. We must care. We must still care and we must still try. People in our life will be challenging, as we will be challenging for them from time to time. This is not suggesting field trips away from our own accountability. Respect those in our life with whom we have healthy, nurturing relationships and responsibilities. We are all reliant and dependent to certain degrees on our intimates and strangers alike, and we must nurture and nourish those relationships actively. This is not an invitation to check out.

This is a prompt to think about what portions of your behavior, personality, and actions are reliant on others’ validation of them. What are the items and behaviors taking up your time and energy that don't have much, if anything, to do with your main goals and dreams of your soul, your year, and your legacy?

Many of us are taught that our value is in our likability. That our worth is based on how well we are performing for other people, how valuable we are for them—whether via paid labor, or work that is energetic and/or emotional. We are taught that we must constantly be proving ourselves in order to be valuable to others in socially-sanctioned ways: by being “good,” “behaving,” by constantly giving things away exactly as asked, by responding to requests immediately and always with fervent yeses, with no questioning or “conflict.” That we must constantly be proving ourselves above and beyond impossible expectations in order to be liked, loved, validated, made real. We are taught that our worth lies in others’ perceptions of us, in the amount of attention we receive. We are taught to behave in ways that at times are harmful and inauthentic in order to prove our worth. Parts of our whole get shoved down into the dark moldy basement subconscious in order to survive, and in order to maintain the thinning strands of what many of us now know to be a damaging and archaic social order. Your value is outside of and far beyond any talent, skill, performance, friendship, or CV. It exists intrinsically inside of you, linked to your breath, your heart, your love, your legacy.

Your value is YOU! Exclamation. All caps.

The more authentic you are to yourself, the more authentic your dreams will be. The more authentic you are to yourself, the more authentically you’ll be loved. Seen. Heard. Valued.

Maybe a struggle you have isn’t about being blocked or controlled by other people’s perceptions; maybe it is your own. Of who you are, or who you should be. Who you want to be, and who you are not. Maybe you give so many fucks about so many horrendous, wonderful, and pea-sized and lemon-sized and maybe even melon-sized things that you are constantly being fatigued by all those fucks, large and small, running around in your head or your dreams, making it hard to make decisions in the day-to-day. Maybe you’re finding it hard to focus as a result. Try to detach, healthily. You can always ask yourself, before you decide to give that particular fuck your valuable energy: will this scenario or person matter in seven days? Seven weeks? Seven months? Seven years? If the matter goes beyond a time period of seven weeks, maybe give that fuck your precious energy. Have the hard conversation. Respond kindly to the angry email. Work on that pitch after midnight. Etc.

This week, consider where you are blocking yourself because of fear of what others would think. Are you afraid to speak up when in certain friend groups? Certain gatherings or spaces? Are there certain activities you’d like to try, but an internal idea of who you are, based on the past and/or your community/society, is stopping you? Certain styles of dress you want to wear or hairstyles or lipstick color? Certain spiritual pursuits, or philosophical beliefs you’d like to explore or express? A career change you’ve been wanting to start on for a minute?

Maybe write down a few. Maybe commit to starting one or two, just after the New Moon.

This is an is an excerpt from Many Moons. Buy your copy here.

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