Saturday, April 16th
Full Moon in Libra at 11:56 am PST

April Full Moon
By Ev’Yan Whitney

This April Full Moon in Libra highlights the binary—this built-in, inflexible, and often oppressive system that has us looking at and categorizing things through a fixed lens of black or white, dark vs. light, this or that. The binary is everywhere. It’s in the way we have been enculturated to see gender as being one of only two options. It’s in the way we see people as being either good or bad, pure or perpetrators, which keeps the prison industrial complex thriving. The binary is in the way we see our bodies—as healthy or not healthy. It’s also in the way we see our sexual selves: I am either sexually free or I’m sexually broken.

The binary can be helpful when trying to classify certain things. Is this beverage hot or cold? Is this gluten-free or not? Is it morning or evening? But the binary is not helpful when it’s applied to us flawed, nuanced, and messy humans. There are very few things about ourselves that can be split and designated cleanly into two categories. We are constantly in motion. We are constantly becoming and undoing and defining ourselves, and we repeat this cycle over and over again, sometimes multiple times a day. We are all beautiful messes of transience and contradictions. There is nothing fixed about us, even if we think there is. The ways we or others try to force our soft, sensual, and visceral selves into a slew of perfectly labeled boxes is just not conducive to our innate fluidity. The binary flattens us into lifeless vectors of ourselves, especially when it comes to our bodies and sexuality.

When I think about the non-binary nature of my body, I think about my body when it’s viewed through a lens of non-binary gender. I think about the contradictions of the masculinity of my menstrual cycle and the femininity of my leg hair. I think about how often my body is soft and strong at the same time. I think about how my body is neither fixed nor broken, male nor female. It’s just a body doing its thing, doing its best.

When I think about the non-binary nature of my sexuality, I think about my aceness, how I am both a sexual being and also asexual—which is not a contradiction to me, but I can understand how it is a contradiction to a lot of other people. I think about how much my sexual energy occupies a gray space between the “yes and no” we’re familiar with when thinking about sexuality—this “horny or not," “sexual or not” binary that many of us have subscribed to. I think about how my sexuality is more like a circle than it is a line from point A to point B. I think about how differently I desire and how much nuance I require when it comes to my arousal. I also think about how, when it comes to healing my sexuality, I am neither departing nor arriving—I am becoming.

As I’ve become aware of the binaries being enforced upon my body, gender, and sexuality, I’ve chosen to radically and/or lovingly reject them. But I still have trouble silencing the inner voices that want me to categorize myself, telling me to be only one expression of myself at a time. So much of my own non-binariness is visceral, intuitive, and somatic of the senses. It can’t be quantified or understood with a binary mind, because the binary always wants an answer, a category, a perfect word to qualify who or what we are.

I want to note that the voice of the binary that’s in us isn’t of us. It isn’t something we created for or by ourselves. It’s the voice of the inner manifestation of the binary systems outside of us. It’s also a voice we can begin to quiet when we begin to honor the liminal that is within (and is) us.

Continuing to radically reject the binary means that I have to be okay with the unknown and unnamed; with the feral, untamed, and unseen parts of me that this inner voice is desperately trying to organize and cordon off. It means that I have to allow myself to be where and who I am, and to meet myself in that middle space with grace, compassion, love, and acceptance. It means that I have to trust my own experience and find a new language to describe myself and the world around me. It means that I cannot abandon myself, that I must stay in union with myself.

As spring begins to rebirth us more tangibly into this Lovers year, it awakens the parts of us that want our attention and intention. My experience of The Lovers has never been about my relationship with others. When I get this card, it’s always about my relationship with myself—every part. It speaks to the “two” parts of me that, when I am intentionally honoring them, meet to create a liminal, fluid whole. It speaks of the contradiction of my being simultaneously in multiple parts while also finding wholeness and acceptance in that fragmentation. It is that infamous 1+1=3 equation. It invites me to envision what that “3” is for me and what it amounts to. Each day that I live is an opportunity for me to feel into that third option, that middle space.

I want this Full Moon in Libra to inspire you to explore, love, and accept the both/and of yourself. I want it to help you become curious about the binaries you’ve been told you must conform and contort yourself into. I want you to give yourself permission to explore the multiplicitous nature of everything you are. Under the light of this vibrant Full Moon, I want you to release any fixed, preconceived notions you have about yourself and actively claim every wild, contradictory piece of yourself.

To read Ev'Yan Whitney's exclusive Full Moon prompts and the rest of this beautiful essay, download the April Guide or grab a copy of the 2022 Many Moons Lunar Planner.

Ev’Yan Whitney (they/she) is a nonbinary sexuality doula and sensualist whose work focuses on decolonizing, unshaming, and liberating sexuality at the intersection of identity, pleasure, and embodiment. Since 2011, Ev'Yan has dedicated herself to sex education and sexual activism by holding healing space for women, femme, and non-binary folks, helping individuals reclaim their unique sexual expressions and reconnect to their sensual bodies. Their book, Sensual Self, is an interactive, self-guided journal that will help you come home to yourself through your senses. Find more about it (and Ev’Yan’s work) at evyanwhitney.com and on Instagram: @evyan.whitney.