At 1 am, I’m a frenzied reporter seized by a tantalizing tagline for a gossipy story. Propped up on pillows, phone pressed to my face, I’ve traded a night of peaceful sleep to indulge in my insatiable interest with the royal family.
My google engine consists of searches stolen straight from the covers of tabloid magazines.
“Did Prince Charles ever love Diana?”
“Did Princess Anne like Diana?”
“Were Princess Diana and Fergie actual friends?”
And finally, and very simply, “Diana, Princess of Wales.”
Wide-eyed and willing, I dive straight into the rabbit hole of Wikipedia pages on Diana and the Windsor royals. Around midnight, I splash into the online archives of Vanity Fair where I furiously read about Prince Charles’ lonely and neglected childhood and the iconic style evolution of Princess Diana’s sensational wardrobe.
Then, around 1:30 am, Vanity Fair hits the lights and cuts the party short with a curt note. Apparently, I have just read my last free article and would I care to consider having a subscription?
Spotlighted in my snooping, I stop.
I sneak the phone under a plush embroidered pillow on a chair in the far corner of my room, but my mind continues to google and buzz about royal secrets and Diana’s world-known story.
Beneath the chatter there’s a spirited whisper to search not the internet but the knowledge of my own soul to understand this spark of resonance with the princess.
And in stillness, in soft solitude, I notice the bright light of the half-full moon gliding through the blinds. Easily, I could shrug off this particular phase of the moon and mentally label it as not-yet-full, still striving to be whole, still impatiently awaiting perfected wholeness.
But the moon is half-full and is still whole. The perfected wholeness is here. The two exists within the one. Perspective from earth determines the half-full shape, but from the cosmos the moon always shines as whole. And in the quiet, I curiously realize that my perspective shifts the shape of the moon. I see the moon as half-empty when actuality it’s a waxing moon, it’s half-full.
And here the half-moon challenges me to review the power of my perspective, the luminosity of my lens, the compassionate kindness in my gaze, to see the current chapter within the bigger picture. And here the moon’s eloquence clarifies my sight to realize why I am drawn to Diana.
The People’s Princess shines like the moon, a light-giver to those suffering and overlooked, and because she’s intimately familiar with her own darkness she instinctually meets people in their own vulnerability and in their pain. She fiercely gives the love she so desperately wants to receive. And energy emanates truth and the truth of her authentic emotionality emanates across time. And so as I merge into “The Crown” and steal glimpses into her struggles and heartbreaks, I witness her very human phases and still am dazzled by her wholeness.
This is an inherent wholeness I hope she recognized and realized within herself, and perhaps this yearning to know if she did initiated and fueled the midnight googling. And since I cannot seem to find the Vanity Fair article that would confirm if so, I hold it as a wish and decide to retrieve my energies and re-center them in cultivating a half-full moon attitude in this journey.
The waxing waltz of the November moon nudges me, again and again, to reawaken to witnessing the wholeness in my loved ones, in the world, in my own self as we ebb and flow through iterations, and to hold a positive perspective in that path of actualization and higher activation.
In the last chapter of November, as I intently timeline jump to 1980s Britain in “The Crown,” I also cast glances back over my romantic past, over the rush of my twenties, the striving and fixing I tend to compulsively fall into, a pattern to overextend and people-please that leaves me resentful and fuming and with a breakout of acne.
And the half-moon encourages me to keep faith – to acknowledge my past with a presence of radical tenderness. In this quality of forgiveness, I am free to see that moon-phase as full of significant learning, and am liberated to root and rise to observe the growth and awareness occurring here in the now.
Awareness activates the change, and the change can simply be in choosing a half-empty or half-full lens on which to view my past self and to despair on my shortcomings or believe in the steady implementation of significant learnings.
Holding a perspective of wholeness lets me see myself more tenderly, and also directs me out of my self-critique long enough to finally see that the neighbors have carved a specific hole out of their wooden fence to let pink roses grow freely.
The moon is half-full and the roses still bloom in the greying mood of late November when a friend alludes to the heart-break. She voices a recent hurt that mirrors my own former feelings, healed and heard and rising to reassure that she’s not alone and she’s still whole and complete during this phase of the journey.
She decorates my eyelids in glistening golds and elegant sweeps of black liner. She eases my makeup frets by validating my product choices, the unique way I tap on my facial powder, and affirming natural beauty.
I flashback to the days before my fascination with the royals. Perched on pillows, poring over my phone, scavenging the internet for makeup tutorials and skincare recommendations.
If Vanity Fair had caught me in their beauty section, I still would have kept going and just snuck around a corner to frantically searching for something no product could fix. My gaze set to the external, to perfect, I didn’t have the tools yet to realize the external reflects the internal, and I’m already whole and complete – with or without liquid eyeliner. And tonight the moon is half-full, and so I choose a kinder tone to my makeup story, because I am learning to feel comfortable in sensitive skin and intuitive expression, and when I soften toward my past, I return to receiving this moment with a spirit of playfulness.
While rummaging through eyeshadow primers and lip liners, we talk about Diana, and her anguish and struggles, and her emotional intelligence, instantaneous and courageous compassion, her mesmerizing aura. We see her vulnerabilities and lovability, and the two coexist in the celestial glow of her wholeness.
And perhaps this is what I was seeking with all those midnight reads. A confirmation on what I sensed and hope to be true. To trust in the half-fullness of the moon, which is always whole no matter the phase of the present journey.