Always Call the Moon by Her True Names (A Small, Holy Method for the Next Step)

On illumination, longing, and writing what is, one small, specific truth at a time

Jan 06, 2026

The moon reached peak fullness for the month this past weekend, around 502am EST on Saturday, January 3rd. This was a supermoon and—like all moons— she is known by many names.

She is the wolf moon, the quiet moon, the stay home moon, the severe and hard moon, the greetings maker moon, depending on who you come from and where you call home, and what ancestors walk beside you on your journey.

Quite likely, she has thousands of other names that I will never find on an internet search, but that I can imagine, or dream about, or guess at and try on for size.

I care about her many names, because naming has power. What we call a thing, a person, an experience, a feeling—it matters.

“Naming is knowledge. When I know your name, I can call your name, and when I call your name, you'll come to me".
jeanette winterson

And so, each month, I take some time to learn the names of the moon, as she is called around the world, so I can speak to her more clearly. In return, I hope that she speaks back. When she does, she becomes both mother and muse. The words find me, and I find the page, and some sort of magic happens there.

Perhaps not the sort of magic that leads to viral essays and new followers and subscribers and income and accolades, those are more suitable for wishes on stars. It’s a more grounded sort of magic I’m reaching for when I commune with her.

When I call to her by name and listen for her reply, I’m just hoping she will do what she does best: illuminate. Shine a light on what is. Not what I dream of or imagine or long for. But what exists right now. Right in front of me. Close enough to touch. The world I am living within and all that exists between me and that world, and even myself, flailing and fumbling in the dark, trying like hell to orient myself in the direction of her light.

A long time ago, in a meditation retreat, a once-beloved teacher of mine asked us all to close our eyes, stretch our hands out around us, and wiggle our fingers. There, she said, “This is all that is real. Only what is right in front of you, in this moment, close enough to touch.”

The moon says much the same when she whispers across the dark. She doesn’t shine a light bright enough to show me everything, but just enough that I can make my way forward and see what is directly in my path. Just enough that I can safely take the first step, and then the next, until the sun rises again.

She is my reminder that I don’t need to look any further than that, not for wisdom, not for inspiration, and not for the answers.

***

***

In the Poet’s Companion, co-writers Kim Addonizio and Doriannae Laux say,"

”This is where we begin, by looking over our own shoulder, down our own arms, into our own hands at what we are holding, what we know. Few of us begin to write a poem about “death” or “desire.” In fact, most of us begin by either by looking outward: that blue bowl, those shows, these three white clouds. Or inward: I remember. I imagine. I wish. I wonder. I want.. Our subject matter is always with us, right here, at the tips of our fingers, at the edge of each passing thought. The trick is to find out what we know, challenge what we know, own what we know, and then give it away in language.”

And that’s how it often is with me and the moon. She shines enough light that I can look over my own shoulder, down my own arms, into my own hands, at what I am holding, who I am, and what I know.

As I continue this tentative path of stepping back into my contract with words, with language, with the story of things, she offers what I need. Just enough light that, if I stretch my arms around me and wiggle my fingers, I can see all I need to see.

From there, my only job is to write.

***

The night of the last full moon, I turned the water as hot as it could go and filled the tub with water, almost too hot to bear. I swirled in a package of high-potency magnesium, vitamin E, and other goodness meant to gift me with a deep and healing sleep, lit an amber candle, and turned on music that evokes deep feelings. I laid back, hair twisted in a crazy bun atop my head, and I let the heat do its thing.

I gave myself fully over to my own solitude. And there, in the water, I began the painstaking work of undoing chronic patterns, one tiny word spell at a time. I practiced the fine art of being with what is, until it can one day be transmuted into what comes next. I grounded into the memory of what it is to prioritize Eros as she lives in me, instead of seeking her everywhere outside of my own wanting self.

It is both reckoning and recollection and holy return, this work. Deeply painful in the ways that liberation often is, perhaps in the way it must always somehow be. But there, by the faint light of the wild wolf moon, I entered a holy remembrance of what it is to reside in my own resonant body, even with all its dissonance. To stop perpetually transforming myself into a vessel of longing focused on pulling to me what I already am and always will be.

There in the too-hot-but-just-right tub, with the salt absorbing into my needy muscles, and the music that told stories of another time and place, I began running my hands over my skin. Not sexually or erotically. Not sensually, even. Practically, at first. A pragmatic reintroduction. Touch light, reverent, asking for permission and offering it, all at once.

Hello body. Hello, container of my spirit and soul. Hello, expanse of hungry skin. Hello to my hands, with their slender fingers and large knuckles. Hello to my high arched feet and their impossibly long toes. Hello, knees and wrists, and clavicle. Hello belly, so much like my mother’s, softer and rounder than it has ever been before in this life. Hello nose with its small protrusion of bone in the middle, it took me many years to make peace with you. Hello, tiny ears, full lips, yearning heart. I continue until I have touched each inch of my skin in an impromptu act of reclamation.

This is prayer, I believe—of a sort—and it has been a long time since I have taken the time to pray.

I continue for one song. Two. Now three. Occasionally, I turn on the cold water full blast, dunk my head under the tap, splash the chill across my face, my chest, run it down my arms just to remember that I am alive. Here. Awake to this experience and all it may deliver.

Before too long, the heat siren calls again, I dial up the hot water tap, and return to church.

The beat of the music gets deeper now, and there is nothing but hands on wet skin and my own sacred attention. My fingers, long submerged, raisin and wrinkle, palms rough. I lift my hand to the light and spin and turn it slowly, marveling at the stories contained right there, in the reach of bone and sinew and joint. Every love story I have lived, and if you’d believe the folklore, all the ones I have not yet encountered, held within its map of lines.

I remember reading recently—one of those random bits of trivia that floats ones’s way in a day of endless scrolling—that our fingers wrinkle in the water to improve grip and channel water away. I think, isn’t it just like science to give rise to so much poetry, nervous system triggering blood vessels to constrict, only so we are better able to touch, to hold, and not lose that which we love to the rush of the current.

Reality. Magic. Science. Poetry. Religion. Pleasure. It’s all the same, in the end.

My hands touch my body more firmly now that I realize my hands have adapted, evolved even, for a stronger grip. They slide with deep and intentional pressure, waterlogged palms offering the jolt of reminder, muscle memory of the sort of skin-on-skin friction my skin has not known for more time than it would like to admit.

At some point, my touch turns to pleasure.

No, not sexual. That would be good, and also holy, but that’s not what this is. This is the simple goodness of touch on bare skin, an answer to the shared hunger we are born with and for. It is an act of devotion to answer the call instead of turning to another. To offer my own touch, not as a replacement for what occurs when bodies collide, but as a reminder of the nature of my own belonging. Of me to myself. Of my spirit to this body. Of my blood and guts and marrow to the whole being of me. Of all these palms, this skin, this body has to offer. Both to myself, right here in this bath tonight, and to all who may cross the threshold and receive the invitation to enter the gates.

These gates open to hallowed ground. This, too, I needed to remember.

I lose count of how long this lasts, there in the dark and the heat, but by the light of a single flame and by the light of the moon, it feels like a kind of forever.

Finally, slowly and then all at once, the bath is too impossibly hot, I am flushing, burning, on fire from within. The stillness is done, and the spell—while not broken— has shifted. Without planning, I pull the plug, turn on the shower to its icy maximum coldness, and stand under the blast. I stay as long as I can, and then longer still, exhilarated, alive, remembering just how much dichotomy and extreme my body can withstand, indeed, how much it often craves.

I’ve never been one to live too long in the middle of things; the edges tell too many stories.

***

I’ve imagined a long and slow return, oiling my body and slowly unwinding before bed. brushing my hair with careful patience to wrap it up in a perfect bun atop my head. But suddenly, I must see the moon and let her see me. So it’s old sweats and a t-shirt with no bra, and I am running out into the street just to catch a glimpse of how this moon howl. As if that is the only sensible thing to do, which of course means that this is so.

I find the moon obscured by clouds, barely shining through.

I smile, out there in the middle of that street. clothing plastered to still wet skin and tangled hair trailing down my back. I remember that I don’t doubt her fierce power, her unyielding presence, even without seeing proof—and so maybe I should give myself the same benefit of the doubt, at least every now and then.

There, under the faint glow, I call up moments from the weekend to offer the moon. Deep text-talk threads with my best friend where we unpack it all, and wrap it back up with fierce and tender love.

How I finally stopped avoiding the task, and I went to the storage unit that holds almost all my worldly belongings. I dug and moved and hoisted boxes until I found the treasure I had been seeking. And because of that, I am once again in possession of my enviable collection of boots, gold and burgundy and rose floral velvet, proper white and black tweed. Black patent leather with big chunky heels. This may seem like a silly, small thing, but it is not, not in the least, because the little things that make us feel like ourselves, these talismans are spells of a sort as well, and hold the magic of return better than any pair of ruby slippers ever could.

There was the 90’s era old-school hot rollers purchased at Goodwill, and a solo night alone to set my hair just like I did back then, the nostalgia of college days nearly overtaking me with a force that is pure and good. It’s a portal to loving that much younger version of myself, with all she knew and all she couldn’t have imagined.

And last night, when I danced, just a little (just enough) to Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson with a backdrop of live saxophone (of all things) with one old friend (and several new). One of those perfect little unplanned moments that shifted something held back in my chest for so long, a thing often resistant to joy and release and surrender. For a moment that only lasted a song or two, I got to touch that place inside of me that knows this: I am made of more than what hurts.

Later, when I walked home alone, through littered streets and a night winding to post midnight quiet, I felt something settle and deepen, and realized I felt satisfied, in some way that I hadn’t in a good long time.

And these are all ordinary things, and mostly, they don’t have much to do with the moon at all. They wouldn’t be remarkable, except for the fact that I took the time to remember them then and record them here now.

Because, although I am making a daily practice of many small acts of remembrance, even when the moon goes dark, one of the most important memories is that I am a writer.

It is my job to take the small and make it larger, to find connections between disparate specifics, and to weave words into worlds. To illuminate what is right in front of me, all the ordinary moments, all the small and specific prayers and spells that make up 24 hours of living. That’s the whole job.

As Kim Addonizio and Doriannae Laux said, “ The trick is to find out what we know, challenge what we know, own what we know, and then give it away in language.”

And say what you will, I’m pretty sure the moon helps with all of that, at least a little.

In fact, I’m pretty sure she helps with everything.

Much love, my beloved readers. It feels so good to be back.

xo, jlb.

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