Aligning with the Tides: Why I’m Watching the Moon

The moon has always held my attention.

For a long time, I focused exclusively on the Full Moon because it felt like the most illuminated and dramatic chapter of the story. As of late though, I’ve become just as interested in the in between. The moon doesn’t simply hang in the night sky. Through gravity, it helps shape Earth’s tides, creating a rhythm that repeats with consistency. Watching that rhythm has made me wonder how often I’ve overlooked the quieter cycles unfolding within my own life.

The Internal Tide

I’ve always been drawn to the moon as a symbol of reflection. To me, it represents the subconscious and the changing seasons of life. It has become a quiet invitation to slow down and pay attention to what’s happening beneath the surface.

When I learned that the lunar cycle lasts roughly 29.5 days—remarkably close to the average menstrual cycle—I genuinely clutched my pearls. It made me realize id been thinking way too linearly about my body. It made me appreciate that both nature and our bodies move in rhythms rather than straight lines.

We’re made of roughly 60% water, and watching the tides has become a powerful metaphor for how I experience my own emotional landscape. Some seasons feel expansive. Others feel quieter.

The ocean retreats and returns.

The moon waxes and wanes.

The body builds, restores, and lets go.

I used to see my cycle as an inconvenience. Now I see it as an internal tide—a biological rhythm that reminds me that rest, renewal, and release are just as essential as growth.

Living in Cycles

While reading about lunar research, I came across studies exploring possible relationships between the moon and human sleep. The evidence is still evolving, and many questions remain unanswered, but I found the research fascinating. More than anything, it reminded me how much there is left to learn about the relationship between our biology and the natural world.

That curiosity eventually led me somewhere I wasn’t expecting.

For most of my life, I measured myself against a world built around a 24-hour clock. Wake up. Work. Produce. Repeat.

Then I learned about circadian rhythms—our roughly 24-hour biological cycles that regulate sleep, hormone release, body temperature, and countless other functions. But I also discovered that biology isn’t governed by just one clock.

Many biological processes follow infradian rhythms, which last longer than twenty-four hours. Menstrual cycles are one example. Seasonal changes in physiology are another. Suddenly, I realized I had been expecting myself to move through life with perfect consistency when my own biology was designed to move through longer cycles of expansion, restoration, and renewal.

That realization made me stop fighting my biology.

Instead of asking myself why I couldn’t maintain the exact same level of energy every single day, I started asking a different question:

What season am I in today?

Returning to the Tide

I don’t think paying attention to the moon is about predicting the future or finding perfect answers.

For me, it’s become a quiet point of reference—a reminder that nature moves in cycles.

I’ve decided to honor those cycles instead of fighting them.

For so much of my life, I believed growth had to happen in a perfectly straight line. Lately, I’m learning that growth looks much more like the tide.

Advancing.

Retreating.

Returning.