a messenger of midsummer molting and the moon

developing cicada consciousness

Dear Starry-eyed wonder,

I’ve been preparing to molt, a feeling of outgrowing my own skin. I thought this was supposed to happen in the year of the Snake. But no, halfway through the Fire Horse, life is galloping full speed while simultaneously insisting on removing the layers of my former sense of self along with it.

We all have cycles of shedding.

Some of us go through a life overhaul every couple years. Other (like some species of cicadas) wait thirteen or even seventeen years, creating broods of overlapping cacophonies. Like some astrological transits, these molting events bring exciting or terrifying mayhem to the quiet stillness of the status quo.

Molting doesn’t really give us a choice in the matter. It’s often catalyzed by a loss, a new life chapter, or any other big change — whether it is perceived as positive or negative — it sends us into the crucible of trust. So here I am trusting the process, while foolishly thinking that I can hold it all together at the same time 😭😭😭¹

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In case our path’s are crossing for the first time — hi I’m April: artist, mother, founder of themoonismycalendar 🌙 poetic plant person and 🌸 budding flower essence practitioner. I create and publish circular moon calendars to support self-study in relationship with cycles.

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This summer I’ve been watching videos of cicadas molting in order to encourage my psyche not to resist the inevitable. It looks like these insects are literally coming apart at the seams. Not like butterflies emerging from the sleeping bag cocoon of caterpillar soup. Cicadas crawl out of their own skin and then sprout wings.²

Meanwhile the shell of the old self is left hollow and gripping onto a leaf or branch.

Now this is where I find myself, again, after twelve years of producing moon calendars and raising my kids. Holding on, yet knowing the molting has begun. My oldest daughter is leaving for college. An empty nest, except the nest is my body.³

The skin that contained this chapter is cracking open.

This particular midsummer molting is occupying the void space between no longer … and not yet. I have a strong desire to close down everything, to get a flip phone and never open social media again. I’ve actually had the thought, “I wonder how long until someone notices that I haven’t written a newsletter.”

Maybe it’s time to disappear. Maybe that’s the cicada talking.

After more than a decade of writing and teaching online, something else is pulling me, but I’m not sure in which direction yet. Being in this familiar yet uncomfortable interlunar space is what I referred to as between the moon … when something feels done, but the next iteration has not yet begun.

Perhaps you can relate.

When was your last big molt?

What was on the other side of the shedding for you? What did you have to lose, surrender, dissolve to get there? These stories remind us to have courage and trust the transformation even if it feels rough at the time.

The moon is an companion for make daily and/or drastic changes. It’s all in her wheelhouse.

A solar-powered flashlight from the cosmos guiding the way.

full moon rising over the atlantic june 29, 2026. i took this with my mom’s phone since mine is old and struggles to capture moonlight.

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Resting place of arrivals and departures

I recently returned from a family trip to visit relatives in a cemetery across the country. Their names on stones. Their lives mostly unknown to me.

After twelve years waiting in a closet, we interred my grandfather’s ashes alongside his parents and siblings in the town where he was born.⁴

The dust of his death had already settled over a decade ago.

It turned out to be a DIY burial in the high heat and humidity of South Carolina. Playfully burying my beloved grandfather with so much reverence. All ten of us took turns shoveling to fill the hole. Even my teenagers participated.

Here we were on the day of the full moon closing the opening made for his remains. Three generations above ground filling the space in the earth for our family’s gentle-hearted patriarch while three ancestral generations rested beneath their headstones.

Could this experience be more Capricorn in nature?

lichen spreading on a gravestone in sunnyside cemetery summer 2026

The moon often waits for the right moment to mark significant occasions.

Milestones.

This moment, this moon, sensing a bridge between generations. Choosing what to carry forward, and what to compost into the soil. Literally, symbolically, viscerally.

Honoring the finite lifespan of a loved one.

The full moon hung right between my own personal Sun and Venus transiting through Capricorn in my 5th house. This is where the structures that help my creative heart to soar come to life! The architecture of legacy that includes children and creativity. Beautiful relationships as a measure of success. A foundation of the future, laid one stone at a time, constantly being remodeled, rebuilt, and repaired in response to life’s calling.

Turning to dust and then into a mountain again.

Taking it all in with a breath, and emptying out with a sigh. This life, like the moon, keeps showing us how everything comes in and out of form.

Even the street was molting.

the brick streets of orangeburg paved over, what is buried will always find a way to resurface

Developing cicada consciousness

Live underground for a long time sucking sap

Have a mysterious yet predictable cycle of reappearance

Crack through your old self

Molt in one night

Don’t hang on

Allow yourself to be eaten

Make love (probably not in that order)

Sing a song that sounds like a bad case of tinnitus

Don’t apologize if no one else gets you

Be the insect version of a death bloom⁵

Give yourself fully to the cause

Go all in on this life

The end.⁶

A cicada beneath the spire

A couple days later I was walking towards the Church of England in Charleston, SC admiring the giant branches of a Lowcountry Live Oak tree when I came across one of the largest cicadas in North America.

Imagine evolving long before sidewalks existed, yet being perfectly camouflaged with the pavement.

a large dusk-singing cicada summer 2026 charleston, sc

This glassy eye-lashy winged insect was about half the size of the palm of my hand. Not that I picked him up, but I could imagine holding him like a large stone. Seeing him on my path was so real it was surreal.

According to iNaturalist, this no-longer-alive guy is known as Megatibicen grossus aka the Northern dusk-singing cicada.⁷ Or the southern oak cicada.

A messenger of midsummer molting.

Living and dying in interdependence with this particular tree.

southern live oak and the church of england in charleston summer 2026

Do you ever have the feeling that trees were actually the first churches, places or worship, kinship, sources of guidance?

Here the Church of England’s spire is obscured through the branches, revealing the contrast of the structures of religion and the organic nature of animism. I took this photo as a visual reminder of whom I offer my prayers to:

“Please dear mother tree, brother cicada, help me molt, free the one who is outgrowing this skin. A more refined essence emerges. Not just for me, but all of humanity.”

Surrendering to the alchemy that allows us to live many lifetimes in one.

As long as we keep molting.

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Thank you for being here, your presence is a gift,

xo April

1. I share this post with so much gratitude for my friend, colleague, and fellow astro flowersister Diomira Rose D'Agostino. The themes that came from my recent Soul Astrology Session with her were so poetic, practical, and perfectly timed. All the transits are facilitating a major molting. Here’s to the ever-becoming nature of life!!

Also in case you were wondering, this is my own quirky writing, no AI assistant involved. Just me trying to wrangle my multi-channel brain to illuminate some facet of the nature of our relationship with cycles, change, and creativity.

2. For your viewing pleasure … the exoskeleton and the emerging insect in this time lapse:

3. Like after birth. But also I still have a fledgling about to start high school, so it’s not totally empty, just emptier.

4. A place he left far behind to join the Navy and end up out West where the rest of us grew up. His draft card from 1942 has a street address that no longer exists. Places that can’t be visited in the physical realm. A life that turns to dust.

5. A death bloom is when certain plants flower and go to seed once in a lifetime in a dramatic display of going all in to create the next generation. Even though the species in this video isn’t the Cicada I saw, I could watch this endlessly… the voice of David Attenborough and the little nimble raccoon hands!!!

6. …is the beginning of the next chapter.

7. More research on the Northern dusk-singing cicada led to this photographer’s site: floridensis with a beautiful close-up of the ruby third-eye crown of this cicada along with intimate images of the molting process and notes about their life cycle:

“Unlike most cicadas that call during daylight, M. grossus is unique in its crepuscular behavior, with males beginning their droning, pulsing calls around dusk—a trait that makes them harder to detect but easier to distinguish by sound. The nymphs spend several years underground feeding on xylem sap from tree roots before emerging synchronously to molt into adults, typically from late June through August.

Adults live only a few weeks, during which they mate and lay eggs in tree branches. While their emergence may seem sudden and mysterious, their presence signals a healthy ecosystem and contributes to the food web as prey for birds, mammals, and other insects.”