Why I'm choosing brutal honesty this New Moon

The moon is dark tonight.

Not gone — just turned away, gathering itself before it returns.

I want to be honest with you about something, because this new moon newsletter and Hamakua as a whole a place where honesty is normal, not an exception.

I've been moving in and out of depression for months. Not the dramatic kind — the quiet kind, where you're technically doing everything right and none of it feels like yours. Wake, tend the land, come in, eat something, stare at a screen until my life force faded, procrastinate with some TV, eat, sleep. Repeat. I wasn't in crisis. I was just... going through the motions of a life that used to feel alive.

So last month I left. Took myself on a journey through Spain and Portugal, mostly in a campervan, mostly with no plan. And somewhere in that wandering, I found myself again. Not through any big realization — just through wonder. Looking at a hillside, a stranger's face, a plate of food, and thinking: this is my time to notice this. I may not get another chance. That noticing — that's what I'd lost. That's what routine had quietly taken from me.

I came home. And within days, I could feel the routine starting to sink back in.

This New Moon, I'm saying: not this time.

Routine vs. Rhythm

We often say modern life has become disconnected from nature. But maybe it's more accurate to say it's become disconnected from rhythm.

A routine is something you follow. A rhythm is something you participate in. A routine is imposed by the clock. A rhythm emerges through relationship. A routine can become mechanical. A rhythm remains alive.

The ocean has rhythm. The moon has rhythm. The seasons have rhythm. None of them run on rigid schedules — they respond, adapt, and change while staying connected to something larger. Life itself is rhythmic. For most of human history, people lived inside that — the sun, the moon, the seasons, the gathering and resting and grieving and celebrating together. Those rhythms didn't just organize time. They kept people feeling connected — to nature, to each other, to themselves.

Somewhere along the way, most of us traded that for schedules and notifications. We got efficient. And a lot of us got lonely, exhausted, and disconnected anyway. Not from lack of productivity. From lack of rhythm.

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This New Moon

The moon is dark tonight. Not gone — gathering.

Nature offers the moon as rhythm, not routine. It doesn't ask to be full. It just moves through dark and light, trusting the cycle.

Aliveness is what happens when we let ourselves move the same way — when we stop demanding constant output and let a season of quiet exist before the next thing grows. The new moon has long been held as a time for intention, not action. Just naming the thing, and letting it take root in the dark.

Belonging isn't a single arrival. It's the cyclical process of becoming — returning, again and again, to rhythm, to each other, to ourselves.

So this New Moon, my intention is simple: try one new thing in every part of my life. Plant way too many Mexican sunflowers on the land, just because. Dance to live music more. Keep telling the truth in this newsletter, even when it's easier not to.

What's your intention for this cycle?

Where has routine quietly replaced rhythm in your life — and what's one new thing you could try before the moon is full again?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

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Where This Gets Practiced, Not Just Written About

I didn't find my way back to aliveness by reading about it. I found it by leaving everything familiar and letting wonder lead for a while.

That's the whole premise of our 8-Day Journey — eight days of waking with the light instead of an alarm, eating together, working with your hands, resting without guilt, sitting in circle, marking the day's close instead of letting it dissolve into the next screen. Most people don't leave calling it relaxing. They call it remembering — like something in them that had gone quiet started moving again.

If any of this stirred something in you, that's where it gets lived, not just read.

Learn more about the 8-Day Journey

We're here for the rhythm. And through it, we keep finding our way back to nature, aliveness, and belonging — again and again, moon after moon.

Until the next one,

Ryan & Yasmin Hamakua Sanctuary