Creating ‘Cosmic Crystals’: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at My New Book

I'm so excited to introduce my new book, called "Cosmic Crystals: Rituals and Meditations for Connecting with Lunar Energy." This is my fifth or sixth book... I've kind of lost count by now! It's my second book being published with a large publisher. My other books before that were self-published.   So my first book was "Crystals for Energy Healing" and this book, "Cosmic Crystals", is quite different. My first book was really more of a guide book or reference book to a hundred different crystals and their healing properties. It also included some more introductory information and how to use crystals for grids, elixirs, meditations, and crystal layouts. My latest book, on the other hand, was born out of my personal work with crystals and the moon. So for me, I started working pretty intensely with the energy of the moon a few years ago. I've always felt so connected and so drawn to the moon and working with lunar energy, but this was intensified when I went through a pretty serious illness and I had to have a hysterectomy. This was two weeks before my 29th birthday.  I was pretty young to have that procedure done, but I had some severe uterine fibroids. They were causing me tons and tons of pain and quite a lot of other health complications. After trying quite a few other things to get them under control, surgery was my next best option. So I spoke with other women who had had this procedure. I really did a lot of research online to understand how I might feel after the surgery - physically, but also emotionally. After doing this, I felt pretty prepared for it. In all honesty, my husband and I decided a long, long, long time ago that we probably wouldn't have children. I was okay with that. But after the procedure, I was really shocked at how much grief I felt for that choice now that it'd been taken away. For some reason, it felt okay and it felt really empowering when it was 100% my choice, but when I didn't have the option anymore, it just felt really strange. It felt like there was something that was being taken away from me.  It was a really strange combination of grief and anger and sadness, and it was really difficult to work through for me. It's so strange to be talking about all of this because, at the time, I didn't realize how much this would play into all of the work and the personal journey that I would be going through years later. I'm going to be 34 in just a few weeks, so it's almost five years later at this point. This personal journey really led me to try and understand my body more. Now that I didn't have a traditional moon time, I didn't bleed anymore. But I still have my ovaries, so I still had all the other things that kind of accompany a moon time. However I found that I lost track of my own cycle and my body's natural rhythm because I didn't bleed. So often, you know, I'll be wondering why I had a headache and felt kind of fuzzy or confused or was tired or why I felt really emotional. And then I started to realize, "Oh, I'm having my moon time." and I just didn't know or didn't notice because I didn't have the bleeding.  So I started working with the cycle of the moon as a way to track my own personal moon time and to help me get in touch with my body again. It was so strange, to be a person who had this experience each and every month and then to no longer have that. It made me feel really lost in terms of my body's own natural rhythms and cycles. I felt so disconnected from myself physically. On top of that, there was just a whole other layer of emotional grieving that was happening that I didn't really expect because I felt disconnected from my sacred feminine. I felt disconnected from my womanness. And that was something that was really unexpected for me. That was something I hadn't really heard from anyone else I had spoken with before I had the procedure. No one else told me that they had experienced that. So not only was I feeling that way,