June 2026: New Moon in Gemini
My ancestors were guardians of the forests of the outer western Carpathian mountains. It is from this land (Lower Silesian Voivodeship in south-western Poland) that I get to write to you this month and from this place that I am experiencing the New Moon in Gemini. It is from this place that I am thinking about my grandmother, my mother and myself.
Perhaps because Gemini is ruled by Mercury, I feel like I am seeing my life from multiple perspectives on this day. The New Moon invites us into beginnings, while Gemini reminds us that there is rarely only one story, one truth, or one way of understanding our lives. It is the sign of dialogue, curiosity, and multiplicity. Under this moon, I find myself in conversation not only with the present moment, but with generations of women whose lives continue to shape my own.
I believe that lived experience brings a richness, depth, and authenticity to theory. Many Indigenous traditions understood that stories make it easier to remember important lessons. Stories carry knowledge differently than facts alone. They allow wisdom to enter the body and remain there. As such, I continue to share fragments of my life in hopes that you might remember the wisdom I hope to impart.
Distress Tolerance and the Wisdom of Multiple Perspectives
Months before my birth, my grandmother died and my mother fell into a deep grief. She was a new immigrant, isolated and without the resources to attend fully to her mother's death or her own mourning. I spent nine months floating in the waters of death, unable to escape it. Depth therapist Violet Sherwood suggests that this kind of beginning can "seduce the child into believing its only orientation is towards death."
When distress arrived, I often oriented toward endings rather than possibilities. Loss felt more familiar than hope. Grief seemed more trustworthy than joy.
This is where the New Moon in Gemini offers an unexpected medicine. Gemini teaches that there is always more than one perspective available to us. It asks us to widen the frame.
Distress tolerance is the skill that widens the frame. It is the capacity to remain present with discomfort without being consumed by it. It is the ability to survive difficult emotions without needing to immediately escape, numb, fix, or explain them.
In this way, distress tolerance and Gemini share a common wisdom.
When we are distressed, our perspective narrows. We become convinced that the feeling we are experiencing is permanent, unbearable, or all-encompassing. Gemini invites another question: What else might be true?
I can be grieving and still be loved. I can be frightened and still be capable. The gift of Gemini is the knowledge that two things can be true at the same time.
From the forests of my ancestors, I am reminded that wisdom is rarely singular. A forest survives through diversity. Multiple species, multiple relationships, multiple pathways of nourishment and renewal coexist within a single ecosystem. Perhaps the psyche works in much the same way. Healing may not come from discovering a single truth, but from recognizing how many truths can coexist and support one another, like the countless forms of life that make a forest whole.
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The Witch's Therapist is located in London, Ontario and offers holistic psychotherapy therapy throughout London and surrounding areas.
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