For the Birds: Bug Oracles!

Plus moon phase prompts to support creative reflection

Thanks for reading For the Birds! Dear creative souls, writers, & HSPs: If you’re seeking one-on-one support with your journey, I offer Resiliency Coaching, strengths-based editing services, and other short-term coaching opportunities. Interested? Fill out my inquiry form below, or write to me directly at sarah.teresa.cook@gmail.com.

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Moon Phase Prompts

These prompts are meant to facilitate reflection on your creative channel as a whole. They can be used once, or repeatedly over the course of multiple moon cycles. Begin based on where you are currently, or wait for your preferred phase…

In other words: Here you go! / Trust yourself.

New Moon - When it comes to your creativity, what’s the relationship between beginnings / initiations / first drafts, and what isn’t visible?

When it comes to your creativity, what isn’t visible, but is still there?

First Quarter Moon - The moon is a perpetual student. Sitting in a classroom in the sky, it has just raised its hand. It would like to ask you a question about your creativity. What’s it asking you?

You’re not looking for the answer here; you’re looking for the question.

Full Moon - What’s the difference between sacrifice and surrender? Explore through free writing or collage.

Alternatively, meditate on the following: How are releasing and planting similar gestures? Like how we release seeds into the dirt; like how we plant things that no longer serve us back into the world, where they might transform into something useful for someone else.

Third Quarter Moon - A time of rest, of shedding, and of recovery. A time of slowing down, simmering, idling. A time where things may crack a little, or start to fall away. Think specifically about an expectation that you have of your creativity that your creativity has outgrown. This expectation is an old outfit, and it may have once fit nicely, but it’s too tight now. It makes your creativity feel wrongly shaped.

Set the intention, on the next new moon, to help your creativity choose some new, comfortable, more flattering clothes.

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If you’re new to my bug oracles, welcome! The short version is this: I used to be afraid of bugs—like, dysregulation meets reoccurring nightmares kind of afraid—and now I love them. This change is the result of three things: choice, extreme patience, and devotion. When combined, these three ingredients create palpable magic.

Here’s how Bug Oracles work: When you encounter one of the bugs below out in the world, return to its corresponding message. Try to read it with a neutral-to-loving curiosity as you consider the direction it’s pointing you in. Notice if you feel surprised, or maybe the opposite.

These oracular messages are crafted with Creativity front of mind, but that doesn’t mean they don’t spill into other areas of life. Creativity touches everything. Depending on your oracle, you might read the message head on, or at a slant.

Why these bugs? I don’t know how to answer that! Just know that different bugs show up in different seasons—which is both metaphor and biology—and that these are the ones carrying messages for you at this particular moment of time and space.

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Praying Mantis

Your oracular message has shown up in the form of an affirmation. It is very simple, and extremely direct.

The affirmation says, “I don’t ruin things.”

You, whoever you are, and whatever your creativity does or doesn’t look like these days: You do not ruin a single thing your inspiration touches. You just don’t.

Lacewing

What’s an assumption you’ve been making about your creativity? No, no…I’m not asking because I’m going to tell you you’re wrong or that you’ve made an ass out of yourself. I’m asking because our assumptions, even when misguided, still tell us something vital about where we’re at, and what we’re needing.

So, first thing’s first: Where are you?

Fly

Look, hard things are hard—this is an established piece of wisdom in my household. But here’s the other side of that truth: Good things can be easy, too. Successes can be easy. Joy can be easy. Discovery can be easy. The next step forward can be easy.

What I’m trying to say is that hardship does not get to own achievement.

And what I’m trying to say is that easy things can still be deliciously, brilliantly, gigantically good. What easy, good thing have you been giving the cold shoulder to?

Jumping Spider

Is your home where your heart is? Is your home where your eyes peer and where your legs rest? Is your home where your body feels safest, unspooled? Is your home where your attention goes? Is your home where your attention, wholeheartedly, is going?

What will your attention do when it gets there, honey? And how will you feel?

I’m talking about home, but I’m talking about home as a way to talk about the body, and I’m talking about the body as a way to talk about love. These three are triangulating in order to tell you something your Creativity needs to hear.

Katydid or cricket

What’s something you want—like, really want? So sharply and sincerely that it almost feels too scary to want it.

You have two options here, both of which are about releasing your grip on expectations.

One is to concoct an understanding of why it’s ok if you don’t fulfill the wanting. It’s not about vanquishing the want, but letting some air into the room of expectations.

The other is to look for the possibility of satisfaction within the act of wanting in the first place; to notice whether desire is not only a means, but an end. What does the experience of wanting offer you?

The katydid and its friend, the cricket, are asking you: Which option serves you best? Which option is the more creative one?

Antlion

Antlion is asking you to recall that anything is possible and/but nothing lasts forever. In this way, Antlion is smashing two clichés together in search of something less clichéd and more interesting, more palpable. Pulpy, like cocoon juice.

When you stretch your arms across your body and reach for your shoulder blades, hugging yourself, what feels possible? When you let the anything-ness of life intersect with the truth of temporality, says Antlion, what feels possible then?

Moth

A single day is a boundaried amount of time and space. “The day” is a construct. The day is a cocoon. In the grand scheme of all of time unfolding, one day is a pretty low-stakes amount.

On this day, today, what will you use your 24-hour cocoon for? What is this single day, which you’ve spun yourself, protecting you from? What is it letting you create inside its temporary walls? What kind of wild, joyful experiment will this particular handful of hours be?