Nearly a year has gone by since I last sat down to pen one of these letters. I was not sure then there would be a second opportunity to do so, just as I am not sure now there will be a third.
By this I do not mean that I am not sure of the supply of interest, talent, and spirit necessary in fellow babes to make the work that makes Moonrise. I mean that to make a third issue, or to make a fourth, will require me to step out of the familiar sources that I have drawn from to make these first two issues, and into spaces that will allow Moonrise to grow. I will have to sing its story louder and farther.
It’s a worthy and exciting prospect, but one that feels, at this moment, impossible—because I’ve just now finished doing it all again. And since I put out that call for submissions so many months ago, I wrote my master’s thesis, graduated from the program, left a job and began a new search, took on a new job, and new roles and responsibilities. I started running again, started hiking, and put more of my writing out into the world. I even went to California with my oldest friend (you may know Sam Limmer from Issue No. 1 and, if you’re lucky, life). And all throughout, I read your submissions and talked with you would-be contributors. I printed your words and took them outside with my lunch. I read them over my dinner at night, beneath the moonlight. And as I plodded forward on my ever-shifting terrain, your words and work were constant sources of energy that fed me and sustained me and renewed me.
I had my aura photographed not long after releasing the first issue. And if you read that first issue, you’ll remember the gorgeous essay on the ritual of aura photography as self care by Haley E.D. Houseman (and she’s back for this issue, too). I was a haze of green that radiated out to a blue. This, I was told, meant I was a nervous wreck. I was sitting on all my ideas for too long, needed to start releasing them into the world—that, and to eat more oranges. I had my aura photographed a second time, just before graduating, before stepping into the unfamiliar, but feeling more prepared to do so. This time, I was a wash of violet and purple, with remnants of blue still circling my center—Better, the reader said, though she did not remember me. But keep going.
Enough eventful time has passed that it is hard to guess (if ever possible) what my aura might show today, and what that might bode for Moonrise. Good, but keep going—or, Good, now onto something else. Will this be reborn again, or will we recycle our beautiful energy into something else? Time will tell, I guess. It always does.
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Written by Missy J. Kennedy.
Missy is the creator and editor of Moonrise, and lives in Boston with her plants. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @missyjkennedy.
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