When I moved into this house, I discovered a set of kitchen scales; you know, the kind. Cast iron, slightly chipped, a brass pan on one side and a little stack of weights on the other. Mine are of differing weights, with a big pound weight that could have doubled as a doorstop. I think for many people this will also be a fond memory – at least for the British.

I can still remember old-fashioned scales where you poured in the flour and added weights until the arm wobbled, hovered, dithered a bit more, and finally settled levelish. These always remind me of the doctor’s surgery where you stood on a scale, and he/she fiddled with getting the balance right.

You couldn’t rush scales. They found their balance in their own sweet time, rather like my dog Tommy, who has to lick all the yoghurt pots before a walk.

With the coming new moon, I have been reminded about scales and balance. There have been many times when the balancing act was a bit skew-whiff. I can see the scales in my mind’s eye.

On one pan I piled everything that had gone wrong: the betrayals, the failures, the things I’d said and the far more numerous things I hadn’t. The other held a few crumbs of good stuff, and I was faintly embarrassed about those. I think that I felt I had a heavy story, and so there wasn’t much balance.

When my spine fractured in 2018 (a heavy story), I had more ceiling-staring time than any woman could possibly want, and somewhere in all that staring I would often cogitate and reweigh things. What else can you do when you are in so much pain and nowhere to go?

When I look back on the fractures, I often think of that pain, but actually there’s a whole load of great stuff to balance it out. There was the kindness of my friends, my sheer bloody-mindedness to get up and heal, and the small miracle of a body still standing despite everything.

Moving was slow (a snail could have overtaken me and I’d have lost my fiver), yet the story was moving faster than I was. I, however, captured as much as I could in my journal and on my computer in a book I thought I would publish.

This is one of many stories, and writing and rewriting your life story is an interesting process. The facts stay put. What changes is what you place on the scales, how much weight you give each thing, and – most importantly who is holding the pen and making the choices about what to write. It is all about balance.

And as luck would have it, this new moon in Libra makes me think of those scales again and what balance I have in my life.

If you’re feeling lost, in between, dancing in the messy middle or as though your life has turned into a book or a miniseries for Netflix you never agreed to write, pull up a chair. This one’s for you.

When Is the New Moon?

Saturday 10 October 2026 – 5:50 PM in Spain. You can check the time with WorldTimeBuddy.

If you are anything like me, the exact time will pass you by, but remember that a new moon’s energy is felt for a few days on either side, so treat it as a long weekend and carve out some time to reflect. Anything from Friday to Monday is perfect for the writing that follows.

October on the Wheel of the Year: Reflection and Letting Go

October is the month of reflection and letting go, and the trees will be showing us how it’s done. Everything feels very autumnal here. Not so much shedding of the leaves here – not yet, but they are changing colour and getting ready to drop.

I love the way that nature knows just what to do. A tree doesn’t simply lose its leaves. It lets them turn and go on purpose. The gold is what’s revealed once the green has gone. One last flourish before they drop to the ground.

Consider that as a memoirist. Think of the cycles of your life and what has changed and what needed to be let go of.

In my Wheel of the Year, October holds five threads: embracing shadows, the power of release, transformation through acceptance, preparing for renewal, and gratitude. Each of them is a brilliant writing practice.

• Shadows are the stories we hide.
• Release is what happens when we finally write them down.
• Acceptance is reading them back without flinching (much).
• Renewal is the next chapter.
• Gratitude is noticing that, against all the odds, you’re still the one writing and perhaps seeing the gifts from your story.

The month ends with Samhain, which is where many mark the true end of the year – never mind what the calendar on the fridge says. That makes this the last new moon of the old year. A boundary line or threshold, and a rather good moment to decide what you’d like written for your next chapter.

The New Moon in Libra: What Kind of Moon Is This?

A new moon is the moon at her most hidden. She sits between the Earth and the Sun, her lit face turned away from us, and for a night or so she vanishes from the sky. In the old ways, this dark moon is the time for beginnings – for seeds to be planted, for wishes to be cast, for the first line of something new.

The moon always shows us the same face; from Earth, we never see her far side. At the new moon, when the side facing us is dark, the far side is bathed in full sunlight. The part of her we never get to see is completely lit.

Think of the other side of the moon as the parts of your story nobody sees – the untold bits, the private bits, the bits you’ve kept facing away from the world. Could these be the parts most full of light? That’s worth considering, isn’t it?

This new moon falls in Libra, the seventh sign of the zodiac, an air sign ruled by Venus. Libra’s season begins at the autumn equinox, when day and night are equal, and its symbol is the scales – the only sign of the zodiac represented by an object rather than a living creature. Libra is the sign of balance, fairness, beauty, and relationships.

Its shadow is rather less lovely. Libra energy out of balance is the people-pleaser, the fence-sitter, the woman who says, ‘Oh, I don’t mind, whatever you’d like’ while minding very much indeed and feeling resentful. I think we have all had experience of these things.

I am not an astrologer, so this is my super short summary of Libra.

Libra, Pondering the Weight of Words

The word libra is Latin for a pair of scales (balance scale), and also for a pound in weight (originally from Roman times) – which is why, to this day, we write pounds as ‘lb’. So… Ponder comes from the Latin ponderare, which means to weigh. To ponder your life is, quite literally, to weigh it. Ok. That was probably over the top, but I love to research things.

So when you sit down to write your life story, you’re doing exactly what Libra suggests. You’re putting experiences on the scales, deciding what they weigh and balancing whether to include them. Memoir comes from the Latin memoria; memory is a living thing that changes each time we ponder it. Which means your story can change too.

As an aside, it is also from the Anglo-French word memoire which refers to a written record or note intended to preserve the memory of an event or person.

Spiritual Aspects of the Month and the Moon

October carries us across a boundary, from the light half of the year into the dark half. The equinox has just passed, that brief moment of perfect balance, and now the nights draw in – which I am not keen on. Spiritually, this is a time of descent – going inward, going down into the roots, going back over everything the year has held.

As Samhain approaches, the veil between the worlds is said to thin. Whether you take that literally or poetically, it’s a season when the ancestors feel close, and with them the stories we inherited: the family scripts, the things nobody talked about, the ‘we don’t do that in this family’ and the ‘you’re just like your grandmother’. Some of these stories are treasures. Others are hand-me-downs that never fit.

Libra then brings the question of fairness, and the dark moon brings the invitation to begin again. Put the three together, and you have what I’ve come to call The Story Scales – a simple way to work with this moon in three movements.

• Look honestly at the story you’ve been telling. What’s on the scales, and what have you left off?
• Like the tree and its leaves, consider the lessons and gifts, and let go of what you no longer need to carry.
• In the dark of the moon, plant the first words of the story you want to live and write next.

I invite you to consider fairness. Many of us are incredibly fair to everyone in our story except ourselves. We give the other person the benefit of the doubt, the context, the backstory, the excuses. Ourselves, we give a verdict, and often it’s a bit damning. This moon asks you to put your own heart on the scales with the same kindness and compassion you’d offer your best friend. In other words, make yourself your best friend.

The Heart Chakra: Where Your Story Lives

As a big fan of the chakra system, I know that each sign belongs to an element, and each element connects to a chakra. Libra is an air sign, and air is the element of the heart chakra. Venus, Libra’s ruling planet, is also the heart’s planet. So it looks like it is all heart for this new moon.

For reference, the heart chakra sits behind the breastbone at the front and between the shoulder blades at the back. The colour is green, sometimes pink. Its right is the right to love and be loved, and the emotion that blocks it is grief.

The heart is the gateway between the three physical chakras below and the three spiritual chakras above. I’ve always thought of it as the place where what happened meets what it meant. Below it, the lower chakras hold the raw material of your life: survival, feeling, and identity. Above, the upper chakras give you voice, vision, and connection. And the heart is where the two meet and decide, together, which story to tell.

When the heart is out of balance, it shows up in your life and your writing. You might find yourself writing with a too-sharp pencil, settling scores, tipping the scales so far one way that nobody else in the story is allowed to be human. Or you might not write at all – frightened of hurting someone, frightened of the grief that might come up, frightened that if you open that particular portal you’ll never get it shut again.

When the heart is balanced, you can write the hard things with kindness and compassion – for the people who hurt you, for the people you hurt, and especially for the younger woman who did her best with what she knew. You can hold grief and gratitude in the same paragraph. And the scales begin to settle down, because you’ve finally allowed them to.

Grief deserves a special mention in October. The season itself is grieving – the light, the leaves, the warmth – and Samhain invites us to remember those we’ve lost. If grief rises as you write this month, let it come. Tears usually mean you’ve hit a nerve. I’ll admit to feeling quite a bit of grief recently.

I have a visualisation and some life writing prompts for you here. But before we finish, here’s a ritual for you to try.

Ritual: Weighing Your Words

Take three small pieces of paper. On the first, write something you’re ready to let go of – a story, a label, a grudge, an old version of yourself. On the second, write the lesson you’re taking back from it. On the third, write the first line of your next chapter.

Hold the first two, one in each hand, and feel their weight, as though your hands were scales. Then let the first go – burn it safely, bury it, or tear it up and add it to the compost so it can feed something new, which feels very October. Tuck the second into your journal and leave it there until the full moon. Review and write about what comes up and what came up between the two moons. With the third, open your journal and write some more.

Closing Reflections

I still have the old kitchen scales. I keep putting them in different places and contemplate giving them to charity, but something holds me back, and I think it’s because when I see them, I am reminded of balance. Balance is never somewhere you arrive and stay. It is something you keep returning to.

Your story works the same way. You can rewrite it at this moon and find yourself rewriting it again in five years, in ten, at eighty-five with a gin in your hand. Each rewrite is evidence that you’re still alive, still growing, and still paying attention. I’ve written my way home more times than I can count, and I fully expect to do it a few more times.

So this month, while the moon hides her face and the trees let go with dignity and grace, weigh your story gently. Take back the lessons. Let the rest fall. Be as fair to yourself as you are to everyone else. And then pick up the pen and write.

Come and Write With Me

If something stirred while you read this, you don’t have to write it alone.

The Soul Writers Lounge is where my community gathers to write their lives – the hard bits, the funny bits and all the bits in between – with gentle guidance, writing invitations, and the company of others who understand that a story can change a life. Come and pull up a chair.

And if you’re ready to give your memoir some shape, my Memoir Planner or Guide on Amazon will help you map your chapters, find your turning points and plan your story in manageable squares of chocolate.