Each full moon, I write to honor the wild rhythms of nature and the raw truths I carry inside. These are moments to reflect, grow, and be brave enough to be seen.
Beavers build their dams with instinct and intention. They drag branches, pack mud, create walls sturdy enough to slow a river, but they don’t try to stop the water entirely. How could they? Instead, these ingenious rodents leave strategic gaps, channels where the current can rush through. They understand something I’m only now admitting to myself: a dam that holds all the water will break.
They swim past my floating home sometimes at night, sleek shadows in the current. Beavers are Oregon’s state animal, the namesake of my childhood hometown, Beaverton. Under November’s Beaver moon, I think of them working in the slough to the south of my island, their ancient knowledge building structures that reshape the river itself.
My home is a kind of dam too. Someone designed it to ride the Columbia’s power, to flex with the pressure rather than fight it. The moorage chains creak with the tides, but it holds because it knows where to let the water flow.
I think about how I’ve been trying to hold back the whole river by myself.
When the Water Rises
Since my layoff, I’ve been fervently growing my business, which is its own kind of dam. The branches and mud are timelines and templates, the river the flow of work coming from new clients. Calendars lashed every hour into place, emails stacked processes into shape. I worked before dawn and past dark, building and building to keep money coming in.
The structure worked until it didn’t.
November came, and I realized I’d said yes to every author with an idea, every client who deserved my best work. I told myself I was building a business, but my building was tottering. By the time projects started stacking up against the same weak point, the water was already too high. That weak point was me.
No Room for More
As I struggled under the weight, a treasured author came to me with a project. Beautiful work, important work, exactly what I started Lingua Ink to support. I looked at my dam, at the water already pressing hard against every plank, and I knew.
“I can’t do this,” I told her.
The words stuck in my throat. I am building a publishing company to help authors. That is the whole point! And here I was, turning one away because I didn’t have the capacity.
“Can we get someone to help?” she asked.
I felt giddy at this obvious answer. I know how to work in teams, to manage. The beauty of cooperative work was right in front of me last month. I was the one who had to let go of the idea that I could do everything. It was time to build a release point in the dam.
We started looking for an artist, a Lingua Ink intern, someone who could take this work and run with it. I sat in meetings with potential collaborators, explaining what the author needed, what the project required. Each meeting brought relief that I wasn’t drowning alone, and fear that I was admitting out loud, to strangers, that I couldn’t hold the whole river by myself.
The water found a new channel. The pressure eased.
Building with Help
I’m learning where the release points need to be. Like every business owner before me, I need to direct the work to people who can do it well, and to design a system that serves everyone, including me.
The beavers know this instinctively. They check their dams every day, looking for weak points, adjusting the structure, opening channels when the water rises too high. They don’t see it as failure when they let water through, but as survival.
I’m very slowly rebuilding my dam with help now. The intern search continues as I vet new collaborators, find channels where others’ expertise can flow into the work. It’s uncomfortable. I hear myself listing all the things I can’t handle, and part of me still wants to take it all back, to prove I can do it alone.
But the structure is holding better now. I can breathe.
Toward Relief
The Beaver Moon sets low over the Columbia, casting one last silver trail across the choppy water. November wind gusts cold against my face. The current runs strong beneath my floating home, but the structure holds. It rocks gently, safely tethered, letting the water move as it needs to move.
The river will always flow. Work will always come. Tonight, standing here under this moon, I’m learning when to ride the currents, when to build, and when to say “I’ve got the right person to do that for you.”
I’m learning when to let the water flow.
