Moons and Junes and Fucking Eclipse Seasons
Or, Sara Delgado's Annual Celebrated Return to E4P
Friends, I haven’t been sleeping well lately. If you’re not new to E4P, you may be saying, Yeah, no shit, Emily. That’s kind of what “having insomnia” entails. Which is fair! You’d be correct to respond as such!
But this lack of sleep has been cutting deeper than your garden variety insomnia: I’ve been going to bed, I’ve been taking my melatonin,1 I’ve been sleeping—just not well. For the past week and change, I’ve been spending most nights in what I think is best described as a non-lavender haze, where my body is asleep but my mind is perceptive and active, and I wake up feeling slightly outside of myself.
In college, one of my roommates was very in touch with the moon and had some homeopathic practices that bordered on the occult. I ate it all up and learned from her that I, personally, am deeply affected by lunar cycles. This is why I knew I would feel some ramifications from tomorrow’s lunar eclipse in Pisces, but I still didn’t expect things to feel this disjointed.
(If my talking about eclipses here on E4P sounds familiar, you’re right in your assumptions of what I’m going to say next.)
In a true act of the universe’s divine timing, today’s piece was meant to run earlier this summer but somehow ended up here and now by chance—I promise!!!!. This week, I’m joined by Sara Delgado for her annual E4P check-in. It’s been nearly two years since our original conversation about going through major life changes, and over a year since we touched base for E4P 100. And, in case you forgot, each of our previous pieces also took place along the axis of an eclipse.
Candidly, this piece has taken so many shapes: Initially, I wanted to spend the whole time talking about Sara’s summer spent traveling around the country and then through Italy; from there, I wanted to ask her about loving and leaving New York (temporarily—don’t worry) and what she learned from her time here; then I begged her to go full Dolly Alderton and tell me everything she knows about love.
What came about instead is both a melding of all of that and none of it at the same time. On the phone, we talked about gossip and men and our astrological charts. In our lives, Sara’s having a whirlwind jet-setting adventure while I can’t seem to find my way out of my daydreamland. As such, this piece is a quintessential Sara-and-Emily-E4P-Messaround in that we cover a little bit of everything in a way that is as glamorous (Sara) as it is wistful (me).
Sara Delgado is a
n Atlanta-basedBrooklyn-basedsuitcase-based writer, product marketer, and in the words of Thorgy Thor (circa RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars Season 2), "she's actually not a witch, just an eccentric Gemini." Hailing from San Francisco but raised in Atlanta, Sara is a self-proclaimed city girl with a soft spot for southern hospitality. Despite having eaten atnearly450500hundreds of restaurantsin Atlantaaround the world, Sara doesn't see herself as a foodie but more so just as a really good eater.When Sara isn't writing or launching features, you can find her sipping martinis,
enjoying her “1989era”plotting out her next chapter of life in New York City, and wondering, "What's for dinner?"
I’m Another Year Older, Sure…But You Want Me to Be Wiser Too???
The first piece I wanted to write with Sara was simply a circle back to close the loop—a check-in, if you will, on the developments in Sara’s life since last July…which is kind of the introduction in and of itself.
I wanted to kick things off by asking Sara:
Emily: How has your life changed since we last talked? What are some of your favorite highlights?
Sara: I love this Billie Eilish Vanity Fair moment for us.
Let’s see—the last time we spoke was a year ago for the 100th E4P!! Wow, what an honor. Well, I’m currently homeless. Unhoused? Untethered? I am living in my parents’ basement trying to move back to NYC after a summer abroad.
Immediate highlights: spotting John Slattery across the bar at Sugarfish, watching my best friend get married in Italy, and maybe turning 30?
Emily: How has the change you experienced over the past two and a half years brought you to this point?
Sara: Oh, you mean my fight or flight just being on, all the time? I’m still very much “winging it,” but now I think I’m doing it with a bit more confidence.
Emily: What was the best lesson you learned while living in New York, and what has been the best lesson you've learned since leaving?
Sara: That you get what you give. Friendships, career, relationships, self-improvement, the subway, etc. NYC rewards effort.
Don’t be afraid to give a fuck, even if it means falling flat. When things inevitably work out (because they will), it feels so good.
Emily: Do you feel like you're living in alignment with yourself? If so, how do you know and what got you here?
Sara: Yes and no. I’m the kind of person who’s ready to press the reset button at any point. I know better than to get too comfortable. I fear complacency, so I’m always ready and willing to scrap and start over.
I feel most aligned when I’m in tune with my intuition (the little voice in my head) and being true to myself.
Emily: What is something you know now that you wished you had known at the time of our first interview?
Sara: THAT IT IS ALL GOING TO BE OKAY. I think I knew that, but I was so scared that I kept stacking the cards against me. Now I’m more of a Winston Churchill, might as well be an optimist, doesn’t make sense to be anything else.
That and to just hang on, trust the process, and be kind to yourself—you know all that self-love nonsense. It is absolutely not nonsense, but it’s hard to love yourself when you don’t really know what “self” is. And that shit takes time.
As someone who feels as though I am starting to truly come into alignment with myself now at 26—perhaps I’m starting my Saturn return a tad early…?—I wanted to highlight something Sara said casually at the start of our conversation that I spent days after thinking about:
Emily: In our chat, you told me about how at your 26th birthday party, you said, "I feel like I caught up with myself," which is something that really resonated with me. There's not really a proper question here, but I just wanted to give you a space to discuss that.
Sara: It’s kind of like—maybe you also did this when you were a little girl—playing dress up in your mom’s clothes. Walking around in shoes that are too big for you, pretending to be an adult. Or at least what you think an adult is in your very limited scope of life. 26 was the year where I felt the shoes fit.
In another version of this piece, I would ramble for a bit about the fact that this comment gave me goosebumps when Sara said it. But for now, the notes of nostalgia in this response make for a very hapazard—albeit fitting—transition to our next almost piece section.
Moons and Junes and Fucking Eclipse Seasons
If you follow Sara on Instagram (which I honestly assumed everyone did after her stint on our It Girl Panel), you likely saw her touring throughout Italy, doing incredible things in even better outfits. But, if we’ll recall, I shared during Sara’s first visit that
when Sara and I talked, I confessed that I had suspected she was going through some big changes offline but that her gorgeous social media presence confused me and held me back from reaching out in case everything was as it seemed. To me, she still appeared to be the woman who had it all, so who was I to question that?
Knowing Instagram is, of course, by no means truly reflective of reality, I wanted to pull on a thread of our offline conversation and ask:
Emily: You used the phrase "show up summer" to describe your travels. Can you explain what that is and what you did?
Sara: Traveling on my own for six weeks from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and then all around Italy gave me so much downtime to just be with myself. So “show up summer,” to me, was showing up for the day in a very, very active way.
I would get up in the morning and just own my place in the world, take up the space that I was given. Plan out my day and move accordingly. Whether that meant dragging 80 lbs of my shit across cobblestones in Rome or being as present as humanly possible at my best friend’s week of wedding festivities—I showed up!
Emily: What was your experience like solo traveling? Did anything surprise you about it?
Sara: I think when we picture someone traveling solo through Italy, we picture some kind of carefree wanderlust-rich main character.
Solo traveling showed me that freedom doesn’t come from throwing caution to the wind. Real freedom comes from planning ahead and thinking every step through so that you know what’s in your control versus what isn’t.
I hear that, I really do, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking Sara:
Emily: Did you eat, pray, and love?
Sara: Yes, kind of, and yes. Does reading aloud Ying Yang Twins lyrics at dinner count as praying?
Pivoting slightly—but keeping in theme with one of my all-time favorite lyrics which is generously paraphrased for this section’s header—I wanted to know:
Emily: Is it almost time for an eclipse?
Sara: Oh my god, yes. We’re on the cusp of eclipse season right now with a full moon and eclipse tomorrow. How do we keep doing these around eclipses?
As it turns out, we’ve never actually discussed what an eclipse is in any of our chats. Eclipses are both astronomical and astrological events. Astronomically, “eclipses occur when the sun, the moon, and Earth align perfectly, casting a shadow that changes the visual appearance of the sun or moon…Lunar eclipses…occur when the Earth wedges itself between the sun and the moon, transforming the moon’s bright silver surface into an eerie, dark-red veneer (hence why lunar eclipses are often referred to as ‘blood moons’)” (X).
Astrologically, “eclipses occur when the moon reaches the upper or lower boundary of its orbit, activating celestial points known as the north and south nodes that are associated, in astrology, with destiny, fate, karma, and legacy” (X). Tomorrow’s lunar eclipse additionally marks
a time of sudden realizations, epiphanies, culminations, and turning points, particularly related to work and service as well as our need for downtime, rest, and spiritual replenishment.
This Lunar Eclipse presses us to look more closely at what we feel is lacking in our lives. Virgo rules the tools and techniques we use to deal with day-to-day life, while Pisces rules the tools we use to deal with our spiritual selves. The key to balance is identifying and expressing our spiritual needs while maintaining order in our everyday lives. Neglecting either end of the axis will surely backfire–we would either be living in chaos or excessive order.
It’s a time to take special note of our dreams and insights or thoughts/emotions that seem to come from “out of the blue.” Secrets may reveal themselves, and these can include discovering secrets within ourselves. For some, a new “calling” will surface in the weeks and months ahead.
We may realize that we need more rest or attention to our spiritual natures than we currently allow ourselves. Decisions made now can be emotionally driven. Because one area of our lives is magnified while another is hidden, it’s best to wait and see (X).
As astrologer Aliza Kelly recently explained in The Cut,
the last time we had eclipses on the Virgo-Pisces axis was between 2015 and 2017, so looking back at what was going on in your life in that era (I recommend looking through your photos or pulling up some old emails), you may be able to gauge what themes will be resurfacing this time around. Keep in mind, however, that these eclipses will be reversing the story from nine years ago (back then, the north node was in Virgo; this time, the north node is in Pisces), so even if the situations feel similar, their outcomes will be markedly different.
Before I read that, I had texted Sara that I was feeling a tad nostalgic putting this piece together while listening to music I used to love when I started college in 2016. This conversation came just a few days after we realized that we had unknowingly rescheduled the piece in sync with the eclipse, and after I confessed to seeing angel numbers so frequently that it felt like they were slapping me in the face.
What I mean to say by all of this is that I feel like there’s some grand point I should be making or building toward in this piece but I can’t figure out what it is. It’s like trying to solve the world’s hardest Where’s Waldo puzzle and being entirely unable to find what it is I’m looking for. I don’t know if it’s the eclipse or the lack of sleep causing this, or if the moon is causing the lack of sleep and therefore the road block in my grandstanding.
But in any case, I fear that I’ve waxed (and waned—moon pun) on for long enough, and that after three pieces only just orbiting around talking solely about eclipses, you’re all likely thinking to yourselves:
So I will…for now.
This Is We…Now
One of the throughlines connecting our conversations has been the changes in my and Sara’s relationships with happiness. When we first talked, Sara told me that “I prioritized my happiness as it existed in our relationship, instead of asking myself: ‘what makes Sara happy?’” During her next visit, I made sure to ask:
Emily: Have you started asking yourself, "What makes Sara happy?"
Sara: Yes! And you know what? She’s so much easier to please than you’d think.
Emily: What makes Sara happy?
Sara: The kouign-amann at L’Appartement 4F, the theatrics that go into preparing the Old King Cole martini at Maison Premiere, a bottle of really good champagne—to name a few.
But I’m happiest when I’m surrounded by the people I love. Preferably gathered around the table, passing plates, sharing stories, pouring wine, and laughing—lots and lots of laughter.
So it only felt natural to ask:
Emily: What makes Sara happy right now?
Sara: The cheeseburger at Pastis.
Emily: If you had to boil it down to one thing, why are you happier now than you were in November 2022?
Sara: Time.
If you haven’t yet fallen prey to my Instagram-influencing charms, you may not have known that I’ve been taking pictures of my outfits in the bathroom every day since I started at my job. Initially, they were only meant to be sent to Hannah to document my first week, but then I continued to document them when I realized it made my life infinitely easier to have a Cher Horowitz-esque lookbook of outfits should I find myself running late without a look planned most mornings.
As I’ve started sharing these photos with people besides Hannah over the past year and a half, I’ve heard the same comment from nearly everyone who sees them: You look happier now. It’s intoxicating feedback to receive, to know the work you do with yourself when no one is watching has found its way back into your smile—and your cow print cowboy boots.
When I shared this with Sara, she told me she had had the same experience recently when she had put a photo taken right after her breakup side-by-side with one taken at her best friend’s wedding this summer. She described them as mirror images—in the old photo, her sadness was clear despite the smile on her face. But in the new one, her happiness while swimming in an Italian pool surrounded by love was undeniable.
Dare I say it? It made me wistful to juxtapose the people Sara and I were back then with who we are today and to think about all that has happened in the past two years to get us here now. Before we shut the door to the spiritual realm of everything that happened in 2022, I was curious to know:
Emily: The first time we talked, you were coming off of a major breakup. What roles and shapes have dating, love, and relationships taken in your life since then?
Sara: They’ve taken shape in a number of ways. During the last E4P, I was definitely still in the trenches but it’s been over two years, so I’m finally in the clear and “over it.” Giving myself permission to actually want to date has been really, really terrifying. Letting someone get to know you is so hard, especially when my bar for chemistry and connection is set in such a high place.
I think NYC is also just a treacherous place to date in general. Finding someone you connect with is probably not even the hard part—it’s more, would I be willing to give up one shred of my independence and autonomy for this stranger?
Do you hear that, Men of Bumble?????
Emily: What thing (material or not) have you been the happiest to lose, and what have you been the happiest to gain since our first conversation?
Sara: Can I name names? Just kidding.
I’ve parted ways with the grief and heartbreak that sort of consumed my first year of living in New York. In exchange, I’ve gained a blank slate, or what feels like one. I feel like I get to really rewrite the rules on romance and relationships and that’s given me a lot of hope.
And finally, because there is nothing in this world I love more than when art references something from the beginning to show that we have arrived at the end of our time together (that’s a lie—roll with it), I wanted to close out this year’s piece with Sara by asking:
Emily: Is it giving Billie Eilish yet?
Sara: She’s far more poetic than I, but I think so? I did my best, folks!
Thank you forever and ever to Sara not just for joining me annually but for being a few steps ahead of me in life so I have someone to tell me if things are really scary up ahead (spoiler: they are)!!! I cannot wait to see what next year’s piece—and, ostensibly, our lives—look like!!!!
Save the lecturing about how it will fuck up my sleep cycle, double it, and pass it on to the next person.