I’ve grown to truly love Crone Cocktail Hour.
Each month just before the new moon, Karen Marie Shelton, Ossiana Tepfenhart, and I gather round a Substack live and talk about our intentions for the next lunar cycle. Karen regales us with her deep astrological cuts, Ossiana offers wisdom from her familiars, and I take it all in and learn.
And you know what? Every damn thing I’ve set intention on for 2026 has manifested. We make some powerful magic.
This month’s conversation covered astrology, grief, creativity, love, burnout, motherhood, dead pets, manifestation, and the terrifying reality of trying to turn art into a sustainable life.
Karen and Ossiana opened the night talking about the upcoming Taurus new moon: think self-care, grounding, money, rest, romance, and the need to stop living with your hair on fire.
From there, things got surprisingly emotional.
I talked about losing my sweet kitty Josie on Mother’s Day, the strange symbolism of childhood pets disappearing just as children begin leaving home, and the realization that the next few years of my life are going to look radically different than the last twenty.
Ossiana shared that she and her guy Yanni Hamburger are finally meeting in person after falling in love online—and may already be planning a wedding. Karen, naturally, had apparently predicted all of it astrologically months ago. I’m telling you, she’s got strange powers and I’m here for it.
And somewhere in the middle of discussing flies invading my hundred-year-old house, I accidentally landed on the real conversation underneath the conversation: the fear that creative work dies if the person making it can no longer afford to sustain it.
The flies became a metaphor for all the tiny unpaid drains on energy, time, attention, and money that slowly wear creators down until something beautiful becomes impossible to maintain.
Which led to a larger conversation about monetizing creative work, asking for help, building community, and the difference between going viral versus building something sustainable. That’s my intention for the new moon. I want my creative work to start to sustain my life, in all ways—including financially. This is an enormous shift for me to contemplate. I’m kind of terrified. But also: intentions are set. So watch out, world.
Thank you Jennifer Heinen, ShālahBPookie - TheRebelCrone, Noble Blend, Jai C. Porter🇨🇦, Ms.Yuse, and many others for tuning in.
Thanks for listening.
I’m Dana DuBois, an essayist and GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest—and founder of I Write Out Loud and co-host of The Daily Whatever Show. Through memoir writing, I explore the larger cultural forces shaping relationships, feminism, parenting, media, modern dating, and life in mid-flight. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.
If this story resonated with you, please consider supporting my work with a paid subscription.
