The Data Was in My Journal All Along: A Year of Notes, One Accidental Variable That Changed My Life
- Get Connected with Brooke
- Dec 29, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 15
For years, I blamed my hormones.
Doctors did too.
When frustration elevated at certain points of the month, when my patience thinned, or my energy shifted, the explanation was easy, understandable, and medically sound. Hormones fluctuate. Stress compounds. Life is demanding. All of that still holds very true to a certain depth, and I don’t discount it.
In 2025, I was journaling for a simple reason. To record my year.
I was tracking my thoughts, emotions, productivity, patterns, and lived experience as they unfolded in real time. The intention was reflection, not research. Healing, not hypothesis.
At some point early in the year, purely out of curiosity and honestly just for fun, I began noting the current moon phase at the top of each journal entry. There was no belief system I was trying to follow. No outcome I was trying to prove. It was simply an added data point. A timestamp beside my words.
Month after month, those notes sat quietly next to my entries.
It wasn’t until much later, while reading back through the year, that something unexpected revealed itself.
Patterns I could not ignore. Emotional shifts that repeated themselves. Creative surges and cognitive dips aligning with the same lunar phases again and again.
Only after giving myself the space to look back did I realize what I had been recording all along.
What unfolded over that year left me with absolute certainty. The moon phases played a huge role in my emotional state, productivity, cognitive clarity, and reactionary patterns.
Perhaps that influence is hormonal as well. That is beyond my current knowledge base, and I won’t speak outside of what I know.
So I’ll speak to what I do know.
The New Moon: Where My Creativity Was Born
I began noticing something I hadn’t expected: the data I’d been quietly recording in my journal all year was whispering its patterns to me.
What the Data Was in My Journal Whispered to Me
What became undeniable is that my creative spark thrived the week leading up to a new moon.
To the point that by October, I was intentionally booking myself to be in my office the week before a new moon. I had learned my body and its cycles well enough to know I did not need to be wasting my creativity elsewhere, because following the new moon, I would naturally begin to shift into a different mindset.
Not a good thing. Not a bad thing. Just awareness of what was to follow.
The new moon became my fresh slate. My blank canvas.
It brought out the poetic and romantic side of me. I swam in depth, feeling, and expression. My mind is clicking. Flowing. Natural and welcomed.
What stood out most was that this pattern did not change based on ovulation. It was not tied to my menstrual cycle in the way I had been conditioned to believe. It aligned specifically with the new moon.
That distinction mattered.
After the New Moon: From Creation to Construction
Following the new moon, I was still in that creative mindset, but I quickly moved into a more analytical space.
My expression wasn’t there. New ideas weren’t arriving. But my productivity remained.
It felt like, Okay Brooke, you painted the canvas. Now assess it. Now work with what you created.
Not blocked. Not broken. Just different.
Understanding this removed so much self-judgment.
The First Quarter Moon: Neutral Ground
Then came the first quarter moon.
And interestingly, I noted almost nothing.
Across all twelve months, there were no significant emotional, cognitive, or energetic shifts during this phase. No peaks. No valleys.
Just normal.
That neutrality itself became information.
The Waxing Gibbous: The Weight of The Pull
Moving into the waxing gibbous, my journaling took a different tone.
Not about work. About life.
I felt heavier in both body and mind. Reading back through those entries, frustration is unmistakable. Which tells me I was likely emitting that energy outward and manifesting poorly during those windows.
In the office, concentration was difficult. Coffee was needed more than ever, yet the caffeine brought anxiety into my chest rather than clarity into my mind.
I relied heavily on my personal and professional assistants during this phase, delegating tasks I typically handle with ease. Both women have worked with me for over three years, and whether consciously noticed or not, they adapted to this rhythm.
I also struggled to retrieve words during this time. Sentences stalled. Thoughts felt pulled.
Imagine that.
A moon strong enough to pull oceans and tides capable of making a human feel pulled as well.
How we’ve gone this long without fully understanding the impact is astonishing.
Watching this play out and documenting it was truly life-changing.
The Full Moon: Surrender, Not Power
And then there was the full moon.
By November, I accepted a new truth. During the full moon, I was a werewolf.
Perhaps this is where folklore comes from. Changing into a beast. Heightened, reactive, unfamiliar. I may explore that curiosity one day just to tickle my fancy.
But here’s what I learned.
During full moons, my students believed they needed Power Yoga. They showed up heavy and pressed, similar to how I felt internally. Expecting cardio. Sun salutations. Vinyasa pace.
What they actually needed was the opposite.
I began offering softer flows. Longer holds. Less push.
I watched them resist at first. Fight the stillness. Then slowly surrender. Renew.
What stood out most to me were the students who are normally the ones pressing it. The ones who always accept the more challenging cues and postures. The ones who thrive on effort and intensity.
During the full moon, they were different.
They were out of breath quickly. Choosing child’s pose over another down dog. Pausing where they would normally push through. I could see them fighting with themselves on the mat, almost confused, as if wondering what was wrong with them that day.
Nothing was wrong.
Their bodies were simply responding to a pull they weren’t used to acknowledging.
Watching that collective experience unfold confirmed what I was feeling in myself. When everything is being drawn outward, strength doesn’t come from effort. It comes from permission to stop resisting what the body is already asking for.
When the moon is pulling everything out of us, we don’t have much left to give.
We may want to press through out of frustration or stuck emotion, but what the body is asking for is rest. Release. Permission to let go.
The Waning Gibbous: Preparing for What Comes Next
As the cycle moved into the waning gibbous phase, a noticeable shift occurred. The physical and mental heaviness that had defined the days prior began to ease, and my body responded with a sense of relief, as though it could finally breathe. While I was not fully restored to a high-performance state, my mind began to return gradually. Creativity was not yet in full bloom, but clarity was emerging.
This period became a time of reflection and discernment. I found myself considering what I was about to bring into my life, what needed to change, and what required modification. It was a phase of quiet assessment rather than initiation, where intention formed before action resumed.
During this time, I was able to work best independently. Collaborative demands, coaching calls, and travel-related meetings felt misaligned with the internal recalibration taking place. Instead, this phase supported focused, solitary work that allowed ideas and decisions to settle without pressure.
Life, of course, does not pause simply because awareness increases. There are moments when showing up is unavoidable. However, understanding this pattern has allowed me to approach my schedule with greater intention. Rather than working against my body, I now use this awareness to protect my time and plan accordingly. That shift alone has significantly improved the sustainability of both my work and my well-being.
What 2025 Gave Me
It made me aware.
Aware of when to create and when to execute. When to rest and when to delegate. When surrender is wisdom, not weakness.
Most importantly, it restored trust in my body.
Not everything needs fixing. Not every shift is a problem.
Some are simply cycles asking to be honored.
And once you learn to listen, everything begins to work with you instead of against you.
You can say not to follow the stars. You can call it woo-woo if you want. But if you desire to understand yourself, your body, and your patterns on a more intimate scale, I highly suggest building a relationship with the moon. Not to worship it. Not to follow it blindly. Simply to observe it. To notice yourself alongside it. I invite you to talk to the moon. To listen. And to see what it reflects back to you. As we move into 2026, perhaps start simply.
You don’t need to fully journal if that feels like too much. I know journaling is a discipline, and not everyone is drawn to that level of commitment. Instead, consider installing a moon app on your phone. The one I use is called Moon. It’s free and includes a prompted journal entry, which makes it easy for those who aren’t fully committed to journaling, those who prefer simple but thoughtful reflection, or those living very chaotic schedules.
When you have a really great day or a really hard one, simply note it. That’s it. No deep analysis. No story. Just the moment. Over time, you may begin to notice patterns. Or you may not. Either way, you’re gathering your own data, in your own body, on your own timeline. Awareness has a way of revealing what’s worth paying attention to.