The Worm Moon: When Change Starts Underground

March doesn’t arrive with a bang.

The land still looks spare. Trees hold back. The air can feel undecided — sharp one day, soft the next. And yet, if you walk slowly enough, it’s clear that something has begun.

In the woods this month, the first wild garlic has appeared. Thin green blades needling up through bare soil as if the earth itself is waking and stretching. It’s easy to miss if you’re rushing. Easy to walk straight past if you’re looking for obvious signs that spring has arrived.

Wild garlic is an ancient woodland indicator species. It doesn’t grow just anywhere. It needs the right conditions — soil that’s been undisturbed for generations, a system that’s intact enough to support slow, layered life.

That feels important.

Because real change tends to arrive like this too — quietly, locally, only where the conditions are right.

The Worm Moon marks the moment when movement begins underground. The frost loosens its grip. The soil warms just enough. Roots wake before anything above ground looks different. From the outside, it can feel anticlimactic. The landscape hasn’t transformed. Nothing is flowering yet. There’s no obvious proof that anything is happening.

And that’s exactly why this stage is so hard to trust.

In my work as a psychotherapist, this is the phase people struggle with most. There’s a felt sense that something is shifting, but no clear evidence. No decisions made yet. No external changes to point to. Just an unease that something is no longer settled where it was.

For anxious nervous systems, this uncertainty can be deeply uncomfortable. We’re conditioned to look for visible signs of progress — action, clarity, movement we can explain. When those don’t appear quickly, people assume they’re doing it wrong.

But the woods don’t rush to show their work.

As the wild garlic pushes up, the leaf litter gets disturbed. Hidden animal tracks are revealed — paths that were always there, but only become visible once the ground shifts. The change doesn’t create the tracks. It reveals them.

That’s often how internal change works, too.

What looks like confusion is sometimes reorganisation. What feels like restlessness can be the nervous system testing new ground. The urge to intervene — to decide, fix, or force clarity — often comes from discomfort with not knowing, rather than from readiness.

Seasonal change doesn’t begin where it’s visible. It begins where it’s protected.

Underground is where fragile shoots can form without being exposed too early. Where growth can stabilise before it’s asked to perform. Intervention too soon often disrupts what’s trying to establish itself.

If March feels unfinished, vague, or oddly unsettled, it doesn’t mean nothing is happening. It means the work is still underground.

Growth doesn’t announce itself at first. It roots.

And learning to trust that process — without digging everything up to check — is part of how change becomes sustainable.

If things feel quietly unsettled right now, try not to rush yourself into proof. Some changes need darkness and time before they’re ready to be seen. Let what’s underground do its work.

— Sarah x