

Your Weekly Horoscopes (Jan 1-7)
Happy New Year!
2018 greets us with a bright and juicy Cancer Full Moon that promises to bring emotional balance where it is needed. Cancer the sign of Home, Hearth and Family, governs the taproot that links us back to our ancestors. Classically, Cancer is the deepest part of our chart that we like to protect with the Crab's hard crusty shell. We're highly sensitive under this Full Moon as it illuminates the part of our lives that seeks to be nurtured while also fiercely defending nostalgic familial memories.
Cancer is the opposing and balancing sign to Capricorn, the sign where the Sun, Venus and Saturn have all been working hard together to get you to achieve your ambitions. Let this Cancer Full Moon pull you back to be balanced, nourished, and taken care of so that you'll have the energy to continue climbing your particular Saturn in Capricorn mountain.
Aries
Go home, Aries! That's right, close your laptop, or whatever work project you happened to bring home over the holidays. While you've found yourself mainly focused on your reputation and career ambitions, this Full Moon is bringing the focus back home. Time spent with family, close friends, or alone in your pajamas will recharge your batteries so that you can continue your ambitious mountain climb towards success.
Taurus
You may want to make a few dates to hang out around the neighborhood, Taurus. Your mind has been focused on refining a new world view and seeing the bigger picture, but the Full Moon in Cancer wants to you invest some quality time around the way. Chat with your siblings or close relatives, absorb, and reflect upon new ideas and see what may fit into your burgeoning philosophies. You never know, a seemingly random conversation or encounter may be filled with meaningful wisdom.
Gemini
Check in with your values and assets, Gemini. After spending time over the last weeks becoming more intimate with others, this Full Moon wants to illuminate what you have to put on the table. What's of importance to you, Gemini? What do you need take care of in order to feel emotionally secure and steady on your feet? You may see a fluctuation in money matters, especially concerning areas of shared resources, where you may want to, or be forced to, take a better look at how you've been doing.
Cancer
The Moon is most at home in your sign, and you're usually completely in tune with her highly changeable emotion nature. This Full Moon is a powerful restart for you, illuminating all the ways you can nurture and take care of YOURSELF. When's the last time you had a good cry, cooked a hot meal, or took a long bath. Focusing on your needs first is a good kind of selfish, in doing so it makes it easier to do the relationship work with others without burning out. Pamper yourself Little Crab, let Mother Moon guide you back home to yourself.
Leo
Allow this Full Moon to bring you deep into your inner imaginative world. The best way to balance out all your efforts to create better health and harness your skills is to drift in the unseen world. Devote some energy towards meditation, prayer, visioning, and daydreaming to keep you going on your path towards holistic health and wellbeing. Emotionally connect with the sense of well-being you'd like to experience, then work towards it daily.
Virgo
This Full Moon is highlighting the need for you to go out and socialize with some like-minded friends. Whatever you've been getting up to during your playtime - for example, creative endeavors - is asking to be shared with others so you can feel the emotional fulfillment that comes with sharing your gifts with those who share common interests and visions. Your family and friends can't wait to nurture your talents.
Libra
With so much emphasis happening around your home and private life, you're in a unique position to go out into the world to support others through your work and career. While this is a good time to gain emotional fulfillment through a job well done or new accolades, consider developing your reputation as a powerful protector and nurturer. Use your ability of knowing how to harmonize environments to bring peace to those around you.
Scorpio
You've been so deep in your books and topics that have caught your interest that this Full Moon will have you shifting your attention to the bigger picture. How is your voice and knowledge going to help change the narrative you see around you? There's a philosophy that you hold close to your heart that needs your attention. Should you rely on it, it will feed your endless curiosity on how to make it tangible, practical, and worth sharing with others.
Sagittarius
Although so much of your work since Saturn left you for Capricorn has been about your finances and building a secure material base for yourself, Centaur, the Full Moon is demanding that you nurture what you share with others. It's easy to believe our self-worth is tied to our bank account. However, in reality, material wealth is merely a tool. It's the face to face time spent with loved ones and experiencing all the births, deaths, and all the intense moments in between. Mother your deep bonds and what's shared with others to get the most from this powerful Moon.
Capricorn
You've been doing so much work on refining and improving yourself, Capricorn, and that's a good thing! However, use this Full Moon to take care of some of your relationships. People have been looking for your attention lately, but you've been so busy doing you. The next time you're invited out for one on one time, say yes. Perhaps you'll get to enjoy a few comforting hugs and kisses as well as some feedback on all your personal growth.
Aquarius
Ideally, this Full Moon will help to illuminate the ways you can get out of your own head, Water Bearer. When facing underlying fears and doubts about your dreams, sometimes a daily schedule that pushes you to work past them is in order. Nurture the day-to-day routines, and refine your unutilized skill sets to help you keep your mind on doing rather than stewing.
Pisces
The key to being a great friend or asset to any organization is having a clear sense of what makes you shine so brilliantly. This Full Moon can help illuminate how you can tend to your personal hobbies and creative talents. You may want to spend some time with some children who help remind you to be joyous and what it feels like to take pride in just being you. Take comfort in your self-expression, Pisces. Turn up the music and crack open those old water colors and see what magic comes out!
What does your moonscope have you looking forward to in the new year? Let us know in the comments down below!
Janelle Belgrave L.Ac is a New York City based acupuncturist, astrologer, and clairvoyant intuitive. You can catch her on Twitter chatting about a mixture of Astrology, healing, politics, and her unhealthy love of Game of Thrones.
How Content Creators Hey Fran Hey And Shameless Maya Embraced The Pivot
This article is in partnership with Meta Elevate.
If you’ve been on the internet at all within the past decade, chances are the names Hey Fran Hey and Shameless Maya (aka Maya Washington) have come across your screen. These content creators have touched every platform on the web, spreading joy to help women everywhere live their best lives. From Fran’s healing natural remedies to Maya’s words of wisdom, both of these content creators have built a loyal following by sharing honest, useful, and vulnerable content. But in search of a life that lends to more creativity, freedom, and space, these digital mavens have moved from their bustling big cities (New York City and Los Angeles respectively) to more remote locations, taking their popular digital brands with them.
Content Creators Hey Fran Hey and Maya Washington Talk "Embracing The Pivot"www.youtube.com
In partnership with Meta Elevate — an online learning platform that provides Black, Hispanic, and Latinx-owned businesses access to 1:1 mentoring, digital skills training, and community — xoNecole teamed up with Franscheska Medina and Maya Washington on IG live recently for a candid conversation about how they’ve embraced the pivot by changing their surroundings to ultimately bring out the best in themselves and their work. Fran, a New York City native, moved from the Big Apple to Portland, Oregon a year ago. Feeling overstimulated by the hustle and bustle of city life, Fran headed to the Pacific Northwest in search of a more easeful life.
Her cross-country move is the backdrop for her new campaign with Meta Elevate— a perfectly-timed commercial that shows how you can level up from wherever you land with the support of free resources like Meta Elevate. Similarly, Maya packed up her life in Los Angeles and moved to Sweden, where she now resides with her husband and adorable daughter. Maya’s life is much more rural and farm-like than it had been in California, but she is thriving in this peaceful new setting while finding her groove as a new mom.
While Maya is steadily building and growing her digital brand as a self-proclaimed “mom coming out of early retirement,” Fran is redefining her own professional grind. “It’s been a year since I moved from New York City to Portland, Oregon,” says Fran. “I think the season I’m in is figuring out how to stay successful while also slowing down.” A slower-paced life has unlocked so many creative possibilities and opportunities for these ladies, and our conversation with them is a well-needed reminder that your success is not tied to your location…especially with the internet at your fingertips. Tapping into a community like Meta Elevate can help Black, Hispanic, and Latinx entrepreneurs and content creators stay connected to like minds and educated on new digital skills and tools that can help scale their businesses.
During a beautiful moment in the conversation, Fran gives Maya her flowers for being an innovator in the digital space. Back when “influencing” was in its infancy and creators were just trying to find their way, Fran says Maya was way ahead of her time. “I give Maya credit for being one of the pioneers in the digital space,” Fran said. “Maya is a one-person machine, and I always tell her she really changed the game on what ads, campaigns, and videos, in general, should look like.”
When asked what advice she’d give content creators, Maya says the key is having faith even when you don’t see the results just yet. “It’s so easy to look at what is, despite you pouring your heart into this thing that may not be giving you the returns that you thought,” she says. “Still operate from a place of love and authenticity. Have faith and do the work. A lot of people are positive thinkers, but that’s the thinking part. You also have to put your faith into work and do the work.”
Fran ultimately encourages content creators and budding entrepreneurs to take full advantage of Meta Elevate’s vast offerings to educate themselves on how to build and grow their businesses online. “It took me ten years to get to the point where I’m making ads at this level,” she says. “I didn’t have those resources in 2010. I love the partnership with Meta Elevate because they’re providing these resources for free. I just think of the people that wouldn’t be able to afford that education and information otherwise. So to amplify a company like this just feels right.”
Watch the full conversation with the link above, and join the Meta Elevate community to connect with fellow businesses and creatives that are #OnTheRiseTogether.
Featured image courtesy of Shameless Maya and Hey Fran Hey
Donald Glover Thanks God For Rejection Because Without It His Career 'Wouldn't Have Happened'
In the fast-paced world of television production, stress is a common occurrence for both cast and crew members. This can be magnified when you're a young creator and even more so when you're a young creator who is melanated. This is no different for the team behind the hit show, 30 Rock, specificallySwarmand Atlanta mastermind Donald Glover, who was a writer for the show.
He recently opened up about the “stress dreams” he used to have while writing on 30 Rock as a result of only being hired because of NBC’s diversity initiative at the time. According to Glover, these dreams would involve him running around the set, trying to find something he had lost. While this might seem like a typical anxiety dream, Glover claims that these dreams were more intense and vivid than any he had experienced before.
"It definitely didn't feel like I was supposed to be there. I used to have stress dreams every night where I was doing cartwheels on the top of a New York skyscraper with the other writers watching me," he revealed to GQ. "There's no animosity between us or anything, but [Tina Fey] said it herself...it was a diversity thing. The last two people who were fighting for the job were me and Kenya Barris. I didn’t know it was between me and him until later. He hit me one day, and he was like, ‘I hated you for years!’”
Glover went on to serve as a writer for three seasons before he broke out to become the phenom that he is today, ultimately developing his alter ego, rapper, singer, and artist, Childish Gambino.
So, what do these stressful dreams reveal about the behind-the-scenes world of television production? Probably everything. And for one of the most brilliant and original minds in Hollywood to struggle with imposter syndrome, our struggles with the same seem just a little more validated.
Glover also opened up about his new production team, where he's headed in the next few years, and more.
Donald Glover on only putting out the freshest entertainment and art at GILGA, his new multimedia studio (which btw, he recently revealed he is actively hiring for):
“You know how you go to a farmers market, and you ask for peaches, and they don’t have any because they’re out of season? Peaches have a season! I’m not gonna sell you shitty peaches just because you want a peach now.”
Donald on one of GILGA's first projects being a short film created by Malia Obama and what it's like being her mentor:
“The first thing we did was talk about the fact that she will only get to do this once. You’re Obama’s daughter. So if you make a bad film, it will follow you around."
Donald on being thankful he was turned down from Saturday Night Live in 2007 and 2009:
“I dodged so many bullets. Me being on SNL would’ve killed me. I got friends who made it on SNL, and, at the time, I was like, damn. But if I got on SNL, my career wouldn’t have happened. And thank God. Thank God I didn’t get some of those pilots. I wanted so desperately to be on Parks and Rec because it was the cool, hipster show. I am the bullet dodger. I feel like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. That wasn’t a mistake, you know? God did that.”
On Chris Rock encouraging him to try stand up (again):
“So I was with Chris Rock, and he was like, ‘People aren’t good [at stand-up] until they’re your age. The only one who was better when he was younger was Eddie. Why aren’t you doing this shit?!’"
Glover went on to discuss what he's like as a family man, the meaning of GILGA, and what's next for Donald Glover. Continue reading his GQ cover story in full here.
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Featured image by Theo Wargo/Getty Images