According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), there are five seasons (in Ayurveda, there are six!) with the fifth being late summer. It is a shorter season and begins around the middle of August and ends at the fall equinox. It is associated with the Earth element, and I wrote more about it last year around this time.
This year, because I’m back to this unsettled, even flighty feeling once more, I’m really needing and seeking more of a sense of grounding. It’s like I have this need to feel heavy and anchored to the earth, instead of the in-my-head anxious, ramped up feeling I’ve been living with for months now. This late summer season is a bridge between the more expansive, abundant seasons of spring and summer and the more inward seasons of fall and winter. This year, I’m thinking of how I want to enter the more inward season of fall ahead with firmer footing, with a better sense of who I am and what I want.
Incidentally (or not) during these last few weeks, I’ve been reading If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie. It is full of stories of women who go through something, usually something traumatic of some sort, and who use that brokenness to break open instead of shut down or grow hard and brittle. It is full of stories of actual women and ancient mythological women finding their footing in their world. Blackie writes:
We won’t find our way by running hell-for-leather towards the light; we will find it rather by embracing the dark. By exploring the fecund, loamy ground of our being — our own being, and that of the rich, wide world around us…Whatever form [this explorative work takes], whether it comes easily to us or not, we have to be still, and trust; we have to resist the urge to view what is happening to us as a problem to be solved. We have to let ourselves hurt, release the old needs, let go of the old urges to become what we are not, what we were not meant to be. This is how we pave the way for rebirth.
As I’ve said (many times) before, I think this #covidseason is a massive opportunity for rebirth, a time to contemplate who we are and why we’re here, a time to reconsider how we spend our days. Even if I’m disappointed (to put it mildly) that more of our society isn’t using this as the opportunity that it is, I don’t have to let that keep me from doing this hard, worthwhile, imaginative work.
Last year, at this time, we were looking ahead to so many unknowns for the fall and winter months: what would happen with the election, with school, with a respiratory pandemic as much of the country got colder. In hindsight, I realize that last fall was just about survival and not much else. I want to lean hard into these more inward seasons coming that I almost feel like I missed last year out of sheer physical and mental exhaustion. This fall and winter seem like the perfect time for the “embracing the dark” and “exploring the fecund, loamy ground” of my own being, as Blackie directs us.
But I’m realizing that I’m not going to get to that place without some nurturing and preparation in this season that already supports that kind of work. To that end, here are a few questions I’m wrestling with in case you want to join me in preparing for the dark seasons ahead - or even if you’re finding, like me, that you could handle feeling a little more centered and grounded these days:
In nature, this season is the last big push of growth and ripening before harvest. In what ways have you ripened this year? In what ways have you grown into more of your authentic self?
In TCM, this late summer season is associated with the stomach and spleen organs and meridians, so we think about digestion during this season. This applies not just to our physical digestion, but our emotional, spiritual, and mental digestion too. What do you need to digest from the past season? Past year? What is serving you and what can you let go of?
The earth element is associated with mothering, nurturing energy. What do you need right now to feel nurtured, supported, cared for? Imagine what a good mother might do for you during this season.
If you need some grounding practices, check out this newsletter for some of my favorites.
Rants and raves
👍 Wendell went away for training for TWO weeks, but now he’s back and has the best manners in the family.
👍 Mountain Rose Herbs (my favorite place to stock up on herbs and plant medicine) is having a huge tea sale. I always stock up on Holy Basil Chai, 21st Century Tea, and whatever else looks good when they have their once-a-year tea sale.
👎 More kids are in the hospital with Covid than at any point in the pandemic.
Stuff worth sharing this week
I really appreciated this conversation on Afghanistan on Pantsuit Politics (there is also some really great additional reading linked to in that post if you want further education). Sarah and Beth disagreed pretty starkly, and I found myself agreeing with both of their points of view. I think it’s important that we bear witness in these kinds of situations, but I also don’t think it’s all that helpful to have one more desktop pundit offering her opinions on the interwebs. One of the only things I thought Trump got right was to support pulling us out of nation building around the globe (I did oppose him negotiating with the Taliban and leaving the Afghan government out of the negotiations for what it’s worth), and I expected more out of the Biden administration’s execution of our leaving.
I loved the first third of this Raptitude post, especially this bit:
We’re full-time subjects in many mad science experiments: industrialized food, noise pollution, overabundant passive entertainment, decreasing face-to-face interaction, increasing employer demands, blue-light-emitting screens, over-identification with news and world events, lack of physical activity, separation from nature, separation from community, and many more well-known and well-discussed pitfalls of modern life.
But then he went down the rabbit hole of solving it with a individual choice (blame?). While I think that’s helpful, I was hoping he would pursue the systems that put us in this position instead of assigning us another 30 day experiment. It’s still worth reading regardless.
Seasonal pic of the week
The view of the garden in late August - last burst of abundance out there too:
Cheers to finding some grounding in the week ahead!
Sara
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