"Nurturing Your Nature: Embracing Seasons of Reflection and Growth"
Also a New Podcast for your ears!
Hello! My latest musings for your heart AND the link to the wonderful conversation that I had with Michelle Smith who has also just opened a new clinic in Brisbane. We talk Chinese Medicine, being a child free Aunty and all things midlife wisdom!
Despite the fact that I am a topical fish through and through, celebrating the seasonal calendar always has me longing for my northern counterpart. The sliding doors version of me living that alternate life thread, that moved to the UK and stayed there, or maybe found a magical little nook in southern France.
It’s an odd feeling.
I wonder if it’s due to some activated (very Anglo very Celtic) DNA where celebrating the seasonal turn of the wheel has me longing to do it the way that it would be done in the north?
The celebrations of the year correlate with the seasons there in a way that just doesn’t translate to the summer Xmas with prawns on the beach. (as fabulous as that is!)
The winter solstice falls in the week of Xmas. Long before Christianity, the shortest day of the year was marked by bringing the yule log inside the house; it’s warmth promised the life that would return in the spring.
All Souls Eve (or Halloween) on October 31st is the European version of Day of the Dead when we honour our ancestors, taking time to give thanks. Candlemas is another seasonal festival in February, where even though it’s still cold and summer is a long way away, it’s another turning point that gave hope. When I lived in rural Ireland we would see the lambs suddenly appear at this time of year. Tiny dots of white on the green landscape let you know that the lighter, warmer days were coming.
So like birthdays or Christmas I have a whole string of memories of where I was on the solstices going back decades.
I have so many fond memories of the summer solstice in the UK from walking through crop circles in Wiltshire to the barrow graves in Ireland
I’ve carried a flaming (very heavy) torch up Calton Hill in Edinburgh in 2001 on Beltaine, to much more low key but no less magical picnics with friends in both northern and southern hemispheres.
These festivals bring family and community together and anchor us to the land we’re on.
Maybe after all these years back in Australia I need to rethink my seasonal celebrations.
And so here in our wonderful upside down antipodean world the winter solstice was a couple of weeks ago. We have technically celebrated Yule; our very own Xmas festival on the shortest day of the year in June. I’m yet to quite understand why we then have Xmas in July celebrations. (We are clearly a bit confused!) But also, how many of us are actually living on the land, tending to lambing ewes or waiting for the frost to break to plant a crop?
We’re in the “Solstice Portal” now apparently, I really am not sure why everything now seems to occur in a portal? Once upon a time cosmic hippy shit was a day or a time or a moment then we got on with it. Is this ageing?
Anyhoo, the winter solstice even here, is a time for stillness and contemplation and not something I think we should hustle past.
Even though in semi tropical (are we temperate?) Queensland where winters are pretty mild, these moments are an echo of our own internal processes. They are a reminder that nature isn’t out there somewhere, but right here, in our own beating hearts, and cellular cycling.
In this stillness and contemplation we get to plant the seeds for the next year of lives.
We have an opportunity to asses the best way forward, to find the most fertile ground to lay our foundations. With the necessary considerations laid we have the best chance for a long and prosperous season ahead of us.
There is no need to rush past this phase, in fact it is so essential not to.
So where in your wintering have you noticed the need to reassess?
What foundations are you laying for the next spring and summer seasons ahead?
What sector of your life is called for the most tending now.
Family? Health? New work ventures?
(These would make wonderful journal prompts let me know if you use them)
The wonderful thing about working with and being in our essential connection to nature is that mostly all we need to do is get out of our own way and let nature and our own nature guide us.
This is both easier and harder than it sounds.
The Yin Yang symbol in Chinese Medicine is wonderful pictorial evidence of this.
The tiny circle of white in the heart of the dark (yin /winter /watery) side of the symbol is always there. The spark that ignites the next season of growth is always present.
Even when we can’t see it.
But if we allow and watch and tend, it spirals out into the full brightness and warmth of the following seasons of light (yang/summer/fire)
How might you tend and listen deeply to your own nature right now?
I’d love to hear from you
K
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