August energetically is often a hard month for me and this year didn’t disappoint. I started September excited but also weary and overwhelmed from all I was navigating the month before, the intense weeks of emotional turmoil, new projects and tasks, creativity, commotions, loss and everything in between. I had told myself that I would enter Eclipse season simply, with soft steps and no pushing. Except I had scheduled one last venture to go through. After which my body decided to show me it’s time to take a break.
I was already feeling off during the day only to wake up at night from a pain in my throat that wouldn’t let me sleep. Strange ― I didn’t feel very ill and yet incredibly so. I wasn’t in too much pain and still in so much that it was keeping me awake at night.
It was 4AM and I moved to the living room. I stood on the couch with my mouth open over a bowl so the toxins could slowly drip out of me. I was hoping I was letting go not only of them but of my sadness and my fears as well. A few seconds in and with the drooling started the crying, the mourning a past life gone, of my childhood completed, of things that will never be again, of seasons changing. I wish I had done better for younger me, that she was happier and safer. Things have changed, and maybe that’s a good thing.
A few days ago I heard someone saying that the future can influence the past. I take comfort in the idea. Maybe while you’re becoming stronger and wiser you are also nurturing the young you, in the now, equipped with extra tools, offering soothing support to all the past versions of yourself.
The next day I wasn’t feeling much better. Worse, if anything. Not only physically ill but also emotionally swamped, feeling guilty about my days of unpleasant rest, bombarded by the idea of constant productivity and achievement that holds my worth hostage, seeing through a screen how much others have accomplished, but without knowing any of the struggle or what they’ve been through, maybe they have something that I lack, again this scamming thought, so I keep pushing, playing this game that isn’t my life.
There is a big pile of fresh soil on our property. What a treasure. Nothing attracts me more than the thought of nestling in and letting it envelope me. Taking some clothes off, I go in. “Amore, you’re playing in the dirt, like a doggie!”. Well, first of all, we all know I’m a cat. And then… playing? This is not playing, this is pulling through, this is surviving and my only chance to process what’s in me. It is a howl from the underworld, a crying urge for connection, to tether through the dirt to all the other women walking this Earth now, before and in times to come. Lying in the ground is my desperate attempt to extract the support of my ancestors and to compost the remains of what’s gone, releasing them into the earth. It is the cold embrace of the soil that links my cells to all other living things, to the whole web of life and to creatures and souls long and recently gone. I crave it, because life takes a village, and I feel so incredibly lonely. So I rest there, with nothing but hope that my grief will fertilize the dirt for the life around, before, and after me. Take it.