On The Luteal Side of the Year

I am here to share a little of what is occurring for me right now, and a few themes that emerge whenever this phase of the year comes.

The summer, particularly after midsummer, feels to me like a restless time of conflicting energies. Perhaps triggered by the years I have spent in education, the thought of September approaching often fills me with questions: “Am I ready?” “What will the next chapter bring?” and sometimes the answers to these questions are difficult.

We are now also entering a new Islamic year, and the blessed month of Muharram. The energy is mixed, between the waning of the meteorological year post-midsummer and the rising of a new, spiritual year. What both of these energies bring to me, however, is the need to shed what is no longer good for me, and all the grief that comes along with that.

This has come along with a new moon in Leo, and the Lion’s Gate Portal upon which a fierce energy of change seemed to rip through the air. With it comes a birthing force, expelling us into new opportunities, along with the grief of what has passed. There is a decisiveness that is empowering to embrace, but there is also a veil lifted and truths revealed, some of which are ugly.

In this space, I feel as if I am swimming in the deep. It is hard to keep up with the anxious change, and my primal instinct tells me simply to keep swimming. Letting go of what is no longer healthy feels incredibly liberating – but also bewildering – when it is what we have become used to. It takes some time to forge a new identity in the space of what has been lost.

I don’t feel ready to set steady intentions when I am still so knee deep in this process, and when more practical matters in my life are currently suspended and transitioning. Instead I am looking at the feelings and experiences of all that has passed, and trying to imagine what a new feeling without it might look like.

I am trying to imagine creativity and ingenuity without the audience of social media to observe it, and I am imagining what my work might be like in the slower world that it leaves behind. I am trying to imagine community and action in a world where I am no longer giving my energies to spaces that were not for me.

My healing journey this year has taken on new depths, and I am so thankful to those who have guided me through this process gracefully when I needed it. I am thankful for the space that this is opening up in me to dream of a different kind of future where I am more at peace with the ghosts that follow me, rather than haunted by them. I am trying to draw deep from the well to find energy to engage in the work that still needs to be done, to listen to what my body is saying, and not to ignore its words.

This all feels like big, summer energy to me. It is like the buzzing of the bees on the borage flowers, and the long days that never quite seem to end. It is the feeling of time suspended for a while in observation, and night creeping in before you can even notice. It the sun and the moon in the sky all at once, holding each other in an impossible embrace.

My journey forward looks long from here, but I am most thankful to my plant friends and remedies that allow me respite. Turning to them feels like the companionship I need in this time.