Who or what do you dedicate yourself to this year?
This year I will write... for Mother Earth, for myself and for you.
She has been waking from her deep rest for weeks: the season I call the Early Warm. I felt the chill pull away. The crows spending more time around our home, sharing our scraps off the compost heap, teasing the dog, talking in their harsh voices above our heads. We could throw off the top ‘winter’ doona for periods of the night. Inside me I felt an ending: this year it was a feeling of grief, like letting go of a loved one. Perhaps the deep time of slumber we were leaving was an important passage for me, in this season of growing a child? I haven’t entered the Waking season as ease-fully as I usually do. In fact the unseasonable heat we have experienced for the past few days stuck with me like glue, making me feel uncomfortable, pained in the head and heart. The inner feelings of ‘deeprest’ (read Depression) were strong within my own being during the Winter season (the time I call the Season of Deep Rest) and the Early Warm Season has been a tricky time of deep inner feeling, congealing with the outer pull of Mother Earth forcing my body to feel, on my skin, the warm promise of change, bringing activity that I don’t yet feel fully ready for. The Deep Rest Season lingers in my bones, despite my heart feeling the tug of Her warm promise and the baby within my womb flutters like new butterflies, reminding me it isn’t all about what is scratched into my mind. There is so much more to life.
We began the Writers Group today, at this new turn of the seasons, perfectly timed and a reminder of so much more. When I speak of my ‘work’, the first thing I say, before thought gets in the way, is that I am primarily a ‘nature writer’ (whatever that means). And with that noticing, I am reminded of a vast ocean of life inside me, one that thrives on noticing where I end and the vastness of oceans begins and how I also contain these oceans. As do all of us.
And She speaks to me now, on this warm Waking day of openness, vastness, of the need to trust Her and our own unique unfolding in life. The seasons are in constant motion. There is never endless stagnancy, and in those periods of stagnancy (that don’t last forever even if they feel they do) there is necessity and worth. This Waking season is for us and every being on this land, to wake up from our sleep, to stretch and to shake off the chill of Winter/Deep Rest and to begin planting seeds, preparing for new growth. What do you dream of growing?
I dream of focus. Sustained focus, to share my love of this land where I reside, to share my journey through the seasons, both the inner and outer seasons of life: a nature journal, highly personal, yet universal to all of us.
What I learned from the Writers Group (and for other people this could be any group for Artists or Creatives) was the value in focusing on a project, just one, and allowing myself to journey deep with it, until it has seen its course, until it is complete.
And so…
I dedicate myself (once again: a reminder) to Mother: myself and the vast being who supports every living being, so that She may help me to stay focused on my unique path, without becoming distracted by my own bullshit (shame, anxiety, trauma, issues) and to help me trust that no matter how small and insignificant I might be convinced my path is, it is the path I am walking and She sees it as worthwhile for Her.
I allowed myself to be vulnerable in the Writers Group. I shared some of my work and felt the shame of ‘saying too much’, of being odd and out of place. But I have since felt the perfect alignment of it and know it to be the feminine assistance I need to keep going. Just as I feel You, Mother, holding me in my shame and vulnerability and urging me to keep on regardless, because you value me and my journey.
Walking the land I live each day and nudging myself to expand beyond my limited mind, by looking up and down, side to side, and around me, is lightening the load of anxiety. There are blue flowers spreading out from the mother plant at the end of our road, more sweet dogs coming to say “hi” as we walk, a lighter feeling in the people who drive past and a warmth in the air and on my skin that there wasn’t a few weeks ago. The Waking season is here and I feel Her nudges to do the same within me: to wake up and expand.
About the Creator
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