Season Change - Blog Post

Autumn surprised me.  Summer felt like a long joyful celebration of life in many ways and I revelled in the openness that summer encourages. Fresh from the wild, I still felt her warmth in my veins – her rhythmic pulsing of zest and extraversion.

I know I saw a few leaves touch the ground and fleetingly thought I needed to prepare myself for season change but I somehow believed I had at least a month left to play, to share in the expansiveness and dream. I didn't want to take notice of the signs.

And then Summer suddenly left, without a long goodbye. Overnight, trees started to dry up and crinkle around the edges. The air hinted at cooler mornings, night started to visit a little earlier. Acorns fell to find new homes in the soil, waiting for the squirrels to collect and store.

Internally, I felt panic. I wasn’t ready for the shed, to let go, and change again. I felt discombobulated by seasonal change and the preparation for fall. I wanted to cling as I still felt summer had so much more to give, I had so much more to learn. Both the Aniwa Gathering and Into the Wild had taught me so much and there was still processing and integration occurring.

Yet the earth has its own timings, its wisdom, and continues to teach this slow student about change.

In university the students were arriving with stories to tell. When I walked in the park on the way to work, I saw leaves that looked like static fireworks. There were families arriving in our home, presenting yielded crops for us to feast. There was the greeting of dusk on my bike ride home. There was the end of another course that had continued my link to my Shamanic birthright, as I finished the medicine wheel in its shorter form.

So many endings and new beginnings.

And now as my calendar begins to fill for the semester ahead, I feel I am now surrendering and embodying autumn. I have started to turn within. I seek silence and the whispers of the leaves as they gently detach and start their new phase of nurturing the soil. As I pile the clothes on to my body, I feel cocooned from the outside and can sense the foundations for future hibernation. I can feel the rise of the feminine arising in the Western hemisphere.

I now need to heed and accept change.

Aho.

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Choose Your Own Adventure - Blog Post

Being single is a bit like those choose your own adventure books. 

As September creeps in and the slightest chill in the evenings beckons, I know that my own season of adventure is upon me. Somehow September has become my month of choice. This time last year I was moving home, buying a new bike and heading to Barcelona... 

This time is so much more – I have created my own Magical Mystery Tour to include Jersey, a festival with my sisterhood, a Cacao ceremony with my tribe, a dieta of my own, 10 days in glorious Ibiza where I will practice yoga daily, lie on the beach and sit in the circle of the Mamitas and my familia once again. Then back to my roots in Jersey before rounding up with a weekend with the Shaman as I integrate all I have done with one magical month. 

I find myself pulsing with excitement just contemplating it, thinking about the space I am creating for myself.  

I remember in the Ayahuasca ceremony when I asked her who I was, she responded, 'You are what's left after you die.' In my deepest meditations and brightest bliss, I have touched upon what that could mean. I know that I am much more than this body that holds me and this collection of data that I call my mind. I know beyond what I call me there is an awareness I can access. 

Since I have been ill I have been so much more aware of the vulnerabilities of my body and have again started meditating daily. My mornings start with the familiar voice of Sadhguru as he tells me, 'I am not the body, I am not even the mind' and somehow I am learning to distance my complex compulsions for a few seconds and find... space. I am realising finding space has become just as an exciting adventure for me!  

Recently, as I was driving back to my parent's home, suddenly I felt something in me say, 'Don't grasp on to anything'. My whole being relaxed into the motion of the car, the movement of the steering wheel, the rhythm of the traffic lights and the voices on the radio. I allowed the world to just be and simultaneously, it gave me the permission to do the same; all that was me just faded away.

The moments of awareness, the space inside the chaos and the feeling of stepping into the new... I am loving this new part of my life. September? Bring it on!

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Autumn - Very Short Story

They walked into the forest together; the ground crunching and crumbling under their footsteps. Autumn had streaked through the park at night and trees were now alight with reds, oranges and yellows. A cacophony of colour beckoned the couple to explore and walk deeper into the unknown. With fingers interlaced, they watched as birds flew overhead, squawking orders to one another. Squirrels scampered up and down large old gnarly trunks, busily picking up acorns for their food stores. The woods were alive and pulsating, readying itself for the long hibernation ahead.

They shivered and drew each other closer as a cool breeze danced between them. She could see warm breath leave his body and suddenly craved the intimate dance he shared with the air around him. His lips were slightly moist and she felt the deepest urge to kiss him. She stopped walking and pulled him closer to her, her hands clutching at his jacket. He wrapped his arms around her body and drew her in.

The glow of the forest warmed their hearts.

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