lessons from Scorpio season
The seasonal shift is happening, albeit slowly (thank you climate change), and I return to this poem I wrote last autumn.
leaf peeping is a grief ritual
witnessing the seasonal shift
of leaves turning, dropping, dying.
Of days darkening,
gifting us time with the night, the moon, the shadows.
Autumn is holy
and the season of grief is upon us.
The autumn change is a profound portal to recognize the cycle of life and death. Scorpio season in particular embodies the life – death – life cycle, of dying making way for what emerges next.
Scorpio season invites me to meditate on death. These questions from Women Who Run with Wolves are reverberating within me.
What must I give more to death to today, in order to generate more life?
What do I know should die but am hesitant to allow to do so?
What life am I afraid to give birth too? If not now, when?
On the day after the 2024 US Presidential Election, I am in a life – death – life cycle. What was true or possible yesterday is dead and what is true today is emerging. There is grief in this reckoning.
I find it hard to truly carve out and protect my time and space to grieve without moving to the place of doing and making plans. And yet, being and feeling is exactly what is needed.
I am orienting to autumn as a period of mourning for myself, in which my only responsibility is to reckon with what is, to witness truth, and to grieve.
Some tangibles for grieving —
Hold a mirror up to yourself, physically or metaphorically, to know your own reflection. This may be through friendship, tarot, your faith.
Create a pleasure practice with yourself. Remind yourself that pleasure exists along with pain.
Have a physical place to hold grief. This could be a cemetery, a tree in your back yard, a bowl of water on your altar, the house plants you care for.
Move your body to move your grief. This may take the shape of walking, dancing, hiking, biking, swinging.
Tap into your creativity. Creativity is core to our life force and contributes to our wholeness.
Practice gratitude. Slow down to notice and appreciate the simple joys in life. Express your gratitude out loud. Take a breath and expand what it feels like to be grateful in your body.
Connect to the land and Earth. Dig in the dirt. Remind yourself that we as a species with all the complexity and stickiness of humanness, are part of the larger ecosystem of life.
Express what you are feeling and then let it go. Feelings are meant to be temporary. It is the suppression of feelings that leads to stuckness.
Be in community and metabolize grief with others. You are not alone, and there is powerful healing magic in community.
