I love the beginning of a new month and for some reason, today being August 1st is really resonating with me. Maybe it’s because there has been a TON, and I mean a TON of change in my personal life or I’m just really hopeful that getting out of the summer months might provide some freaking relief from these 100+ degree days (wishful thinking, I know). But waking up to a new month brought some sort of deep breath to my whole self this morning. And it made me want to take a minute and invite you to do a similar thing…
You see, life works in seasons, we see this everywhere. In nature, in biology, in the moon phases and in our own development. Things are not meant to go on endlessly forever at the same pace with the same purpose. Summer cannot go on forever right??? We need the fall and the Spring, we need the calmness and hibernating of the winter. But as 21st century people, I think we kind of suck at moving with the seasons and acknowledging when a season is potentially changing. We expect ourselves to go, push, press on, maintain and persevere, no matter what.
And lately, I’ve realized, I’m just not cut out for that. I have to let things end, I have to let the seasons change and I need to agree with this inherent and inevitable reality. Like a branch hanging on til the last minute at the crossing of fall to winter or my longstanding refusal to just wear the dang tank tops because it’s so hot and I can’t stand it anymore. Accepting the reality of where we are is one of the greatest challenges and gifts I think we get to experience as humans.
When we lean into the season, when we admit that things are changing or we need to let something go, it’s in that moment that we find our peace and strength. When we lean into and allow what is, like the ending of a season or a change that is happening among us, we are able to release the pressure to keep going and invite in stillness, ease and openness.
I don’t know about you, but I have spent too much of my life holding onto things that were clearly over or nearing the end and the person most affected by that was always me. Clinging to something that isn’t there anymore hurts us- not the thing we are clinging to. One of the hardest things we get to attempt to do as humans is to practice holding both accepting reality as it is and finding the spaces that we can invite in and welcome change. Acceptance and change, hope and reality, life and death, summer and winter– it’s all about living into the weird and beautiful space of both/and instead of either/or.
So I don’t know what August 1st means to you, maybe nothing. But perhaps, for today, it can be a guidepost that welcomes you to an acknowledging of your season of life, it can be an invitation to let something go that you’ve held onto a little too tightly, or maybe you it can offer you a quick moment of recognizing all that has changed over the last several months and naming where you are now- in this month, in this moment.
Naming where we are and acknowledging where we’ve been affords us the opportunity to then name and know what we need here and now. Because it’s always changing, friends. And it’s our work and joy as people to know ourselves well and respond accordingly.
Happy August. We’re with you.
-Candace McArthur, LCSW-S
