Note from Louisa

​When my life feels crazy, I find it helpful to take a step back and look through a longer lens. I open the aperture a bit and remember my own history and all I have experienced and survived thus far. I remember the youth of this country, the recency of the modern age, and even the whole of human history. Many civilizations have risen and fallen before I came to be on the planet.
 
We can sometimes be so self-important that we ignore how myopic our lens truly is. We forget that we are part of something much larger, deeper, and more ancient than our day-to-day travails. I find it helps to look to the lives of our ancestors and how they dealt with challenge before the complexities of political pundits, social media, and the global economy complicated the picture.
 
There is a simplicity in living close to the Earth and honoring her rhythms, a way of being that cuts through the day-to-day noise and asks us to come back to basics, if only long enough to catch our breath and reorient ourselves.
 
On Monday, September 22nd, we passed through the midpoint of the Earth’s wobble around the Sun, the astronomical event that gives this planet its seasons. As this orientation to the sun moves us from spring to winter, it passes over the equator resulting in an even balance of light and dark. Twice a year, we are reminded that, just as light and dark are in perfect balance all over the planet, we too need to maintain balance. It is a wonderful time for a pause, a recalibration, a reexamination of how we are allocating our energy.
 
While the Vernal Equinox (in March for those of us in the Northern hemisphere) is a movement toward the growing light and new life as the planet wakes up from her winter dormancy, the Autumnal Equinox is a preparation for those dark winter months that still lie ahead of us. For our ancestors, it was a dire time of preparing for survival.
 
As the light grew dimmer each day, our ancestors would be busy with an inventory of their supplies, replenishing their stocks, making needed repairs to structures, and reaching out to neighbors to strategize how to get through the winter together. How to make it through the deep cold and darkness that lay ahead. These seem like valuable lessons for us too. 
 
Let us take a breath and set aside some time to make sure we have things in order. Let us release the burdens that will not serve us over the winter months. Let’s reach out to one another and strengthen our bonds. And, above all, let’s not pretend that our survival is not intertwined.
 
We need to be mindful of what we carry into the dark.
 
“May you be rocked, as deeply as necessary and as gently as possible”
                                                                                           ~Anonymous
Louisa