The days are getting shorter. Each morning is darker for my walk. The daylight is giving way to dusk earlier each evening and the cool air quickly chills the summer heat as soon as the sun drops below the horizon.
These are the signs that Autumn is just around the corner.
My kids don’t think it’s as fun as I do to talk about the start of yet another school year. The Saanich Fair is a marker in the annual cycle of my life. Every time it comes and goes I marvel at the fact that yet another fair has come and gone. This year will be the 43rd.
Maybe it’s a little too early to be ushering in the next season. However, as I’ve become more mindful of the world around me, these changes are coming into my awareness.
Shining light
Last weekend I peeled back the facade just a little to shine light on some of the darker moments of my life. It’s not so much that I fear the darkness; rather, I’m learning that each season is the time to prepare for the next.
None of my posts have been as popular as that one. Six times as many people opened and read that post as any other post I have published in months. Only outrage about the provincial government’s logging of old-growth forests has even been close.
Increasingly, people are openly sharing their experiences and de-stigmatizing mental health. I raise my hands to their courage and offer whatever support people need to continue our important movement toward personal well-being.
Even though we are still mid-summer, I am aware that the dark and cloudy rainstorms of the west coast fall and winter are around the corner. Whatever personal effort we can organize to strengthen our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual toughness in the days and weeks ahead, will prepare us with the tools and the resilience that we all need to power through the darkest doldrums.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
August the 6th, After a pretty manic May and June, I tend to settle into a nice state of Up Mood through July and as the days get slightly shorter each day through August I sleep longer and more deeply, with just a comfortable amount of energy and chipperness. A tinge of dread looking ahead to the long cold dark gloomy days ahead, seems like so far away. I feel blessed to be retired and no longer have to push myself to go to work and fake it in the fall/ winter. Trips are planned to the sun/warmth this fall winter that carries me through. Christmas is a tough time for me, all the jocularity and get togethers that I am just in no mood for, after that I tend to see the days getting longer and know that I will make it through until the time of year that makes me happiest. April to September….. My yearly pattern.