Messages from the Equinox
The equinox represents that swift moment of balance in a time of transition and preparation. Last fall, I found myself working frantically to prepare for the full force of winter at the autumnal equinox, and now, I find myself poised for a flood of activity to prepare for the strength of summer.
Today, I stopped to catch my moment of equinoctial balance, and I received my message this morning. I took a moment to think about the equinox, and I thought, Somewhere in the world, people are preparing for their winter, not their spring. Where we are, others are not, and where others live, we are not. And that is life as a human on Earth. We try so hard to force each other to be in the same place, to see the world in the same way, but we can’t because there are too many ways to be of this Earth, to be human.
Some of us are in the spring of our lives, others the fall. We all see the sky from different vantage points and we walk different paths, and yet, we share it all. We have to learn each others’ seasons. We have to learn each others’ parts of the world. There is no contest; there is no one way or place or view of life.
Today, I realized, after reflecting over the past year, life is only ever a state of constant contrast. Ups and downs, highs and lows. Transitions. Hibernations. Manifestations.
This past year has been one of the fullest and most seasonally-aligned years that we can remember in our dozen years together. As the year turned, we turned with it, and life grew increasingly cyclical in every aspect.
Last year we were planning massive change at the equinox — finishing school, quitting our jobs, and preparing to move to a new city in a new state. We even attended an Earth Day sweat lodge as a purification ritual, cleansing ourselves of whatever we wished to leave behind. And we did.
We went into high summer with clear, untethered purpose. We took the opportunity to live a true summer — where the world is full of sun and possibility. We traveled to the West Coast, lazed, socialized, fished in the Ozarks, gardened in the city, drank, hosted and guested, and beached….
As autumn approached, the flame of our summer bonfire extinguished; we had no income and our funds rapidly dwindled as we paid whatever bill arrived that day. A lingering fight with cancer brought death to the family in November. We had known this would all come — that the summer had to end — that the days would grow short and dark, and they did. It was time for things to end…and yet, that’s not what equinoxes are about — they’re about endings and beginnings.
And one week after the fall equinox, we got that message of beginning: I was pregnant.
Winter came and went in a state of total gestation. We settled in. We hibernated. We rooted deep. We waited.
Now, here we are, one year later. In one year, we lived a whirlwind of life cycles — with wins and losses, cleansing and filling full…with the wildness of summer highs snuffed out by the desperation in stormy lows…the new and old, freedom and limitations…and the many days of dullness and all the other bleary blinkings in-between.
From here, from the edge of this shifting ledge of spring, we prepare again for a new chapter of our lives — one that comes into existence where others no longer exist — one that starts with a summer baby in a world where there are winters and endings.
Because in this world, it is possible to have spring and fall happening all at once. This is the world where humanity exists.
