Autumn is here 🍂
Can you feel the season turning?
It’s Equinox season still, which is ruled by the element of water on the Celtic wheel 🍁
Nature is supporting us to let go… to let go of all that is holding us back from feeling vital and alive 🍂
To reflect on our year 💧
To appreciate the blessings we have experienced so far this year and all we have created 🍎
To let our energy turn more inwards, allow ourselves to rest, to clear space from the consistent external pulls on our energy as we prepare for the naturally quieter inner journeying cycle of the year 💧✨🌀
Like all of Nature, our lives are cyclical🌳
In contrast to patriarchal systems that so many of us have grown up in, that value consistent pushing, performing, self-sacrifice and self-neglect over feeling, intuitive, nourishing qualities, Nature calls us to honour our natural rhythm of going inward when needed, resting when we need to, and allowing the feeling of what our energy wants to do to guide our actions🌀
Like the tree that roots down and begins to send it’s energy down into its tap root for the Winter, offering us it’s beautiful colours of letting go and finding inward renewal for the next seasonal cycle, our bodies and minds need to slow down when rest is needed, gathering our energy for times when action is needed and inspiration to create comes ✨’
We all have work and responsibilities but can we find daily pockets of time and space for deepening into rest?
Rest and ‘just being’ regularly are so essential in our busy lives. Allowing ourselves to just be when thats needed, surrendering to the flow of energy in and around us is where we can find a centering balance in our lives and energy.
In committing to rest, like all of Nature, we too can learn to trust the quiet restful periods of our life, times when the surface may look lifeless but so much growth is happening inside and beneath what is seen 💜
I learnt the hard way in my early 20s (ultimately a gift) that allowing and permitting rest within can be a deeply healing practice for so many of us who have, despite the best intention and love, been trained from an early age to neglect our needs as a way to feel safe, acceptable and loved.
So often I see this theme of self- nourishment and giving ourselves permission to rest come up so regularly in myself and women around me, in life, with friends and in Five Leaves workshops 🧶
Often arising is a shared observation and awareness of patterns of pushing ourselves, often internalised early in life and glorified in our culture of ‘busyness’ and sacrifice-of-self as valuable and preferable to maintaining radical self-care, and especially as women and mothers – how they present within us as adults and yet, how very possible and healing it is to cultivate a new narrative within us as we gift ourselves the right, space and time for physical, mental, emotional, spiritual rest and renewal.
I recently committed to a deep longing to return to Greece, one of my favourite places for a week, and to go alone.
Giving myself that permission felt vulnerable. The voice of the critic intervened with those old words ‘ I can’t afford to go away’ ‘ I can’t afford time off’, even piping up with ‘ Will my family see me as being decadent?’ along with another old narrative around the theme of constriction and ‘lack’ and the actual benefits of sticking with fearful thought patterns.
And I had to ask, whose voice is this? It was not the voice of my true essence! Thats for sure.
The reality is I know myself and how my energy works, that I’m not an infinite well spring of constant productivity and that I can’t afford to NOT gift myself time out for rest. And Im so very grateful for it.
Like many women I know, I’m a full time Mum, which we all know by it’s nature is a very full-time role! I also homeschool while running a small business along with all the other projects big and small that go with maintaining a home. Most of us know this is invaluable and essential work that is not financially rewarded in our for-profit driven economies and as a result, is often invisible to others. But it is not invisible to us who do this work every day. Its not invisible to our children. But sometimes it can be hard to find flow and joy within and beyond the everday mountain of daily tasks that need to be done.
Maybe giving a loud voice to all we do and also gift ourselves REST is a slow pathway to a new collective valuing of economically invisible work.
It can feel uncomfortable and vulnerable to tend to our need for stillness and listen to our longings, where we maybe once have kept those needs invisible, valued for not having any, while caring for everyone else around us instead.
It can even feel possibly selfish to listen and care for our own needs and speak up on our own behalf in this way when it’s something new for us.
We may even experience pushback or judgement from others or ourselves when we create boundaries around our need for self-care. Judgement around who we should be and what is acceptable in terms of how we live.
What is important is that we see, understand and value our own needs, honour our own rhythm where we can and forge our own path in how we wish to live. In the end, this can only benefit everyone. As we learn to structure our time and energy in sustainable ways, we feel better and inspire others to do the same 💜
However others may judge us, often those closeby, does not take from our right to care for ourselves, be fully responsible for our wellbeing and energy and be worthy of meeting our needs fully, including that crucial need for rest.
So in light of this seasonal theme of nourishment, permission and letting go, I offer you these inquiries for reflection:
Do you listen to the signs of deep rest being needed and how do they show up for you?
Do you give yourself permission to rest fully?
What gives you true nourishment and fills up your energetic cup?
Are you tuned into the cycle of your energy?
Do you allow for low energy times and schedule high energy tasks around these times?
If your life is busy, can you bring spaces of rest into your day?
Can you make any small shifts in daily life to honour that need?
Do you take the time to name and honour all that you do?
Please feel free to share with me – I would love to know 💜
We are so deeply worthy of rest and renewal 💜
Aideen xx