Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.Robert Frost
And so we arrive once again at the Autumn Equinox, like clockwork. How dependable in a chaotic world we can count on these moments in the year to help us transition, take stock and turn toward something new. Summer decays; its bright fire wanes and disappears with the last of the tomato plants and dying flowers.
As a kid, I felt so desperately sad at the start of a new school year (usually because I was starting a new school, which I did every two years for my entire scholastic experience). By the time October rolled around, though, I had usually made a few friends and would start to feel the excitement of the darker season — my natural habitat. There were so many things to look forward to: my birthday, for one, which my mother always made a huge deal about for the entire month of October. This explains a lot about me: how much I want to be showered with gifts and how utterly surprised I am that adulthood does not provide me with a month-long birthday celebration.
Then came Halloween, endless debates about what costume to wear (usually a princess because I was extremely basic), the changing colour of the leaves and more reasons to drink hot chocolate. Essentially, Autumn meant there were more opportunities to eat a lot of sugar and get presents, which was always ideal. I still feel a twinge of sadness at the start of September; there is grief in letting go of summer’s promise and headiness — but then there is always an opportunity to start again.
I had two goals this summer:
To swim in cold water as much as possible
To remember who the fuck I am
It was that simple, what I tried to get out of my summer. I spent the first half of this year disillusioned and unwell. I had a bad attitude. I should know better than to give into my propensity for negative thinking (and how to get myself out of it). But alas, I’m only human, and sometimes, all you can do is be at the whims of your humanness.
Luckily, I reached my goals with what felt like flying colours, and I did, eventually, figure out how to get myself out of that bad attitude. I swam in so much cold water. I sank into salty sand and let it heal my body in the way my body so desperately needed to heal. I got thrashed by the waves. I swam with old friends who have become family. I swam by myself. I let it be as simple as that, without needing the water to do more for me than I could expect from it. I whispered prayers into the ocean, the cold springs and the lakes. I asked them to be carried through the wind and water.
I gave my body time to unravel in the ways it needed to. I took ten steps back and then catapulted myself thirty steps forward. I came alive this summer. I was brave this summer. And I did remember who the fuck I am. My depleted energy did return, though it felt as if it might not at the start of June. I returned to movement, dancing, exercise and sustained practice after a long hiatus. It connected me to my desire to stay alive and to stay present to my life (not one and the same thing, surprisingly). It connected me to who I am and who I want to be. It clicked me into how I want to move in the world and my work.
As we move into this new season, I feel a renewed sense of how surprising and delightful life can be when I just let it be surprising and delightful. I don’t have to do so much for things to fall into place (and neither do you btw). I am buoyed by new goals for moving forward with the healing, ritual insight and beauty that summer provided me. And yes, there was some pain, too. But the pain I felt this summer provided a doorway to something different. As pain always does, that motherfucker.
A development from this summer incubation is that I’m teaching a new in-person class for the first time in a long time. I truly cannot wait. I am leading Body Temple Dance + Breathwork at the new Maha Rose space in Brooklyn on October 18th. This is a two-hour workshop from 7-9 p.m. for ALL bodies and abilities.
We will start the evening practising the somatic movement modality Body Temple Dance created by my teacher and friend Adriana Rizzolo — this practice is truly for everyone and is a way to be with your body in a way that helps you move through grief and towards your aliveness. We’ll do some writing together as a group and then move into conscious connected breathwork to help you unearth whatever needs to come out. Read more about the event and register HERE!
With love,
Nora x