August

August is perhaps the month that I get on least easily with. It feels a strange month to me; it’s the holiday month when not only schools go on their summer break but everything and everyone kind of runs at a different pace, on a pared-down or delayed service. It’s the month, in the archives of my chronology of these things, where my mental health has often taken a dip. It’s a month I struggle to describe. In the Northern Hemisphere, August seems to be widely viewed as being summer – and certainly there is often heat and sun – but a little look around reveals that the year is waning, pulling back.  Áine at Heart Story describes feeling a similar ambiguity. Although there’s a lot of celebration vice around, the harvest is underway and leaves are turning and curling around the edges. The days are not so long now and growth in nature has slowed down.

Perhaps the portrayal of August as being the peak of the year conflicts with what i see and so causes my uneasy feelings. Perhaps we as a society are so disconnected from nature that we mislabel and misrepresent this month. Perhaps, towards the end of the month, I’m subconsciously reminded of the gloominess I’d be feeling at this point in my childhood years as the return to school loomed imminently. My brain does, however, immediately associate the latter part of August with blackberry-picking. which is a very positive connection indeed!

In my interpretation of the fertility cycle of the year, the goddess who conceives a child at the winter solstice is just about term right now; a hugely uncertain time. She could go into labour two moments from now, or not for more than a month.. She’s as pregnant as can be, but her belly’s “dropped” a little so losing a bit of that full roundness. There’s expectation, anticipation, excitement, fear, and exhaustion in the air. For those harvesting and preserving the crops it’s a full, busy time. 

This past month, I’ve been addicted to sewing. Most evenings (and snippets of time snatched in the day), I’ve been at my machine. I’ve not got a lot to show for it but am pleased with the harvest that I have. There’s a kind of meditative element to the drill of the sewing machine, a very direct focus that perhaps has been helping me draw inward – when knitting I often talk or read or look at the world all around. Either way, I feel I’m coming to September ready for the real shift into definite Autumn, ready for birthing ideas and for harvesting what I need. ♥