rosehip

In January, the last time I wrote here, I thought I was coming back to blogging regularly. And here it is mid-June, and I haven’t written a single post! So I suppose I was not coming back. This year so far has been one of gentle awareness…slowing down and letting go…experimenting with newness and also finding myself in old patterns…days of vitality and the making of progress with my aspirations…days of pain and lethargy and doing very little.

This feels like a threshold year for me, not in some grand, clear, decisive way, but in ways that come out of quiet noticing and thoughtful responding. It makes for interesting times with my creating for the world beyond my home and garden, I can tell you. All that I am deeply certain of is the beauty and wonder of becoming a grandmother…and wanting to spend more and more of days making do to mend the earth and become ever more my own. My threshold is wide and comfortable, and I am sitting upon it, looking out and looking within, here for as long as I need to be.

So on this late morning as I am simplifying some online things…and putting together a week-long simplicity retreat for Wisteria & Sunshine, I thought I would leave a note here. In a few days, I am leaving on a long train trip to Maine to attend an herbal retreat and visit with dear friends. Two twelve-hour journeys there and back with spacious hours, removed from my every~days, to plumb the depths, dream and ponder. Hours to stare out of windows, see fresh-to-me every~days and sights, to look at my life from a distance and take stock…and to relax and enjoy the pleasures that come my way, of course.

I’ll be back here sometime this summer when I know more clearly what this space is for. If you’ve been receiving emails when I post here, please know that I’ve let go of that service as a part of my simplifying. But you will still be on my mailing list, and I will let you know whenever I do leave something here in the hedgerow post~box for you to find. If you aren’t on my mailing list, I welcome you to sign up here.

Wishing you a peaceful, clarifying summertime,

Lesley

xo

Integrate…my guiding word this year. A word I don’t really care for the sound of and haven’t been able find a prettier, more beckoning synonym for. A word, tho’, that best describes the work going on inside me. Work that is wanting to express itself in my actions as well, but that is always much slower in coming into being for me.

It is still Winter, and I continue to take my days gently. It is the best medicine for my nights, which are broken so often now with hot flashes. I smile to think of the last year when mild, warming waves came to me regularly. Strong enough to keep a fan nearby, in case, but so easy. How Lesley-like, I thought, thinking I was getting off lightly. That all changed a few months ago. And even more recently, deep chills have been added to the mix. And goosebumps so powerful there should be another word for them…ostrich…emu? But they feel more wondrous than scientific. And I feel as tho’ I am being rewired.

And I suppose I am…in body…in mind…in soul. In deep ways and everyday ways. But it’s so easy to keep doing and being in the same old ways. My word is there to keep my attention on actually weaving the understanding and experience I have from all of these years on the planet into some new ways. And I have a feeling that will be the work of more than just a year! The closest poetical word I found to describe the process I am in is ripen. The rosehip metaphor that has accompanied me since the beginning of this menopause journey gave me that one.

I am glad the growing of a rosehip woman is less straightforward than it is for the rose. There is so much sustenance in the seeds I hope I am nurturing…for myself and my world. Or so I whisper to myself as I grow…