Catching up with "The Wheel"

Dear Web,

There has been a shift. I've only experienced this kind of shift one other time that I can remember right now; I've come to call it 'catching up with The Wheel'. Let me explain.

I live my life with The Wheel of the Year. That is, I pay close attention to the Earth and Her movements through the year from season to season. And, I notice my own movements/changes internally in the context of Hers. For example, when Fall Equinox comes around (that is the day when the length of day and night is equal), I take a look at the concept of balance or imbalance in my life. I examine what harvests there are in my life to celebrate, like projects that have reached fruition, or not. It is a time of assessment: what will I keep (relationships, patterns of thinking/being, objects etc) and what will I honor and let go? Anyway, you get the idea. So, I follow this way of Living in relationship to the natural world around me. Sometimes there are big ways I am in sync with what is happening on the Wheel and sometimes I am very much not there. Although, any way I am however that is, I mark the day and celebrate it. I celebrate Her place and mine.

So, last year around the time of Spring Equinox...actually just a couple of days before Phoenix was killed this year....my sweet cat Companion died. He was over ten years old and was a stray from the island of Lesbos in Greece. Long story, short, I brought him home with me and we enjoyed such a lovely cat connection for many years. His death was difficult, though not because it was traumatic like Phoenix's, but because I loved Hekati that much. So for the rest of last year's March, into April and beginning through May I grieved terribly. Plus, beginning January of last year, my partner had a bout with cancer! It was a difficult year too!!

The movement of the Earth and Her seasons is such that Spring Equinox marks the time of re-emergence. You know, here in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in the United States, Daffodils are some of the first ones to bloom along with Crocus and of course, there's the return of Bloodroot's incredible white flowers! If you live in places where the winters can be long, cold and dark, Spring Equinox is especially a place of great celebration. "We made it through!" can be a common sentiment.
Well, because of the intensity of the events before and around Spring Equinox last year, I fell into a state of what I understand as "internal stunted growth." Spring Equinox came and went with me in a heap of great grief. Spring went on without me. I did not re-emerge with the Earth, I stayed deep, deep within my dark cave. For months.

By May, though, before my partner's second surgery, Phoenix and I went to the ocean for just three days. I needed to re-Source myself and when that is called for, I often find my way to the ocean with Phoenix. It was there, that I finally emerged. Between Phoenix's exuberant joy of life and our time beside the water, I finally 'caught up with The Wheel' and could Return. It was my Spring Equinox in May, instead of March.

So, this year, there was no trip to the ocean just all the stuff I've since recorded. And, somehow, by the Grace of Spirit, this shift has seemed to have occurred again. Though because of the different circumstances of my grief, I am not fully confident that I won't slide back into my cave. It does feel extremely important, though, to acknowledge that for the moment, for the last three days actually, I feel I have 'caught up with The Wheel'; I have re-emerged in a Spring Equinox way here at Summer Solstice. And I still feel tentative like there could still be a spring frost....

And...I think I am going to Live. And it just may be an OK thing.

In Her Love,
Melissa