How can you better prepare for the season you're in?
Thoughts on tending to ourselves by intentionally planning for what we need from one season to the next.
Pre-S: The doors to Ephemeris are open once more. If you'd like to join us for the late spring season we'd adore having you.
A couple weeks ago the inspiration to start sowing some early vegetables indoors hit me… but I didn’t have any seeds. I scrambled to get my hands on a seed catalogue, and submit my order. And then I waited (rather impatiently, I might add) for my seeds to arrive. I had all the energy, excitement, and the time to begin… but I couldn’t.
It makes me think back to the holidays, to all the beautiful intentions I had for a daily practices throughout the Twelve Days of Yule. But I had done nothing to prepare… so each day, when it arrived, felt daunting. I couldn’t possibly muster up the energy to cook the recipes I wanted to make or do the rituals I wanted to do, because I was overwhelmed by the fact that I hadn’t gotten anything ready.
So many moments, days, and seasonal shifts that I desperately want to honour creep up on me, and then pass me by, without any of the ritual or celebration that I long for, deep in my bones. Why? Because I’ve done nothing to prepare. And I can’t expect myself to whip together a whole straw doll burning ritual on the spring equinox if I never made the straw doll, months before, to begin with!
Can you relate?
Preparation. It’s the not-so-sexy part of rituals and celebrations and gathering with friends and preparing food and feeling deeply grounded in our bodies and in the seasons. And yet, if we don’t prepare… we’re not going to get what we want, and it’s certainly not going to FEEL the way we want it to feel.
One of the things we’ve noticed coming up again and again for folks inside Ephemeris is how powerful it feels to make a year long almanac so that we can better prepare in years to come. In the autumn portion of our almanac, we can write down and keep track of all the metaphorical nuts we want to gather to prepare for winter. Then, when we return to this chapter of our almanac next year we’ll know - “Aha! Right! Those are all the things I do in November so that my holiday time in December feels the way I want it to”.
The amount of times I have though to myself, “I’ll do this differently next year. Next year I’ll remember to prepare more in advance” and then when that time comes back around twelve months later I have completely forgotten that intention… well… it’s basically every year up until this point. But as we move through Ephemeris, we gather all this information, we write it all down.
Now, I have a whole set of clear actionable intentions written down for November - things I do to prepare for the holidays. Now I have a whole list of priorities for January - things I do to prepare for seed planting.
How could I better prepare for this moment? This has become one of the most important questions I ask myself.
And on that note, we want to let you know that the doors to Ephemeris are open once more.
Perhaps you’re feeling wobbly still, recovering from the long winter. Or maybe your feet are feeling firmly planted in spring. Either way, we’re moving - seasonally, here in the Northern Hemisphere - into a time of awakening.
The ground is slowly beginning to warm. It is time to plant the seeds that will unfold throughout the rest of the year. We have emerged from the depths of winter, transitioned from the darkness into the light, and it is time to dream into what we want to call forward throughout the year.
In nature, the snow might be beginning to melt, the daffodils might be starting to poke through, the first signs that spring has indeed, arrived.
Our animal bodies are ready to slowly emerge into new life once more. It is time to plant the seeds for our year ahead.While there may still be snow on the ground where you live, this is a time of emergence. It is a time for us unfold ourselves from the depths of winter and embrace the warmth of the sun. It is time to awaken from our cocoons of slumber and begin crafting, creating, cultivating and communing once more.
If you’d like to join us in connecting with this season (and the rest of the year as well), understanding the needs of your animal body, your creative impulses, and building a deep and profound relationship with yourself and the world around you… AND if you want to build a personal almanac for the year so you are better prepared as we move from one season to the next in future years… then we’d love for you to join us inside Ephemeris.
If you'd like to find out more about Ephemeris, and how we can deeply nourish ourselves by tending to our own cyclical and seasonal rhythms, you can find out more and join us here.
xo
Kelsey