The In-Between: What This Summer Has Been Asking Me to See

We are nearing the end of August… YAY! 😂

I don't know about you, but this summer has absolutely flown by.

And yet, when I look back over it, I also feel like my feet barely touched the floor.

I've tried to keep up with my usual grounding practices. I've tried to find those little pockets of time to come back to myself. And yes, the grounding happened — because sometimes grounding can simply be walking outside, putting your feet on the earth, breathing and remembering where you are.

But silence?

Reflection?

Proper meditation?

That was another story.

With teenagers in the house, I found that the minute they woke up, the day began.

Mam…

Where's this?

Can we go here?

Who's collecting who?

What's for dinner?

You know the drill. 😂

And now, as we move towards the school term beginning again, I can feel myself entering that strange in-between.

Summer isn't quite over.

Autumn hasn't quite begun.

The children aren't quite back to school.

And I'm not quite back into my normal rhythm either.

Maybe that's why the eclipse affected me so much.

A moment that made me stop

Watching the Moon move across the Sun during the solar eclipse was extraordinary.

For those few minutes, everything seemed to stop.

We looked up.

We waited.

We watched something happening above us that was so much bigger than whatever emails needed answering, jobs needed doing or places we needed to be.

And I found myself thinking about time.

About how tiny one human lifetime really is.

About my children.

About the grandchildren I may have one day.

Even my great-grandchildren.

And suddenly a question came into my mind:

What am I going to leave behind for them?

Not financially.

Not possessions.

Not things.

What will I have stood for?

What will I have taught?

What will I have created?

What will exist because I was brave enough to bring it into the world?

And then came the slightly more uncomfortable question...

Where am I still playing small?

That one stayed with me.

When the body makes the decision for you

You may have seen on my social media that I've been fairly unwell.

Last week I completely lost my voice with laryngitis, and this week I've been dealing with a chest infection.

Not exactly how I planned to spend August!

Of course, illness is illness and I'm taking care of myself physically.

But I also believe we can sometimes be curious about what our experiences bring up emotionally or symbolically.

For me, losing my voice immediately brought up the theme of speaking my truth.

Where am I holding back?

Where am I editing myself?

Where am I worried about what somebody might think if I fully say what I believe?

And then my chest brought me somewhere else.

The heart.

What am I holding in my heart that I'm ready to release?

I don't believe every cough or illness needs a spiritual explanation.

Sometimes a chest infection is simply a chest infection!

But I do believe our experiences can become invitations to reflect if we choose to let them.

And perhaps that's what this period has been for me.

An invitation to stop.

The space between who we've been and what's next

Spiritually, eclipse seasons have long been associated with periods of change, endings, beginnings and things coming into awareness.

And I think there's something interesting about being in this space between the August eclipse and the Full Moon on the 28th.

It feels like a threshold.

Not somewhere we need to rush through.

Somewhere we can actually stand for a moment.

Because perhaps we don't always need to immediately know what's next.

Perhaps sometimes we need to ask:

What am I ready to leave behind?

What truth am I ready to speak?

What am I holding onto that I no longer need to carry?

Where have I been making myself smaller than I really am?

And maybe the biggest one:

If I thought about the people who will come after me, what would I want my life to have stood for?

That's the question I'm sitting with as August comes to an end.

Not what else can I achieve?

Not how much more can I squeeze into the calendar?

But:

What am I here to create, embody and leave behind?

Maybe that's a question worth sitting with yourself over the next few days too.

Christine x