It’s August.
My feet keep taking me away from the computer where I do my writing and out to the berry batch, the bean trellises and the beach. My toes go from dusty to dirty to clean as I submerge myself fully in whatever body of water I find myself with. A river, a lake, the ocean.
I find too, that I’ve been turning over ideas of what to write in my mind. Handling them like smooth river rocks, picking up one and then the other, finally leaving them all back where I found them. It’s dangerous, this giving yourself too much time to think about what to say. Some of the ideas slip away, caught in the current of life as my attention moves elsewhere. Others that seem glossy and important when I first pick them up quickly turn to a dull sheen, the way a rock dries in the sun.
What is it I want to share, I ask myself. Everything and nothing is the answer that comes back to me. I want to share how in the summer, I have to drink half-caf coffee because if I don’t, my anxiety becomes unbearable and my heart tries to fly out of my chest. How swimming in the ocean is the best medicine I’ve found for this seasonal disharmony, and how it’s a reminder that what we navigate changes so much with the seasons. How my chickens are fully grown and my resolve is both softening and steadying as I prepare to harvest them next week. How I’ve been thinking a lot about how to share ways that all of you can best show up for yourselves when things get unsettled, disrupted, plain damn hard. And how it seems, awash in a bounty of options, perhaps sharing more of what I do for myself, is at the very least, a place to start.
Which leads me to share how the blackberries teach me, year after year, about how to live in alignment. This year, they’ve been reminding me about waiting until the time is right.
I lean in, stretching for a berry just out of my reach. It looks perfect. Glossy, plump – I’m certain that it is ripe. But when my fingers find it they detect a firmness that says, “still sour, not ready, come back later.” Thorns catching my wrist, I know it is the only option. To come back later that is. Because if I continue now, pulling this berry from the branch, it will disappoint. My tongue will pucker, confused as to why I would choose such a thing, surrounded as I am by a bounty of perfect sweetness.
It’s like this with treatments too.
We want the first one to be the right one. We want relief or transcendence; shifting or illumination. We want the discomfort that is the loudest in our bodies to be the first one to find ease. These things are certainly possible; however, there is no guarantee.
So here is an invitation – come to clinic like you go to the berry patch.
Come as you would to the berry patch.
Barefoot and ready to work.
Bring the things that you need.
Set aside enough time
for what it is you are hoping to harvest.
Be ready to encounter thorns.
Pick what is ripe,
leave behind what is not.
Feel the warmth.
Taste the sweet.
Visit often.
Just as the berries ripen slowly on a bush, so do you grow into areas of transformation. If you are watching, if you are visiting your own inner brambles regularly, you’ll find the fruit when it is perfect. These are the jewels of summer that (at least in August) I believe are the entire purpose of living.