“In the Chinese calendar there is an extra season that blooms between the spaces of late summer and autumn. Long Summer, as it’s called, is a liminal season — one that lasts the small handspan of time between the ending of August and the equinox arrival of fall. It is a sacred pause for integration. An invitation to come back into a state of balance after the hubbub of summer, and find a place of peaceful neutrality before the waning of autumn begins.” ~Asia Suler
Hades, the god of the underworld, fell in love with the beautiful Persephone and kidnapped the goddess of spring, imprisoning her in the netherworld. Demeter, Persephone’s mother and the goddess of agriculture, became so distraught that she plagued the world above with drought, bitter cold, and unrelenting darkness. After many months without growth, Zeus begged his brother Hades to allow Persephone to return to her mother for half of each year. Persephone and Demeter are reunited on the spring equinox, marking the start of the growing season. All through the spring and summer long, Persephone dances, sings, and feasts.
As August closes its door and time strides toward fall, Persephone grows ever more restless, too wired to rest but too exhausted from a season of festivity to focus. But long season only lasts a few weeks, its coda the autumnal equinox. On that day, Persephone returns to her husband in the darkness of the underworld. Here, she lets go of the merrymaking and grows reflective and still.
I always feel a bit itchy this time of year too. A Leo of the first kind, summer is my everything. It takes these weeks of long summer to fully integrate the wild revelry of the last months and move intentionally toward darker, cooler days. Long season is bittersweet; the passing of time can leave me feeling nostalgic and melancholy.
But’s perfectly normal to notice the magic of the coming season while still feeling sad to close the door on the passing one. Science calls this anticipatory anxiety, or the worry that the future will be too different, too scary. We panic, sure that we will be completely unprepared for the challenges a new season will bring. Anticipatory anxiety is a false dichotomy. It tells us that joy can only lie in one place, when true peace lies everywhere.
This false dichotomy says if we love one season, we won’t possibly find joy in another.
But happiness can lie in flip flops and slippers, ice cream and pumpkin pie, pool parties and fall festivals, budding trees and trees stripped bare.
As my zinnias go to seed and the tall grasses turn brown, I’m reminded that we’re basically plants with more complex emotions, absorbing summer’s sunlight to create and store energy, then shedding what is no longer needed as autumn knocks.
In this liminal space of long summer, ask yourself:
What did you harvest these past few months?
What should you release this fall?
How can you celebrate both?
