Boundaries are the New Autumn Self-Care Practice
The Autumn Equinox marks a midpoint - a balance of night and day length, the middle of Autumn, and the halfway mark of the harvest season. The deepening of seasonal dormancy is showing on the plants around us, as the colors of leaves change and wild-grown foods turn hardy and scarce. I’ve always felt a bit of a necessary fading and slowing down this time of year. After all, we can’t bloom year round. It has taken most of my lifetime, but I now appreciate the permission - the mandate, even - to slow down. My studies with my shamanic spiritual teacher began many years ago, in September, and I remember well a mantra she taught me to repeat regularly to myself - “Medium to slow,” she would say. This is the pace I invite you to take on now through Winter and repeat regularly to yourself. In fact, I have always found it to be comforting ritual to return to as needed, like its own kind of spell-casting - repeat three times: “medium to slow, medium to slow, medium to slow.” Maybe even allow yourself to take a deep, nourishing breath, as you say these words. Let this be a simplistic reminder as well as a reset for your whole body.
Perhaps slowing one’s pace lays the perfect foundation for the fact that we, in the Northern Hemisphere, are now turning swiftly and steadily toward the second half of the harvest season and the end of another full turn around the Great Wheel of the Year. November 1st brings the New Year within this nature cycle, and along with it, a thinning of the veil between the worlds, allowing us closer connection with our ancestors. But permeable and porous membranes require a sense of cohesion, lest they lose themselves to depletion. Said another way, the Autumn Equinox is an ideal time to sort out and strengthen one’s personal boundaries. After all, if I were planning to connect with my ancestors during a time when the boundaries between the realms of life and death were particularly permeable, I would want to have a conscious confidence in the strength of my own boundaries.
Over the multiple decades that I have held Wheel-of-the-Year ceremonial space, I have often been asked if I would teach what I know. In doing so, I discovered of the most fundamental truths, that for life in general, but especially for deeper and more dedicated work with the Ancestors, as well as within these liminal spaces, the work begins with knowing and strengthening one’s own boundaries. Unfortunately, most of us were not adequately equipped with this knowledge in childhood. In fact, many of us were taught very early on that disregarding or dissolving our boundaries - if we even know anything about them in the first place - is a much easier and kinder approach to life and our loved ones. But as the author, Juliana Taylor Shore, LMFT, speaks to in the very first line of chapter one of her book, Setting Boundaries that Stick, “there is an old saying that goes, ‘Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.’”
Though we may never have been taught this (or worse yet, many of us were taught the opposite), the fact of the matter is that having and communicating clear boundaries are one of the safest, kindest things we can do for ourself and those we love. And one of Juliana Taylor Shore’s basic approaches is to find your “Big Why” - the thing, for yourself, that you will value and protect and prioritize above any temptation to cross or neglect your own boundaries, out of fear of disappointing or losing someone in your life. It may require a bit of contemplation, but this clarity and motivation around personal boundaries may just be one of the most empowering gifts you can cultivate for yourself. I also believe this is exactly the work the second harvest festival invites for us, in preparation for the weeks and months ahead. Whether for protection from unknown entities across the thin veil between the worlds or for protection of your own energetic capacity through late Autumn and Winter, clear boundaries are so kind.
May you experience the brightest, clearest, kindest remainder of the harvest season.
Jennifer Rotermund
Founder