Welcome to the Harvest Season: What Will You Set Aside for Yourself for the Coming Winter?

August in the northern hemisphere marks the beginning of the harvest season. My blood ancestral lineage, which ultimately traces back to the Scandinavian region on both sides of my family, has been guided by this foundational fact for eons. Likewise, I have been holding ceremonial space for - and writing and teaching about - the seasonal cycles of the Great Wheel of the Year for the last 26 years. The elegant beauty of this cycle, and its organic validity, is something in which I have always found comfort. Whether we like it or not, or are prepared for it or not, by August 1st, the plants begin turning towards the earliest stages of Winter dormancy and the harvests - the literal fruits of the abundance and labors of Spring and Summer - begin to achieve ripeness. From August through October, my ancestors would take stock of the degree of leanness and suffering to expect in the coming winter. So, although there would be so much to celebrate and still enjoy, there was also the sobering reality of survival always gnawing and clawing for attention. I believe that primal inner-knowing is woven into the feeling of sadness that many of us have as the Summer day light wanes.

Modern conveniences and technologies have lifted the burden of raw survival, and replaced it with other technologies. However, the traditional questions still apply. At this time of year, I ask myself and those for whom I hold space, “what are you putting aside for yourself, or setting up, for your survival and nourishment this Winter?” Stated another way, “what do you see now as your focus or intention this winter? What will support you most during those cold, dark months?” My German Grandmother, in her young adulthood, worked diligently, I was told, to maintain a large pantry of canned, jarred and pickled foods she had grown and harvested on the modest homestead where my father grew up. Imagine if we were all as diligent with our hearts and our emotional & energetic well-being?

I find that if we bring conscious awareness to this concept now, while we’re still basking in the warmth of Summer, we are more prepared with the necessary resources, when we most need them, at the leanest time of winter.

For me, the supportive resource I am setting up for myself now, for the coming Autumn and Winter, is access to and allowance of a natural flow of my emotions.

Let me explain and elaborate.

For the past two years, I have been the main caretaker and medical advocate for a close family member, through a very serious and potentially life-threatening illness. Thankfully, that person lived and has since fully recovered. But this process had an enormous impact on me - on every level of my health and well-being, as well as the resilience I had previously taken for granted that allows me to navigate my own life well. And, through it all, it became clear that I was having difficulty accessing the well of grief that I intellectually knew I was carrying within me. Sacred medicine ceremonies were my main ally for access to safe and supportive emotional release and exploration.

At the beginning of August, I collaborated and co-created a Lughnasadh Ceremony with my dear friend, fellow Ceremonialist, and sister devotee of the Great Wheel of the Year, Christina. A bit to my surprise, I openly wept throughout our shared opening prayers to the directions and setting of the ceremonial container. I was deeply moved by the beauty of what we were co-creating, so happy to pray openly with someone who could meet me as a full equal in our devotion to the Great Spirit, and was overcome with the beauty of this Earth holding us. I was also continuing to release my grief, as I wept in deep relief for the extension of life for this member of my family. It’s all such a beautiful mystery, this life.

Lughnasadh marks the beginning of the three-part harvest season in the Northern European and Celtic Wheel of the Year. It represents the first, noted transition from Summer to Autumn. On a wheel that is always turning, there is no beginning and no end, but it is useful at times to mark phase changes. Where I live, Lughnasadh aligns with the full ripening of soft fruits (like blueberries, raspberries and blackberries), and the maturing of various grasses (imagine hay is harvested in the fields or lawns turning a dormant brown from lack of water). This is all part of a cycle that we often take for granted and which is always happening right around us. We are part of it.

As it happened, this beautiful co-created ceremony with my friend, Christina, took place exactly one week before I left for a long weekend Ayahuasca retreat. At this retreat, I further mined my emotional blockages and depths, clearing a channel of emotional access that doesn’t feel constrained or overwhelming for the first time in my life. The core insight I uncovered was an early childhood decision I made that emotions harm people - particularly loved ones - so I must always keep mine contained. This actually helped me approach life directly and candidly, rationally, in ways many around me have been in awe of over the years. And, there was a cost to me - a suppression and a limited expression of emotional range. Emotions are fully present within me, just not fully shared or released.

In the days since, I’ve cried - by my standards - quite a lot. This inner permission and new-found freedom to trust and allow the flow of my emotions is, so far, a relief. Ironically, and yet unsurprisingly, I see now how much energy is required to keep emotions stored.

I now find myself interested in and curious - even a bit excited - about the idea of “setting up” this flow of emotional exploration and freedom as an intentional and conscious resource for myself, through the rest of the harvest season, with an eye toward allowing this flow to nourish me throughout the winter months. What might that even look like? I have a few ideas already brewing.

The harvest season has only just begun, we still have Mabon (the Autumn Equinox) and Samhain (the Celtic New Year, which marks the beginning of Winter) to come. We will revisit this inquiry of consciously setting something aside for ourselves for the coming lean times.

In the meantime, I invite you to sit with the question of what you might begin to set aside for yourself at this time?

Jennifer Rotermund
Founder