Here we are, in the midst of September, and how is my current word of the year (Submerge) affecting my world here and now?

I am leaning into this time of year, this liminal space opening up for me. Autumn is my favorite time of year, even though it is a few more days before it arrives here. I am eagerly awaiting its welcoming arms. The strangely spicy dusty scent of drying leaves falling from above, piling up in shadowy ways everywhere you look. The change in the air, speaking of things from the dead, dark visions, being confined inside more and more and the weather shifts and twirls and turns more towards the ice and the cold. Here is my vision. Here I am calm.

At my heart, I know I am the Goddess of the Dying Forest, long before the Snows arrive and the airs give way to the next Season’s Hostess. I miss my mountains. I miss my trees. I miss the cool shadowy embrace of the forest as she reaches out for me during the day, my serene companion giving me spiritual nourishment from the roles of my feet up to through the crown of my skull and back down.

I am submerging more into my own real self.

Years ago, when my two oldest children were still so very young, I read a lot of mid-life books. I worked through a lot of id-life books. The online group of writers I worked with suggested the books and I bought them, devoured them, and made many choices based upon what I rad, what I felt and the directions that called me. Here I am now, actually in mid-life…and I have my two oldest children…and my youngest child…and I am actually just now wondering…where do I go from here…and why…

What is expected? What do people think of…? Where do I fit in? Where should I fit in? What’s next for me? I have been pondering pulling out all of those old books, and a few new ones, and working my way through all of them, all over again. Perhaps I shall…but for now…it is to my journal that I turn. It is in my journal that new ideas evolve and meander and demand space and lead out into a direction here, a pathway there. Many things coalesce and come together … and I have decided that there is no reason to allow those voices in my head that have followed me since childhood any ground or any standing– which at my age seems to me a bizarre thing to say, but I know better. I know just how common an issue this can be for so many people.

I am remembering things I haven’t done in years, years, and I am slowly making space for each thing in my life, one step at a time…one day, one step, moving forward, never giving up.

I am taking more classes. I put some of my more academic classes on hold…hurrah for online classes you can work at your own pace…so that I can absorb more of what I am after. More book-making. More bookbinding. Plus, for the December holidays, we will be making several books and journals for some people…and for others, my son and I will be making a ton of yummy candy treats. No cookies here–although we will be making them too–but not so much as gifts.

My deep diving all of this year has led me to that place I had always meant to be, but in our travels and journeys and hullabaloo, it all got shoved aside in favor of just…surviving and subsisting. The hardest thing for me to come to terms with of late is the fact that none of that is going on any longer. We have arrived where we are and this is where we are staying for the foreseeable future. I don’t have to focus on tomorrow or worry about the future. I can stop, breathe and worry about the here and now, dig in, plant roots, and BE the here and now. My focus, my drive, is hearth and kin…and I am sinking back into that once again–and for being able to do that, especially as thoughtfully and as deeply as I am currently able, I am deeply grateful.

Where are you with your relationship with your word of the year? Let me know in the comments below.