Abundancing
On embodying the dancing lady emoji because thank fuck the sun is out
Thank heavens it’s spring. This has always been my preferred time to start the new year, the most natural time to harness New Year/New Me energy (although September is close second, followed by my birthday). Maybe you’ve test-driven a few goals, made a little progress, recalibrated, pivoted or berated yourself because it turns out the goals you made during the shortest, coldest, darkest months of the year didn’t exactly set yourself up for success. Here in Kitchener-Waterloo, Canada, the days have just started feeling truly long, sunshine stretching deep past the end of the workday. The shoots are coming up through the dead and matted grass. The crocuses are popping. Birdsong is BACK, baby.
This spring equinox, in particular, felt like a true renewal. I was a couple weeks into a tango with COVID, my first one yet, when my energy was just starting to reliably return. I tried taking my usual half-hour dog walk one week into The Sick and became so winded, it took me out for the rest of the day and half the next one too. Even though my body was restless, antsy, cooped up, my lungs weren’t able to support me doing more than a quick spin around the block. For someone who has recently, surprisingly, delightedly gotten addicted to powerwalking to house music and lifting barbells, this suuuuuucked. I have two Jack Russell terriers, and by the end of two weeks without a proper walk, I too felt like an under-walked, pent-up, squirrelly Jack Russell. But now, coming out the other side, the melting snow and double digit temperatures feel like a revelation. The relief of a light jacket! The joy of an ambling body!
I refreshed my altar without planning to, tried a new ritual, wrapping a piece of yarn around one candle representing dark, and yarn around the other candle, representing light. Stretched a strand of yarn between the two, representing the midpoint. It was a fun, light creative project to wade through my bowl of yarn trimmings, all the bits from my knitting projects, the sweaters and weavings and ribbons cut from the insides of fast-fashion t-shirts. I save these scraps for my mom, who hangs the yarn in her yard for the birds. I like thinking about little bits of my makings, woven into nests in this season of blossoming. The altar candles, I burned them to their ends, then braided the yarn together. I have placed it by my bed, hoping this intention for spring will settle into my dreams — an intention for what?
I am tending to abundance, honouring what’s here. So often, we treat that term like a stand for wealth, for what funds or financial stability can make possible. But an abundance is simply a large quantity of something, anything. I have taken up a practice of listing down everything I can think of that feels abundant in my life, adding to a running list of things I have a lot of. Books, unread books, butter knives that don’t match. Yarn pieces. Dogs in my bed (two, but two’s enough). Hours of warmth and sunshine stretching before me, unfurling enticingly into the bounty of the summer ahead. Friends I can be truly honest with. Plain black tank tops. Email accounts subscribed to too-many mailing lists. Hair clips. Pompoms.
By honouring the abundance currently showing up in my life, other abundances might find me too. The right ones, the ones that magnify and amplify what they find. The right opportunities might sense they’ll find a home with me, be treated kindly, with appreciation once they enter my atmosphere. I’m finding it more delicious and enticing than a more traditional gratitude reflection, which falls flat or loses steam for me as an ongoing practice. This allows me space for the weird, the slight, the ordinary, where gratitude often points me towards the big and the known and the yeah, duh. How can I surprise myself with what I notice today? How have I never noticed there are so many of those thingamabobs in my orbit before? How lucky am I, with this bevy of whatsits?
In my recent studies in Jungian Somatics, we talked about dreams and how important they can be to the analytic process, how they unearth unconscious material if we’re patient with their secrets. My teacher, Jane Clapp, suggested we welcome our dreams, have a little conversation with our inner dream maker, that once they know their gifts will be received, they gear up production and you’re more likely to remember them. As humans, we dream nightly, our dreams are how our brains defrag, but in noticing that we want to dream, our dreams become a little more solid, linger a little longer, deliver a little more juice. I’m simply taking the same approach to life, setting out the plate for my abundances to gather, feel they are known and seen and tell their friends, “hey, this might good spot to hang.”
Whatever you’re welcoming into your life this Aries season, season of fire and initiations, I wish you magnetism, I wish you satisfaction, I wish you plenty of good kindling 🔥
Invitations
I’ve been mulling over this quote from Marie-Louise von Franz, “the unconscious does not waste much spit telling you something you already know.” It’s brought a newfound energy to how I sit with my dreams, to considering what suggestions their contents might have laying in wait for me. I have been bringing my dreams on my morning walk now, turning them over as I talk through the weird snippets only half-formed and half-remembered. And now, my husband has started talking about his dreams too? Like he remembers his better now as well? This feels potent, somehow.
Take a walk or take a run or row or cycle to this playlist, no I swear to god if you have fire signs in your chart and especially Leo placements, it is medicine.
Record of the week:
