Almost, Nearly, Not Quite
An intention for May
I’ve been feeling the pull to choose an intention or theme for each month here on Peace of the Whole. This month I’m finally going to start.
This is something I do in my own life: intuitively setting an intention that helps direct me through the month. When speaking about cycles, as I do here, it seems like a good way to honor the particularness of this point in the spiral. And while the concept of months may be a construct—Mother Nature pays no heed to the calendar—it seems to me to be a helpful way to carve up time into more easily fathomable pieces.
So here we are in May—spring in the Northern Hemisphere. And here is the theme that came up for me:
Buds and those nearly-open blooms; possibility
Like my personal monthly intention, I let this come as it would. Whatever feels like burs stuck to my socks after a walk in the woods, that’s what I settle on. And that’s what happened with the word “buds.”
“Too simple,” I thought. “Too predictable.” But it stuck.
Many mornings I take some time for movement and stillness, and during that I can look out the window at our backyard. Our yard spills right into our neighbor’s yards so it’s like there’s a big nature-y nook out there: dogwood tree, some kind of locust maybe, fading lilac bush, so many birds, bunnies. And while I was trying to quietly be in my body, looking out at this scene, it occurred to me that there’s another side to the buds and possibility.1
Yes, the spring buds are tiny and dear. Yes, all the greenery, color and abundance feels so potent after winter. But it’s also all delicate and comes in drips and drabs.
We’re having a lot of fluctuating temps here in the Mid-Atlantic—highs of nearly 90°F and lows of 28°F in the space of a few weeks. So some of the blooms—I’m thinking particularly of some tulip trees down the road—were briefly beautiful and then they got nipped by sudden cold. They were brown before they ever got to be pink. In contrast, a couple of our shelling pea plants got fried by the unseasonably high temps.
So I find with the theme of “buds and possibility” also comes:
Tenderness, vulnerability, and almost-but-not-quiteness
Why, you might ask, does this even matter? Who cares about the particularities of the season? Well, I’m trying to learn how to live with the cycles that exist internally and externally. The cycles that have always been there and will always be there. This, I believe, is essential work. It’s what I believe my body was made for through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. And I believe there’s been a deliberate, reckless disregard for nature’s cycles which really sped up within the last hundred years. I think we’re paying dearly for this disregard and we’ll keep paying until we stop.
So I’m trying to bring my awareness back to the cycles because I don’t want to perpetuate this destruction anymore than I have already. Right now, I find my two greatest guides to be my menstrual cycle and the seasons.2
I think spring is often romanticized more than other seasons. All the bunnies, the flowers, the lambs, the baskets of eggs! And I love that too. But this year I find myself wanting to go deeper with the wisdom of this season and uncover what it has to teach me.
So there are flowers, plants, and veggies popping up. But the growing abundance is tender. One frost or sweltering day could do them in. I too feel a little vulnerable to the elements: one day I’m wearing a linen dress and the next—like today—I’ve got wool on. I’ve gotten caught in the rain on multiple walks. In someplace, this season brings mud and dangerous flooding. Spring, with all its beauty and bounty, isn’t always what we expect or can predict. Spring is many things all at once. And there is the almost.
In spring and in life I find this overwhelming and exhausting. Just let me get to the bit where it’s fully whatever it’s going to be! Not the in between! Not slow transitions of change. I don’t want to have to sit with the part where I am not where I was but neither am I where I want to be.
My mentor in college, an anthropology professor, had a term for these liminal places in life. Betwixt and between. And I remember thinking: That’s cool, Marlene. But I hate the betwixt and between.
To me, I find this season saying: It’s hard, I know, but be here in this. You need this vulnerable, uncomfortable part. Be in this bit and don’t skip over it. But also, give yourself some grace in the in-between.
In spring, I find myself unease. Really, the change of all the seasons is a bit difficult for me, as Megan Meyer so wonderfully wrote about over in her newsletter Holy HSP.3 But one seasonal thing I’ve really beat myself up about is starting seeds.
My husband and I have a kept a garden for a couple of years and now we have our own little 1/3 acre with six raised beds. But in recent years, particularly when I was chronically ill, I couldn’t get my head around the job of starting seeds in the spring. If you’ve never started seeds for a garden, you have to get going really early on this. Ideally, we’d buy seeds in December or January and some things would be started in February. Starting seeds is a messy, often cold, project that takes up a lot of space.
But the work that will become our unruly, generous garden in August starts when we can’t even see the beginning of spring on the horizon. The tiny seeds are a promise I find hard to hold onto.
This year, my husband took the lead with the gardening and seed starting.4 The plan is I, in turn, will manage the tending, which is daily, consistently work—more my speed than my husband’s. I’m good at daily watering, weeding, or making massive batches of pesto to freeze. But I struggle with making the plan, making the decision, and making the mess of tucking each tiny seed into seed trays.
And that is ok.
Beating myself up doesn’t get the seeds started.
The other thing I love to think about is that this work begins in the dark. What becomes the bud starts the down in the dirt, in the dead of winter, without access to the sun. I love that this is mimicked in human bodies: the creative potential of the follicle that becomes the egg is deep inside, quietly doing its thing. Whatever that creative potential becomes—however that human decides to work with the what-ifs given to them—it isn’t showy. It’s tucked away, content—what’s the meme?—in its lane. Focused.5
I think too it’s also important to note how this current season is not going how many of us expected it would. I’ve had many conversations with people about how early many flowers are blooming. Everything seems to be coming up too soon and done too swiftly.6 My brother, an organic farmer, tells me we’re already in a drought. And I think there’s no mistaking this—this is climate change. This is us. We did this. This, I believe, is a symptom of us pretending the cycles of nature don’t matter.
But, regardless of our mistakes, the plants bloom. I hope we can re-learn how to care enough so that it snows in February, and the lilacs can last more than a few days.
Our indifference towards cycles has led us astray. Still, we can reconnect with them—they’re always there. The summer will come. And it will go. And then there will the winter again. But right now, there are tiny buds of promise. Will they stay? It seems to me the season is asking: Can you be patient enough to see it through? Can you be with it all just as the plants are quietly, knowingly making buds again when there’s still a chill in the air?
With this intention and this month of May, I’m changing some things around here on Peace of the Whole.7 I’m going to play with a new structure for articles and honing my focus a bit. I’ve realized this work can and it feels must go beyond menstrual cycles. But menstrual cycles will remain at the core of it. I feel the pull to talk about engaging with all the cycles here, because they all call us back to our true nature.
On the note of change, I’ve also added a resources page, which will grow as time goes on.
💭 I’m curious what you’re thinking…
🌀Does this feel like a season of almost-but-not-quite? If that’s you too, how are you navigating it?
🌀Do you set intentions or themes for each month? If so, would you be willing to share yours?
🌀What is this season saying to you?
Which I keep typing as “bugs,” so there’s that.
More on all this in an essay just before the new moon!
And, man, did he take the lead. I’m fairly sure he had at least one spread sheet and definitely a Notion document.
Last year, I kept a journal of when things bloomed so I have literal notes to compare it to this year. For example, I written down that irises were out the week of May 23 last year. They’re currently a week or more into blooming.
Including a small change of the overall look of the place. I realized it was time to more prominently feature blue, my favorite color.
Have you been reading my journals and mind? These thoughts you’ve shared are so similar to what’s been percolating in my mind recently. Thank you for the wonderful mention too! I am honored and grateful ♥️
Was just talking about the discomfort that comes with the act of emerging this week. Growth is glorified but it's also painful. The splitting open of a branch. The initial transformation from one state of being to another. It can also be both slow and then fast, at times erratic -- like a flower that spends a lot of time underground and then the entire plant shoots through the earth and quickly blooms. Thank you for this essay. It resonated!