august is my favorite month. august brings unbearable heaviness. august asks us to remember the lessons of june, the month of grief, and slow down. it’s late summer and i have been burning the candle at both ends. the english language often evades me, especially in writing, if i’m not being careful. phrases appear out of nowhere, pulled out of latvian, nonsensical, and flowery. i want something to happen but i don’t know what that is yet or anymore. i need something to look forward to or else i might actually stay stuck in august. what i need is rest and the bravery to lean into ease instead of forcing things to happen.
ease will not return by itself, you have to actively make space for it. take a critical look at your life right now. in what ways are you making things harder for yourself? what could you change to lighten up a little bit? here are ten spells for inviting ease back into your life:
get out of your head. a promise i made to myself in the spring: this season, i will swim at any opportunity that i get, even if the water is a touch too cold and i don’t have my bathing suit with me. i did it because when i’m in the water, there is nothing else in my head. everything else has been left on the shore. if the sea is very still that day and i float on my back, i can almost unbecome and be the saltwater itself. other opportunities for (the good kind of) disappearing: when i’m running and i dissolve between the beat of my feet and sweat trickling down my temples, when i’m dancing and the songs bleed into one another and i let loose a little, when i’m with someone new for the first time and the air in my bedroom is saturated with inevitability, when i’m goofing around with my friends and we crack open into the heart of the joke and the conversation flows.