The Great Healer

"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake," said the poet Wallace Stevens. Or in my case, a month of my year spent walking, talking, sitting, swimming, reading, praying, practicing yoga, gathering and connecting with my family in this protected harbor of Lake Ontario. I consider it the center of the calendar year and, in many ways, the center of my evolving self. 

For just a few weeks, it feels so wonderful to let go and leave behind everything of my normal day-to-day life and allow myself be restored and renewed by the natural world. It's one of the things I miss most when I'm in the throes of a busy school year and living in suburbia, spending much of my days parenting and working indoors. I have to take my nature time in small doses--a morning run through our every growing city, appreciating the few patches of green that still exist, visiting the local lakes that typify this "gem in the hills" and bask in my own partially visible backyard sunsets that offer unexpected beauty. Some days it's just about taking the time to look up at the sky mid-day as I get my mail and take a deep breath to recalibrate before I'm back inside. 

The month of July has become the time of the year where my kids and I can enjoy being barefoot and bathing suited most of the day with no schedule to maintain and no pressure to be "on" in any strenuous way. However I have come to recognize the greatest opportunity is in gaining a deeper intimacy with the natural world. The first day we arrived at the lake, my daughter and I went for a walk and found two caterpillars that we transferred to our little butterfly sanctuary. My daughter named one "Faith" and I named the other "Destiny." We proceeded to spend the following couple of weeks witnessing the incredible transformation. We felt building excitement at each stage from caterpillar to chrysalis to first sight of wings. I was visibly more excited than my kids when the day finally arrived to watch Faith and Destiny take their final freedom flights.

Our time this year coincided with the solar and lunar eclipses. These powerful gateway periods invite us to become aware of endings and new beginnings in our lives. The energy tends to set the tone for the next six months. For the full moon eclipse I felt the call to use the lunar energy for ritual. I invited my mom, dad, brother and kids to participate. I suggested that we each meditate on a word or a few words that we want to focus on expanding in our lives now. What do we want to experience or express more fully in the coming months? I prayed and collected rocks from the lake and we each wrote our words on the rocks. We went to the edge of the lake together and tossed our intentions into the water. My kids spent the rest of our vacation attempting to dive for them like lost treasure. The only rock they found was Hope.

This year marked our fifth summer on the lake. I reflected on how much has changed in my life over that course of time. I've gone from married and mostly stay at home mom to divorced and feeling devastated and lost to being an empowered unpartnered woman, working hard to build my career, a single but peacefully co-parenting mama dedicated to being present for my kids. I have changed dramatically in the last five years as my own personal transformation has taken place. But the lake and its container of beauty and rest along with my amazing family have been a constant that I'm deeply grateful to have. That combination of nature and nurture have been the great healers for me. Every year my kids and I celebrate all that we have successfully navigated in the year that passed by doing a "family jump" off the dock together. It's a symbol not only of what we have lived through, but what we are living for: to continue to grow and learn together and to trust that when we leap the lake will always be there to receive us.