Spring Equinox is upon us, and she brings with her an extra bright nightlight in the form of the super worm moon to help illuminate our way this season. It’s been 19 years since the earth and moon last aligned in such a way on this day.

Nineteen years ago, I was oblivious to the Vernal Equinox and the moon’s movements. I was doing all I could to catch sleep. I was parenting a five-month-old, potty training and chasing a toddler, and fitting my hotel sales work into my schedule where and when I could. If Spring Equinox was a heralding of balance and equilibrium that year as every year, I had not received the memo.

And so here I have a redux. Life couldn’t be more different. I still feel out of whack and misaligned, but for entirely different reasons. No longer do I have kids to chase except via text. No longer do I have to hide in bedroom closets and mimic the motions of air traffic controllers in order to make work phone calls.

A fresh new season is here yet it’s not one that heralds rebirth, renewal, and flowers and butterflies. Not yet.

I will celebrate the warmth of a rare 75-degree temperature day by seeking out the worn pathway of the local labyrinth with its time-honored design that has contemplatives like me meandering inwards to the still point at our core, before returning back out into the world, ideally with a greater sense of reclamation.

And I will also find myself seeking out a nearby creek and its muddy embankment in order to sink my toes into the soft earth. So much of what I seek at this winter/spring threshold, where the last patches of snow only just finally melted, is a kind of rootedness and connection to the earth. I want to mold my feet into this cold wet clay so that I might know stillness and a somatic sense that the resilient ground will hold me. I yearn to feel the messiness of such a foot bath that I might better appreciate the healing elixir of a cleansing food scrub thereafter.

Release. Renew. So much of what I want to let go of I will bequeath to the mud. Sorrow, uncertainty, shame, confusion, inertia. Let these be mud concerns now.

Spring is here which means it’s time for me to shed my shoes, wiggle my toes as worms know to do with their whole shimmering selves, and dare to stand upon the holy ground of a brand-new season in life.