Danna D. Schmidt
Master Life-Cycle Celebrant®
Ordained Wedding Officiant
Funerals/Memorials Specialist
Certified Grief Educator/Tender
ADEC-Certified Thanatologist®
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.
My unofficial almanac for this winter of 23/24, brought to you by the letter L, is that it has been the winter of listening and lamenting (so much lamenting for a world gone utterly mad). It’s been the winter of loosening and lightening. And it’s been the winter of leaning in which was all about… Continue Reading
Here we come to it again. The high, holy midpoint of the year. We are halfway to somewhere or something, and halfway past that other place and time that chronicled 2023’s arrival. And maybe this still point, this Midway Madness, is the posture best assumed for this day. To plant yourself outside, in whatever way… Continue Reading
The autumn equinox is upon us and ah, yes! As the poet Rilke reminds us in his poem “Autumn Day,” “it is time. The summer was immense.” Maybe not immense enough for those of us who see so little of the sun in the other three seasons, but I enjoyed my days in it, nevertheless.… Continue Reading
Tiny dust-cumulus rise on each side of the rhythmic broom. The worse the news the more I sweep.” excerpted from “Sweeping Equation” by Dory L. Hudspeth I’m not what you would call the world’s cleanest person but there are few moments of contentment I cherish more than sequestering myself away in a small cabin in… Continue Reading
Midday in the Puget Sound. The sun has spread out a grey blanket to sit upon a spell – her momentary respite perhaps before her virtual global light show with sunset and sunrise at Stonehenge. We celebrate this annual rite, welcoming the arrival of summer and the longest day here in the Northern Hemisphere… Continue Reading
Someone I know well (or perhaps after all these years, not at all) asked me why I’m always dwelling on topics like grief and all that other stuff, which by other stuff she meant death and dying. This was in response to our chat about Mother’s Day. To know me is to know that at… Continue Reading
The year 2020 sure has come in with a roar. Eleven days past my annual New Year’s ritual (in which I burned a letter I had penned to 2019 together with a stack of ceremony transcripts), and I suddenly find myself in need of another way to say things rite. And that’s the thing about… Continue Reading
Spring Equinox is upon us and in this last year of the second decade of this uneasy millennium, 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… Continue Reading
Two cups of water, it turns out, is the magic measurement needed to puree four years of healing. Two cups, mixed with the torn bits of emails and a litany of epistolary fragments that together, represent a realm of relational trespasses and toxic clutter I’ve allowed to take up residency in my heart and soul. In… Continue Reading