Dear you,
Today is All Saints’ Day and tomorrow is All Souls’, and for a lot of people this is the weekend of remembering. In older calendars it’s also the turn into the dark half of the year, Samhain, when the evenings close in early and the people we’ve lost are said to come a little closer. You don’t have to believe any of that for it to be true that November makes us think about who isn’t here.
The moon is shrinking this week, past full and heading for the new moon on Monday the 9th. A waning moon is a good time for finishing rather than starting: the letter you’ve meant to write, the drawer you’ve meant to clear, the name you’ve been avoiding saying out loud.
This morning’s card was the Wheel of Fortune. It’s the card of turning, of the part of life that moves whether we push it or not. Next to a weekend like this one I read it gently. Seasons go round, people leave, things change, and none of that is a failure on your part. What you do get to choose is what you carry through the turn.
Your one small step: one evening this week, light a candle and say the name of someone you miss, out loud, once. That’s all. It’s a small thing, and it helps more than it should. If nobody comes to mind, say the name of a version of yourself you’ve outgrown, and thank them.
If you’d like company for the week, there’s a quiet spread for grief in the journal, and one card each morning is always here.
Clara
