The final prompt for Susannah Conway's #AugustBreak2024 is "August was..." and I'm sharing here instead of on my social media channels as there is, maybe, a lot more to say.

I posted late for days 15 and 16, and then stopped posting completely because August was a time.

One of my youngest cousins got married this August, mehendi night was on the 13th, maticoor night on the 14th, the wedding ceremony was held on the 16th and the reception on the 18th. It was a lovely time of family, celebrations, love and happiness. This year has been the year of weddings as two of my other cousins got married, in April and in July.

This human experience is one of connection and community, of seeing oneself reflected in others, of observing our interconnectedness. We are all expressions of the Divine. With all of the weddings happening my thoughts have been on how we support each other's growth and understanding through our family units and then, as we branch out, find partners and create our own family units.

"Who will hold [the heart], and fix it so that it may stand still for a little while and catch for a moment the splendour of eternity which stands still forever, and compare this with temporal moments that never stand still, and see that it is incomparable… but that all this while in the eternal, nothing passes but the whole is present." - St. Augustine

Following my cousin's wedding my partner and I had our first bout of covid. It finally caught up with us and I suppose that that is because these wedding events have had the most people we have been around since before the pandemic.

I tested positive on August 21st following a night time fever of 103.6 °F. The experience has not been very bad and perhaps would have been easier if I had not also been on my period. As I explained to my husband, I couldn't tell the difference between the regular cramps and aches that I get during period time and any cramps and aches that covid might have brought along. Fever came and went, heart rate was a bit elevated, breathing and oxygen levels have been consistently fine. There has been tiredness, a general overall weakness in body, and now at the tail end of it there is a bit of a cough. It is the longest I can remember being ill since perhaps my teenage days.

These past few months since I burnt my foot to my recent covid experience have been an exercise in caring for self. I plan on writing an update to my notes on healing post at some point and include thoughts that I have about our local remedies, about haldi doodh and karha (kadha), about the value we place on what has been known to us versus what science is now focusing on.

I am also observing the pacing of this year a lot more. Projects that I wanted to be working on have been pushed back or put on hold, completely different projects are swirling in my space. It is an interesting time and the word that keeps coming to mind is 'liminal' - that in-between space, threshold, sacred shifting. During the posts leading up to my fortieth birthday last year I shared this prayer for Liminal Space by Octavia Raheem. Keeping it in mind this week as we move into the new moon and new month of September.

August was a celebration, a lesson, a pause.

peace,

Renee Arundhati