Summer Lovin'

Look at these girls! Specifically, look at Margaret! Look at her JUMP!!!
What a Ninja!
Three legs be damned, that girl gets air!
(She also LOVES to swim and is very good at it!)

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All my life I have been a winter person.
I truly love snow, like, wholeheartedly and with real passion.
I love first snow, especially. I love playing in it walking in it and many activities associated with it... I also love the darkness and the coziness of winter. I love a good hibernation.

But lately, something has shifted in me.
Where I normally can't wait for Fall shifting into Winter and everything it brings and stands for, I am finding myself feeling passionate about summer.

I have always loved the ocean and feel very blessed to have grown up in a coastal town (and now lived back in a neighboring one for 10 years!). There is nothing like the soothing, cleansing sense of submerging your  body in briny water and feeling the reaction of salt drying on your skin, tightening every pore. It is like all the atoms and molecules that compose you are dancing, happy and free! (I am an extremely tactile person, followed by an abstracted mind- or maybe it is better put the other way 'round, I don't know...) I have always loved the vibrant greens, as well as rainbow of colors and all of the lush, blooming life that comes in the warmer months of New England. It is a part of me, through my studies (as an herbalist) and my art, my work, but somehow I think I have never fully been able to appreciate it. I have been missing the true passion for the season until now.

Life can be hard and cold (especially where there are 4 seasons), if you look at it that way. For me, in the past, my physical discomfort in the heat has clouded my perception to a degree and I always felt that the heat of summer was the most difficult to tolerate. Part of it is that I have a hard time slowing down and that is exactly what Summer does, slows down life. Because of the heat, because of the traffic (oh, the joys of living in summertime tourist town), because of the beauty...

The Universe seems to be screaming a shift of consciousness at me. I am ok with it.
Winter is slow too, in its own way. But Summer slow is different. And although it is a busy time of year for my work, the time in between and the moments spent with people I care about seem to linger longer. It makes me smile.

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