August: The Threshold Between Bloom and Surrender

August has always felt like a threshold to me—something not quite one thing or another. Not the bright surge of summer’s beginning, and not yet the hushed turning of fall. It’s the in-between. The breath before the exhale. The quiet edge where things soften.

Lately, I’ve been spending more time listening to nature, not for guidance in the form of clarity, but for the kind that comes wordlessly—through rustling leaves, the low slant of late light, the change in the air that I can’t quite name but feel deeply in my body.

August doesn’t speak loudly. It doesn’t demand. It waits. It invites.

I’ve noticed the way the wild things know how to hold this month. The grasses are golden and slow. The trees, still lush, begin to surrender their deepest greens. Even the waves seem more rhythmic, more inward. There’s a hush I’m learning to lean into.

As a woman, and as someone trying to live in better relationship with the earth, I’ve come to understand that there are seasons of blooming—and there are seasons of becoming quiet. Both are sacred. Both are necessary. August is teaching me that I don’t always need to push forward or produce. Sometimes, I just need to stay present—to the heat, to the hum, to the subtle shifts inside and around me.

There’s a question I keep returning to this month, one that I carry with me on walks through the woods and along the shore:

What is changing in me that doesn’t need to be rushed?

Nature, in her wisdom, doesn’t hurry. And when I let myself follow her lead, I feel something loosen. Some inner tide begins to settle. I can feel myself remembering how to belong—not through effort, but through presence.

August holds that reminder gently. That thresholds are sacred spaces. That pause is not the opposite of progress. That stillness, too, is movement.

So I’m standing here, in the heart of August, not asking for answers, but learning to listen. Letting the forest whisper, the waves rock me, and the wind brush against my skin like a reminder:

You are here. You are enough. Let this be what it is.