Waning Crone Moon

Last week, I held my own private Samhain ritual and said goodbye to the spirits of my Harrow garden. I also collected a bit of its soil, so some of its blessing can come with me to Westacre and be mixed with its soil at the Winter Solstice.

On Saturday, I went to the Samhain ritual of the London Tamesis Seedgroup and said goodbye to my friends. This group has been a part of my life and of my identity for close to a decade. This was my last ritual with them as a regular member.

At the ritual, my friend spoke of this early winter as the time when things decay and rot away to make soil for the next year. It still feels deeply unreal to me, but this is what has started to happen to my old life. Slowly, bits of it are dropping away, and they will continue to do so, until very little of it is left.

Over the weekend, a friend came to help us tidy up the garden. It now looks a lot more bare than it did, not like my garden at all. Alex drove off to Westacre on Sunday with a few boxes containing the first of our possessions. Our house will gradually empty and be less like a home as the weeks pass. I have only 14 more days to go at work, and I'm getting ready to leave behind a brilliant place that I was part of for 18 years of my life.

At the same time, our ideas of how the project will work are changing already. We're letting go of some of our assumptions and adapting as we go.

Nothing is certain; everything is changing. All I can do is watch, as large parts of the identity I have built through home, work and community slowly fall away and come to an end.

But this is a good thing. What is left after all has gone and rotted away, is the seed of a new life, and so much fertile ground to grow it in. As my friend said during that ritual: 'Let the rot begin!'