In keeping with our “life learning for ancestral remembering path” (or ancestral schooling) we are 
intentional about celebrating the seasons’ sacred passages. From my lineage I think about Mayan and Aztec calendars that are intricately woven with the seasons and cycles of life. Planets and galaxies providing wisdom. Temples erected with doors facing the sunrise. My ancestors walked with all of life as did/do any land based culture (aka all of our ancestors).
Much of my work is helping people to remember their own blood lines. Whether my children and I are exploring their celtic, Italian, or Mexican roots, we always return to the earth, to our wholeness and interconnection with all of life.
So the Equinox is a sacred day in our home. It is a day to remember our ancestors who felt the energy of the shifting season and who were called to tend the plants and themselves in keeping with the pull of the moment. To celebrate Equinox is to remember our birthright to feel the connection and vitality in all of life pulsing in us and around us.
In the past, I primarily focused on the ceremonial part where we reflect on balance; feeling the shift of cool winds, trees blowing, leaves turning and shorter days, reflecting the equal day and night of Equinox. We always have some sort of conversation around a fire or a meal where we reflect on a few questions:
What is your soul needing for you to feel more balanced (like the balance of this day with equal day and night?
What have you cultivated that you are ready to harvest?
What does your guidance say would be loving/helpful to support you in balance now and preparation for winter?
As the years have passed and we’ve grown more and more earth connected, these days also often include some sort of seasonal harvest in our garden or the surrounding area, or both :)
Today, I thought about how this day (both Spring and Fall) has grown more and more meaningful to me, as I am deschooling myself and preserving and supporting my children’s connection with all of life.
It is the seasonal days that I want to celebrate like Christmas, rather than Christmas.
Fall Equinox IS bountiful and delightful in the truest sense.
In our garden squash, peppers and tomatoes are ready for harvest, and all around us the trees are nearing time to drop their apples, acorns, walnuts, chestnuts.
All the gifts provided by Mama Tierra/Mother Earth, no materialism needed.
Today we found a huge, gnarly, silly fig tree with branches criss crossing each other and offering little sweet green gems of fruit.
The smell took me back to one of my most vivid memories as a child: playing in my grandmother’s fig tree when I was 8. My dad would drop me off in between jail stays and I always found solace in that backyard. I buried my face in the leaves, remembering the pungent scent that speaks comfort to me to this day. One of many ways I felt the Mother/Spirit caring for me as a child.
This afternoon, my youngest and I recalled our fig trees in California that would burst at this time of year, too many for us to harvest so they would become encrusted with the emerald junebugs (which I would catch in a bag and feed to my chickens ;) Recalled the many gifts Mama Tierra has been giving for so long.
Earlier in the day, we honored the directions/all of life and reflected as a family on our gratitudes. Sabi made willow crowns and bracelets and we harvested mallow by the roots. The first of our roots that we will begin to harvest with the season.
And just like a ‘modern holiday’ we are making cookies and treats (shaped like moons and suns).
Later we’ll build a fire and share our answers to the above questions.
It is not so much about the things we do, but the ways that we are walking through this day cultivating the innate connection that I imagine our ancestors felt with the shifting rhythms of life.
A connection we have lost in this increasingly rapidly moving world but CAN reclaim.
Enjoy celebrating and remembering your way!
Happy Equinox!!!