August is Integration Month – Be Like Fruit
The last few weeks, I’ve found myself watching pears and apples surrender to gravity, falling heavy and ripe to the earth below, and thinking, “That’s exactly how I feel.” A few figs slip by me as well and end up on the ground (not many – they are my favorite) and I think they are the most how I feel.
Mush.
I’m working on a few things – a bit of writing around my own personal healing journey and how much this has led me to architect our programs at Dark Woods of Grief based on what I know, firsthand, to be really effective.
This was kind of an epiphany I had last week when I started to write about and reflect on what got me out of the hell that was my personal unprocessed grief & trauma, and it’s turning out to be quite an epic story and will be a slower burn than I thought.
But mostly I’m integrating.
Cosmos in the garden — this year one of my intentiosn was to make more beauty
A few weeks ago we completed our final session for our inaugural Roots of Ritual – Grief Tending Foundations Level 1 Facilitator Training. It was INCREDIBLE! I knew making a training that was accessible to folks who couldn’t travel to me for in-person work was called for, but I had no idea it was going to be as potent as it was.
I wanted to jump right into writing about it and promoting the 2026 training, because my heart is SO excited…but my body said, “Nope!”
August has been asking me to be “unproductive” in all the ways our culture measures such things. Every time I’ve tried to push forward with pretty much ANY projects, the same gentle but insistent message arrives: August is integration month.
I’ve understood this for years. In the Chinese Medicine way of knowing, there are five seasons, not four. The fifth season is Earth time, or late summer. Earth season is a time for slowing down, listening, extra nourishment and integration.
This year, my body insisted. Not by getting sick or anything extreme like that, but simply by kind of melting into the ground like a ripe fig. This is actually a nice feeling, as I’m sure you can imagine, but it frustrates the parts of my brain that are still ‘under the influence’ of colonial/capitalist programming, which says, “Productivity = Value…”
Josea praying & releasing at water ritual led by Kim Wassener — July 2024 Facilitator Training
I share this with YOU, dear reader, because I know how much this can also be true for anyone who needs to take downtime to grieve in our society. It goes against the grain.
And yet this deep need for rest while grieving is perfectly in tune with nature.
There’s profound wisdom in fruit that falls when it’s ready, not when we think it should be. If you’ve ever tried picking and eating an apple before it’s ripe, you know what I mean. 😝
And every year the timing is a little different, depending on how the weather has been — just like our lives.
August is the month of harvest, yes — but not just of crops. It’s the harvest of all we’ve processed, integrated, and become throughout the year. It’s the time when our inner work ripens and falls into place, often when we’re not trying to make it happen.
Bean chillin’ in my garden
It’s a time of complete dissolution and recognizing the things we need to let go of, and where we need more support to see our intentions to harvest the following year.
If you’re grieving — whether it’s been days, months, or years — your nervous system is doing the profound work of integration every single day. You’re metabolizing not just loss, but transformation. You’re digesting the enormity of love that continues beyond physical presence. You’re processing the reality that you are both the person who existed before this loss and someone forever changed by it.
This work is invisible to most of the world, but it’s arguably the most important work humans can do.
A day of deep emotional work requires more rest and recovery than a day of physical labour. Your need for more rest isn’t laziness — it’s integration. Your need for more sleep, for slower mornings, for saying no to things that once felt manageable — this is your wise body knowing exactly what it needs to tend the enormity of what you’re carrying.
In a culture that glorifies productivity and “bouncing back,” choosing rest becomes a radical act of self-compassion. It becomes a way of honoring not just your own healing, but the relationship that created this grief in the first place.
So if August has been asking you to slow down, to let projects sit unfinished, to choose the hammock over the to-do list — consider this your permission slip. You are not behind. You are not failing. You are following an ancient rhythm that our fruit trees understand perfectly. And there is value beyond measure in that.
Sometimes the most productive thing we can do is allow ourselves to fall ripe into rest, trusting that integration happens in its own time, in its own way. Sometimes August asks us to simply be rather than do, to let our souls catch up with all the living and losing and growing we’ve done.
Lotus flower on the lake we receive our water from…
The cooler, energizing days of fall will come. There will be time for new projects, fresh starts, and forward momentum. But right now, if your body and spirit are asking for integration, for rest, for the gentle falling that happens when fruit is finally ready — honour that wisdom.
You are exactly where you need to be.
Your grief is not a problem to be solved but a process to be tended. Your need for rest is not a luxury but a necessity. Your integration is not procrastination but profound spiritual work that happens in its own season and rhythm.
May you trust the timing of your own ripening.
PS. If you’re a professional supporting others through grief, remember that modelling healthy rest and integration isn’t just good for YOU – it’s essential teaching for those you serve. By finding ways to honour our body rhythms within our capitalist/colonial society that constantly encourages us to push-push-push, we become Wayshowers for those who desperately need this too.
I’m off to the West Coast for a few weeks where I will be immersed in sand and surf, and hopefully some sunshine! But most importantly, no cell reception, no internet, not even a landline (remember those??) for miles.
We’re bringing tents, tarps, a water filter, a tiny stove to boil water, a lot of dehydrated food, layers of merino wool, bathing suits, wet suits, surf boards, toques and a change of socks. Our splurge purchase this year was a new double sleeping mat, and we’re praying that it’s as comfortable as the reviews said!! Pics to come in September! 🙂
Sending you so much love for the last few weeks of summer! (or winter if your on the other end of the Earth!)
Salt-water blessings & love,
Josea
