Hey Reader,

Welcome to this month's Energy Update. A little later than planned thanks to the school holidays, but we've made it here to the beginning of September.

I'd love to know, in the comments or by reply to this email, how you're feeling moving into September. There were some really big moves in the sky over July in particular, and August too. We've had a few eclipses. How are you feeling after that?

For me, it feels like things have shifted. Not in a really obvious outward way, but definitely some internal shifts going on. I talked in the last video, the August energy update, about that push-pull between things speeding up and wanting to get going, but at the same time it was naturally a time of year where a lot of people felt they had to slow down. If you've got kids at home or you're on summer holidays, there was that tension.

Moving into September, we always get this natural boost of it being back-to-routine time, and that supports the energy of starting to move forward and get shit done.

For this energy update, I'm going to bring in this month's plant quite early on, because it's such a great symbol of September as this threshold month. We're on the cusp, summer ending here in the northern hemisphere, in the UK anyway, and moving into autumn. There's a real threshold feeling to the month.

Again, when we're in a threshold, we often want to take all the action and run off and do all the things, we can see those steps ahead of us, and it's like, right, let's get cracking. But we still have to be mindful of the speed we're going. If we're taking the earth, the land, into consideration, there's a knowing that although we're still reaping the harvest of a lot of things, still enjoying the last parts of summer, there are signs now of the land starting to slow down as we move towards autumn and winter. So just being mindful of that as we go out and do our stuff in the world.

As we approach this time of threshold, the plant I'm speaking about here, the one that speaks to this most for me, is Hawthorn. It came up strongly for me this month. If you've taken the Stile, the interactive quiz, you'll know Hawthorn might have come up as your plant ally, for where you're at now. It really is a threshold plant.

I work with it a lot, it's in its classic home around September, October time. Where I live, a lot of the hawthorns are coming into berry now, especially around waterways, rivers and things.

Hawthorn is such a good one to work with right now, because I think a lot of us are integrating what you could call upgrades, the new energy that came in over July and August. It feels like we've finally got access to that, but we need to keep integrating it within ourselves, and Hawthorn is really useful for that, whether you work with it out in nature or tincture the berries. I've seen a lot of work coming up now around integrating identity in particular. Really connecting with those parts of ourselves that feel newer, maybe reclaimed, maybe unearthed, parts that make up almost a new identity.

So we can use Hawthorn to connect fully with the identity we're starting to embody, and to step into that, start making new decisions, different decisions, start changing the course of our life ever so slightly, steer in a slightly different direction because we feel called to. These are all themes coming up around this time.

We might have to make some big decisions as we're stepping into this newest version of ourselves, so give ourselves the tools, equip ourselves to actually make those decisions. This is a time I really like to tap into the wisdom of the land and the plants, to remind me to connect with my own intuition and inform my decisions, my beliefs, my narratives going forward.

It may be that things are coming up for you right now where you're having to make decisions about things, and also to face fears. Perhaps you're in a situation where you can see the way forward, you can feel that pull, feel a desire towards something, but there's fear holding you back. Again, I come back to Hawthorn as a plant to work with for that, because it's such an ancient plant, it's connected to that ancient, ancestral wisdom we all hold within ourselves, but don't always know how to access. The plants are really useful in helping us slowly unearth that.

So whether it's fear now, around making choices and decisions, things coming up in your own life, or whether, if you dig deeper underneath the fear, it's related to more ancestral themes, things passed down through the generations, an old learned fear of a certain situation. Whatever that looks like for you, I invite you this month, if you're able and you have Hawthorn growing in your area, to connect with it, even as simply as going on a walk and noticing it out and about.

I hope this month's energy forecast was useful for you. As ever, let me know what you're moving through, in the comments or hit me back an email reply. I'm not sure if I'll have the chance to get a video version of this recorded and up on YouTube, I'll try my best, but at this point it might be more towards the middle of September. We'll see how we go.

And if you haven't already, take a look at the Stile. It's an interactive five-question quiz that makes you aware of the current landscape you're standing in, a real landscape-and-plant focus on where you might be in your own life right now. If you're feeling that the old has ended but you're not quite able to step into the new, and you feel at that threshold point, take the quiz and see which plant ally comes up for you. And let me know if you get Hawthorn too.

Sarah