Hello, my friend!
It’s midsummer, and this past week my clients all seemed to want the same thing: rest. If you’re feeling it too, the pull to retreat or a low hum of something you can’t quite name, you’re entitled to feel all of it. Here’s my case for doing less.
↓ In today’s email:
- This week’s inspiration: The most yang season (and permission to slow down)
- Latest blog post: 21 Days of Being Enraged
- What I watched & read this week: The Odyssey → Circe
This Week’s Inspiration: The Most Yang Season
Catching my breath this morning. The house is quiet, save the soft hum of the refrigerator. The kitchen is miraculously clean. After a big dinner last night, the only remnant is the peach galette on the stovetop. I put it in the oven at 350 to make the fruit warm but not scalding, the crust crisp and flaky. And from this quiet place, I’m happy to write to you.
It’s midsummer. How are you feeling?
This past week, my full slate of clients needed quiet, rest, and relaxation. Most of them wanted to be treated face down, which seems to turn off the brain, while I placed needles that calm the nervous system and let the body deeply relax. People needed just plain old R&R, and a lot of it.
They’re not alone. I feel it too.
We’ve made tons of plans for every weekend: house guests, getaways, maybe overcommitting on the kids' activities, all while some part of us is looking for a dark, quiet place to retreat.
This makes sense. Midsummer is the most yang moment of the most yang season, so we’re ripe for burnout, especially if we don’t pace ourselves. If we go, go, go, we can run ourselves straight into the ground.
If your natural inclination is to downshift, to do less, to see fewer people, go for it. It’s a great idea. And don’t forget: you can have FOMO for skipping the social events, but you can also have FOMO wishing you’d just stayed home.
If your hope this week is to get a little more rest, I support you in that.
Latest Blog Post
21 Days of Being Enraged
This one started with homework. My own healer, Julia, gave me an assignment I didn’t love: write down everything I’m angry about, every morning, for 21 days.
Here’s what I keep coming back to. As women, we’re rarely given anywhere to put our anger. Young men punch walls or practice jiu-jitsu; we’re praised for being gracious and easy to be around. So it goes underground. In Chinese medicine, we’d call that stuck Liver Qi. And there’s a real, physical cost to keeping it in, including something surprising anger does to your blood vessels, which I get into in the post.
There’s also the word I can’t stop turning over: aggrieved. Look at what’s buried inside it: grieve.
What I Watched & Read This Week
The Odyssey → Circe
This week’s reading inspo came from The Odyssey — not the book, the movie. When was the last time a summer blockbuster was based on a poem that’s 3,000 years old? Never, that’s when. Usually our summer entertainment is all sequels, aliens, or both. But Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey was a fun, if occasionally brutal, way to spend three hours. Huge kudos to Matt Damon for turning his very successful, very middle-aged body into the ropy, warrior Odysseus. I’m dying to know how he did it.
One of the most gruesome scenes happens when Odysseus and his men land on the island of Circe. The movie paints her as a witch with a genuinely demonic edge — there were parts I watched through my fingers because it was just that yuck.
All of which sent me straight from the theater into the audiobook of Circe, the novel that came out about a decade ago. Told from Circe’s point of view, it’s the story of a young nymph finding her power, her voice, and her place in the universe. What’s not to love? In The Odyssey, Homer seems to see women as seductresses, demonic witches, or damsels in distress — but as women, we are so many things. Circe gives voice to the multiplicity of what we are, with all its nuance and complication. This Circe is a far cry from the sinister figure on screen — proof that the same character can hold two entirely different truths, depending on who’s telling the story.
Rest where you can this week. And if what surfaces in the quiet isn’t rest but a little rage? You’re entitled to that too.
Dr. Catherine