Mabon Challenge Day 3: A Creative Gratitude Practice For the End of Summer
The secret to a powerful gratitude practice, plus a call for creative odes to summers past.
Hi everyone. It’s the third installment of the Mabon Challenge!
I am sincerely grateful for your presence here. I know we’re strangers and the Internet is impersonal, but please know I am imbuing this email with all my love and gratitude for your attention in this busy world. Thank you for taking time to honor yourself, the earth, ritual, and our connection to all living things.
This is the final email before Mabon, which means it’s the last two days we’ll spend honoring the summer that’s been before moving towards inviting fall.
And I don’t know about you, but as for me…what a summer it’s been.
Personally, this summer has probably been the most transformative one of my entire life. I did a sound healing course and a 10-day Vipassana retreat in Nepal, and a two-week mental health retreat and a one-week tantra/breathwork/Osho meditation retreat in Thailand. I also (probably largely thanks to the clarity invoked by all of these experiences, and the time I’ve been lucky enough to have to do this work) fell in love with this blog and the community on Substack.
Writing on this site feels so aligned with my purpose, and doing these kinds of nature rituals has been such a long-held dream of mine.
So thank you for being here, threading your creative dreamworld with mine.
I also hope you had a beautiful full moon ritual two nights ago. The full moon can definitely involve a lot of heightened emotions and tensions, but fortunately we’re past it, so the energies should start to mellow out — making this the perfect time to start slipping gently from summer into fall.
We’re in the very last few days of summer now, and I’d like to invite you to look back on the season and pay tribute to whatever crossed your path over the past few months.
Who and where were you when spring slipped into summer on June 21? How are you different? What are you newly grateful for? What are you seeing with new eyes?
Here’s your task for today:
Challenge 1: Create a list of the things you’re grateful for from this summer.
Gratitude is an incredibly powerful tool, and I highly, highly suggest listening this gratitude masterclass from Tamara Levitt if you’re looking to deepen your understanding of what it means to really have a gratitude practice.
If you’re on Calm or can get a free trial or subscribe, try listening to the first episode today and see how your relationship to gratitude changes.
Next, make a list of at least 20 things (try 50!) you’re grateful for this summer. After each gratitude, take a minute to say what you’re grateful out loud, and — here’s the key — actually feel the emotion of gratitude as you make your list. This will make the practice fifty thousand times more powerful, I promise.
Try to think outside the box as you come up with your gratitudes for the day. Here are some questions you might consider:
Were there any natural places you visited that healed you this summer? Any bodies of water or errant birds or early morning walks that moved you in particular?
What were the best days of this summer like? What did you do? What made you feel most alive?
What kinds of energies or guides protected you this season?
Who did you meet or spend time with that you loved this summer? Send them love in your own practice, and maybe also shoot them a message of gratitude if you’re inspired.
What kinds of books and art did you enjoy?
What lessons did you learn or changes did you implement? How are they creating positive change in your life?
What did you learn to accept or let go?
Who gave you love this summer? Send them all a little bit of love back. The universe mirrors what we put out into it, and when you start consciously putting out more love, you’ll inevitably feel it coming right back to you.
Here are some videos about gratitude to inspire you. No matter whether you love TED talks, manifestation gurus, those mystical musical Hz activation videos on YouTube, or (if you’re like me), all of them combined, I hope there’s something here for you:
Challenge 2: Create a piece of art as a tribute to the summer.
Using your gratitudes as inspiration, create some kind of art based on the season that’s just passed you by. A collage or painting or a poem or a blog post right here on Substack will all do wonderfully. (You’re more than welcome to make more than one).
If that feels too general, try picking just one item on your list, and I’d strongly suggest that you choose something natural that you associate with the summer that’s passed.
If it’s a place, and you’re able to go there, then do that and try creating some art in that place. If not, spend some time envisioning yourself in that place.
Take some time to really allow the energy of that place or being or human to permeate you. Let it sing through you as you create. Allow your art to be a tribute to the beauty and warmth and magic of the season.
You can also incorporate heartbreak or pain into your art if that was part of your story this summer. Thank the season for what it gave you and leave whatever happened in the past, in the past.
Wrap it up in the beauty of your creative soul and allow it to shine, warts and all. Allow the salt of the ocean of creativity inside you to smooth any sharp edges, turning them into sea glass that catches the last rays of the summer’s dying light.
You’re also welcome to incorporate memories from summers past into your art. Do you remember summer when you were a kid? How infinite the days felt? How vast the ocean was during your early days, wobbling on your short little legs, knowing the surf could carry you away? How everything glowed? How it still does?
I’d love to see what you make, so feel free to share it in the comments or tag me in a Note.
And here’s a song of mine, which carries memories of a formative summer a very long time ago, and which also feels appropriate for the season:
Have fun with this one. And I’ll see you on Saturday for Mabon!