Between Fire & Ice: A Season of Extremes

September always feels like a threshold month. The fall equinox balances day and night in perfect equality, while eclipse season cracks us open to transformation—death and rebirth, endings and beginnings. It’s a time when the extremes of life brush up against each other, asking us to hold both darkness and light, fire and ice, joy and grief.

That energy came alive for me on my recent trip to Iceland, a land that is itself an embodiment of extremes. Volcanoes rise from beneath glaciers. Black sand beaches stretch below emerald cliffs. The earth rumbles with hundreds of small earthquakes every day, reshaping itself before your eyes. Fire and ice dance together here, not in metaphor but in truth.

I went with two of my good friends, Allison and Anna. It was a short trip—Friday to Tuesday—but it was full. We hiked to Glymur, Iceland’s tallest waterfall, and about halfway up I stripped down to my sports bra, laughing at the irony of hot flashes in the land of ice. And then, without warning, I was in tears. Not from pain or exhaustion but from awe. My heart felt like it might explode out of my chest with joy and gratitude. For this body that carries me up mountains. For this land, raw and alive. For these women who have become such a vital part of my life. For the fact that I get to live this life at all.

That moment was such a stark contrast to my twenties, when I wanted nothing more than to escape this life. I tried. Depression, bipolar episodes, suicidal thoughts—they colored everything. Back then I couldn’t have imagined moments like this one, where joy would be so big it spilled out of me. Where I would be crying on a mountainside not because I wanted to die but because I had never felt more alive.

There were other moments like this. At Skógafoss I stepped away from my friends to connect with the land directly. I spoke to her—the rocks, the water, the river—and told her I saw her. At Seljalandsfoss I was soaked head to toe, giggling like a child as I stood behind the roaring curtain of water. Later, in a crowded bar, I sang along to 90s cover songs with people from all over the world. Strangers, but not really. Just humans. And it struck me again that we are far more connected than we let ourselves believe.

This trip was different from many of my past travels. It wasn’t about healing or escaping or pushing myself to grow. It was about joy. About living. About choosing to create beauty and connection, just because I can.

It reminded me of another vision I once had, years ago, when my grandmothers appeared to me in a session and flung me off a cliff. I thought I was falling to my death, but instead I began to fly. That vision changed everything, and Iceland felt like another embodiment of it—falling into the extremes of life and finding flight, love, and expansion on the other side.

That’s what this season is about. Eclipse season doesn’t come to punish us, and the equinox isn’t just about balance. Together they remind us of our capacity to transform, to hold opposites without breaking, and to keep choosing life.

Iceland reminded me that I’m not here just to survive. I’m here to burn and to thaw, to cry on mountaintops, to sing in crowded bars, to run straight into waterfalls, to live in the extremes and let them stretch me wider.

Because this life—this exact one I get to live—is mine. And I’m not wasting it.