Hidden Seasons

Lessons from what grows in the unseen

By Bri Perry - Your Local Mystic

I’ve been wondering where to begin for quite some time.

I thought if I ever introduced this extension of my creative work I’d have to share everything. I’d need to explain how I arrived here and catch you up to speed. But, in more recent years I’ve become less and less interested in explaining myself to be understood, and more committed to honoring the truth of my authentic expression. However it finds its way to others.

So I suppose in the spirit of Leo Season and boldly allowing your creativity to take up space and shine in the world, that seems like a beautiful place to begin :)

During this season of summertime conversations about Leo’s archetype, and other cosmic portals like the Lion’s Gate and Sirius serve as collective invitations to lean into our passions, be bold, and find outlets for what lights up our inner fire.

What has surprisingly taken more of my attention in recent years is a quieter part of the Sirius story that takes place in the weeks preceding its rising.

The annual August cosmic event when one of the brightest stars in our sky becomes hidden by the glow of the Sun. It hasn’t vanished. It hasn’t been swallowed by the sun. It simply can’t be seen.

For a long time, I thought hidden seasons meant lost seasons.

Years ago, others would have said my life looked vibrant from the outside. That observation isn’t entirely untrue. I was a full-time traveling musician supported by an incredible community of friends, family, and strangers, creating and sharing art that moved people. By many accounts, I was living the life I had dreamed of since I was a little girl.

And yet, beneath the surface of what was visible I was disappearing. 

It didn’t happen all at once. More so in the quiet everyday choices that happen to so many of us. Through keeping the peace. Through over giving. Through submission. Through the double standards of being a woman in the music industry. Through believing that everyone else’s perception of me and their comfort towards certain identities mattered more than my own inner voice.

The life I had built looked full and colorful on the outside. And it was, but two things can be true. The truth was my internal world and inner flame was becoming increasingly dim.

Then, one day during a solo road trip across state lines to perform a string of shows, something seismic happened.

I don’t know whether you would call it a gut instinct, God, nature, my deeper intuition, or just the quiet wisdom that finally became conscious above years of noise. The label matters less than what took place. For the first time in years, I had a clear knowing of what needed to happen and the decisions that were ahead of me. I knew monumental change was on the horizon and goodbye would become my new companion for the foreseeable future.

I had no clue what would be on the other side of those life altering shifts. All I knew was I could no longer ignore what staying in my current reality was costing me.

For the first time in a long time instead of being concerned with how do I keep this life together, I started asking myself what would happen if I trust my intuition for once? What would it look like if I welcomed instead of denied this voice rising to the surface trying to speak?

Deciding to trust that spark of inner knowing rising within me, that became impossible to ignore, was the bravest and most terrifying thing I had ever done.

It meant disappointing hundreds of people I loved. It meant untangling from communities that were designed to keep me away from my autonomy. It meant questioning my beliefs that up until then had promised me certainty. It meant walking away without a map.

The day before I moved out of our home, something unexplainable happened that has remained etched in me ever since. There was a tree in the backyard of my ex-husband and I’s house that had been slowly dying for years. We had talked many times about potentially cutting it down. We never did, and it never grew any fruit.

That afternoon as I was packing my things, I happened to look out the bedroom window.

What I saw next felt like time had stood still for a moment and gave me full body chills. Fruit was covering the branches of the tree. At the time my beliefs would have led me to think I was possibly witnessing a miracle. But as the years have passed and I’ve looked back and reflected more about that mysterious experience it has made me realize how little I understood then about timing. 

In the middle of the night I woke to the sound of the fruit falling onto the shed outside. One by one. Subtle noises in the darkness. I didn’t get up to watch. I didn’t search for an explanation. I simply laid there in the stillness of the night and listened as tears ran down my cheek.

To this day I don’t exactly know what happened or need an explanation. What I do know is that it revived something in me. Somewhere I understood in the core of my being that nature was gently whispering back:

Keep going. If you follow through and honor this decision, fruit will be on the other side of this.

How magical nature can be in the way it speaks in the most unexplainable ways during times of transition if we learn its language. This time teaching that certain seasons can’t be rushed, and fruit is forming long before we can see it.

The years that followed have asked many things of me. Life has been both magnificently beautiful and also held unimaginable grief.

I’ve lost communities and relationships I thought would last a lifetime.

Some identities fell away. Others emerged softly over time.

I fell in love again with old passions and discovered new ones. At first, these different outlets of creativity seemed isolated. But today, they feel like different expressions of the same conversation. Each one asking me to slow down.

To observe. To participate. To listen. They’re all similar practices of remembering.

Each act bringing me back into relationship with mystery, presence, and wonder. 

The more time I spend in nature studying the stars, or have my hands in the dirt, the less convinced I am that hidden seasons are markers of failure.

Seeds spend remarkable time underground. Trees don’t apologize for shedding. Even the night sky seems perfectly content to reveal itself in cycles instead of all at once. The more I observe these patterns I’ve started to wonder if we’re being invited into those same rhythms. Not because we are separate from nature, but because we belong to it.

I don’t believe anymore we are broken and in need of fixing. Nature has shown me again and again we are more like living ecosystems. Shaped by life’s seasons, relationships, loss, creativity, rest, renewal and every other lived experience unique to being human. Some chapters ask us to bloom. Some ask us to root. Others ask something else entirely. Each having their own value.

There was a time in the void of my own unraveling I found myself longing for different frameworks and philosophies of thought that left more room to breathe. More room for nuance. More room for paradox. More room for mystery. Wonder became an ingredient of healing I didn’t expect to desire.

When fear wants me to shrink, wonder invites me to expand.

When certainty wants me to defend, wonder invites me to explore.

When survival wants me to panic, wonder invites me soften.

That quiet shift has changed the way I move through almost every part of my life.

I find myself more curious about the possibility that healing looks a little more like remembering. Remembering that our worth, our bodies, our wholeness isn’t something we prove or earn. Maybe instead it’s something we gradually uncover beneath the conditioning and unconscious beliefs we’ve learned to carry about ourselves.

Maybe that’s why the hidden season of Sirius moves me so deeply. Because I’ve learned that invisible doesn’t mean absent.

If roots grow deep underground.

If seeds break open in the dark.

If trees produce their fruit long before anyone enjoys it.

If the brightest star in our sky spends a part of its orbit hidden from view.

If nature doesn’t mistake any of these stages as failure.

Neither do I anymore.

If this is your first time here, welcome! I’m grateful our paths are crossing :)

If you’ve been walking alongside me and my various forms of creative expression for years, thank you for witnessing and staying curious with me. Either way, my hope is that this writing space becomes less about finding answers, and more about exploring the wisdom that’s already alive within us.

A space where together, we might remember.

I have a feeling we’re only just beginning.

Find more of my writing on Substack.