Do you love Indian Summer as much as I do? 💃 🌞 🍂

When, right in the middle of autumn, a little bit of magic suddenly happens — a few days that seem to have slipped out of the ordinary flow of time!

No wonder that in Serbia it is called Gypsy Summer: it is as if summer was stolen, only to be returned to us for a few more days. Just enough time to warm ourselves, remember the taste of sunshine, and carry a little of that warmth with us into autumn.

Interestingly, there are many different stories about why this little piece of autumn came to be called what it is. I like the idea that women possess the power to turn the seasons back — and to influence the weather itself. Our ancestors knew something about that!))

And then there are the old stories about women’s gatherings that began around this time of year. Women would come together, working with linen, taking up their spindles, knitting and embroidery. And they weren’t simply making things with their hands — they were also “spinning” their own fate.

The beginning of Indian Summer was also traditionally a time for making peace and settling old conflicts. Things that there had been neither time nor energy to deal with during the hot, hectic days finally came to the surface and demanded attention.

🍂 I really love this image — like a beautiful metaphor for what happens in our own lives. Because sometimes we, too, have our own personal “stolen summer”.

We live, we hurry, we try to save things, hold on, fix what can be fixed. We give our strength to people, relationships, work, worries. Again and again, we return to what has already happened, trying to understand something, say what was left unsaid, change something — at least within ourselves.

Continuing to pour our energy and attention into it.

Holding on to unspoken words, unrealised plans, hopes that never became reality.

Leaving behind, little by little, drop by drop, cup by cup, bucket by bucket, some of our warmth.

But if we want to feel warm again, we don’t always have to unravel our past thread by thread.

Sometimes it is enough simply to take back what was left behind in places where you have long since stopped being.

🌞 This is exactly where my ritual work “Stolen Summer” was born.

It is a ritual of returning to yourself — not to the person you once were, but to that part of you that is still yours and that you would like to feel close again. We turn to what was given away to past events, people and circumstances: your energy, attention, desires, inner warmth. To what was once a part of you and now remains somewhere behind you.

We return ourselves to ourselves. And finally stop arguing with what has already happened.

We make peace with the fact that life did not unfold exactly as we wanted. With what can no longer be changed. With decisions that once seemed right or wrong. With losses, changes, our own mistakes, and the doors that never opened.

Making peace does not mean agreeing with everything that happened.

It simply means no longer spending your strength fighting inside yourself against something that has already become part of your story.

And when your hands are free again, you can take up the thread.

And begin weaving the fabric of your fate — with a different feeling of yourself and your path. With what you want to invite into your life, where you want to direct your returned energy, and what possibilities and states of being you want to begin weaving into the next chapter.

Don’t rewrite the past. Don’t try to bring back what has already gone. Take back what is yours — and continue your thread.

📩📩📩

To warm yourself again, reclaim your inner warmth, make peace with what lies behind you, and begin weaving the next piece of your life with your own hands — write to me at elena.shuwany@gmail.com.

The ritual is currently available at a special price of €75.

© Elena Shuwany