Spring Constellations

🌸Spring Constellations! 🌸

Hello and happy Pisces, Aries, Taurus, and Gemini seasons, friends and colleagues! We are so grateful you are here and part of our community. 🫂 We hope you will take some comfort from the words, partners, and resources shared here. 💗

🌠 Interstellar Connections 🌠

Years ago, some of us at Constellation ran across the post below on a social media platform (don’t know which) by someone (don’t know who) that listed the seasons of Chicago. We took the screenshot below for posterity.  

I had never felt more seen than when I read that list of seasons. We had just entered Third Winter, and I was finally coming to understand what spring is in Chicago. Spring is a time of deception and tears and temperatures that drop 40 degrees in eight hours. 

I am only 30% joking. 

Despite what we tend to assume, data suggests that the transition to spring doesn’t on average improve (or worsen) mood for most people. But, for a subset of folks, spring can get dark. Research consistently shows that: 

• Suicide rates peak for the year in April and May in the Northern Hemisphere 

• People with affective disorders – depression to bipolar– experience moods or states that either are or mimic (hypo)manic or mixed mood states

• Increased symptoms and coerced admissions to hospitals during the spring and summer months.

The why of it all isn’t particularly well understood. Possible explanations include everything from inflammation, disrupted circadian rhythms, to challenges regulating temperature changes. We are in the land of hypotheses. But, there is an interesting thing about spring that crosses a whole host of cultures. 

Spring often has rituals. The specifics look different, but some things are shared. The timing is roughly the same each year. We are brought (sometimes low-key coerced) into community with tangible, physical acts that we do to mark the moment. And, while this isn’t always the case, the ritual usually riffs on a theme of life in the aftermath of loss. 

My spring-time ritual is Passover, and when I sit at a Seder, I’m told to remember that all pains, even those where we feel the most helpless, have a season. That I am part of a people and world where life tries to (and often does) find a way, even when doing so feels unimaginable. In that moment, I don’t have to imagine alone. 

I imagine with the help of all the people around me. I have the story we are telling and the acts we are embodying to steady me. Maybe most important, I have my memories. 

I remember every time I sat at the same folding table, with most of the same people, eating enough potato kugel and chocolate roll cake to be just a smidge (or two smidges) past comfortable. And each similarity encourages me to see just how very possible it is that I will be there, next year, doing it all again. 

Passover is not the only ritual that does this. It is simply mine. Yours may be Easter or Nowruz or planting tomatoes in the community garden plot that it took you six years to finally get off the waitlist for. Or, maybe, you don’t have a ritual. That’s okay too. 

But if this is a time where life feels narrow and constrained, consider leaning into this tool of ritual. Bring your people close and do something that grounds you in just how very alive, how very part of the world, you are. 

Because you are. Because we all are. Even when we forget.

If you are interested in doing more thinking about these ideas of ritual and community, both within and outside of faith contexts, at least one of our team members highly recommends Casper ter Kuile’s book, “The Power of Ritual.” He offers wonderful guidance about finding and creating these kinds of rituals with our people.

🎉 Constellation Celebrations 🎉

Our team was thrilled to support Center on Halsted’s Trans Youth and Family Action Summit in so many ways back in March! From piloting a new workshop, Grounding Ourselves in Solidarity, to hosting the Support Space and tabling in the Resource Fair, it was uplifting to be in community with so many rad young folks and their supportive adults. Thank you for saying “hi” and sharing your light with us!

Jess and Nat were also so excited to bring our Accessibility Lens workshop to Youth Outlook’s Future Outlook conference last month! We are heartened to see such an increased interest in supporting Neurodiverse youth in group spaces and grateful that folks find our tips and resources so relevant.

🌅 On the Horizon 🌅

We currently have openings for private pay, BCBS IL PPO, and Aetna PPO clients - as well as a limited number of sliding scale openings. Check out our team and schedule a consult call today!

✨Constellation’s Constellations✨

Trevor Project’s 2025 U.S. National Survey on the Mental health of LGBTQ+ Young People is now open! If you’re LGBTQ+ and 13–24, they would love to hear from you. Click the below image or use the QR code to start the survey!

PHIMC’s inaugural Youth Health Conference: My Health, My Voice, Authentically Me, which will be held on Saturday, May 31, 2025, will amplify and engage young people and their champions across Chicago in strategic conversations around health-related topics, including substance use prevention and education, mental health, LGBTQIA+ health, violence prevention, HIV prevention and education, and justice involvement. Attendees will experience student-led learning, real conversations, and fresh insights on delivering quality health services to young people. The event is free and open to the public and will be held at UIC Student Center West. Please register by May 15, 2025.

🏳️‍🌈Pride🏳️‍🌈 season is nearly upon us! 💃🏼 Check out PFLAG Council of Northern Illinois to find an event near you all month long and come out to see us march with Youth Services’ Pride Youth Program at the Buffalo Grove Pride Parade June 1st!

AND/OR check out the below flier for Lurie’s Pride in the Park on Saturday, June 14 at Lake Shore Park. Register today for family fun including, but not limited to: a DJ, games, prizes, and joy for all ages!