The universe is extracting daylight, is stopping sugar in the leaves, the mornings are cool and we are falling into fall. Lots of endings and lights are on early to ward off the darkness. The last of gardens are being gleaned. We are setting aside those things that no longer serve us for this new season in preparation for winter. Even though it all feels like endings, it is also a time of new beginnings.
Change is always hard, even though, we know what to expect and that it is going to happen anyway. I always dread when the nights get cool and the garden is done because I dread winter. Did you know that the fear of change is called “metathesiophobia? Our very souls tend to dread change. It is not something new. Perhaps we still fear the ice age returning.
Routines need to be made but no rush. Fall takes its time and does offer some respite from the heat, the outside work, and the momentum of Fall falling is not as sudden as it feels. We know things can get dark and gloomy outside, but we can begin nesting. We can find ways to float along with the falling leaves and find the beauty that only comes this time of year. We begin to organize, to plan, to find things to occupy us during the darkest hardest months.
Try planning something new to you. Organize projects you have started and wish to finish during the cold winter days, nights, weeks and months. Go to a book store, a thrift store, places that trade books, and pick out a few good books to read during winter. Gather up dinner recipes to try during the cold days (especially breads). Choose one new art/craft project to do when harvesting is done and it gets too cold to do many outside activities. (Terracotta pot crafts interest me and there will be many of the pots left over from the earlier seasons.) Find something to occupy your time, that will take up hours of the day or night when boredom might slip in.
Seriously begin to extract things from your life, like people that no longer need to be in it. People who drain you are not good for any season, but this is a great time, when Mother Nature is releasing, for us to release those kinds of people from our lives. Learn the lessons that they have been trying to teach you, and let them go, with dignity and grace, of course.
Life is winnowing and winding down. We need to as well. We have been busy with harvesting, with getting kids back into school, with setting up routines that Fall demands. It is time, now for us to prepare, personally, for things that will entertain and sustain us.
©Carol Desjarlais 9.15.23
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