Hello dear one,

Here in the western hemisphere it’s getting fully into autumn, the air a bit nippier, the leaves turning riotous sunset colors and then dropping in papery trust falls to the receiving earth.

In a fiction book my son is reading, they aptly call this season “leaf-fall.”

One could say the trees are falling apart.

They are losing their leaves after all — losing their youthful foliage, their fertile beauty, their defining features. They will become naked. We will see them bare to the bone, stark silhouettes against the sky.

But we don’t say the trees are falling apart.

We know it’s seasonal, it’s beautiful, it’s powerful. We fully trust that the trees will get a new coat of leaflettes come springtime. We do not worry: our friends the trees will grow leaves again. They will renew themselves. They will still be who they always were, yet regenerated versions — newer, truer, stronger, wiser.

I think we would do well to take our cues from the trees and this season of leaf-fall.

So that when we or our lives start to fall apart, we are more willing to become naked, bare to the bone, more willing to trust ourselves and our bodies during our own personal season of leaf-fall.

When we or our lives start to fall apart, it can be startling, confusing, heartbreaking. It’s a wild trip to lose the advantages that things like youth and beauty and endless energy afford us. A health crisis rocks everything. So does a spiritual crisis. Losses are real, and they hurt.

And yet.

Our livers regenerate every 150 to 500 days. That means, in as little as half a year or as much as a year and a half, you get an entirely new organ of detoxification and purification. Our skin replaces itself every 27 days, whether we know it or not, whether we exfoliate or not.

Our bodies know what they are doing. Our bodies are already totally at ease with this constant falling apart and renewing.

We are made for this, dear one.

So this is the heart of the heart of the beating red loving heart of any falling apart:

This is not the end, dear one; it is the beginning of the beginning of the start of a renewal.

It is not a mistake; it is part of the wise grand cycle of death and rebirth.

We do not have to try to keep our leaves from dropping like garments, too ill-fitting for us now. We can get OK with being stripped bare.

We can trust the trees, trust our bodies, trust the fall.

And eventually, we can get curious as to the selves that are being renewed, regrown, regenerated, that will burst forth in our own personal springtime, newer, truer, stronger, wiser.

Let’s trust fall,

COACHING / COURSES / COMMUNITY
Moving you through the dark night & into your one wild precious life

PS: Image by Jakob Owens of Unsplash