As the season changes, the light shifts — gentler, dimmer, lingering a little less each evening. Cold whispers slip under my collar, and the scent of wood and damp earth returns. Leaves turn from gold to brown to dust and night edges closer, whispering its quiet reminder: it’s time to release, to let go.

Autumn is the season of falling leaves and it is most definitely nature's reminder that it's the season of letting go.

But we — we humans, we clutch our stories, our old hopes, our guilt, our fears. We drag them into winter like too many blankets on a cold body. Yet the trees show us that when we release, we create space — and in that space lives the hope that the seemingly vast emptiness we so often fear is, in truth, fertile and ripe with possibility.

In nature, letting go is not dramatic. It’s pragmatic. The maple doesn’t agonize over whether to drop her leaves. The oak doesn’t make a pro-and-con list. They simply loosen. Energy draws inward; sap thickens; life retreats to the root. There is wisdom in that rhythm — to conserve what is essential and compost the rest.

Humans, on the other hand, are hoarders of the unseen. We hang onto identities that no longer fit, habits that numb us, stories that keep us stuck. We cling to being right, being needed, being busy. We mistake holding on for strength, when sometimes, strength is what it takes to loosen our grip.

There is turmoil everywhere — war, grief, uncertainty, the constant background noise of fear. And yet I’m always in awe of how the natural world continues its quiet, rhythmic work of birth and release. Leaves drop. Rivers slow. Geese find their lines in the sky. And somehow, we put one foot in front of the other.

It can feel indecent, sometimes, to turn inward when the world is on fire. So often we mistake letting go for withdrawal. It's not. It's clearing away the noise and the clutter — choosing to make space for what still matters. We don’t need to harden. We need to unburden. Letting go, in times like these, becomes an act of sanity. Of survival. Of faith, not in an outcome but in the process itself.

Long before pumpkin saffron soaps and scented candles, autumn was a reckoning. The harvest gathered. The fields left bare. In Celtic tradition, Samhain marked the thinning of the veil — when ancestors and living souls could briefly touch. In those nights, people lit fires, named their dead, and offered what they no longer wished to carry.

These rituals weren’t about beauty or performance — they were about life and continuity, and all that endures.

There’s power in simple ritual. Write the thing you’re ready to release on paper. Burn it. Bury the ash. Whisper the name of what you’re finished carrying. Don’t overthink it — just honor it, then let it go. We all need ritual and ceremony for closure, even if it’s just standing under a bare tree in your yard, watching one last leaf spiral down.

Letting go looks different for everyone. For some, it’s finally admitting you’re tired. For others, it’s forgiving someone who doesn’t deserve it. Maybe it’s putting down the news for one night, or the phone for a week. Maybe it’s setting boundaries and saying no.

For me, it’s releasing the illusion that I can make everything right — that I can heal aging parents, make everyone happy, fix broken systems, or mend the thousand small heartbreaks of a world unraveling.

What I can do is tend my small circle — to create, connect, and offer what care I can. Maybe write a few words that help someone breathe a little easier. That's what helps me stay in touch with myself.

When the leaves are gone, the landscape looks stripped bare — stark, even lonely. But look closer as the architecture of things reveals itself. Branches, bone, sky. You can finally see what’s been hidden all summer.

That’s the quiet gift of this season. Letting go might feel like loss, and also a  revelation. And in that clarity — that clean, skeletal truth — something inside us exhales.

So yes. The world is heavy. The nights are long. The air smells of endings. But also of what’s next, of what's still to come.

Let go.
There’s room now.

And when winter deepens, we’ll gather again with notebooks and hearts open. In mid-January, I'll be leading Tending to Your Heart: Journaling for Renewal 2026, a guided journaling series I launched last year to help you sort through and release what no longer serves, and reconnect with what you truly want. If fall is about shedding, this is where we begin to root again, to restore, to listen, and to prepare for releasing new intentions in spring.

You can join the waitlist or learn more at moodindigoliving.com.