Oak leaf turning brown amongst the green leaves around it.

In the Celtic tradition, autumn is the final season of the year. Celtic New Year begins at Samhain (31st October – 1st November), marking the start of winter. Autumn brings the year to a close in a beautiful crescendo, an abundance of fruits, seeds, and nuts, the goodness of the year coming to fruition. We feast on this abundance with gratitude, yet the seeds we eat were made to secure the future - to carry the cycle of life forward.

Some seeds are carried away by wind, water, or animal. Others are buried in the soil, “put to bed” for the winter, hidden, protected, waiting for the right conditions to awaken in spring. This seasonal rhythm invites us to reflect:

What has come to fruition for you this year? What can you celebrate?
What needs to fall away? What has it taught you - good, bad, or somewhere in between and are you ready to let it go?
What seeds, dreams, or longings have grown in you this year? Can you wait patiently, allowing them to rest until the right time comes to bring them to life?

Autumn and Melancholy

Autumn is stunning and it often stirs something tender in me. I want to hold onto summer: the warmth, the light, the greenery, the long days, the sun on my skin. I don’t want it to end. And yet I’m captivated by the beauty of the changing leaves, the yellows, oranges, and reds, and I feel the inward pull of winter - the coziness, the slowing down. Autumn highlights how we can feel two things at once: joy and grief, beauty and ache.

Autumn reminds me that the more we love and appreciate something, the more we grieve its passing. Life is constant change, constant turning. Part of me wants to freeze life in its good moments but autumn teaches me to accept that life is both beauty and struggle, night and day, hidden and seen, love and loss. The fleetingness of it all makes it even more precious, as Susan Cain writes in her book Bittersweet - How Sorrow and Longing make us Whole:

“If we could honor sadness a little more, maybe we could see it — rather than enforced smiles and righteous outrage — as the bridge we need to connect with each other.”

Perhaps autumn invites us to lean into this complexity — to feel sadness, gratitude, and longing all at once. It reminds us to transform our pain into something beautiful.

“Whatever pain you can’t get rid of, make it your creative offering.”
– Susan Cain, Bittersweet

And:

“We’re living, famously, through a time in which we have trouble connecting with others, especially outside our ‘tribes.’ And Keltner’s work shows us that sadness,sadness, of all things! — has the power to create the ‘union between souls’ that we so desperately lack.”

This autumn, maybe seek out artists, musicians, or poets who help you engage with this bittersweetness — who help your tears fall and your longing rise. This is not wallowing, but allowing. Susan Cain reminds us that the word longing comes from a root meaning “to stretch.” Longing is an active motion — like the wild scattering seeds for the next season, trusting they will come alive at the right time.

Join the 2 hour Autumn Equinox Online Retreats (Sun 21st 4pm and Monday 22nd at 7pm) to contemplate theme of Autumn and Melancholy some more - BOOK HERE

Autumn: The Season of Melancholy

Lammas 1st August