A TIME TO HARVEST AND LET GO
Outside of my window is an ancient birch tree – full limbed, graceful, a haven for birds – that I have come to befriend. She is my pulse for the changing of the seasons. Today, I watch her green leafed abundance quietly turn into muted yellows and mustards. The colors of Autumn. Her leaves, beginning to fall. She reminds me that this is now a time of harvesting and letting go.
And I wonder: What are you harvesting and getting ready to let go of?
What is stirring inside you as you meet the challenges of these turbulent times?
What is it you are dreaming of?
Where are you going?
Who are you becoming?
Our questions stand like guardians at the gate into our future. And even as we hunger for the right answers, it is the questions we ask, the questions we don’t ask, the questions we are afraid of asking that will shape our unfolding journey and pave the way into our authentic new story.
The question for us now is what story are we living in? What story are we seeking to live into?
If you are feeling stuck in your life, anxious and exhausted, more likely than not a story that you have been living in is coming to an end. In fact, looking out into the world today we can sense that a larger collective story is unraveling and coming to an end. That what we need now is a new story – one that invites us to live from a place of possibility and presence, inspiration and fearless imagination.
It’s not easy. We have to be brave enough to meet ourselves with fierce honesty, ask ourselves the deeper questions and learn to let go of weary, habitual ways of being that keep us captive to fear. The journey may well be wild and unpredictable, the storms of life may well arrive, but we have to trust that through the uncertainty, our new enlivened story awaits.
My friend, the birch tree, is a good teacher. As I gaze out at her on this breezy autumn afternoon, her leaves floating down into the wilted garden below, she reminds me that letting go is a necessary part of life’s natural cycle. It is a potent time for renewal and the birthing of a new story.
We are being asked to do the deep work of preparing our inner soil for new growth.
Let us welcome this time of harvesting and letting go.
Painting: Unveiling (acrylic on paper)