Although I have always enjoyed October, with it being my birthday month and containing the one childhood holiday I looked forward to every year, for as long as I can remember, there has been a certain weight that accompanies its return, like a dense fog hanging over what is. Life transitions to shorter days and colder nights, with less light to illuminate what we want to see and more darkness to fill spaces already hidden in the shadows.

What I recognize today is what it really holds is opportunity. Opportunity in the form of more time and space to turn inward, less distraction, and a more supportive environment to familiarize ourselves with what’s living inside.

Today I recognize it’s all choice, if we choose. Choice to step in, choice to slow down, choice to look within, just as it is choice to become cozy and settle into our processes.

While I can honor what was, I can remind myself of what is, and what is, is now. What was once true is only chiseled in stone if I see it to be. I can allow the heaviness of this season to wash over me and pass, just as easily and effortlessly as the leaves fall and the wind howls. Where there is resistance there is fear. And where there is fear there is fight. Where fight exists, I am gripping to control and when I am gripping, I am not being in allowance of. Can we be in allowance of what once was, of what is now, and of what no longer is, just as Mother Nature so gracefully shows us, year after year?
Can we be conscious enough to become aware of where we are at, today, in this moment?

Where has resistance taken up space in you? Where have you fought the weight or the heaviness?

Where have you forgotten the power you hold to be awake and choose?

Let us gift ourselves with the ability to choose new, each year, each season, each moment.

Let us remember our ever-changing, ever fluid nature as we hunker into the gradual progression of this season of slowness.

Let us acknowledge and honor our abilities to recognize the capacity we hold, when and especially if we allow ourselves to enter into each new space, each new season, each new moment, not predetermined, not already decided, but willing. Willing to let what is flow, and to let what is not fall away.

Happy Fall y’all. I love you all.

Written for you by Myra Chopp

Recipe by Brianna Belanger, creator of Food For Goodness Sake