I have a confession, of all the seasons, it’s summer that I hate. Summer is sensory overload for me; summer is like that crazy hazy state of falling in love where there is so much potential you miss the truth because you are strung out on the feel good feelings. Summer makes me lose my footing because it is simply too much.
Fall is that place where I find myself, where the seasonal changes force me to face myself, the good, the bad and the ugly. I realized that this morning when I found myself up at 7am deciding to make an 8am yoga class and I actually walked to class. I discovered that at 7:50 am even in a small city in Maine on a Sunday, the streets are practically desolate except for the occasional runner and sleepy eyed dog walker. Yet it was in that exquisite place of silence where I felt myself and started to face those truths that summer loves to hide. Fall is where my truths are laid bare and like the changing leaves, I see glimpses of beauty and like the end of fall, I am faced with bleak truths and decisions.
If fall is where my truth is revealed, winter is the season where despite the bleakness on the surface, change is happening underneath the surface. Winter is an inward season for me, a place where life is lived at half capacity but that half is rich and full and filled with silence. In a world that no longer values nor tolerates silence and slowness, I find myself looking forward to the days where I don’t need an excuse for doing nothing because Mother Nature herself often provides the excuse in the form of snow storms. In recent years my excitement over snow storms might actually rival that of school children.
Spring is the season of rebirth and in recent years it’s become the season where I rebirth myself and shed all that no longer makes sense for me. Spring is when my senses spring forward and guide me to take action on the truths that fall and winter reveal to me. Spring is when I test out the new me knowing with each passing year, it’s okay to be a work in progress. Spring is that place where I refine me and share it with the world.
Summer arrives after I have found the perfect me, it starts so sweet, so strong, eventually becoming too much yet this cycle of seasons is what I live by and need to be me. This is the BGIM wheel of life.
Indeed, such a beautiful post.
I’ve spent years and years trying to heal my allergies so I can enjoy spring and fall the way you do. I hope one day I will.
What a beautiful post. I feel the same way about the seasons.
you echoed how I feel about the seasons. I think that may be why living in AZ was so ridiculously hard for me, I felt like I was stuck in a two-year long Summer season. People always give me the sideeye when I say I don’t really enjoy Summer, I’m glad *you* get me 😉
I wanted to add: have you ever wondered how it would feel to live in the Southern Hemisphere where the seasons are backwards from ours, from what we’re used to? I do, all the time and especially after living in AZ. I’d love to find out how my perception of Summer would be affected if I associated Christmas & New Year’s with longer days and bountiful produce… as well as the bugs, bugs, everywhere bugs & inescapable, sticky heat!
That would be an interesting thought. In my mind Christmas with heat and bugs would be hard to imagine though I know it’s reality for many in the world.
I’m a fall person as well. I was born in October so, perhaps that explains it. I always thought I was a summer person, because I generally enjoy the tropics. Nope. It’s fall that makes me feel tingly and good inside. After racing and running all summer (literally and figurative), fall is the time I chill and give my body a rest.
By the way, today, my yoga instructor told our class that April and October have the highest rates of depression because the radical seasonal change alters our serotonin. I find myself taking care of my body and health much more in the fall because I am prone to the “blues”.
Now, winter…ugh. I’m working on it.