Fall
It’s late August, but already I can feel the transition starting. Fall’s essence starts to wrap around me like a sweet embrace. It’s gentle and loving, coaxing me into a space of contemplation. I feel myself start to slow down while it seems my senses are waking up. They are sensitive to everything; the touch of a soft knitted blanket, the sweet woodsy scent of the candle on my desk, the way the light dances through my window in the morning or lays across my sheets in the afternoon. If I go for a walk, the crunch of newly falling leaves fills me with pleasure and the lavender growing in my neighbours yard is captivating.
I always felt that if I was a season, it would be summer, the sun at it’s most vibrant, the heat radiating strength and energy. It’s a season, that for me, felt like power and pushing forward. But with all that energy and forward movement, I’m quick to forget that we’re multidimensional human beings and while sometimes we move forward, sometimes we just need to sit back.
I woke up today feeling the transition of seasons in my body together with a wave of emotions: something there wasn’t very much space for in a season of outward and upward, power and pushing forward. I didn’t notice the missing piece, didn’t feel the effect of neglecting the rest of myself. But now It’s like a deep breath, a release. It’s like my body can tell that a new season is coming, embedded with the permission to slow down and to feel.
Fall is a season of feeling and I realise I could never be just summer; as human beings we’re too complicated for that, for ever being just one thing. I’m reminded of the beauty of flowing from one thing to next, being capable of both pushing forward and feeling the world really deeply.
When the pandemic swirled in like a hurricane, it brought with it the season of sun and strength. I’m grateful for that. While it may have felt breaking, the season supported me to meet it with power and pushing forward. But we can only do that for so long. We should only have to do that for so long. It finally feels like time to feel and I didn’t expect the flood of relief that would pour through me. There is a little space now to feel sensitive. While that sometimes can look like feeling emotional, more often I think feeling sensitive can mean feeling really aware; both of what you experience inside yourself and what is around you, letting that fill you up. I feel filled up by little things right now, like snapshots I wish I could capture in a camera or how they make me feel. A picnic in my backyard with two dear friends, surrounded by strung up lights and take-out boxes. Making dinner in my kitchen with no one around, singing all the words to all my favourite songs from high school while the setting sun dances through the window with me. For this moment, those things feel like more than enough to fill me up and make me feel whole.
Mia Krabbendam
Mia is a graphic designer and maker living between Boston and LA.