The beauty of Autumn

For the past few months I've been living with extreme exhaustion, and have been confronted with the need to adapt my life to fit my vastly reduced energy levels, both mental and physical. One concept which has been brought up to me a couple of times recently, by different people and in different contexts, is that of wintering, retreat, or sabbatical. That we all have occasional fallow periods in our lives; times of retreat, of quiet withdrawal, of reflection or preparation. While I'm familiar with sabbaticals (for other people!), I've often seen them as a time of work, of busy-ness, of dealing with things which don't fit in to the everyday. But actually, thinking about some of the sabbaticals I've known my friends take, retreat, reflection and withdrawal can be very much a part of them.

While I'm dealing with the reduced level of functioning that I currently have, I'm doing a lot of thinking about what's important, how I spend my time and energy, and what I want my life to look like. It's undeniably different now to the way it was a year ago, and even more so to five year ago, ten years ago, and more. Our offspring are now grown up and moved away, establishing their own adult lives, and my role as mum has changed accordingly. I no longer have to wash mountains of school and club uniforms, and shuttle children to their various after-school activities; now I'm on-call for help with grown-up emails, sending cat and dog photos, and providing general maternal support as needed. It feels to me as though after a long and busy summer, we're now in autumn.

People often seem to use autumn and winter of life as metaphors for approaching death - but it seems to me that this glosses over the cyclical nature of the seasons. I love the crispness of a bright autumn day - the sun shining on the leaves in varied tones of red, yellow and brown; the first mists of autumn and the promise of frost and cold to come; the evenings drawing in and the twinkling lights in the garden being visible in the evening. The feeling of maturation, of things drawing in to themselves, and hunkering down ready for the winter - that's where I am right now. This isn't about approaching the end - that's hopefully still quite some way off, thankyouverymuch - but of moving on to the next phase. It's conserving energy, withdrawing for a time, to enable preparation for regrowth in the future. Of letting go of anything which is not necessary to survival.

Just as the earth is parched after a long, hot summer, and needs the autumn rains to soften and enrich it, so in life we need times of refreshment after busy productive seasons. For me, now, this is about listening properly to my body and mind; accepting that I tire easily, that I don't think as well as I used to, that I can't do everything that I want to be able to do. How many times over the past years have I been so busy trying to do it all that I've felt I'm running on empty? No more of that - I'm finally learning how to not over-commit myself, to prioritise physical and mental recovery, to allow myself rest and relaxation.

So while I'm in this fallow period, I will take the time to enjoy the ripe fruits, admire the changing colours of the trees, revel in rustling through drifts of crunchy leaves on the pavements, and look forward to the refreshing crispness of the first frosts.