There is something rather beautiful about October.
The trees begin to loosen their grip. Leaves that were once green turn to gold, copper and russet before drifting gently to the ground. The air changes, the evenings draw in, and the landscape slowly begins to let go of the things it no longer needs to hold.
We know this is how autumn works. We don't stand beneath a tree and wonder why it isn't trying harder to keep its leaves. We don't tell it that it should be greener, fuller, or holding on for just a little longer.
We understand that this is part of its natural rhythm.
Yet, somehow, we don't always offer ourselves the same understanding.
The weight of “should”.
I should be further along by now.
I should be coping better.
I should have this figured out.
I should be doing more, achieving more, feeling different, and moving on.
The word should can be a remarkably heavy thing to carry. Sometimes it arrives from the expectations of other people, our families, our workplaces or the wider world. Sometimes it comes from somewhere much closer to home: the voice in our own heads that keeps a quiet record of everything we think we ought to be doing.
We can become so accustomed to listening to that voice that we stop questioning it.
Perhaps we believe we should be happier by now, that we should have recovered from something that hurt us, or that we should be able to manage everything without needing help. We compare ourselves with people whose circumstances we may know very little about, measuring our own progress against a timeline we never consciously chose.
And so we keep going.
We push through tiredness. We put our own needs aside. We tell ourselves that we will rest when everything is finished, feel better when we have sorted everything out, or finally be content when we reach that next milestone.
But what if the finish line keeps moving?
What if the things we are chasing aren't even the things we truly want?
Sometimes, beneath all those shoulds, there is a quieter question waiting to be heard: What do I actually need?
The beauty of letting go.
In autumn, falling leaves aren't a sign that a tree has failed. They are part of a natural cycle, a change in season, a necessary letting go.
There is no drama in it. No announcement. No apology.
Just change.
Of course, human beings are not trees, and letting go is rarely as straightforward as watching a leaf drift to the ground. We hold on to expectations, identities, responsibilities and old ways of being for all sorts of reasons. Some have helped us survive difficult times. Others have kept us safe, given us a sense of purpose, or helped us feel that we belong.
Even the things that exhaust us can feel difficult to release when they have become part of who we are.
Perhaps you have always been the strong one, the person everyone turns to. Perhaps you are the one who keeps everything organised, holds the family together or makes sure nobody else is disappointed. Perhaps you have spent years trying to be good enough, do enough or prove that you can manage on your own.
Those ways of being may have served you well once. They may still be important to you in some circumstances.
But do they have to define you forever?
Letting go doesn't necessarily mean walking away, giving up or abandoning the people and things that matter. Sometimes it simply means loosening our grip on the belief that we must do everything, be everything, or keep being the person we have always been.
We can appreciate the person we were while allowing ourselves to become someone a little different.
There is beauty in that, too.
Living by the clock.
Recently, at the Green Gathering, I explored an idea through an exercise called Clock and Compass.
It began with a simple thought: how much of our lives is guided by the clock, and how much by our own sense of direction?
The clock is familiar to most of us. It tells us when to get up, when to work, when to leave, when something is due and how long we have left. Time is useful, of course. It gives structure to our days and helps us organise the practical business of living.
But sometimes the clock becomes more than a way of measuring time. It becomes a way of measuring ourselves.
We think we should be married by a certain age, have reached a particular point in our careers, own a home, have a family, or know exactly what we want from life. We believe we should have recovered by now, be further along in our healing, or have made more progress than we have.
We create invisible deadlines for things that don't always follow a timetable.
Grief doesn't check the calendar. Confidence doesn't arrive because we've decided it is time. Healing doesn't necessarily happen in a straight line, and sometimes the most important changes in our lives take place so quietly that we don't recognise them until much later.
Yet we can be surprisingly unkind to ourselves when our lives don't follow the schedule we imagined.
What if, instead of constantly checking the clock, we allowed ourselves to consult a compass?
A compass doesn't tell us how quickly we should travel. It offers a sense of direction.
It invites us to consider what matters, what feels meaningful and what kind of life we want to move towards. Rather than asking whether we are keeping up, we might ask whether we are moving in a direction that feels right for us.
Perhaps the question isn't, Am I where I should be by now?
Perhaps it is, Am I moving towards what matters to me?
And perhaps, sometimes, the answer is that we need to stop walking altogether for a little while.
Rest is not necessarily a detour. A change of direction is not automatically a mistake. And taking longer than we expected doesn't mean we have failed.
We are allowed to have our own pace.
What are you ready to put down?
Walking outdoors can offer us a different way of thinking about these things.
There is something about being alongside nature, rather than sitting face-to-face with a problem, that can give our thoughts a little more room. We might notice the changing colours, hear the leaves beneath our feet or find ourselves looking up at a tree we would usually walk straight past.
Our attention moves. Our breathing may settle. We are reminded that there is a world beyond the demands of our own thoughts.
Nature doesn't require us to explain ourselves. It doesn't ask what we have achieved this week or whether we are making enough progress. It simply offers us an opportunity to be where we are.
And sometimes, that is enough to begin.
If you find yourself outdoors this October, perhaps take a few moments to notice the leaves around you. Look at the ones still clinging to the branches and those already scattered across the ground.
You don't need to turn it into a lesson or find a meaning in every leaf. Just notice.
Then, if it feels helpful, consider these questions:
What am I carrying at the moment that feels particularly heavy?
Which of my shoulds come from my own values, and which have I absorbed from other people?
Is there an expectation of myself that I might be ready to loosen my grip on?
If I stopped measuring my progress against someone else's timeline, what might I notice about my own journey?
What would it mean to choose direction over speed, even for a little while?
You don't need to answer every question. You don't need to make a plan or decide what comes next. Sometimes simply noticing the question is enough.
And if nothing comes to mind, that's fine, too. There is no deadline for working yourself out.
A little magic, a few masks, and things that go bump in the night.
I have to confess, I do love Halloween. The pumpkins, the autumn darkness, the little bit of magic in the air, and the permission to be a little bit different for a night.
There is something rather wonderful about a season that invites us to play with the things that usually frighten us. We dress up, put on masks, embrace the spooky and give ourselves permission to be someone else for a while.
But it got me thinking about the masks we wear the rest of the year.
The ones that don't come with a costume or a face of painted cobwebs. The mask of I'm fine, when we're anything but. The one that says I've got this, when we're quietly wondering how much longer we can keep going. The familiar role of the strong one, the capable one, the person who never seems to need anything from anyone else.
Sometimes these masks help us get through the day. They can offer protection when we're not ready to show the world what's really going on. There is no shame in that.
But what happens when we forget we're wearing them? When being the strong one becomes something we believe we must always be, or when pretending everything is fine leaves us with nowhere to put the things that aren't?
Perhaps this Halloween, alongside the pumpkins and the ghost stories, we might give ourselves permission to put down a mask or two.
Not because we have to reveal everything to everyone. We are allowed our privacy, our boundaries and our own timing. But perhaps we can find one person with whom we don't have to pretend. Somewhere we can say, 'Actually, I'm finding things a bit difficult; without feeling, we need to follow it with a reassuring 'but I'm fine', really.'
After all, sometimes the things that haunt us aren't the ghosts in the stories. They're the old expectations, the unspoken worries and the shoulds we carry around long after they have stopped serving us.
And unlike a Halloween costume, we don't have to keep wearing them just because we've grown used to them.
So, as October draws to a close and the leaves continue to fall, perhaps we can give ourselves permission to put something down. An expectation, an old version of ourselves, or simply the belief that we should be further along than we are.
We don't need to have everything figured out before the next season begins. We don't need to know exactly where we're going, either.
Sometimes, it's enough to loosen our grip, take a breath, and trust ourselves to find our way.
This October, what are you ready to let fall?