I'm sending lots of love during what is still a surreal time in our collective! We have been in a place of void for a long time - ways of being are dying and ending, yet the new hasn't yet begun. This void is a very uncomfortable place to be. Yet it is timely to feel everything now, in this season of good grief.

If you work with me closely, you know that my outlook on life and how to be in the world involves an embodied earth-based spirituality that follows the cycles of nature. Autumn is a time of endings. Just as the leaves are falling from the trees, the energy is ripe for releasing and allowing endings to take place.

Notice how the tree does not worry when its leaves begin to change color from green, to yellow, to red, to brown. The tree understands this is a part of its life, its cycle. Nor does the tree struggle, resist, or wish for greener days. The tree allows its leaves to fall, knowing its branches will soon be bare. The tree is able to stay present to all that is.

We can learn much from the trees. In a society that has tricked us into thinking life should be positive forward motion at all times, many of us have become disconnected from our ability to be in the ebb, in the releasing times, in the endings, the death times. And most of us were never taught how to grieve the endings.

Whether we hold grief for a loved one, for an ending or life change, for the earth, or for the things we do not know how to name, this work is important. Learning how to grieve is important. More than important: It's crucial. It's vital. It's emotional life or death.

Perhaps reflect on these times:

• How do you feel as the seasons transition from summer to autumn? Do you find patterns in this transition year to year?
   

• Do you recognize a sense of grief, releasing, or even longing as you move into autumn?
   

• Are you willing to create space to create ritual in your life to honor those people or things that are leaving your life, or have already left your life?
   

One simple way to create space for this includes journaling about that which you grieve. Write a goodbye letter. Write all the reasons you have gratitude for what you are losing. Include and express any forgiveness that you may need to, in order to fully release (remember that forgiveness does not excuse bad behavior, it only frees you from holding onto the pain of it). Write everything to this person or entity or thing in your life that you'd like to say.

Then feel free to symbolize your release by either burning the letter or by reading it out loud near a body of water. What I love to do, is to whisper my grief and my goodbye into a shell or stone at sunset. Then, I hold the shell close to my heart and prepare to let go. As the sun sets, I throw the shell into the water, turn around, and walk away. And if it feels like I really need to release something for good, I make sure not to look back as I walk away.

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In our Western/American culture, we are most often not taught how to honor our grief. Grief, bereavement, and general sadness are emotions that are often starched white, dressed up, or shoved down, in order to be made more palatable.

In order to be truly whole, and truly free, we must re-learn HOW to grieve, and make sacred space for this emotion to flow.

If you’d like to work with me more closely about this or other soul-development topics, feel free to contact me to book a 1:1 session or join my monthly membership for women and femmes, Temple of the Wild Wanderer.