Autumn

I don’t have many words this week…just images of autumn and fragments of thoughts.

I learnt to knit during half term and have made three scarves and am loving the feeling of the needles moving and the wool weaving.

I am learning to ride.  I can transition from walk to trot to canter and back but now I’m learning to do it with more subtle messages to the horse, just light touches and squeezes rather than kicks.  I am learning to find my balance standing out of the saddle.  I am working on the alignment of my sit bones plugging into the horses back and then stacking my spine straight on top of that.

I am listening to Esther Perel (for free on my podcast app) and learning about how love is not the same as desire.  How desire comes from a place of freedom, wanting, taking for ones-self and  that is incompatible with caring for and looking after.  I am hearing that desire comes from knowing what you want and feeling like you have the right to take it and ask for it.  That desire requires freedom to chose. That am listening to the podcast and hearing couples understand how unconscious childhood patterns play out between them and leave them stuck.  I am learning that although for some couples desire has been switched off for a long time, communicating in the way Perel teaches them, allows passion to be re-ignited.

I am also blown away by Perel’s skill as a therapist, her ability to understand what it is the couples are trying to say but can’t and finding the words to help them is astute and highly intuitive.

This week I have heard of one death, one crash which the driver safely walked away from, and one family who are caring for their 92 year old father as he goes the the process of dying.  This time last year I went to a funeral and watched as a close family member succumbed to cancer.  The two most significant deaths in my life happened in December and January.  I associate this time of year with death and dying.  The leaves are falling, the land looks bare.  Energy pulls inwards.  I am reminded of the cycles of life and that life is short.  Even if we live into our 90s that is still  only 90 autumns, 90 summers, 90 blackberry picking seasons.  Not so many.  Stop and pay attention to what really matters.

I am listening to Judymay Murphy’s courses and videos and learning so much about healing trauma and recovering from co-dependence.  I love her rage at the financial inequities between women and men and how it seems much more socially acceptable for women to lack money than it is for men. She made me think about what my birth family’s shames are and how they might carry on.  I now understand why chanting ‘Om’ over and over feels so good (it stimulates the vagus nerve which stimulates our parasympathetic or relaxation mechanism).

I have been listening to Rangan Chatterjee’s podcast about well-being and am learning so much from his conversations with other leaders in the health field.  I have learned that eating within a 10 hour window allows out gut to heal over night, that constant movement is better for us that having a sedentary life with just an hour in the gym three times a week.  I have learned to ‘eat the rainbow’ in vegetables to increase my gut health.  And yes I do feel better for the tweaks and changes I have made as a result of the information.

I have learned that I can write fiction.  I am surprised that sending out to readers is actually way more nerve-wracking that sending the other non-fiction books out.  I feel so much more naked in fiction even though the story is not about me and the other books had much more about me in them.

I have loved listening to youngest son grappling with and mastering multiple piano pieces.  I have been so proud to see how well eldest son has adjusted to his new college life, how he is becoming independent and how much he is loving his course.

I have enjoyed baking more, I’m in charge of all apple pies and youngest son makes cakes.

So autumn feels like an inhale.  I’m learning, watching, listening and reflecting.  My energy is lower, I’m sleeping more, wanting to read, wanting to knit and bake, ride and write, do you yoga, swim, listen to music and walk in the longer shadows of the autumn afternoons.  Autumn feels like a time to take in, to fill up again to top up on all the summer energy which was expended.

• What does autumn give you?

Keep warm and snuggle up.

Thank you to my son Ben Leoni for his beautiful photography on this blog.