What the leaves are trying to tell us…
What the Leaves Are Trying to Tell Us
There's a certain light that shows up in Maryland right around now. Softer, a little gold at the edges, like the sky knows something is about to change. The equinox is almost here, that one day a year when light and dark hold hands as equals before dark takes the lead again. And every year around this time, I feel the same pull: something must go before something new can come in.
So, this week I cleaned my room. Not the surface kind of clean. Top to bottom. wasn't just tidying, I was making space, the way you'd clear a stage before the next act walks on. There's something almost ceremonial about it when you let it be, opening the windows, letting the old air out, laying down fresh linens like you're setting an altar instead of just making a bed. I wanted to receive the equinox instead of just letting it pass by while I stepped over a pile of laundry.
Fall has always felt like the season of the edit to me. Not an ending, an edit. You keep what's working. You let the rest fall, the way the trees do it, without drama, without apology. A leaf doesn't hate the branch when it lets go. It just knows its season changed.
Some things have been shifting at home lately too, the kind of changes that quietly rearrange the furniture of your life even when the actual furniture stays put. I won't pretend that's been simple. But I've been trying to move through it the way I'd move through a yoga class, one breath at a time, trusting that not every season needs to be explained to be honored.
The parts of fall that ask nothing of me, though, those have been pure gold. Jude and I made a trip to the Renaissance Festival, and watching an eight year old lose his mind over a brownie sundae and a maze is its own kind of therapy. He wants to go every weekend it's open, and honestly, so do I. There's something about a whole village built around pretending, minstrels and mud and swordfights, that feels like the most honest thing we do all year.
We also caught a Maryland game together, our first one as just the two of us in the stands. Jude loved almost every second of it, the flags, the band, the big collective roar when something good happened. If you asked him, the only thing he didn't love was how loud the students got. My sweet, sensitive boy, covering his ears through the fight song and still cheering his heart out a minute later. We loved the pageantry of it all. There's something very yogic about pageantry, all that ritual and color and collective energy pointed at something bigger than any one person in the crowd.
Speaking of ritual, Sunday night class has a new time. We're now meeting at 7pm at Soccer Plant (9050 Red Branch Road), still under the disco lights, still exactly as low-pressure as it's always been. Come as you are. However your week has gone, whatever you're letting go of or holding onto too tightly, the mat doesn't ask you to explain yourself. We meet you where you are, every single time.
So that's fall so far. A cleaner room. A turkey leg. A stadium full of noise my son mostly loved. A season quietly rearranging itself at home. And a Sunday practice that keeps meeting me exactly where I am, at 7pm now, under the lights.
Whatever you're letting fall this season, I hope you let it fall gently. And I hope you'll come blossom with us on Sunday.
Come as you are. Blossom as you're meant to.
Victoria
