How to Embrace the Season that Asks us to Let Go
Deborah Edwards Coaching Ltd
How to Embrace the Season that Asks us to Let Go.
There's a particular quality to October air.
Something in it asks you to slow down, not as a self-care suggestion, but as an instinct. The evenings arrive earlier. The light turns golden and then goes. And something inside often shifts too, in ways that can be hard to name.
I've been thinking a lot lately about what autumn actually does to us, and what it might be trying to tell us, if we slow down enough to notice.
The natural world at this time of year is doing something quite specific.
It's releasing.
Trees don't hold on to their leaves through willpower, they simply stop feeding them, and they fall. There's no grief in it. No failure. Just a quiet decision that this particular thing has done its work and doesn't need to be carried anymore.
I find that genuinely moving, because most of us are not very good at that and instead we hold on, maybe to the version of the year we planned, to things we said we'd have sorted by now or to the weight of everything that has happened since January and the quiet hope that we're further along than we feel.
What if autumn is less a season of getting ahead, and more a season of noticing what you've been carrying?
A common thread in my practice, and in my own life, is the difference between our capability and our actual capacity.
So many of us are capable of pushing through overpacked schedules, but our emotional and nervous system bandwidth might be asking for something different right now. Autumn gives us the prefect opportunity to reflect on how much spare capacity we have, and what we could put down.
Lately, I’ve been sitting with the practice of honouring my current capacity rather than demanding maximum output, letting enough truly be enough.
I want to offer you two questions to reflect on this week.
"How much spare capacity do I actually have?"
"What have I been carrying this year that feels heavier than it needs to?"
You don't have to write a lot. You don't even have to answer it fully. Sometimes the most useful thing is just to let the question sit with you for a day — on a walk, in a quiet moment, over a cup of tea and see what surfaces.
If something does come up — something that has been at the back of your mind all year, something that quietly costs you more energy than you'd like to admit — you might notice it a little differently now that you've named it. Not solved. Just seen.
That, actually, is where most meaningful change begins.
If the idea of a longer pause appeals, I'm planning some retreats for next year — more on those soon.
As always, if something in this resonates, I'd genuinely love to hear what comes up when you sit with that question. Hit reply. I read every response.
Warm wishes,
Deborah
P.S. If that question brought something to the surface that feels bigger than a journal entry can hold — if there's something you've been carrying that you'd rather not carry alone — a free 30-minute discovery call is a gentle place to start. No pressure, no agenda. Just a conversation.
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