The leaves have almost all fallen off the trees across from our house.
The trees are knuckling down for the long dark months ahead, pulling much needed resources back into their centres and letting their leaves go in a spectacular blaze of colour. Every year, this brings me so much joy.
This year, this season, this week, it feels like the trees – maybe more than us humans – know the importance of slowing.
The world seems to be going mad – or getting worse. I have written about this before, how external world events can threaten to overwhelm us with their enormity. The seeming impossibility of there ever being a just, kind and hope-filled resolution to some of the entrenched problems in our world raises it’s head again this week.
Add to that, the individual tragedies going on in people’s lives that are not newsworthy:
Illness. Loss. Bereavement. Abuse. Mental illness.
I am sure that you know people affected in such ways, as do I.
I have also been reflecting a lot recently on the importance of slowing.
In a number of different places in these last weeks, I have been reading about the importance of slowing and stepping away from the constant noise and hustle that is normal life. This slowing can take many forms, but the central connecting theme is the importance of giving your mind, heart and soul some space.
Space to stop and breathe.
To stop and ask, how am I actually feeling? What is going on under the surface that I need to pay attention to?
Space to stop and let our souls catch up, when we have been travelling too fast. Read this beautiful story here for a reminder of how important this practice is.
MB gifted me at the weekend the Christmas edition of Good Housekeeping magazine. That says quite a lot about my age and stage in life, but there it is.
There was a beautiful article on coping with the loss of a loved one at Christmas. It made me cry, thinking of our own loss at the start of this year, and some of our wider family traditions that will expose the enormous hole in the heart of our family now without mum.
You may well have a similar experience, and will certainly know someone who is approaching this festive season as the first without a loved one.
What struck me about this article?
What I love about this article is that the author, a GP who recently lost her own dad, talks about the importance of slowing.
We often put huge expectations on ourselves of what we can do, or slap on the brave face with the lippy and get on with it. We can expect ourselves to be able to continue with the relentless pace of life and the busyness of the festive season without so much as breathing space.
The author of the article expresses the need to create space each day for “reflection and reminiscence.” She points out that:
Grieving is emotionally exhausting and you need to give yourself space to heal.”
She wisely suggests setting a little time aside each day to simply sit with your emotions and allow yourself time for reflection, reminiscing and probably some tears. Grief can catch us off guard at really inopportune moments. But knowing that you have a dedicated time each day to let your emotions out safely allows you to give yourself permission to park emotions temporarily at inconvenient times knowing that you will revisit them later.
It may be that you are not needing space to grieve the loss of a loved one, but I think it is important that we recognise the importance of having space to reflect, reminisce, process, heal whatever our starting point.
This takes me back to where we started – the mess our world is in and the challenges we face.
Trees know what they are doing.
As autumn approaches, the trees are pulling resources back into their centres to allow them to get through the dark and lean times. They are casting off what is no longer needed, preserving energy and slowing production.
I think we need to do that too – to stop, pause, slow, even for a few moments each day and identify how we feel, what we need and then take appropriate action.
There is a helpful framework of reflection questions here, written at the height of the pandemic madness when we were all feeling completely discombobulated. But the principles remain just as relevant.
And there is more here on a recent post about good grief habits.
But this week, I encourage you to take time to sit quietly with your own thoughts, pay attention to your own emotions, and still the noise in your head.
You are precious and this is important.