Autumn: The Season of Letting Go
Autumn used to be my favorite time of year — the shift from summer heat to sweaters and beanies, the smell of crisp air and earth. I loved the feeling of slowing down.
Now, it’s a more complex reminder — an initiation into a life I did not choose willingly, but one I’ve learned to embrace with acceptance, longing, and all the emotions in between.
When Everything Changed
A few years ago, as the leaves started falling and the mornings got that cool, sharp edge, I found myself crying alone on my kitchen floor.
Just days before, I’d been treating patients — doing bodywork, feeling grounded and purposeful. My hands moved with ease back then: gliding along a spine, feeling muscles shift and soften, making art with touch. It was my favorite kind of magic.
Then, out of nowhere, my hands started swelling. The pain was so intense that even trying to make a fist felt impossible. I remember staring at them — red, shaking, throbbing — and hoping it would just go away in a few days.
But it didn’t.
Days turned into weeks. Weeks into months. Months into years.
The pain changed — sometimes better, sometimes worse — but it never left. New symptoms emerged. Somewhere in that process, I picked up a new identity: “chronically-ill.”
Trying Everything
Like many of us do, I threw everything at it. Acupuncture, herbs, bodywork, light therapy, somatic therapies, dietary changes, mindset shifts — the works. Some helped, some didn’t. Mostly, I was desperate to feel like myself again.
I got stuck in this strange limbo with the medical system — too functional to be taken seriously, too symptomatic to be well. I kept pushing through, thinking if I could just do the right thing, I could fix myself.
Instead, I burned out.
The Grief I Didn’t Expect
Eventually, I realized I was stuck in grief — not just the pain, but the life I used to have.
My motorcycle sat in a garage collecting dust, the battery dead. My cello left in the corner of my room—neglected and out of tune. My dancing heels were replaced with orthopedic sneakers. My canes became part of my entryway decor where my helmet used to hang.
I hated it. I was angry. I didn’t know how to fully feel my anger. I cried often, and it didn’t make the pain go away. Somewhere in that frustration came a harder truth: I didn’t know who I was anymore without the things that used to define me.
Who am I if I’m not the healer, the artist, the musician, the dancer? Who am I when I can’t be the “happy one” anymore?
It felt like all the versions of me I once relied on were slowly dying off, both good and bad:
The people-pleaser died when fatigue became too heavy to mask.
The overachiever disappeared when I couldn’t work in a clinic anymore.
The perfectionist had to learn that “good enough” really is good enough.
It was a funeral of old selves, one by one. It was heartbreaking — but also strangely liberating.
An Initiation, Not a Punishment
One of my mentors once told me that chronic illness can be an initiation. At first, I hated that idea. I didn’t want to be initiated into anything — I just wanted my life back. But over time, I started to understand what they meant.
When your body changes, you’re forced to listen in ways you never have before. You can’t rush it. You can’t bypass it. The body becomes the teacher — and you either resist it or learn from it.
I learned that fighting myself only made things harder. That healing wasn’t about getting my old life back — it was about creating a new one that fits who I am now.
Autumn as Teacher
Autumn has taught me this. The trees don’t resist their shedding; they release, trusting that decay feeds the soil.
I’m learning to do the same — to let what no longer serves me fall away.
Freeing myself from the cage I built looks like:
Making art again: with arthritis-friendly stamps, markers, and mobility aids.
Letting rest become a ritual, not a punishment.
Saying “no” when my body says no.
Redefining nourishment — not as productivity, but as care — a warm bath, a gentle walk, a meal made with love.
Autumn still carries that familiar scent of change, but now I feel it differently — not as loss, but as a reminder that endings and beginnings can co-exist.
The Metal Element and the Gift of Release
In East Asian medicine, autumn is the season of the Metal Element — the energy of letting go, grief, and refinement. Just as the trees release their leaves, we, too, are invited to shed what no longer nourishes us.
Metal teaches us about value: what to hold close, and what to finally release. Illness became my teacher in that way. It stripped away what was unnecessary and left me face-to-face with what was precious — rest, presence, gentleness, honesty.
Every autumn, I feel that invitation again: to breathe out what I’ve been gripping too tightly, and to make space for what’s still becoming.
Our Undas (Day of the Dead) altar, filled with offerings, stories, and memories of our passed loved ones <3
Undas: Grieving Together
This past week, as autumn starts to transition to winter, I spent Undas — Day of the Dead — gathered with my loved ones, remembering those who came before us. We shared stories, lit candles, and sat around our ancestral altar, letting the air fill with smoke, prayer, and gratitude.
Grieving together felt like another kind of healing — the kind that doesn’t ask us to move on, but to move with.
We don’t separate grief from love; we understand them as two sides of the same breath.
Autumn, in all its gold and gray, reminds me that grief is part of the harvest — it clears the ground for what still wants to bloom.
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-Celine