This is part two in a three-part series on witnessing nature move through fall, and allowing her to guide us along the way.. Read the part one here and part three here.
Recently I had an open weekend. I wasn’t teaching a workshop and my children were with their fathers.
It’s rare I have this free space in my life. I could have taken a bath or read a book, but do you know what I really wanted to do with it? Clean the house.
I could feel the desire pulsing in the marrow of my bones.
I wanted to clean and clean and clean and then clean some more. So I started at the superficial level: laundry, dishes, etc, but then I went even deeper. I moved every piece of furniture I could lift on my own (some I could barely lift!) and vacuumed in places that haven’t seen the light since…. forever. I looked like a madwoman — dusting on top of the doors, scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees, wiping the baseboards, polishing the doorknobs. I completely rearranged my office space. I even bought a new mattress.
Fall can do this to us.
Most people think of spring as the time for cleaning – spring cleaning gets all the glory – but fall is actually an incredible time for cleaning because fall about letting go.
Look at the trees clearing the old leaves and dropping acorns.
Nature cleans house in the fall time, making way for the deep internal processes that can only happen in the dark of winter; that can only happen if we make enough space for them – physical, emotional and energetic.
Cleaning as an act of devotion.
Cleaning is devotion. It says: I love my life and my home (or office space) enough to devote my time, attention and energy to it.
How often do we think: ‘I don’t have time for that!”
What we’re really saying is: ‘that (cleaning) isn’t important enough for me to spend my time on.’
So: hire a housecleaner for routine maintenance if that feels good for you and your family – but also take the time to put attention on your space in a way that says “I love you”.
Wipe the counters in a way that says “thank you”.
Make the beds & organize your closet in a way that says “I honor you”.
Wash the dishes in a way that says “you nourish me & I am grateful”.
Pay the bills as an act of relishing that you have enough; you have so much.
This devotion will come back to you one hundred-fold.
The fall ache and letting go.
A lot of people feel an ache in fall and I think this is because letting go and shedding {our leaves} is an act of trust — trust that they’ll grow back next year; trust that we will have what we need when we need it; trust that there is a becoming beyond the letting go.
One of the things I’m letting go of is a toy piano that both my children have had. We’ve had it for seven years, it’s moved with us through five different houses, both my son and my daughter have played with it, but they don’t really use it anymore.
I could keep it on the off chance they do decide to play with it, but I know (just as the trees know it’s time to drop their leaves) that it’s time to let it go.
I can feel the ache in myself: not so much the ache of letting go of the piano – letting go of the piano is just a reminder that I don’t have babies anymore, I have big children. I am no longer in the phase of having babies, little children who delight in tiny pianos. We are a family with big children now, and, as beautiful as that is, it also makes my heart ache.
And it’s an act of trust that says: ‘if I have another baby, I will have what I need when the time comes.’ I don’t need to hold on to everything just in case.
It’s letting go of who we have been in order to make space for who we are now, and for who we are to become, to arise.
Trusting the fullness of the season.
If we look to the earth again, we see the acorns around us have been green and little, and now they’re coming into their mature state. They’re becoming food for the squirrels & they’re dropping into the places in the earth that incubate them so they can grow into oak trees.
If the acorns resisted and said, ‘no no no no no, I want to stay a cute and young and tender green acorn forever’ then we would never see the glorious emergence that is an oak tree.
The oak tree requires that the acorn become brown and dry and mature; it requires the oak tree(s) to let go and drop the acorns, and it requires the acorns to trust, as they drop into the dark of the earth to germinate.
If the acorn is green when it goes into the earth, it never sprouts into an oak tree. It’s the willingness to be with the uncertainty of the transition, of starting to shed what is no longer needed so that we can go into the winter energy, go into the earth and truly be in the fullness of hibernation.
Take time to shed what is no longer needed so that you can enter your hibernation time in fullness.
Take 10 minutes to clean a drawer.
Take 10 minutes, 3 hours, or a full day — whatever you have — and scrub the stove, clean your junk draw or pull from your closet. Allow your intuition to guide you towards what you need to get rid of.
This will bring a little more flow not only to that particular space, but {magically} to your whole house & every area of your life.
Watch the full video:
With love,
Kendra.
P.s Feel free to leave any questions, comments or practices you’ve found helpful for building awareness during transitions in the comments below.
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