the fruit is falling

the seasons are shifting and so are you.

I have started taking my coffee on the back deck again. The relentless heat of summer seems to be dissipating *for now*. My midwest readers will undoubtedly understand the gift of false fall. The relief. The yearn for more.

I am mindlessly stirring leaf shapes into my coffee, watching the creamer mingle, I sometimes like to whisper intentions for the day as I do this. A helpful declaration and ownership over my own part in it all. Crisper air fills my lungs and on an exhale, I realize how at home I feel, right here. Just as I realize how at home I feel, I begin to feel homesick, because I am in transition. I am in the process of being a living, breathing thing, changing, shedding. Like the seasons change around me, my own soul seems to mirror it.

There has been a restlessness afoot this past summer in my life. I have been on the brink of decisions I think that I have to make, offerings from life, awaiting my response. On my 2025 vision board I have a quote that says ‘I can change anytime I want, and oh how change is occurring. With or without my consent. Friends moving, changes in work opportunities for me, my daughter stepping into the bold age of two, a tune up of my marriage, embarking on the journey of a second child. All summer long my life feels as if it has been ripening. A fruit waiting for me to decide to pick it, or to simply let it fall.

In between my time where I began writing this piece and now, I have traveled back to the northern part of Michigan. I have tucked myself away with my little family, I have seen two shooting stars. This trip had all the pressure of finding clarity and putting me into alignment. Guess what? I have come back with the same questions. Like, what is alignment anyway? What is the difference between me being in and out of alignment? Yes, I know. I saw two shooting stars arn’t I now supposed to have found the still water within me? Did the shooting stars not bewitch me into knowing what fruits to pick or let fall?

The truth, they did not. They did however, remind me of the vastness of this life, the expansiveness of it all.

They really were extraordinary shooting stars. The space away with the loves of my life was needed and did bring me some amount of clarity and perspective like most travel experiences do. However, I am no closer to deciding anything than I was. Because, ultimately it is up to me to decide to move, to decide to make meaning. I think many people struggle with wanting to make the “right choice”. The most aligned choice.

Ah there is that word again. Alignment. If you asked me in my early twenties how to be in alignment, I would have told you to carry more crystals and meditate more, probably to drink some sort of kale juice. Now, I say it comes down to trust.

Trusting yourself. Letting go of the idea that circumstance alone will lead you to experience a state of centeredness. Although circumstance sure can help, I think alignment might mean allowing yourself to fully show up to your life and trust that you will adapt.

When I find myself ruminating over the changes happening and the decisions asking me to make them, I can’t help but notice how prevalent the undertone of grief is. I could choke on it. At times I do. I have been in objectively shit circumstances, trying everything in my power to bring about “more alignment” aka, better circumstances. Today I find myself back on my porch, still stirring a coffee and am stuck by how many of my dreams are playing out right now. There it is. The grief. The homesickness. The childlike want to stay a little longer.

I look at the dreams I am living and I also see the breaking of foundations I have built. I am struck by the knowledge that my dreams are changing. Anticipatory grief of the changing of the seasons.

I think what I am really writing about, what I am really feeling is the ache of love. The part of loving someone or something so fiercely that it is out of my control. I am not grieving because I have recently lost someone or something terrible has happened, this time I am just sitting in the knowledge that this time period in my life cannot be duplicated. No time really can, but before now, before meeting my daughter, I can’t say that I was that aware or even cared.

I hear the squawk of a crow and my daughter mimicking it. From my perch on the porch I notice the singular leaves on trees starting to change, they are just now beginning to show the signs that they have been preparing to transform, that soon enough they will be undressing themselves, naked and bare. Same tree, different presentation.

I think to myself, me too tree.

Perhaps the signs of my own transformation are just starting to show through. Perhaps the tree is not more or less aligned because it changes.

This is just the first little murmurs of the season shifting. I want to be brave enough to witness it in its entirety, to trust. I read somewhere that the process of the leaves dropping off trees is actually critical to their ability to build stronger roots.

Stronger connection.

Ah me too tree, me too.

And perhaps, as the leaves and unpicked fruits decay on the ground, as the dreams change, as people come and go, a more fertile soil is being made.

Until next time,

Taylor