There is something comforting about the turn from summer into autumn being called fall. As the air chills, the leaves change color and eventually drift away in the gentle autumn breeze, I can’t help but romanticize the loss of leaves for the trees. I have always loved this time of year, though I never thought too deeply about what I was actually admiring. This year, I can’t help but notice. While coming to terms with a change I never wanted, I suddenly see fall in a brand new way.
Change itself is nothing new to me. Growing up in a military family, I constantly left friends, homes, schools, and memories behind to start completely over somewhere new. I learned early that life does not always wait until you are ready to change. Nine moves taught me how to leave — none of them taught me how to be left.
Recently, someone I never thought I would have to live without unexpectedly became someone I had to. I always imagined a lifetime of change would have prepared me for a loss like this. Instead, everything continues to move, even when something I held so closely has come to a complete stop.
As the season changes around me, I am beginning to notice how little nature resists what I am still fighting to accept. The world does not stop changing simply because I wish it would. October arrives anyway. The air gets colder. Daylight disappears a little earlier. All around me, trees prepare to let go of everything they worked all year to grow.
The trees don’t beg their leaves to stay. They don’t ask the sun to remain closer to Earth for just a little longer. They don’t bargain with October for another day of warmth just to keep a loosening leaf on its branch. There is no reaching after it once the wind carries it away. No pretending winter isn’t coming. They simply allow what has reached its end to fall.
Sometimes, I watch the leaves fall not knowing if they choose to let go or if they’ve finally lost the strength to hold on.
Perhaps there is something painfully beautiful about that kind of surrender.
Soon, the trees will stand completely bare, and maybe that is the part of letting go we don’t romanticize enough. Before there is new growth, there is complete emptiness. There is a long stretch of winter between losing what you had and growing what comes next. I have an aching emptiness where someone used to be. There are memories with nowhere to go, love with nowhere to land, and a future I must quietly unimagine.
And still, the trees survive winter. They stand exactly where they are, stripped of everything they spent the warmer months carrying and forced to endure the cold without knowing when it will break.
So, this autumn, I am trying to stop reaching for what has already fallen. I am learning to let the wind carry away what I can no longer hold. Spring, after all, does not return the leaves that fell. It grows new ones.
For now, I will let myself be bare.
I don’t have to know when I’ll blossom again to trust that I will.