The Spirit of Autumn: Grief, Gratitude, and a Ritual for Letting Go
Photo by Benjamin Voros on Unsplash
Originally for my next article, I was going to write about fear for “spooky szn” in October, with a plan to share right before Halloween. I would note the magic of the holiday, how many cultures believe in the “thinning of the veil” around this time, the mischievous festivity of costumes and trick or treating, and explore connecting with fear through this playful lens.
However it didn’t feel right -too flippant, perhaps- to write about fear in this way with so much terror alive in the world right now as we collectively see the horrors of war unfold before our eyes. Instead, I’ve been reflecting on grief and it’s tie to the rhythms of fall, the energy of this season, what we are experiencing collectively, and how we may see this showing up in the natural world.
To backtrack for a moment, part of my own healing and self care practice is acupuncture, and I’ve been fascinated by how it helps me return to myself and how my energy is meant to feel. Over the years it has helped me with anxiety, insomnia, shoulder tension, headaches, skin inflammation, and lots more. I often refer my clients to acupuncture as a complement to our work together if they are open or interested, as it can help the body come back into balance and support the changes we are making in therapy.
So why the segue into talking about acupuncture for a post about fall and our feelings in this season?
The style of acupuncture I receive is called Five Element, and because I have a near-compulsion to extensively research everything that piques my interest, I’ve done a lot of reading and learning about Five Element. In Five Element Acupuncture, treatment focuses on a correspondence between symptoms and an organ, a season, an element (think fire, water, earth, etc), and an emotion. In Five Element Acupuncture:
Autumn corresponds to metal, to the lungs and large intestine, and to grief.
Grief feels ever-present in the collective, and really has since COVID. How is our grief showing up? How do we feel it or not feel it? We can often sense grief or loss in general during this time of year, even when current events aren’t capturing our attention. The loss of light, the loss of leaves from the trees, the darkness encroaching on our post-work hours, the loss of warmth and days spent with friends at a bonfire or barbecue with play and laughter feeling so easily available on summer vacation. For some, this is when Seasonal Affective Disorder begins to take hold.
Fall is a transitional season and with every transition, while we are moving into something new, there is a goodbye and an ending there too. The action for transitions, and for fall, is a letting go. Think of how we take in and let go of our breath over and over (our breath moving in and out of the lungs- grief’s corresponding organ). In order to inhale we must exhale. It’s part of a cycle, and it can feel like the hardest part.
Photo by Erik Witsoe on Unsplash
Grief and Gratitude
Along with the themes of grief, loss and letting go, in fall we also bring our attention to abundance, to gratitude, to the harvest of the bounty we grew and produced and worked for all spring and summer. After all, this is the season where we celebrate Thanksgiving, we feast on the fruits of our labor, we gather our resources for the coming winter and are able to see and reflect on all that we have and all that we’ve generated this year.
Grief and gratitude may feel at odds with one another, and sometimes integrating polarities can make things feel whole.
Francis Weller, psychotherapist and author with a focus on grief says:
“The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering. Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.”
As we focus on what we’re grateful for, we know it may not last forever. In recognizing impermanence- in our relationships, in life- we may feel even more grateful to have it now. Grief and gratitude are intertwined.
Somatic Practice:
How can we hold these experiences together, both grief and gratitude? A somatic mindfulness practice from Buddhist Psychologist Tara Brach comes to mind, one that she offers for physical pain. In it, we are asked to notice where and how we feel pain in our body, and if and when it feels too much, to shift our awareness to a place that feels good or neutral. In this way, shifting our awareness, the experience of the pain is somewhat titrated, creating more space inside. Perhaps there is a way in which we can take this concept and bring it to the emotions of grief and gratitude, holding both, shifting awarenesses when need be to bring in more space and presence overall for the sum of our experience.
Ritual and Community
Community becomes more important than ever when processing grief. It’s why we come together for funerals, the combination of ritual in community tapping into ancient practices for healing and holding the grief together. We are not meant to process pain, and especially grief, alone.
Ritual speaks the wordless language of symbolism that resonates with our psyche and right brain. In ritual we acknowledge and alchemize feelings that are present, perhaps with the witnessing of community. As I learned in my Nature Informed Therapy training, working with ritual combined with elements of nature can be especially potent, allowing us to tap into a sense of something larger than ourselves.
Yet sometimes in our culture with such a relentless pursuit of productivity, where we are only given a few days a year to take for bereavement, with time spent more on screens than together, opportunity for connection and ritual may feel hard to come by. It can feel like there is no room for processing grief or loss, and of course this makes it feel even harder to let go. Letting go here doesn’t mean bypassing or moving on too quickly- it simply means allowing whatever ending may be here.
An Autumn Ritual for Letting go:
Letting go is a process that we move in and out of all of the time, whether in a relationship, with work, an interpersonal dynamic, or an internal emotional process or pattern. The following ritual can create an intentional way to honor where you’ve been and where you’d like to initiate a letting go in your life, and it’s seasonally right on time.
Using these questions, reflect on your intention and what “letting go” you’d like to acknowledge in your ritual.
What have I created this year and what am I harvesting from all of my earlier efforts?
What serves me now, and what no longer serves me in my life?
What am I ready to let go of, creating space for a possibility of renewal?
Once you have chosen something to symbolically let go, choose an element to release it to. The element you chose can determine the manner of releasing. With fire, you can write it on a piece of paper and burn it, if it is safe and accessible to do so. With water, you might speak it into a glass of water and pour the water out on the ground. With earth, you could write your words on seed paper and plant in the ground or in a small pot of potting soil. If the paper blooms into flower, all the more an illustration of how letting go contributes to the cycle of renewal. Send your thanks to this process, and if it feels right, acknowledge what you’d like to invite in or cultivate when new growth returns in the spring. You might end the ritual with a poem or song or piece of sacred text that speaks to you. Use your creativity and make it your own.
May we hold our losses, this space and season of letting go, and any feelings of grief with tenderness for ourselves and each other.
In support of your further exploration:
For a soulful guide to the indelible experience of grief in the human condition filled with depth, sensitivity, and poignant beauty, please consider reading Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow.
For more ideas for bringing ritual and ceremony into your life, check out psychotherapist Monique Lang’s book Meditations and Ceremonies for Healing.
To learn more about Five Element Acupuncture, try this simple guide by Nora Franklin.
Check out this article for a Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective on fall and corresponding organs. Also, if you are local to Maryland and would like acupuncture recommendations, feel free to get in touch!
Here’s the link to listen to Tara Brach’s meditation: Radical Acceptance of Pain.
