The Things We Carry Into Winter

The Sovereign Shift | The Manjula Awakening

There’s something about autumn that makes you pay attention.

Maybe it’s the way the trees begin to change, or how a landscape that looked so full just a few weeks ago starts to look different. The leaves begin to fall, the air changes, and you realize that even though you haven’t done anything differently, the world around you is moving into another season.

I took pictures of three different trees in my neighborhood. I wasn’t looking for anything extraordinary. I was just paying attention to what was happening around me.

But I kept coming back to those pictures.

Because there was something about seeing three trees in the same season, each at a different stage of change, that got me thinking about how we move through our own lives.

Sometimes, the season changes before we realize that what worked for us before might not work the same way anymore.

The Comfort of What We Know

There’s a certain comfort in knowing how to live in the season we’re in.

When we have the energy, the time, and the resources to do certain things, we get used to doing them. We build routines. We take on responsibilities. We make commitments. We figure out what works, and after a while, we stop questioning it.

Until something changes.

Maybe our circumstances are different. Maybe our priorities have shifted. Maybe we’re simply not the same person we were when we first took something on.

But we can get so accustomed to the way things have always been that we don’t immediately recognize when something needs to change.

We keep doing what we’ve always done because, at one point, it worked.

Just because something was sustainable in one season doesn’t mean it will remain sustainable in the next.

That doesn’t mean what we built was wrong. It doesn’t mean we failed, or that everything we’ve invested in needs to be abandoned.

Sometimes, the circumstances have changed, and we have to be willing to acknowledge that.

Three Trees. One Autumn. Three Different Stages of Change.

I keep coming back to those three trees.

Three trees. One autumn. Three different stages of change.

None of them can tell us their entire story simply by the colors of their leaves.

We can look at them and observe what’s happening, but we don’t know everything they’ve endured, what they’ve adapted to, or what has happened beyond what we can see.

And I think about how often we do the same thing with people.

We look at someone and assume we know where they are in life. We look at ourselves and wonder why we’re not further along, why someone else seems to be moving through a change more easily, or why something that once felt manageable now feels so much harder.

But we don’t have the whole picture.

We don’t always know what someone has been carrying. We don’t know what it took for them to get where they are, or what they’re still trying to work through.

And when it comes to our own lives, we don’t always recognize that we’re changing, either. Sometimes we just know that something feels different. What used to fit doesn’t fit the same way. What we used to have the capacity for requires more from us now.

That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re doing something wrong.

It may simply mean we’re in a different stage of the season.

The Cost of Holding On

One of the trees I photographed has lost some significant limbs in previous years. I’ve noticed it before, and as I thought about these trees, I found myself thinking about what happens when we hold on to things while the conditions around us change.

Now, I can’t tell you why those limbs fell. I don’t know the tree’s full history, and I wouldn’t pretend that I do.

But seeing that tree made me think about how much we carry without stopping to ask whether we still need to carry it.

We hold on to responsibilities because we’ve always been the one to handle them. We hold on to expectations because we remember when they made sense. We keep showing up in certain ways because that’s who we’ve always been, or who people have come to expect us to be.

And sometimes, those things still matter. Sometimes, they’re worth the effort it takes to maintain them.

But sometimes, we keep carrying things because putting them down would mean admitting that something has changed.

Maybe a responsibility needs to be shared. Maybe a commitment needs to be reconsidered. Maybe we’ve outgrown a way of living that once helped us get through life.

And that can be uncomfortable to admit, especially when we’ve built so much of our identity around being the person who can handle it all.

But being able to carry something doesn’t automatically mean we should have to carry it forever.

There’s a difference between caring for something because it still has room to grow and exhausting ourselves trying to keep it exactly as it was.

One allows for change. The other leaves very little room for it.

Autumn Has a Purpose, Too

We tend to celebrate growth.

We celebrate the new beginnings, the breakthroughs, the moments when our efforts start to pay off. We like seeing something come together. We like knowing that what we’ve put into something is producing results.

But what about the seasons when life isn’t asking us to produce more?

What about the times when we need to slow down, reassess, or make adjustments we didn’t anticipate having to make?

Autumn isn’t summer failing to continue. It’s a different season.

And maybe we need to stop looking at every change in our own lives as a sign that something has gone wrong.

There are times when we have the capacity to do more, and there are times when we don’t. There are times when we can take on another responsibility, and there are times when taking on one more thing would mean neglecting something that already needs us.

Recognizing that doesn’t make us incapable. It means we’re paying attention.

We can’t keep measuring every season of our lives by what we were able to do in another one.

Sometimes, the work isn’t about adding something new. Sometimes, it’s about figuring out what needs our attention now, what can wait, and what we may need to stop carrying altogether.

What Are We Carrying Into Winter?

This is where my thoughts keep returning.

What are we carrying into the next season of our lives simply because we’ve gotten used to carrying it?

It might be a responsibility. It might be an expectation. It might be a belief about who we’re supposed to be, what we’re supposed to tolerate, or how much we’re supposed to be able to handle.

Some of those things still belong with us. Some are worth the effort. Some have helped us grow into the people we are today.

But not everything that helped us get through one season has to come with us into the next.

And I think it’s worth asking ourselves whether we’re holding on because something still matters to us, or because we’re afraid of what it would mean to let it go.

Those are two very different things.

We have limited time, energy, and attention. We can’t give everything the same amount of ourselves, all the time. And when we keep pouring our resources into maintaining something that no longer works for us, we may leave very little for the things that need us now.

That doesn’t mean we should walk away from every difficult thing. Some things are worth working through. Some commitments deserve to be honored, even when they’re inconvenient.

The point isn’t to abandon what becomes difficult.

It’s to recognize the difference between something that requires care and something we’re trying to preserve simply because we’re not ready to accept that it has changed.

Winter will ask something different of us than summer did.

The question is whether we’ll recognize that before we find ourselves trying to sustain a life that no longer fits the season we’re in.

Different Trees. One Autumn.

I keep coming back to those three trees because they remind me that change doesn’t look the same for everything moving through it.

We can observe what is happening without knowing the whole story. We can recognize that something is changing without pretending we know why. And we can be in the same season as someone else without being at the same place in our lives.

Maybe that’s enough to remember.

We don’t have to rush our own transitions to match somebody else’s. We don’t have to assume that a different pace means we’re behind. And we don’t have to keep carrying everything simply because it has been part of our lives for a long time.

Not everything we carry into winter will serve us there. But not everything we leave behind was a mistake.

Some things helped us grow. Some things sustained us. Some things belonged to the lives we were living at the time.

We can appreciate what those things meant without insisting they have to remain with us forever.

And maybe that’s part of learning how to move through change: being honest about what still belongs, recognizing what needs to be different, and accepting that we cannot carry everything forward unchanged.

Three trees. One autumn. Three different stages of change.

None of them has to become the other to make it through the season.

And neither do we.

— The Manjula Awakening