Fading into fullness in September.
honouring the thresholds and contrasts within my favourite month.
Story & Thread. is a weekly letter exploring the intersection of creativity, mothering and the living world, with a home and a garden at the heart...
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“Autumn leaves don’t fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar”. — Delia Owens.
Hi everyone
I hope you have all landed softly in September - I loved reading your reflections on how summer felt to you, the messiness of realistic rituals, the unexpected challenges of reading in motherhood and all of the heart-warming Shirley Hughes nostalgia!
Here we are in a month that always feels special to me, it has a both a muted elegance and an illuminating clarity — a timely lesson in noticing, holding and honouring the often many existing truths of our storied lives…
The fading alongside fullness, the falling and the flying, the gathering inwards and the clearing — it is here that I experience most strongly the schooling of September and this year I am placing my feet strongly on the earth in order to feel it all…
A September feeling.
September will always feel more like the new year to me than January — my birthday falls at the beginning of the month and so it really is the start of a brand new year in my book. Growing up, my birthday often coincided with the first day back at school after the slow-motion stretch of the summer holidays and I don’t think this feeling of turning a fresh new page will ever leave me. I find that Virgo season too, where both my Sun and Rising signs fall, always feels like coming home.
A time of thresholds.
As a month that signifies a seasonal shift, plus the mutable yet earthy energy of Virgo season, it seems inevitable that it is a time of thresholds for many of us.
A threshold is defined as any place or point of entering or beginning — it is a space rich with potential, dancing between one thing and another. Is anyone else feeling it?
I loved
’s recent post ‘Tending to our threshold moments’ in which she explores the idea of “a life of threshold moments” and the importance of pausing to recognise and honour them, with some beautiful ideas for doing so.Until now, I feel as though I have been halfway there — I am aware of these times of change and pause to inhabit them as best I can, but I have rarely stopped to fully honour them, an important part of processing the magic of the often unseen shifts taking place below the surface.
I was reminded recently that the word ‘threshold’ has its origins in the Old English form of the word ‘thresh’, meaning ‘to sift grain by trampling’ or originally ‘to tread, to stamp noisily’ (and I love that in Old French the related word treschier is ‘to dance’) — each version alludes to a sense of active participation in transformation, within a container of ‘holding’.
Inspired by Lauren’s post and these findings, I am feeling into and marking the liminal space of thresholds this month — a place that can feel both ripe with opportunity but tender in its mystery.
An autumnal shift.
Seasonal shifts feel like natural thresholds playing out around me, yet are not separate from me. Noticing them and their reassuring familiarity reminds me to align myself with the world around me and the wisdom of my own inner seasons too.
Fading and fullness.
September, the month that starts in summer and ends in autumn, has a way of simultaneously fading and coming into abundance — a place of in-between where everything is possible. There is an unassuming beauty and radiance that feels more low-key and effortless than in the preceding seasons of spring and summer where expectations are high.
Fading beauty sitting alongside the seedpods of possibility reminds me each year of the soft strength required to hold the contrasts and contradictions in all aspects of our lives, where everything is valid and all of it is true.
Falling and flight.
September is a harbinger of change. Even in the glorious warmth we are experiencing this week in the UK, September’s morning air tastes inimitably like the first days of school, and as the light lowers, the evenings approach with a renewed haste. Suddenly the leaves on the trees glow; both adorned by the sun’s rays and illuminated from within as the process of fading and falling begins.
This fading and falling is accompanied by fullness and flight — as seedpods come forth, spreading and scattering new seeds that will sit below the surface, waiting for the light to strengthen in spring. It is both an ending and a beginning — the living world’s ritual of letting go in order to plant a source of potential for the lighter days that will return once again.
It feels like an opportune moment for us too to craft gentle intentions as a way to resource ourselves for the quieter, darker months ahead.
Gathering and clearing.
The beginnings of autumn and Virgo season signify a move away from the upward, outward growth of spring and summer, ushering in both a sense of earthy grounding and gathering, alongside an energy of clarifying, shedding and distillation.
There is a depth to this corner of the calendar, as although it is a month of harvesting abundance, it is also a time of clearing, with layers to peel away. There is a release of expectations and a return to routine, a reset and a refresh. To me, it signals a time to let go of summer dreaming, instead turning inwards to take stock, to sift and refine.
As the living world begins to become slowly quieter and darker, it is a time to both recognise how far we have come and to access clarity as the distractions of the longer, light-filled summer days dissolve.
My September shifts.
Turning 38 this week means I am now fully immersed in my late 30s, and I feel ready. The lessons of my 30s are continuing to evolve in an autumn-style return, remembering and refinement with a much more yin feel (an introspective energy with a lunar-led softness and stillness according to ancient Chinese philosophy) than in my 20s. There is a sense of homecoming, familiarity, a return to myself with a new unwavering trust in my own deepest knowing and intuition.
My birthday was also the first day of taking my son to the nursery at the end of our road, where he will join his big sister for two mornings each week. The overarching picture of this shift in our routine feels good — a chance for him to gradually experience the world beyond my arms; and for me to explore new opportunities, to catch up on all of the things that have been put on the back burner in these all-consuming early mothering years and to find a scintillation of creative balance.
And yet within the immediate visceral moments of his ‘settling in’ week, in true September style I am holding on tightly whilst letting go — of his little hand, and the most recent edition of myself too.
I would love to hear if you are also feeling the thresholds of change in the air, and in your life?
Is there a feeling you would like to embody as we move into autumn?
Thank you for reading and I really look forward to your insights, hope we can chat more in the comments.
Beautiful words and photos Lyndsay. I hope you had a lovely birthday! September for me feels like new beginnings too, I guess just because of the kids starting school again, a chance to get back into some kind of routine with just my youngest at home and time for my creativity again. I was thinking today when I was out walking with my youngest, how strange it feels to have crunchy leaves underfoot but it being so hot, and also the darker nights and mornings too. Hope your youngest is settling into nursery well too, it's a big step isn't it, for both of you.
Interestingly, my birthday is in the first week of February so I rarely “begin” the new year until then. September also brings with it the chance to start over and I can relate to that sense of holding on and letting go...”a timely lesson in holding and honouring”. Such beautiful words. Wishing you a happy birthday 💛