11/04/2026
🍂🌲🍄✨ The forest is alive with magic, and autumn is whispering her ancient wisdom.
I have always felt that the forest is one of the most sacred places we can go to reconnect with ourselves, our ancestors, and Mother Earth. The way the mist moves between the trees, the smell of damp earth, the mushrooms emerging from decaying wood, and the golden leaves returning to the soil. Everything feels alive, even in the midst of dying.
When I walk into the woods, I feel her welcoming me home.
I feel the ancient wisdom of the trees, the stillness beneath the noise of everyday life, and the beautiful reminder that I am not separate from nature. But apart of the living, breathing and dying ecosystem. I am nature.
🌲✨ The trees are incredible beings.
Beneath our feet, their roots intertwine with vast networks of fungi, creating living relationships through which nutrients and chemical signals can move. Above us, their branches reach toward the heavens, while their roots anchor deeply into the Earth.
And then there is the Schumann resonance, the earths heartbeat that surges through the trees and all life on this planet.
I find something so beautiful about knowing that our planet has her own electromagnetic rhythms.
To me, the Earth is always speaking.
Through the wind. Through the rain. Through the changing seasons. Through the silence that asks us to listen instead of constantly doing.
And when life feels heavy, when I’ve been carrying emotions, grief, experiences, and energies that no longer feel aligned with who I am becoming, I go into the forest.
I bring Mother Earth my darkness.
Not because darkness is something bad or something to fear, but because I believe even our heaviest experiences have something to teach us.
I sit with the trees. I place my hands upon their trunks. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I breathe. Sometimes I simply stand before this ancient being and ask for clarity, I release what is no longer serving my highest purpose here, I lay it upon the Earth and allow myself to feel everything I’ve been holding.
In my spiritual practice, I offer that density back to Mother Earth, trusting in her wisdom to transmute what I am ready to release into something lighter.
Just as fallen leaves become nourishment for the soil, I imagine my grief, fear, anger, and old stories becoming compost for the next version of myself.
🍄 And the mushrooms! Oh, the mushrooms!
There is something so beautifully mystical about these little beings.
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi, and beneath them exists an often-hidden world of mycelium. Fungi help break down organic matter, returning nutrients to the ecosystem so that new life can flourish.
They remind me so much of our own bodies and healing journeys.
Our bodies are ecosystems, too. We carry entire communities of microorganisms within us, and so much of what sustains us happens beyond our conscious awareness.
Just as the forest depends upon countless unseen relationships, our bodies depend upon balance, connection, and cooperation.
And the symbolism of fungi is especially powerful.
They teach us that decomposition is not the opposite of creation.
It is part of creation.
What falls apart becomes the nourishment for what comes next.
What dies makes room for life.
What is released creates space for rebirth.
And isn’t that exactly what so many of us are experiencing right now?
🍁✨ We are moving through the season of the mystic, the season of the ancestors, the season of death and rebirth.
With Samhain just behind us, we are entering that sacred descent into the darker half of the year. In the spiritual traditions I connect with, this is a time to honor our ancestors, reflect upon our lives, and listen to the wisdom that emerges in stillness.
And even the cosmos seems to echo these themes.
We are moving through Scorpio season, a time astrologically associated with the shadow, transformation, truth, and rebirth. 🦂
Mercury is retrograde in Scorpio, inviting us, symbolically, to revisit the conversations, beliefs, and emotional patterns we haven’t fully processed.
Venus is also retrograde, bringing the themes of relationships, self-worth, love, and what we truly value into focus.
And as we approach the Scorpio New Moon on November 8 here in the Pacific Northwest, I feel called to sit with what is ending rather than rush toward what is beginning.
Not everything is meant to come with us into the next season.
Some relationships, identities, expectations, and ways of living belong to the version of ourselves we are outgrowing.
And that’s okay.
Look at the trees.
They don’t cling to their leaves out of fear of what winter might bring. They release them because release is part of their natural rhythm.
They do not mistake their bare branches for failure.
They trust the cycle.
They understand that rest is necessary, that darkness has purpose, and that life continues even when growth is no longer visible.
We are no different.
We are cyclical beings living in a world that constantly pressures us to bloom.
But autumn reminds us that we are allowed to shed.
We are allowed to retreat.
We are allowed to grieve what has ended.
We are allowed to become unrecognizable to the people who only knew our previous seasons.
And we are allowed to trust that something beautiful is taking shape beneath the surface, even when we cannot see it yet.
🌙🍂 So if you’ve been feeling the weight of change lately, perhaps the forest has something to teach you.
Go sit with the trees.
Listen to the leaves beneath your feet.
Notice the mushrooms growing from what once was.
Feel the cool air filling your lungs.
Offer the Earth what you no longer wish to carry, and allow yourself to be held by something older and greater than the stories you’ve been living.
You don’t have to force your rebirth.
You don’t have to know what comes next.
You can simply honor the season you’re in.
Because we are not separate from the cycles of life, death, and rebirth.
We are the cycles.
We are the falling leaves, the ancient roots, the mycelium beneath the soil, the darkness of winter, and the first green shoots of spring.
And perhaps the greatest magic of autumn is remembering that nothing in nature remains the same, yet everything belongs.
Even our darkness.
Even our endings.
Even the parts of ourselves we are learning to let go of.
Mother Earth has been showing us how to transform all along.
We only have to remember how to listen. 🌲🍄🌙💜
🍂✨ As you move through this season, I invite you to reflect upon your own cycles of life, death, and rebirth.
What within you is asking to be released?
What have you been holding onto out of fear, familiarity, or the hope that something will become what you’ve always wished it could be?
Are there relationships, beliefs, patterns, or versions of yourself that you’ve outgrown but continue to carry?
Where in your life are you resisting the natural process of change?
And perhaps most importantly, what would happen if you stopped fighting to keep everything the same and allowed yourself to surrender to the season you’re in?
Think about the trees. What are your leaves? What are you being asked to shed? And what parts of yourself need nourishment, stillness, and rest before they can bloom again?
Can you honor the parts of your life that are ending without seeing those endings as failures?
Can you trust that even in the darkness, something within you is being transformed?
You don’t have to have all the answers. Sometimes the most profound healing begins when we become still enough to ask ourselves the questions we’ve been avoiding.
🌲🍄 I encourage you to spend some time in nature this season. Find a tree that calls to you. Sit beneath her branches, feel the Earth supporting you, and listen to what arises within you.
And if you feel called to share, I’d love to hear…
What are you releasing this autumn, and what are you making space to welcome into your next season of life? 🍁🌙💜
Mother Earth has been showing us how to transform all along.
With love,
Kathryn
