November 2023 Reflection

November came and went with a bone-chilling gust, the kind that makes you gasp as breath turns to ice in the lungs. It was a season of many stone cold realities waking from ancient cellular hibernations within my body. There are seasons of endurance and there are seasons of abundance, and this autumn has shifted to resemble much more of an early winter for me.

It is enough to celebrate a summer harvest that lasted until October. This month has been all about welcoming the imminent collapse of subsisting off this previous bounty, stored as a wellspring within my heart. There are branches of my identity withering that I never expected to lose. The euphoric gratitude settles like sediment within tumultuous, sorrowful waters. Eternally suspended in a state of bittersweet presence in the moment.

I am reminded, more than ever, that there is so much joy and so much sorrow to behold of this world all at the same time. So much hope and hopelessness to simultaneously hold and mourn. Abject horror and unspeakable beauty. So many dichotomies to feel into and experience within the mosaic of the human condition. I breathe a sigh of relief as the semester concludes and allow my body to settle into a moment of seasonal slumber. 

I continue to be grateful for the incredible people that have been put in my life. My treasured finds in a lifelong past as well as the new ones pursuing my same dream. They have given meaning to the phrase, “it takes a village.” They remind me that even while under the inescapable knife of time and change, I will continually be put back together again in a better, sturdier configuration with surgical precision.