There is something about this time of year that brings us back. We remember, recall, revisit. The prefix “re” carries a sense of coming around again. An autumn afternoon, a photograph, or a familiar quality of light can bring an earlier chapter close enough to feel. Sometimes, we judge this return: Why am I here again? I thought I had moved through this. Yet encountering an old feeling does not necessarily mean we have lost our progress. We may be meeting familiar ground with a different awareness, more language, or a greater capacity to care for ourselves.
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are in the fall. Daylight dwindles, darkness lengthens, and leaves loosen their hold. What falls becomes part of the soil, gradually composting into nourishment for future growth. Our bodies belong to this living world; changes in daylight can affect sleep, energy, and mood. Some people experience winter blues, while others develop seasonal affective disorder, a recurring form of depression that deserves assessment and treatment. Both remind us that our lives unfold in relationship with the earth. As a reflection for our inner lives, autumn offers another possibility: a season of turning inward, allowing what we have lived to settle and become something we can understand.
Myth gives this inward movement a language of its own. In the Sumerian story of Inanna, the goddess associated with the planet Venus descends into the underworld, surrendering her adornments as she passes through its gates. There is a fitting celestial echo this October: Venus disappears into the Sun’s glare as it approaches its passage between Earth and the Sun on October 24, before returning to the morning sky. This planetary cycle is not an annual autumn event; its connection to our emotional lives is poetic rather than an established cause. Still, the image speaks: even a brilliant presence can pass beyond our sight for a time.
We, too, may feel drawn toward an inner cave after months of outward movement. There, we encounter what activity has kept at a distance: grief, unresolved conflict, anger, longing, or parts of ourselves we have learned to hide. We can enter with a lantern of awareness, approaching slowly enough to notice what is there. What am I remembering? What needs acknowledgment? What feels different this time? Returning can become an opportunity to witness our experience with less judgment. Like leaves becoming soil, some experiences need time and care before their meaning changes.
Therapy can offer companionship in this landscape. A steady relationship in which to explore what returns, tend to what hurts, and recognize when seasonal changes call for additional support. Renewal has its own pace; we do not have to force a spring before its time. If this fall finds you turning inward, you are welcome to begin that exploration with me through therapy. Together, we can make room for what is asking to be seen, and for the life still taking shape beneath the surface.