Seasonal inquiry

I love working with metaphors and Autumn offers so many! As a season, Autumn is all about change, transition and transformation - the very stuff of our practice. The temperature, the length of the days, the quality of the light, the shape of the trees, the glorious colours of the leaves; it’s all about change.

There is a ‘busyness’ in the air as winds shake the branches and swirl falling leaves around. What will you choose to let go at this time? What are you seeing more clearly as your ‘leaves’ fall? Walking across the fields last weekend, I collected a pocketful of conkers. Deep, glossy brown, supremely smooth and tactile, each slightly different from the next, released from a defensive casing on collision with the ground. I decided to scatter them at the end of my garden….to see what emerges.

As a season of change and transition, Autumn is a period of liminality. The shift between ‘no longer’ and ‘not yet’. A season of potential growth and immense possibility. Confronted by everything around me, it’s a time to act on what I want to change; what I choose to let go; what I want to work on. Accepting my own development edges, I choose to move towards a different quality of reflective practice. It will take some time, some slow growing during the months ahead.

I’m not yet there, but the change is underway - I am stuck no longer.

Carolyn Didsbury

APECS Board Member and Master Executive Coach