In the traditions of several of my friends, we are in the season of the New Year.  Maybe it is indoctrination by the American school system or the sudden smell of fallen leaves, but Autumn seems to me a much more natural, intuitive place to mark the beginning and ending of things than mid-winter.

I encourage my clients and friends to recognize their internal seasons, as much as our societal ones.  If in May or Sept, you realize you need to make a break with the past and welcome a new future, then do it!  Have a New Year’s party, make a resolution, an adjustment, or even an acknowledgment of your current state.

Autumn has always been a time of beginning for me.  It’s resonance is even deeper this year as we live with Hurricane Ike’s prunings piled on every lawn and the changes to my town wrought in that one night slowly reveal themselves as we reassemble our routines.  Some of the old routines still serve, and are being reestablished, while others no longer match our reality and need be let go of, perhaps mournfully, perhaps in relief, but let go of either way.

Happy New Year!

* Both the Ethiopian Orthodox & the Hebrew calendar begin in Autumn.  Their months also follow the cycles of the moon, instead of the sun.