The Dark Season: Autumn 2025
Welcoming November here at Isola means welcoming change – big change. Here in the Northern Hemisphere our lives change drastically when the season changes from summer to autumn/winter. We go through a personal physical and emotional ‘winterizing’, as well as a tangible winterizing of our properties. Physically, we tend to feel that we need a little more rest. But many of us also feel inspired to be in the gym more, or at a fitness or yoga class. It’s revitalizing to be in a social fitness environment. Emotionally, many of us start to look at the people in our lives: our loved ones, our new friends and long-time friends. Our colleagues. How can we be a better person? And sometimes we ask ourselves: ‘Should this friendship/relationship continue the way its been going, or does it need a change?”.
At our home this season change means closing up the Isola greenhouse, clearing away all of the planters and pots on the property so we can prepare to shovel the snow. We down the terrace outdoor furniture, have winter tires put on our vehicles, stock up on feed and emergency veterinary supplies for the horses, and I do the last of my canning/freezing/dehydrating local fruits and vegetables. This year, I took three months to do a major home clear-out…
I Got Rid Of 40% Of My Belongings (And I’m Not Done Yet…)
I’m a chronic ‘organizer’. This is a great personality trait to have, unless you’re like me and can succumb to the advertising world’s organizing products. If there’s a little box with sections for each item, a pretty blue jar, a folder with slots in it for all of your special papers, or an organizer for your knitwear, the previous version of myself would beg “sell them to me”! The problem with having many ways to organize your things, is that within each of those little organizers are things. And how many things can a home hold before those things, tucked away in their special locations become dusty, forgotten, or, in my case, a burden?
Somewhere along the way I started to look at the belongings I filled my home with, the people, animals, plants – the living things I filled my life with – and I felt content. I’ve been organizing other peoples homes or spaces as a hobby for a number of years now (which sounds like something I shouldn’t enjoy, but I do), and one of the most frequent things I see is a closet, a cupboard, or a drawer with items shoved so far into the back of it that the person didn’t even know that they owned those things. My question to them is always “how long do you think these items have been here?”. The answer is usually “years and years”. And when I’m doing a really ‘harsh’ home organizing for people, usually we end up getting rid of the entire piece of furniture that held ‘years and years’ of things.
Now, my own home is slightly different – I know what’s in the back of every drawer. Our home was built in 1905, so we are blessed with the absence of cupboards and closets – very little can be tucked away. However, there were ‘things’ that took up space that I knew would be best appreciated by someone else – they’d be new again. And in turn, I could be a little bit new again too.
I started with cosmetics. As a natural skincare formulator, I not only love cosmetics and skincare, but I feel I wouldn’t be doing my job very well if I didn’t consistently research, test, and learn about products. I also have extreme sensitivities to products on my skin, so I usually have a number of products that I’ve purchased that don’t work for me. I sorted through my cosmetics and skincare products twice this year. First, discarding or donating about 20% of what I had, and most recently, I got rid of about another 30% of what I had.
I moved onto my clothing, shoes, books, papers, horse ‘stuff’, work ‘stuff’, and finally into our common spaces: the kitchen, the living room, the bar room, the front foyer, the garage, the gym… this took about three months to tackle part-time. But here’s what happened….
When You Get Rid Of Half Of What You Own, You Have 50% More Energy
This is not a new concept, and I am always learning. So here’s a few things I’ve learned:
- When you get rid of half of what you own, you have 50% more energy (more on this below)
- With that 50% more energy, you begin to see things in your life that you didn’t see before (more on this below).
- This is not an easy or comfortable process. It feels exhausting just to look at a shelf with ten things on it, knowing that you want to tidy, discard, and donate some of those things. I think that the most tiring thing about all of it for me was the physical ‘getting-rid-of-it’ process: Loading up my car, delivering things to people, taking items to the Women In Need Society, packing up and discarding bags of recycling, garbage, etc.
- Everyone has an opinion. Whether it’s a “good for you!” or a “your home is already tidy”, or “why are you getting rid of that?”… when people see you making a drastic change, they will have an opinion.
- You’re not done yet. This might be the hardest part: your threshold for ‘things’ just got a lot narrower. So now you’ll look at a surface that used to have 10 things on it, which now has five things on it, and you’ll want to only have three things on it. So you’re not done until you look at your space, and decide to sit down and enjoy that space without wanting to make alterations to it.
Your Clarity Will Take You To New Places (So Pack Your Baggage….)
Well, here we are: all of the emotions that you tucked under the comfort of those ‘things’ in your mind is now exposed. Here comes the (temporary) discomfort:
- You might start tidying up your ‘friends’. I like to speak in the ‘love languages’ with my friends, and here’s what I did: I realized that I had more to give to my friendships, so I asked my best friends to be patient with me, but to understand that my friendship love language was changing: Instead of ‘words of affirmation’ (as in texts and voicenotes, instagram memes and the like), I was looking to give and receive ‘quality time’. And my best friends really showed up for this. Other friends kind of fell off the radar. They’re doing their thing, and I’m moving forward with my thing. I hope we come together again someday. But you find out who your people are when you ask them to show up, and they do.
- You might start tidying up your body. And if you share a home with someone, they might not want to eat what you’re eating. They might not want to exercise with you. They might not appreciate your homemade cashew yoghurt, or your newly spray painted dumbbells (which, as they’re now more aesthetically pleasing, you want to use them more…) So you might have to get comfortable with yourself again. And the people you love might have to get comfortable with you too. Just be calm about it. Change is ALWAYS good.
- Sharing all of the benefits of working on yourself is a really great way to show support to someone who’s going through a difficult time. But be prepared: Sometimes people are very comfortable being uncomfortable. They might choose to stay in their situation, no matter how obvious it is to everyone else that it’s an unhealthy situation. Forgive them. Love them. Be there for them. But you’ll be stronger for them when they’re ready for you if you take care of yourself first.
The Dark Season: Making Light Of It
This will get its own blog post, as I truly believe that incorporating Herbalism, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Ayurvedic knowledge are the keys to transitioning smoothly into every season. However, lets make light of a few autumnal joys:
- “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad weather attire”. I’m pretty sure that whomever said this has never lived in Canada, but I like the intention of it, and I try to remind myself of this when I look outside and don’t want to subject myself to the elements…
- Soups and stews, soups and stews. If you take anything from this, let it be this: in all natural health practices from 2000 years ago until today, we know without a doubt that in the autumn season our bodies need warm soups and stews. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, this is the season of the Lung. To nourish the Lung, we need soothing fruits like pears and apples, and COOKED ground-growing foods like cauliflower, onion, radish, carrots – best served in a warm soup or stew (no stagnating flour or dairy added).
- “…And then my heart with pleasure fills…” William Wordsworth wrote about daffodils, but we need to find that same pleasure in the dark months too. Best for the mind and body are craft-esque projects. Lighting a beautiful candle isn’t enough… make your own candle (and make a few more for holiday gifts). Make yourself a home-spa space: buy an infrared light for the bathroom, paint the walls a soothing color, refurbish a new dresser, start a business! My mother is a very talented craftswoman, and she dedicates her time in the fall and winter to making crafts and refurbishing antiques that she’ll then sell in the spring and summer. Pleasure comes from the art of doing.
- We all have ups and downs. Be strong and calm. This is not the season to be reactive. Take a moment. Take a month. Take a breath, then breathe harder – work it out at the gym. Write it down; journal. Be a good friend, which sometimes means telling people things that they don’t want to hear. And then be strong and calm.
- There’s less than 35 days until the Winter Solstice… so don’t worry, this season will be over soon enough!
If you’ve read through this out-of-the-ordinary long post, thank you! Here’s a little gift for you:
Use Code: ISOLAFALL25 for 25% off all Isola-made products!
This code is valid until December 31st, 2025 and excludes Harmonic Arts and Canadian Kelp products.