Hello my gorgeous troop!
Happy fall and cheers to colder weather, shorter days, snuggly times at home and the essence of rebirth and change. The one thing I love most about fall is watching the trees lose all their leaves, stripped bare for the world to bask in their expanse, cherishing the crunchy nature of their discards like little love notes from Mother Nature herself.
We don’t mourn their loss, in fact we celebrate it. Racking up their castoffs so we can jump in their vast piles of joy, making wreaths out of their orange and yellow goodness and taking road trips to watch the hills change into their auburn colored finery.
Every single year we look forward to this huge shift and change. We wait with noses pressed to windows to watch the first leaves fall and we luxuriate in knowing that a slower time is coming. Because as humans, we cherish the shift. The trees release their leaves because they no longer need them, knowing full well that their April buds will bloom in due time. There is no stress that the cycle will stop or the world will end because they have discarded something that no longer serves them.
Trees continue to flourish and thrive while they embrace their change and what a concept, to not fear change. I have spent the last decade painstakingly duct taping my dropped leaves to my trunk. Hiding behind my little pieced together costume out of fear that if I change one bit, people won’t love me anymore. People won’t support me anymore. People will stop showing up. So over the years I have collected the leaves that have fallen and held onto the scraggly ones at the top simply out of fear.
So this year, I am lovingly taking a page from these majestic creatures and dropping the leaves that I have painstakingly collected and quilted together into a comfort blanket. What I was doing out of perceived safety has actually stifled the new growth and I am ready to embrace the changing season.
I say all of this because a few things are halting indefinitely in my world, one of which is the paid education platform I have tried so hard to get off the ground. It has felt like a square peg in a round hole for the entire duration of setup and I am no longer finding much joy in what I thought was going to be my entire existence going forward.
This platform (Substack) is going to be a place of internal reflection and a personal diary of my journeys, my adventures, my travel and my continued pursuit of body neutrality. My hope is that you get to experience someone living life to the fullest and think “if she can do it, so can I!” I will occasionally hop in here with some selfies I have taken, or journal prompts that have helped me personally, but this page is turning into a place of creativity and joy. I will be re-instating a very small paid portion on this page if you want to support my art, but it will be coming from a place of celebration rather than education.
I will also, very sadly, not be doing Naughty November like we did last year. This is not a post to solicit sympathy, it’s a simple acknowledgment that change is pretty magical if we let it happen. If you want to join in on the fun on my socials, I'll be over there doing micro tutorials and being the general hype woman you have come to know and love. If you have signed up for Naughty November already, refunds were processed this morning.
This fall, as I watch the leaves drop and press my little nose to the glass to watch them flutter to the ground, I will be joining them. Change is not scary if we can just learn to run naked in nature for a bit….and you all know I am pretty damn good at that.
Thank you for being here, for loving me, for being a part of this journey and allowing me to be my weirdo little self. If this still serves you, hang around, I love having you. And if it doesn’t, just know that I have LOVED having you for the season that I did. It is more of an honor than you will ever know.
Happy fall my sweet loves and may the changing of seasons feel as soft, sweet and delicious as they ever have been.
With SO much love,
Katelyn