Some Thoughts for the Autumnal Equinox

September 22, 2025

Nature Journaling

On Saturday, I led a mindful nature journaling hike for some friends through the mom fitness group that I’m a part of. I hadn’t led a nature journaling hike since I was pregnant in the spring of 2023.

It went really, really well. The weather was perfect. The moms loved it and said it was exactly what they needed and how much they enjoyed it.

I think if we had 2.5 hours instead of 2, it would have been perfect. I need to tweak the timing, and either eliminate the journal-decorating portion or eliminate one of the activities (neither of which I want to do but…).

I want to run this program again with another group of friends and try to nail the timing. I’m hoping I can do that this fall when the colors are beautiful.

This past Thursday, I was talking to my mother-in-law about my plans for the hike and the ones I led back in 2023. After, she said, “You really light up when you talk about this stuff, don’t you?”

And I instantly started crying.

I am eternally grateful for the privilege, and so happy to be stay-at-home. I do not miss my day job. But I do very much miss the opportunity to plan and teach creative lessons in nature, which is what I used to do as part of my old day job.

I think when I am ready to go back to work part-time, I will try to do some freelance program offerings like this. Maybe substitute teach, or maybe work part-time at a library or for the comedy theater or its nonprofit (if the situation wouldn’t be unbearable).

But I think I’d really excel leading programs like this. Everyone I mention them to gets excited about the idea of them. It makes me really want to keep trying them so I can solidify a lesson plan.

Why do I always get into this stuff shortly before having to usher a new child into the world??? My timing is imperfect in many ways.

The Equinox

Today is the first day of fall, with the autumnal equinox occurring at 1:19pm. I was

hoping to put Rosebud down for her nap at 1pm and be journaling in the hammock outside at that time, but I was watching her on the monitor jump around her crib instead. She is finally asleep now, at 2:26pm.

The autumnal equinox is a time of rapid change, with it getting darker earlier than the day before in larger time intervals as we get closer and closer to the date.

On the mindful hike on Saturday, I related this period to parenthood, which is also a time of rapid change.

Both are also followed by a season that has, at the same time, so much darkness and so much light—the darkness being the long long nights, and the light being the celebrations and familial connection.

My baby is due November 30th and I’m bracing myself for all of it.

The New Baby

She is kicking me in this moment as I think about what to write. My belly is swollen with her. She is so present in every moment of my life because of this physical connection.

I, obviously, carry her everywhere I go.

She is a tiny person who lives and sleeps and stretches and hiccups and yawns and tastes and blinks and flips in my abdomen, day and night.

She is already here to me.

She has already changed my life so much— altered my existence on this earth, my day-to-day, as she has for no one else. It is a connection only she and I have.

Right now, I am all she knows. And really, I am the only one who knows her.

But her arrival on the other side of my being will change everything for everyone, whether they are aware of it or not. I have seen the way a new existence can change the world.

I currently have a lot of anxiety about her entrance. Nothing is promised.

I am so afraid of something going wrong. I am afraid for her life and mine. My first birth went so well. What is the likelihood of me being so lucky again? I am at least statistically undeserving if not karmically.

This fear is greater than the first time because of how well that first time went. I also have so much more to lose now. I do not want to miss out on the lives that I have created.

I am not afraid of how we will handle a newborn and a toddler, because the fear of not getting the opportunity to even do so is so omnipresent to me.

I keep thinking about the one we lost in December, who would be two-months-old now.

I am feeling the need to reread my Mindful Childbirth book to calm these spiraling thoughts. I should also reach out to schedule a therapist since the referral was put in a month ago; it’s a huge hurdle that I have to call versus them being the ones to reach out to me.

Me vs. Family vs. Others

My energy for care is so split.

I am barreling down on the arrival of this new baby, and I have a primitive instinct to turn inward, to nest & rest. I feel like all my focus and care right now need to be on myself. I feel so much energy flowing toward this second heartbeat in my body. It feels like that’s where I should be shifting all of my mental and emotional attention now.

And yet.

I have a family. A husband whose life is intertwined with mine in a Tui & La relationship. A beautiful daughter whose life I am trying to memorize and internalize and cling to every moment. Her laugh falls through my hand like sand. Her current mannerisms and colloquialisms are breezes that are here one moment and gone the next, never to be felt or experienced again. How do I hold on tighter?

I have a mother, a father, siblings, nieces, cousins, grandparents, dear friends, who are all so deserving of my time and attention and love and space and care. I want to be there for all of them. How do I love them better?

Growing • Flowering • Fruiting

In the final reflection of the nature journaling hike I led, I prompted my group to assign one word each to their past, present, and future.

For my own journal entry, I drew a circle divided in three, like a peace sign. In the sections, I wrote:

PAST - growing

PRESENT - flowering

FUTURE - fruiting

I feel like my life up until now has been an inhale. A slow gathering of potential. A growing seedling into a satisfying leafy plant.

A flower is beautiful, appreciated, coveted, celebrated, fawned over. My present feels like a flower. It is a beautiful time. A stop-in-your-tracks-and-admire-it time. A temporary bloom to treasure.

This flower may be blooming for a while longer. But the purpose of the plant is not to flower.

The world hasn’t seen what I truly have to offer it yet. My future will be growing and ripening that fruit. It’s coming.

And hopefully, that fruit will contain the seeds of my next life phase.

That’s why I drew a circle and not a line.

*Matthew McConaughey voice* Time is a flat circle.