I want to start this one from a personal place... If you read my last newsletter, you already know that I am in the middle of a really hard season. A broken foot. Mold in my home. Canceled travel plans. A nervous system that has had just about enough. And a heart that is doing its best to hold all of it with grace. It is in these moments that I am most grateful for the tools I have spent years learning and teaching...

Long before plastic pumpkins and bags of candy, autumn was a season of gathering roots, preserving the last herbs from the garden, lighting fires against the growing darkness, and preparing the body and the home for winter. Plants were not simply food or medicine. They were woven into stories about protection, spirits, divination, death, remembrance, and the mysterious boundary between the visible and invisible worlds...

Every October without fail, my inbox starts filling up with messages from people in my community saying some version of the same thing... "I do not know what is happening but my body is falling apart." And I always want to say the same thing back. I know. I feel it too. And there is actually a name for it. The October Slide...