Everyone says they love Autumn in New England.
What they really mean is the couple of weeks where it’s still warm and the leaves show off in every shade of orange and red. But once the show is over, they’re ready for Spring. Or they’ve conceded to Winter in disappointment.
No one befriends the bare lonely branches.
No one even looks to see the beauty in a lawn turned gold. They pass by trees they call grey and don’t notice the mint green lichen growing up the brindle brown branches that brighten to a maroon as they slim into twigs at the ends.
No.
It’s just grey.
I love old knotted oak trees that scrape the crisp clear sky. Like an old woman’s hand reaching into heaven. She’s let go of unfinished business, unfulfilled dreams, and unrequited love like browned fallen leaves. But her reach is unburdened because her roots are still intact and continue to give to all who are connected to her beneath the surface.
She knows that she lives on in all she’s touched and created.
True immortality.
Autumn is the in-between. 
A place of uncertainty.
It ages and learns to be reticent and peaceful. Everything that fruited in Summer has started rotting in transition. Soon all things will be frozen still and napping under blankets of snow. But here we are rushing by in a grey haze of hurried schedules and to-do lists.
Late Autumn is the part of yourself you don’t want to look at.
The Fall encourages us to look.
Find a place in yourself that’s shriveled, wrinkled and grey. Find that it’s begging for your acceptance. Hoping for the day you will recognize that all that you were ecstatic for in Spring and found joy in through Summer, has matured.
We judge this as ugly.
If you look long enough you can fall in love with ugly and see that it was never ugly at all.
It just withered without your attention.
In your taking for granted.
You let society label a part of yourself that could never be defined. You let it determine that your wisdom and experience that has scarred your skin has no value because it breaks the rules we crafted that govern “beauty.”
Write your own rules!
If you leave the leaves you’ll notice that they start to meld into the earth. Fading into dust and dirt that will feed Spring. Match the lines of the leaves with the lines of life on your hands. The tall golden grass feathers at the tips and waves at the sky. Hairy red poison ivy vines curl around a tree’s bark. Looking closer you’ll see a rainbow of brown and orange with green moss peeking from the cracks.
Don’t continue yearning for the Spring or Summer of your life. We are meant to move with the seasons. To let them move through us. There is beauty in the blossom, and in a petal curling with mature grace.
Stop and let yourself see it.
Don’t let your rushing past, turn everything into just grey.
<3 Nicole Ivy
Happy Autumn, everyone
*I previously posted this piece to Medium