🖊️ Fall Doesn't Have To Be Sad

To: (123) 456-7890 -- From: Raven

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Song: [Habits - Genevieve Stokes]

Book: [Radio Silence - Alice Oseman]

Keywords: [anxiety, change, fall]

I just had my first lick of anxiety that has come with the changing seasons for a while now. In the spring and summer, I get more carefree and my philosophical inner thoughts are easier to deal with because of the fun and lightheartedness of the warmth and sunshine and friends. But now it feels like fall, and it feels like the darkness is coming. Those days of anxiety and shadows that terrified me for months and months last year. But fall doesn't have to mean the darkness is coming.

Everyone thinks fall is about everything dying, but it's not about that. It's about nature giving one last hurrah in a beautiful display of fiery colors and the mixture of warmth and coolness and the bringing together of community before everything goes quiet for a little while.

And everyone thinks winter is about everything being dead, but it's not about that. It's about the coziness of the homes we have built through the cold and uniting families and friends and finding inner warmth when everything is cold outside.

So if you're like me and your mood has shifted with the cooler weather, and there's a pit in your stomach and that creeping, warm, prickly feeling over your skin that reminds you of those very scared nights when the monsters visited long ago and it was a bit harder to stop them than before, just remember:

The fall isn't sad. It's just different.

Just because the soft pink petals and bright green leaves of spring will come again doesn't mean the brittle crunch of brown leaves and a hug in a soft sweater aren't happy too. Fall doesn't have to be sad. The chilly whisper of wind through the branches doesn't have to be scary, the hours spent with your books at school don't have to be mind-numbing, the last yellow leaf falling off a branch to the ground doesn't have to signal the terrible end of something great.

Spring, summer, fall, winter will come again.

The fall doesn't have to be sad. It can just be different.

And that's okay. <3

--Raven

A FINAL NOTE: But it can be sad too. And that's okay.