Sit with SMB: What If Thriving Looks Different in Every Season?
Episode Summary: As summer gives way to fall, nature begins shifting from outward growth and abundance toward release, conservation, and eventually rest. In this Sit with SMB episode, Susan explores what the changing seasons might show us about our own rhythms—and what becomes possible when we stop expecting thriving to look the same in every season of our lives.
Show Notes
What if thriving doesn’t look the same in every season?
As the fall equinox marks the transition from summer into fall, I’ve been noticing what’s changing outside my window—and what those changes stir in me. The days are getting shorter. Flowers are fading. Leaves are beginning to change. Some things are reaching the end of their lives.
And yet, nature isn’t failing. Nature is cycling.
In this Sit with SMB episode, I explore what the changing seasons might show us about our own rhythms of activity, transition, rest, and growth. Summer’s abundance and outward energy look a lot like the qualities our culture tends to celebrate: productivity, achievement, expansion, visible progress. But nature doesn’t remain in summer mode all year long.
Fall begins a movement toward rest. The living world releases, conserves, simplifies, and responds to changing conditions. Winter brings dormancy and rest, but also gestation—life continuing in ways we may not be able to see.
I reflect on my own tendency to keep going, even when my body or circumstances are asking for something different, and on what I’m learning from experimenting with doing less and allowing more space into my life.
Perhaps thriving isn’t about maintaining the same pace through every season. Perhaps it’s about becoming more attentive to the conditions we’re actually living in—both in the natural world and in the seasons of our own lives.
As we move into fall, I’m sitting with a question:
What changes when we stop asking this season to be something other than what it is?
Key Themes
The seasons as a lens for understanding our own changing rhythms
Our tendency to associate thriving with productivity, growth, and visible progress
Fall as a transition toward rest rather than rest itself
Responding to changing conditions instead of maintaining the same pace
Winter as a time of rest, conservation, and gestation
Making space for forms of growth we cannot yet see
Living in relationship with both the natural seasons and the seasons of our lives
Key Takeaways
Nature doesn’t remain in a state of constant outward growth. Healthy living systems continually respond to changing conditions.
Fall offers a visible reminder that release, conservation, and simplification are part of a natural cycle—not evidence that something has gone wrong.
Rest doesn’t have to begin with exhaustion. Fall invites us to consider what it might mean to transition toward rest more gradually.
A lack of visible growth doesn’t necessarily mean nothing is happening. Winter reminds us that rest and gestation can coexist.
Thriving can happen in every season. What it looks like may change as our conditions, energy, responsibilities, and seasons of life change.
“A tree can be thriving when it’s covered in leaves in July, and it can be thriving when its branches are bare in January.”
Resources Mentioned
No external resources were mentioned in this episode.
Reflection Prompt
What season are you in right now—and are you allowing yourself to fully be present in that season?
Prefer to read? The full transcript is below.
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Susan:
Welcome to ROOTED, a podcast about nature and wellbeing. I’m Susan Morgan Bailey.
And today is a Sit with SMB episode. Just you and me, taking a little time to explore something I’ve been noticing and wondering about.
Yesterday was the fall equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, the official beginning of fall. And I’ve been noticing the changes happening in the world right outside my window.
The days are getting shorter. The light is shifting. Flowers that were vibrant just a few weeks ago are fading. Leaves are beginning to change, and some of the annuals that have filled my garden with color all summer are reaching the end of their lives.
At first glance, it can look like things are dying.
And some things are.
But when I step back and look at the larger landscape, something else is happening, too.
Nature isn’t failing. Nature is cycling.
Summer is giving way to fall. The outward energy and abundance of the past few months are beginning to shift. And fall, it seems to me, is the beginning of a movement toward rest.
I’ve been thinking about that because we humans don’t always seem very good at seasons.
We like growth. We like movement. We like productivity. We like visible signs that something is happening.
And by “we,” I for sure mean me—but I know I’m not alone.
In some ways, we seem to expect ourselves to live in perpetual summer.
But nature doesn’t.
So I’ve been wondering: What might the seasons have to show us about our own rhythms of activity and rest? What if thriving isn’t supposed to look the same all year long—or all lifelong? And what happens when we stop asking ourselves to live as though it’s always summer?
That’s what I want to sit with today.
Summer and the Pull of Productivity
So let’s talk a little bit about summer.
It is by far my favorite season, which is no surprise given what I said earlier about how natural productivity feels to me.
But really, seriously—the long days, so much sun, sun, sun, sun, the warmth in Michigan, the humid warmth. I love it.
Things are growing and green. There is movement, abundance. There are flowers blooming, gardens producing. It’s just outward energy.
Summer is a season when so much of what is happening is visible. Things are growing, blooming, producing, moving and shaking.
And there’s something about that that feels familiar when I think about what we value in our own lives.
We, as a society—especially here in the States—celebrate doing, producing, achieving, growing, moving forward. More, more.
There’s nothing wrong with any of this. Nature needs summer. We need seasons of energy and growth.
But what happens when summer becomes the only season we value?
Talking to myself here. It’s not the only season I value, but it’s definitely top on my list.
What happens when growth and productivity become the primary evidence we use to decide whether we’re doing well?
What happens when we expect ourselves to live in summer mode all year long—without any sun to do it, by the way?
Learning to Pay Attention to the Season
As I reflect on this, it ties to me personally, big time.
A couple of years ago, I started to lean into this idea of seasons—giving myself permission in the winter to slow down.
Because I love summer so much, I often resisted fall. And a couple of years ago, I started to spend some time asking: Can I embrace fall? Can I look at what fall has to offer, whether it’s the physical beauty or simply what’s happening here that can be helpful to me?
And I started to think: Are there spaces in my life where I expect myself to keep going, even when my energy or body or circumstances might be telling me something different?
For me personally, this was the experience I’ve had over the last eight or nine months with pain in my shoulders that got so significant. It was trying to slow me down, trying to get my attention.
But being me, I just kept go, go, going—trying to solve, solve, solve and move through it.
And as I’ve spent time over the last many months with this podcast, continuing to lean further into the truth that we are nature—that I am nature—I’ve reflected on the simple idea that my body knows.
Just the same way that, miraculously, the trees know when it’s time to drop their leaves or sprout their leaves, my body knows when something needs to change.
And that, I think, is pretty miraculous.
That was part of what was going on with my shoulders.
I needed to make some changes.
And so, as I think about fall, I’m beginning to really lean into finding appreciation for the seasons—especially for a season that, for so much of my life, signified the end of something I love so much.
But it’s natural.
So what happens when I play with nature and see what it might have to teach me about fall?
Fall as a Movement Toward Rest
The reality is that nature is still incredibly active in fall, but the direction of the activity is changing.
The leaves change and eventually fall to the ground. Seeds are dispersing so they can find their spots to grow in the spring. The days are getting shorter. There’s less sunlight. Animals are preparing for winter. Plants shift what they’re doing.
The shifting is toward an inner focus versus outward activation.
The whole living world in fall is responding to changing conditions.
But I think what’s interesting is fall as a season that is movement toward a season of rest.
And I don’t know that we are great at that.
As a society, we go, go, go, go, go—and then we crash. We’ve got burnout as an epidemic. We have people struggling to keep up. I hear it all the time.
Is there an opportunity for us to think about this idea of slowing down a bit?
We don’t have to go from on to off. Maybe we can look at it as a way to slowly transition to a more restful period, whether we align ourselves with the natural season or even just think about what’s going on in our broader lives.
I’m going back in time and thinking about when I was working full time and was a parent of two young boys, a spouse and partner, a friend, a daughter—all of the roles and titles I had—and go, go, going.
There were things in my life I still wanted to happen at the same pace.
I’ll pick one example: exercise.
As a college athlete, exercise looked to me like an hour-long, sweaty workout. And I can remember back then not getting a lot of workouts because I didn’t have the time.
Somewhere along the way, the revelation came to me that some is better than none.
Some movement, some stretching, some weightlifting is better than none. Some strength training is better than none.
And in this season of your life, what can you actually expect of yourself?
It’s thinking about the season of life: What are the demands? What is happening right now? And can I shift a little bit? Can I adjust to the changing conditions?
In that case, it was what was going on in my broader life. I had a lot on my plate. Expecting myself to be able to do everything else that had been on my plate before wasn’t fair.
It’s an interesting thought: The conditions on the outside are changing.
Do we need to pause? Do we need to reflect? Do we need to think personally about what we can shift in our lives for a season?
And a season might last years. It might literally be a season—the next three months.
But can we give ourselves permission to pause, notice the current state and the conditions, and shift accordingly?
Release Is Part of the Cycle
When I think about fall, it also—not surprisingly, given what we’re talking about—brings a very visible process of release.
The leaves change color and eventually fall. The landscape that looks so full in summer begins to simplify.
We often use fall as a metaphor for letting go. And there is something to that.
But what’s interesting is that release isn’t separate from the cycle. It’s actually part of it. It is quite natural.
A tree dropping its leaves isn’t giving up. It’s responding to changing conditions. It’s no longer putting energy into maintaining something that made sense during another season.
And that makes me wonder about the way we think about change, because we tend to value adding.
Do more. Grow more. Learn more. Become more.
But living systems don’t only add. They also release, conserve, simplify.
Not because something has gone wrong, but because different seasons require different things.
Maybe part of living seasonally is recognizing that not every period of life is meant for expansion.
Sometimes the movement toward rest involves simply doing less—not as failure, not because we earned it, but because rest is part of the cycle, too.
And as we think about this, fall isn’t the destination. Fall is a part of the cycle.
All of this releasing and conserving is moving the living world toward another season entirely.
Winter: Rest and Gestation
Eventually, fall takes us into winter.
And winter, especially here in the northern United States, can look very different from summer.
Bare trees. Frozen ground. Dark days. Less visible activity in the natural world.
If summer gives us all sorts of evidence of life, winter can make life much harder to see.
That doesn’t mean that nothing is happening.
Winter is rest.
Winter is also a gestation period.
Things are happening beneath the surface. Energy is being conserved. Seeds wait. Roots remain.
Life hasn’t disappeared simply because we can’t see evidence of growth.
I see it as a helpful reminder for my own life as I evolve and age.
I’m someone who feels really good when I make progress. Yes, it’s still true.
It feels good to be able to point to what I’ve accomplished, what I’ve powered through, what I’ve done, what I’ve managed, what I’ve carried.
And periods where nothing seems to be happening can make us uncomfortable—especially, again, in a society where accomplishing is just in our DNA here in the States.
We can start to wonder whether we’re falling behind, whether we’re doing enough, whether something is wrong.
But what if not all growth is visible?
I wonder if we could experiment with this idea. I know I am experimenting—and have been over the last few years—with the possibility that there might be periods of our lives where nothing visible seems to be growing.
For me, I’ve started so small on this because it’s just counter to how I have lived and survived and thrived throughout my lifetime.
But I’ve leaned in over the last couple of years. Fall is when I begin to practice it. Winter is when I begin to practice it more.
Just doing nothing.
Practicing the art of having space to do less.
And when we think about it, a tree isn’t less whole because it’s lost its leaves. A landscape isn’t somehow failing because it isn’t blooming.
Perhaps we aren’t less whole during the periods when we are resting, waiting, wondering, or simply being without producing something visible.
This is a super stretch for me, and so I’m being genuinely honest here.
Saying it out loud is something I’m going to let sit with me as I move forward, as I move into this fall and prepare for winter.
Thriving in Every Season
And it’s a nice complement to what I’ve been thinking about: the conditions that support thriving.
It expands the idea and adds to the question: What if thriving isn’t about trying to remain in one particular season?
We naturally tend to associate thriving with the qualities of summer, when we can see growth, energy, productivity—the things we can see, beautiful color and blooms.
But I know that a healthy living system doesn’t always stay in summer mode. It changes in response to changing conditions.
There are times of growth and abundance.
There is transition and release.
There is rest.
There is gestation, when creating is on the verge of becoming.
All of it belongs.
A tree can be thriving when it’s covered in leaves in July, and it can be thriving when its branches are bare in January.
What thriving looks like has changed because the conditions have changed.
Maybe that’s part of what the seasons can remind us.
We don’t have to stop thriving when we enter a quieter season.
Maybe thriving is less about maintaining a particular level of energy or productivity and more about being in relationship with the conditions we’re actually living in—with the natural seasons around us and with the seasons of our own lives.
Instead of continually asking ourselves to produce and grow and move at the same pace, perhaps we can become more attentive to what this season calls for.
Not resisting it.
Not wishing ourselves into another one.
Not assuming that a quieter season means something is wrong.
But recognizing that each season has its own rhythms and its own conditions for thriving.
And so I offer up a question:
What changes when we stop asking this season to be something other than what it is?
That’s a question I will be playing with even more as I move into fall and as I lean into the knowing that nature isn’t trying to hold on to summer.
It’s responding to what is here now.
What Season Are You In?
So as we move through the fall equinox and begin this transition from the outward energy of summer toward the quieter seasons ahead, I’m trying to simply notice.
To notice what’s changing outside, and to notice my own instinct to resist those same kinds of changes in myself.
Nature doesn’t ask fall to be summer.
It doesn’t ask winter to bloom.
Each season has its place in the larger cycle, and maybe there’s something for us in remembering that.
So I’ll leave you with the questions I’ve played with during this episode:
What season are you in right now?
And are you allowing yourself to fully be present in that season?
Or are you asking yourself to live as though it’s always summer?
Thank you for walking with me today.
If this conversation resonated with you, I’d be honored if you’d subscribe to ROOTED so we can continue exploring together.
And if you know someone who’s sensing something’s missing, someone who might need to hear this, please share this episode with them.
Buen Camino, friends. Until we meet again.
