Well, we’re almost to the autumn months.

Personally, I’ve been autumn since the beginning of September. And I’ll be in autumn until the 21st of December. I absolutely love having my birthday in the fall. I was supposed to be born in December, likely on or very close to my mom’s birthday on December 21st, the Winter Solstice. But I was born two months early, which means I’m an October girl.

Every single October, I feel the most like myself. I’m the most in-tune to my body, my spirit, and to the creative parts of my brain. I write more in October than in any other month. And this year, I’ll be heavily working on the final(ish) revisions of my first manuscript of poetry. (I say ish because I believe all pieces of writing are in a constant state of evolution, even during and after publication.) I’m taking several days off the week of my birthday to relax, to celebrate my life, and to read, read, read, and write, write, write.

For my birthday, my partner and I are going to stay on the coast in California. He has family there, and he surprised me this morning with news that that would be my birthday gift. A week on the California coast. In October. I am so excited. I haven’t been on a real trip like this in years, and I haven’t been to California since I was 19.

And as the summer waxes away, the days getting shorter and cooler and clouds rolling in more frequently, I feel a peace in my body. I’ll be turning 33 this year, and all I can think about is how long it took for me to find/build the life I’ve always wanted. It took so long for me to really give myself a chance to live, to thrive, to succeed, and while I am grateful it didn’t take longer, I can’t help but wish I hadn’t wasted so much time on people who didn’t deserve it. Because right now, in this moment, I see what always could have been. I see a life that I didn’t even let myself dream about because I thought it was pointless.

I hated my life for such a long time. Tried to tell myself it wasn’t so bad because other people had it worse, but I suffered for years longer than I needed to because I was too scared to take the steps that would lead me to the healing I required. And then when I finally took those steps, they lead to a complete and total overhaul of my life. I stood up to my own insecurities and self-doubts. I confronted my bad habits. And I stopped letting people trample over me.

My therapist said in our last session that one of the reasons it’s important not just to heal trauma, but to confront the insecurities created by the trauma is to prevent the same issues from happening again. I have never, in my life, really listened to my gut, to my instincts. I have always given too much of myself away to people who didn’t care about their impact on my wellbeing. And while I can have compassion for the people causing me pain, it doesn’t follow that I have to let them mistreat me just because they’re unsatisfied with their lives.

That’s why my therapy is more than just healing from trauma. I need to learn to listen to my gut so that I don’t put myself in situations to be taken advantage of. I think of all the things I did to avoid confrontation during my divorce because it was easier, and really those things only worked to benefit my ex. It would have been better to have the confrontation. The same has been true for other friendships. Giving so much of my compassion, my trust, my money, and my love away because I thought I’d found people I belonged with was one of the worst decisions of my life. People who used me in every possible sense of the word, including turning me into the scapegoat to avoid confronting their own issues.

Autumn makes me reflect on these things. The end of a year of my life and the beginning of a new one lead me to think of all the ways I’ve changed in the last year. All the ways I’ve grown, lost, discovered, healed. All the things I’ve learned. And I also think about what work I have left to do. And I think of all the ways I can celebrate myself, love myself, and treat myself. Because life is both too short and too long to spend it hating myself when there are plenty of others who already hate me enough for a lifetime.

Their hate fuels my self-love.

So here’s to the upcoming autumn and all the beautiful secrets it holds for me to discover.