The Day the Light Overtakes Me …

A // W // F

Yesterday, I walk into the woods and into autumn’s first blush:  red dogwoods and the crackle of dry leaves underfoot.

And I find myself breathing a deep sigh that feels — strangely — like relief.

Autumn is usually a hard season for me, in spite of the goodness of hot cider and apple-picking, boots and flannel and blankets.  I guess that’s because I’m a summer girl, and fall spells the end of a season in which I feel most alive, most myself.  Usually, I walk into the red-tinted forest and feel the first breath of winter on the wind.  The death of everything green.

But this year is different.

This year, along with the fear, I feel hope.

*

Can I tell you a secret — a secret that those who love me best already know?  This has been a hard summer for me.  I’ve made some terrible relational decisions in recent months — trusted people I should have held at arm’s length.  Allowed my patience to be mistaken for permissiveness. My kindness stretched into shapes that felt all wrong.

And believe me:  I don’t say this with even a hint of self-pity…  This is no one’s fault but mine.

As a result, I’ve walked around for half the summer with a shadow perched on my shoulder, the way some old ladies carry a trained monkey or a pet parakeet.  On the bad days, that shadow dug its claws into my clavicle, pressed a beak to my ear and muttered the same three mocking phrases over and over again — I won’t repeat them here — until it was hard to hear the song of the cicadas.

The wind in the treetops.

The water over the rocks.

But…

*

In the midst of this season of shadows, I’ve been finding light strewn across my path right and left.

I can’t even begin to put into words the way my cup has been overflowing lately:  the way new friends and old friends and complete strangers have showered me with love and affection, openness and positivity and joy.  They’ve done this without being asked to do so, without even knowing why I needed it.  Sometimes I’ve felt like a beggar on the side of the road, opening my palms as each stranger passes, and one day God himself walked by and, instead of dropping a coin in my cupped hands, he heaped on me so many handfuls of gold that I don’t know what to do with it all.

And I know I’m mixing metaphors.  Leaving so much unsaid.  So I’ll just say this:

Like so many things, the joy and the pain, the shadow and light come wrapped together in the same box.

And this, too, is beauty.

*

So yesterday:  I walk into the forest.

The light is lying there on the path, hard-angled and very gold.

And I don’t know why, but suddenly I want to know what my face looks like, in this moment.  I want to capture the sight of myself in this strange season — a season of Shadow and Light — which is beginning to feel not at all like Autumn, but like a second Spring.

So I pull out my iPhone.

I hold it up and take a photo of myself without looking.

I take another photo.

And another.

And after a moment or two, I look down again and scroll through the images I’ve just taken, and I see this:

light4

And this:

light2

And this:

light3

I see myself for exactly what I am:  a frail, foolish and good-hearted creature, being overtaken completely by the Light.

light5

You, too. ❤

///

{Wondering why I take photos of myself?  Self-portraiture is one of the best and most beautiful things that’s happened to me.  You can read about my body-image project, Same Body, Second Glance, here.  I hope you’ll take a few photos of your own. <3}

402 Comments

    1. Isn’t it awesome, the way we can feel both at the same time? I love light best when it’s pushing through a dark space — both in photography and in life. It’s always nice to meet someone on the Internet who gets that.

      Welcome! I love that you’re here. ❤

      Liked by 4 people

      Reply

  11. It is so true I think that “shadow and light come wrapped together in the same box”. Wishing you well in your continued discovery of autumnal joy.

    Liked by 6 people

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      1. Thank you. It is a new project for me but I am enjoying it immensely and loving discovering other people’s blogs. I have very much enjoyed your blog too – your photography is beautiful and I think you body image project is really inspiring. Thanks again for this post.

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  14. Made me smile!

    Please check out my blog and go follow me. I’m about to publish some posts about something really personal and heart crushing. I need you guys and i want to relate to you. Please check out my blog. Thanks! 🙂
    yourstrulyrelatable
    xx

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  20. Where there is bad, there is also good. I’m an old lady with s parrot, but I don’t let it on my shoulder for many reasons. Bit of tongue in cheek there. Love your photos and your attitude made me smile!

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  28. Wow, what a beautiful post. Your writing really warms me and I feel the same way about autumn….so bittersweet. I live in the mountains, where winter comes faster than I would like and it has already snowed up here! I hope this autumn and winter bring you a warm and fuzzy feeling-maybe not the same you get from the summertime, but a feeling all on it’s own : )

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  35. Nice photographs. Being good-hearted is a wonderful thing. The people I like best are the good-hearted ones and the people I stay away from are those who are mean-spirited.

    Incidentally, I’d like to have a monkey or parrot to put on my shoulder. Preferably a monkey, come to think of it, because I was bitten once by a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo when I was eighteen and I’ve been a bit afraid of parrots ever since.

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    1. Your comment made me smile. 🙂

      Parrots are pretty — for years when I was a girl I wanted an African Grey — but you’re right. They bite!!

      Thank you for stopping by — hope to see you again soon!! 🙂

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      1. I wanted one of those for a while too after I heard the fascinating but rather tragic story of Alex the African Grey. In the end I decided against it, partly because I didn’t think a large bird would be allowed in my apartment, but mostly because I wasn’t sure if I wanted a pet that was smarter than I was.

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    2. Thank you for that! I love having faraway readers — I’ve never been to Colombia, and if you come here now and again maybe we can get to know each other’s worlds a little better. 🙂

      Thanks for reading!!

      Liked by 1 person

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