Teach me how to let go

Teach me how to let go… I say to the tree.

I took these words from a drawing made by a friend, who’s an illustrator. She drew a walnut tree, like those we both see around us. A few leaves drift down past its bare branches. A woman stands, looking up, and words are written describing her thoughts:

Teach me how to let go…

These words were a request. They became a blessing.

For, despite having grown up in a region famous for its fall foliage, I never thought to ask this request of the trees. I’m only starting to learn now, at nearly 40, why this autumnal transformation occurs.

From this question, answers have come.

Below are some of them… a working thought-process… on a topic I am still learning about every day.

Before I could understand how the tree is able to release its leaves, I first had to understand why. For a healthy tree will only do what makes sense for its life and the health of its ecosystem.

How it does something will come from why it needs to do it. So that’s where I began my query.

Why do you do it? I asked the tree. Why do you let go of your leaves?

And the tree answered…

In the spring and summer, those very leaves allowed me to turn sunlight and water into my food. My nourishment. Now, as the weather cools… as I begin the cold seasons, in which I must rest… these very leaves are not needed anymore. In fact, if they were to stay green on my branches, they’d be vulnerable to frost and weakness. It no longer benefits me to hold on to them. Instead, it serves me best to let them go.

So, before they drop, they will dry up and lighten, so that a faint breeze can snap them off my branches, and allow them to fall and gather at my roots.

There, they become a soft bed to cushion the fall of my seeds… and a cover and camouflage, so these seeds are not all eaten by animals…

Now, I can focus on my foundation. My roots. The earth on which I stand.

Now, in this season of repair, stillness, and rest, I need the leaves to replenish the soil, and the life around and under my roots. Their decay feeds the soil… holds moisture… and allows life to flourish in the rich, live soil.

This soil, the foundation upon which my life depends, needs this nourishment. My health depends on my ability to take cues from nature and re-prioritize with the seasons.

I let my leaves go because it is time for them to transform. It is time for them to become a source of fertility for my very existence. They are not any less important decaying on the ground. In fact, one could say they are more important there. Without their falling and decomposing, I could not exist and thrive.

I let them go because it serves my life best to do so. And the potential life of my seeds, and all those who depend on me. The whole ecosystem in which I live.

I let them go because transformation is life.

I let them go because I choose life.