Each week, Samantha Lewis shares her insights on various topics, from exploring new health trends to reimagining personal growth.
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Autumn is my favourite season
Summer and I have a complicated relationship.
After the heat, the fire risk, the watching the sky and checking the app and hoping for rain, I am always genuinely relieved when it ends.
There is nothing bittersweet about it for me.
When the season turns I feel my whole body relax.
Autumn arrives and I exhale. Finally.
There’s something that happens in April that I look forward to all year.
The light shifts first. It goes from that flat, relentless summer glare to something golden and low and a little bit cinematic.
The mornings have a coolness that feels like a gift.
The garden starts to let go.
And everything in me settles into it gladly.
And then the rain comes.
The scorched dry earth that has been holding its breath all summer slowly turns green.
Not just a little green.
Lush, deep, almost impossibly green.
After months of anxiety about fire and drought and brown paddocks, that green feels like the most calming thing in the world.
It feels like safety. Like everything is going to be okay.
I can also finally walk my dogs without scanning every path for snakes.
If you know, you know.
Autumn is the season that gives you permission to come home.
The shorter days mean the evenings start earlier and I stop feeling like I should be out doing things and start feeling like I'm allowed to just be in.
To draw the curtains a little sooner.
To light something. To stay.
It’s the season I feel most like myself.
Everything simplifies.
Summer has a pressure to it.
An expectation that you're making the most of it, filling it up, getting out there.
Autumn asks nothing like that.
Autumn just says: slow down. The people you love are right here.
The smaller table. The longer conversations.
The pot on the stove that has been going since the afternoon.
The excuse to keep only what matters.
Here’s what I’d invite you to consider this season.
With the cost of fuel making everything feel a little harder right now, this is actually the perfect time to look closer to home.
Not as a compromise. As a genuine choice.
Our region is full of things worth showing up for.
Local events, markets, live music, art shows.
Trails and reserves that most of us drive past without stopping.
Towns just down the road that are worth a proper explore.
A day trip somewhere nearby costs almost nothing and does a lot.
For you and for the businesses and communities that make this region worth living in.
There is a version of wellness that looks like optimisation.
Long lists, big plans, expensive retreats.
And then there is this.
A walk in the bush.
A coffee in a town you haven't visited in years.
A slow afternoon with people you love.
Autumn is an invitation. To turn your attention inward. To focus on what actually matters.
To find joy in what is already here.
I’ll be taking it. Snake free.