Meditation: October 11th, 2025

Find yourself outdoors if possible, where fallen leaves gather in damp clusters. If indoors, sit near a window where autumn light filters through, pale and slanting. Let your bare feet touch cool earth or wooden floor. Place your hands palm-down on your thighs, fingers slightly spread as if preparing to receive something precious. Breathe through your nose, tasting the mineral dampness of October air.

Gairm air an Talamh Mhàthair
Call upon the Earth Mother

Close your eyes and feel the weight of mid-autumn settling into your bones. October's eleventh day—the year tilting toward darkness, the sun's arc growing shallower, the world preparing for its long sleep. The trees around you bleed color: crimson, burnt orange, ochre yellow. Leaves spiral downward in the cool wind, each one a small death, each one a promise of transformation.

A Mhàthair na Talmhainn, cluinn mo ghairm
Mother of the Earth, hear my call

Today you carry two threads within your chest: the thorny tangle of resentment and the raw ache of yearning. These are not separate from the season—they are woven into it, part of the great turning. Feel them now. Do not push them away.

The earth beneath you holds the rot of a thousand autumns, the composted grief of every summer that has died. She does not reject what decays. She transforms it.

Guidh orm le do làmhan sìobhalta
Guide me with your gentle hands

"The wound and the wanting are sisters, born from the same womb of impermanence."

Sit with your resentment first. It sits in your jaw, perhaps, or coiled behind your ribs—a bitter root that has been fed by small slights, by promises broken, by the exhausting weight of being overlooked or misunderstood. In nature, resentment appears as the strangling vine, the invasive root that chokes the native plant. Yet even this has its place. The vine seeks only to survive. The root seeks only to drink.

Tha an fhearg agam nad làmhan
I place my anger in your hands

Watch a leaf fall. It does not resent the tree for letting it go. It does not curse the branch that once fed it. It falls because it must, because the season demands it, because holding on would break the tree itself. Your resentment is old leaves—necessary once, but now pulling life from what needs to grow.

Breathe into the bitter place. Let the Earth Mother's fingers—made of mycelium and dark soil—reach up through your sitting bones, up through your spine, into the clenched fist of your anger. She does not dissolve it. She composts it. Slowly. Patiently.

Now turn toward the yearning.

Yearning is the reaching root, the seed that splits open in darkness, crying out for light it cannot yet see. It is the bird that flies south though it has never made the journey. It lives in your chest as a hollow ache, a hunger that cannot name itself. What do you yearn for? Connection? Recognition? A version of yourself you've glimpsed but cannot grasp? A love that feels like coming home?

Tha mo mhiann domhain mar fhreumhaichean
My longing runs deep as roots

In the forest, yearning is everywhere. The acorn yearns to become oak, though it knows nothing of branches. The salmon yearns to return upstream, though the journey will destroy it. The wolf howls at the moon, yearning for its pack, for the hunt, for the wild completeness of belonging.

Your yearning is not weakness. It is the compass needle swinging toward magnetic north. It is the proof that you are alive, still reaching, still becoming.

Teirig sìos dhan dorchadas
Descend into the darkness

Picture yourself standing at the edge of a forest in late October. The light is failing—not night yet, but that blue hour when edges soften and the world becomes uncertain. You step between the trees. The ground is soft with leaf-fall, silent beneath your feet.

You walk until you find a clearing. In the center, a pool of water reflects the darkening sky. You kneel at its edge.

A Mhàthair, fosgail mo chridhe
Mother, open my heart

Look into the water. See your face there—but also see what lies beneath it. The resentment rises as dark silt, clouding the reflection. The yearning appears as ripples, distorting the image, reaching outward. You place your hands into the water. It is cold. It is kind.

The Earth Mother's voice rises from the depths, not as words but as knowing:

Tha gach rud a' dol dhachaigh
Everything is going home

The resentment you carry—it is the forest floor, the necessary decay that feeds new growth. The yearning—it is the mycelium network underground, connecting root to root, tree to tree, sending signals of need and nourishment. Both are part of the great web. Both serve.

You cup the water in your hands and drink. It tastes of minerals, of ancient stone, of rain that fell before you were born. As it moves down your throat, you feel something shift. The resentment becomes fuel. The yearning becomes direction.

Tha mi a' gabhail ri mo nàdar
I accept my nature

Take a moment to contemplate:

If your resentment is composted material and your yearning is a root seeking water, what is the tree trying to grow in you? What fruit might it bear if you tend it through the winter darkness ahead?

Tapadh leat, a Mhàthair na Talmhainn
Thank you, Mother of the Earth

You rise from the water's edge. The forest around you is darker now, but not frightening. You know these trees. You know this ground. You are made of the same substance—carbon and calcium, water and minerals, hunger and the slow miracle of growth.

Tha mi nam pàirt dhiot
I am part of you

As you walk back through the trees, feel the October wind on your skin. Taste its coldness. Smell the sweet rot of leaves returning to soil. Your resentment has loosened its grip, not gone but transformed into something workable. Your yearning remains—it will always remain—but now it feels like a lantern instead of a wound, lighting the path forward.

Beannachd leat, a Mhàthair
Blessing to you, Mother

Open your eyes. Press your palms to the ground or the floor beneath you. One breath. Two breaths. Three.

You are here. You are held. You are becoming.

Tha mi beò
I am alive