The Season of Letting Go

This week, we usher in the season of fall. In Chinese medicine, this season belongs to the metal element, linked to the lungs and large intestine. The lungs connect us to life with every breath, while the large intestine teaches us how to release what we no longer need. Together, they embody contraction, purification, and letting go.

The lungs manage respiration, bridging our inner and outer worlds. The large intestine clears waste, ridding the body of excess and toxins. One sustains life, the other makes space for it to continue — a physiological reminder that we must both receive and release.

Fall carries these same qualities. The metal element teaches us the beauty of endings and the necessity of release. Its emotion is grief, which arises whenever something ends — a life, a relationship, a season, a chapter of the self. In autumn, nature mirrors this truth: the trees mourn their fullness, shedding what cannot be carried forward.

For us, fall is an invitation to discern what must be let go. Release is not only physical, but emotional and spiritual. Forgiveness is part of this rhythm. It is a deeper letting go — not condoning, but freeing ourselves. Just as the large intestine separates what nourishes from what is waste, forgiveness keeps the lesson while discarding the pain. It often requires moving through grief, mourning what should have been before opening to what is. Like the exhale, it is not a bypass but a refinement: inhale to receive, exhale to release.

Fall reminds us that release is not weakness but wisdom. The body cannot cling to what it no longer needs; neither can the heart. Forgiveness is the exhale of the spirit — a letting go that makes room for life to flow through us again.