Let it all fall away
Thoughts on thirst, change, and the allure of promises
It’s about this time every year when I begin to notice the thirst. It feels like desperation, a crawling and clawing towards change, a need for a dramatic shift in the weather. In Los Angeles particularly, the air becomes unbearably hot, the desert having suffocated its people for too long. Bodies move like slugs, so eager and ready for change, for shade and water. We want the rush of rivers so cold our limbs go numb until new blood runs through them.
I’ve never been one to shy away from discomfort, at least this is what I tell myself and what I must believe when I look at all the places I’ve moved, the jobs I’ve kept then left, the ‘yeses’ I’ve shouted at every opportunity. Maybe the discomfort has been in staying, which yes, now that I think about it, is definitely true. Shedding layers is easy because it means change; it means becoming a different version of my former self. This is not what I find to be terrifying. Rather, it’s the sitting still while only subtle changes occur, as if I’m in a prison cell and watching a flower grow through a small window.
Still, some seasons call for the drama and movement I crave, and summer to autumn feels like the most obvious and metaphorical one. Life to death and all of that, sure, but perhaps there is also something deeper, something more violent that requires opening our palms and releasing all that we’ve held so close for too long—even when we don’t want to, even when we believe these are the very things ensuring our survival.
In the last few years, my life has felt a bit like trying to build an empire, which is to say, after moving to Los Angeles, my gaze narrowed and set itself on money and vanity. It’s so predictable, right? It’s what we all hear from those brave enough to move to LA and then jaded enough to leave. The stereotypes are both accurate and much too simple. Everyone here is hustling to become someone who can afford things. This is true. It is also not.
I still remember the night in 2019 when I drove into Los Angeles for the first time, cresting over the grapevine and cutting west towards the city. The apartment lights glittered and the stars disappeared in layers of smog. My stomach churned with anticipation. It was perfect and dreamy in all the ways one might imagine, and I was ready for it all. After years of school and minimum-wage jobs, I wanted to make real money, have a home with things I could buy on my own, and feel the sun on my skin year-round. LA promises possibility, and promise is perhaps the most alluring and devastating of all assurances.
It may sound like I’m veering in the direction of writing about my departure from Los Angeles, my good riddance as I pack my bags and drive away from this complicated and confusing place. This isn’t the change or shedding I need though, and as nuanced as I feel about where I live, it’s not one I want either. Los Angeles can be hard to love, but that’s only because it’s so easy to lose yourself in its walls.
Summer to autumn is a change to fall back, to fall away, to fall into yourself again, and this is what I am most craving. And it’s what I’m after. My hope for this season is to examine all the extra, all of the things I’ve thought I needed but actually don’t, to let them go like dead leaves in the wind.
For the first time in a while, it feels like I’m examining my life without making the dramatic changes I’m most known for. I’m not moving apartments. I’m not leaving LA. I’m not ending relationships or starting new ones. Rather, I’m taking a step back to see what is for me and what is against me and then letting all that fits into the latter category fall away.
In his book Clarity and Connection, Yung Pueblo writes:
“You can change your location,
meet new people,
and still have the same old problems.
To truly change your life,
you need to look inward,
get to know and love yourself,
and heal the trauma and dense conditioning in your mind.
This is how you get to the root,
internal changes
have a significant external impact.”
I’d add to this external change, while often a byproduct of what’s happening internally, can work as lighter fluid for these self-actualizations. Sometimes, our environments are too constricting or oppressive for us to see clearly. Like the desert heat, we can’t breathe and need to start by getting ourselves a glass of water, by driving to the ocean for a swim so we can feel alive again. A both/and scenario. Our internal changes lead to external ones and our environment can help us make the internal changes we crave.
Just some meanderings and thoughts for these final summer days. I’d love to dialogue more about this and hear how you’re craving change or what you’re choosing to let fall away this autumn. xx
Thank you for this! It got it today in perfect timing.
I am already in the process of dismantling the empire I’ve built over the past 20 years. And I’ve stayed too long. I’ve been treading water, so to speak, as I dive deeper into my essence and who I am now, vs. who I was when I wanted all the things.
It always feels like I stay too long. Sometimes it takes finding “the next thing” to motivate me to move on. To let go enough to feel the hard hitting, and all knowing, “YES, it’s time!”
I feel it now and have for over a year. It got shrieky loud in June, when Costa Rica called me. To put it dramatically, my inner jungle goddess said, “welcome home.” “You deserve a simpler life.”
What I never realized is that it takes almost as long to untangle what we’ve built as it does to build it. And it's nowhere near as exciting! It's slow, ambivalent, painstaking. It requires patience, decisiveness and compassion for ourselves as we unravel the identities of who we were, what we wanted and GOT, but what are now dying leaves, no longer converting light to the energy needed to inspire us today. So I’m sitting in the compost of a garden I’m discarding. Fruit by fruit, weed by weed. Swapping buried treasure for buried bones.
I love your line “promise is perhaps the most alluring and devastating of all assurances.”
Because there is no future really, there is simply now and how we meet it with presence.
My purpose these days it to trust myself and meet each day with a deeper knowing of what is, rather than what could be. And for me, it’s been the subtle, daily path away from the “discomfort in staying.” It exists outside of inspiration, my all time favorite fuel. It is born of connection to something bigger than my mind and its grandiose plots and schemes.
Its medicine is acceptance, humility and grace. And this is the garden that composts the patterns of self that no longer serve this moment.

Yes! So many lines I resonate with, like "Our internal changes lead to external ones and our environment can help us make the internal changes we crave."