Sweet November

🌸 Where the Year Begins to Breathe

There’s something tender about the way November has unfolded - that slow, shy stretch of days when the year began loosening its shoulders and summer edged a little closer with its easy warmth. Here in South Africa, this past month carried its own quiet magic: the scent of sun on wet pavements, warm breezes and jacaranda petals fading into soft lilac confetti as the season shifted around us.

I felt November long before the calendar pointed to it. It was in the way the mornings shrugged off their coolness, in the sound of sprinklers and lawnmowers, in the weekend drift of sunscreen through open windows. Even people seemed to move differently - slower, lighter - as if we were all reaching that same soft threshold of “almost there.” The days grew longer, the evenings lingered and the mornings brightened with the impatience of summertime pressing in.

Looking back, this month felt like one long inhale before the exhale - a gentle pause before the rush of gatherings, beaches, celebrations and the hum of full summer. It invited reflection, but the soft kind. A simple glance over the shoulder at what changed, what stayed and what I quietly grew into. Some of that reflection felt fragile, threaded with gratitude and the ache of things that didn’t quite unfold as planned. Other parts sparked with possibility - a quiet thrill for whatever might come next.

Even with client sessions, workshop prep, personal errands and the familiar weight of year-end fatigue, I found myself lingering in small moments: warm coffee in a patch of sunlight, the softness of an evening breeze, the way late-spring light seemed to fall just a little differently each day. My body, it seems, always knows the year is winding down before my mind catches up.

I’ve been thinking about the intentions I set back in January - the plans that bloomed, the ones that dissolved and the unexpected turns that shaped the year more than any list ever could. Some dreams became gifts; others drifted away quietly, making space for something truer. This November, I’ve tried to hold all of it: honouring the versions of myself that carried me, while opening my heart to the ones still forming.

Now, as November slips into its final days, I’m reminded of its quiet magic. It never shouts. It never demands reinvention or resolution. It simply asks us to notice - the warmth settling into the afternoons, the slow unwinding of the year, the sweetness tucked into the ordinary. It’s a bridge between what was and what’s coming, between gentle endings and soft beginnings, between the peaceful slowing down and the wild joy of summer waiting just ahead.

So here’s to November, as it waves its soft goodbye.
To the tenderness of transition.
To gratitude found in small, ordinary moments.
To sunlight, jacarandas and the beautiful pause before summer arrives in full colour.