A Letter for November: Finding Stillness in the In-Between
Dear friend,
November arrives softly—like the pause between heartbeats. The air cools, the light leans low, and even time feels stretched thin between what has been and what’s not yet here.
This month doesn’t call for movement so much as listening. After a year of gathering, pruning, and recalibrating, November is the still point—the quiet between. It’s where everything you’ve learned begins to settle into the body.
Lately I’ve felt it everywhere—in sessions, on social media, in my own heart. There’s a collective exhale that doesn’t quite land. We crave rest but don’t know how to stop. We scroll between recipes and reminders, gratitude lists and global grief, trying to reconcile how the world can hold so much beauty and so much ache at once.
And maybe that’s what November is asking of us: to hold both—the gratitude and the grief, the joy and the unease, the hope and the heaviness.
This is the quiet between what was and what’s next—the liminal space before winter where clarity begins to flicker but form hasn’t yet arrived. The undercurrent I feel right now is one of integration—not rushing to decide who you’ll be next year, but quietly digesting what this year has already shown you.
Maybe you’ve noticed that your tolerance for surface-level conversations has waned. That you’re craving warmth—not just the temperature kind, but the emotional kind. Maybe you’ve been withdrawing a bit, not out of avoidance, but out of reverence. Because your soul knows: before we move forward, we have to metabolize what’s still sitting within us.
This is the month of letting things settle, of trusting the slow work happening beneath the surface. The stillness isn’t emptiness—it’s gestation.
And because we all need reminders to embody what we’re learning, here are a few small ways to live the medicine of November:
November Practices for the Quiet Season
Soft Landing Space: Choose one spot—a desk, a nightstand, a corner of your kitchen—and keep it clear. Let it remind you that calm can exist amid chaos.
Evening Candle Ritual: As the sun sets, light a candle. Whisper one thing you’re grateful for and one thing you’re grieving. Both belong.
Nourishment Over Noise: When you reach for your phone, pause and ask: Do I need connection or distraction right now? Choose accordingly.
Gratitude That’s Real: Forget the perfect list. Name three ordinary things that carried you today—the smell of dinner cooking, a text that made you laugh, a warm shower.
Rest Without Reason: No justification. No productivity sandwich. Rest because your body asked for it.
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What within you is asking not to be fixed, but simply to be held in quiet reverence?
October asked us to gather what’s ours. November asks us to rest with it—to let wisdom steep before the next beginning.
There’s something sacred about this time of year—not in the loud, ceremonial sense, but in the small, holy moments of noticing. The way the last leaves cling before they fall. The way dusk settles early but softly. The way your own heart begins to slow, asking not for answers but for presence.
You’re not falling behind. You’re resting in the quiet between.
With warmth,
Abby
@groundingu.therapy
