The New Year is Fall

Well, this is long past due, but this fall felt so long, not in a bad way but just so full. Now that it’s finally over, it felt like a lifetime has passed for me. Especially, living in Michigan, where sometimes winter shows up a month earlier, fall felt so intense. I’ve realized that the start of fall has always felt like the new year for me. I used to think this was just my deep-rooted psychological association with the back-to-school routine. But this year, I questioned that since I’m no longer in school, this was my first fall not packing up and going back, yet I still felt that same internal shift that I’ve felt every single year but somehow never noticed. This past fall everything around me felt like a signal to reset.

I think what made that reset feel so real this year is how clearly the season itself supports it. Fall has always felt like the true end of the year for me, summer wraps up, routines slow down, and there’s this like unspoken consensus that something is ending. Yes, part of that is tied to the American school system, but the seasons reinforce it too. I also never saw going back to school as something bad or annoying. I was always excited. I’m sure it wasn’t literally going back to school that excited me, but more the feeling of knowing something new was beginning in my life. Fall marks the end of the fast-paced growth season and the descent into a slower, more dormant one and everything feels more intentional. The leaves literally change colors and fall, a clear indication of shedding and starting over. Even with modern technology that keeps us warm in the winter and cool in the summer, environmental cues still matter. In The Atlantic, psychology professor Krystine Batcho explains that things like leaves changing color or the crispness in the air signal environmental change, and biological and emotional responses naturally follow.

What really solidified this for me was something that happened earlier this fall. I went to a Sunday reset event with the Detroit Social Wellness Club, we did cold plunges and sauna rounds, with breathwork prior to that. During the breathwork session, the instructor mentioned that fall feels like the new year for her too. That honestly caught me off guard, because I had just assumed this was just a personal thing. Hearing someone else say it out loud made everything click. When she asked what intention I want to bring into the yoga mat, I said being more open and more accepting. And that’s exactly what fall brings out of me, a quiet, seamless way to let things go and move forward.

Fall puts me in such a reflective headspace in a way no other season does. I’ve always been a nostalgic person, I like looking back and thinking about who I was and how I got here. But this kind of reflection isn’t about missing the past or wishing for the “good old days” or even regret and shame. It feels more intentional than that. It’s remembering without attachment, like a way to honor all the me’s that came before me. They ran so I could walk lol. They all exist as part of my story. At my company’s holiday party, I kind of zoned out for a second and I was just thinking about how I’d forgotten how my grandparents’ house smelled like, the house that part-time raised me. At the same time, I was like wow well look at where I am and how much I’ve accomplished. That little girl doesn’t even know that, yet she’s me. But it’s funny because sometimes my mom will walk into my room, and she’ll say how my room smells exactly the way my grandparents house did. I wish I could smell it. Fall makes the process of reminiscing a little easier. It creates just enough distance to reflect while still being grounded in the present. Even for businesses and work, fall lines up as the final quarter of the year, and it naturally becomes a time to refocus, set a budget for the next year, conduct performance reviews. Goal setting becomes steady and productive not overwhelming and frantic the way January goal setting feels. Everything feels grounded, like I’m just tightening loose ends and setting myself up properly not scrambling to reinvent my life overnight. It’s the perfect time to be like “How did this year go? And what did I learn? And how can I apply it from now on?” Fall isn't even my favorite season but I really appreciate how the fall pushes me into a recalibrating and rewiring mindset.

That’s also why January 1^st has never really felt like a new beginning for me. Especially in Michigan, January means grey skies, freezing sad temperature, and a million inches of snow racked up outside. That’s not a fresh start, it’s survival mode. Seasonal changes affect me in harder ways too. I deal with the winter blues every year, and I’ve learned to stay on top of it, but that process is introspective and heavy, not celebratory. By the time January comes around, I’m already conserving energy, not trying to reinvent myself. So, expecting that moment to feel like some big reset has never made sense to me. I already did the work of reflection and preparation in the fall leading up to it. It feels like less following a calendar and more like moving with a natural cycle. There isn’t one clear answer to when a new year officially begins. It depends on where you live, the culture you were raised in, and the traditions you follow. Science journalist Deborah Byrd, EIC of EarthSky, explains that marking the new year is a civil tradition. There’s no natural event that signals the start of a new year. January 1^st is always credited as the time for fresh starts, but for me, fall feels like the real beginning because I’m already setting myself up for the new year before it calendar-ically starts.

So where do I go from here?? Realizing that my feelings about fall are more than just a silly random quirk. Who says January 1^st is the new year??? To me it’s the autumnal equinox!!! B