Today, the light and the dark meet each other evenly. And then, slowly, the dark begins to win.

We have strange language for this time of year. We say we're losing daylight. The days are getting shorter. Summer is over. As though darkness has taken something from us.

I used to feel that way too. There was always a little sadness in watching another summer disappear, another year moving faster than I wanted it to. But the older I get, the less interested I am in living in perpetual summer.

There is something deeply reassuring about a season that doesn't ask us to keep blooming.

Summer in Tofino is beautiful, but it is also full. Really full. The roads are full, the beaches are full, our little town works its ass off all summer, and so do I. I'm making, packing, answering emails, filling orders, raising a kid, running a business, trying to be a half-decent partner and mother and friend, forgetting something at the grocery store and usually thinking about three things I should have done yesterday while doing the thing I'm supposed to be doing today.

Sometimes there are dishes upstairs while I'm in the studio making beautiful things for other people's homes.

There's something funny about that.

I love this life. I chose so much of it. I built so much of it. But loving your life doesn't mean it doesn't exhaust you sometimes. Even beautiful things have weight.

Maybe that's why the equinox feels different to me now. Nothing here suddenly changes today. The trees are mostly still green. The ocean is still doing what it did yesterday. I'll walk around the corner to my same work table and there will still be something waiting to be made.

And yet, from here, darkness gets more of the day.

Nature seems completely unbothered by that.

The cedar trees aren't downloading a productivity app. The salal isn't worried it's falling behind. Nothing in the forest is trying to optimize October.

Things die back. Things rot. Things go underground. Things become still.

And somehow we've decided our lives should be exempt from all of that.

We want to be blooming in January. Productive when we're tired. Available when we're overwhelmed. Turning hobbies into side hustles and quiet moments into something useful. Even rest has become something we're supposed to be good at. We track it on our watches, optimize our sleep and congratulate ourselves for taking a bath.

I make bath products for a living, so the irony isn't lost on me.

I've spent much of my adult life believing growth is the goal. More orders, more ideas, more places carrying what I make. More travel, more experiences, more money, more memories. More proof that this little thing I started became something.

And here's the uncomfortable part: I still want those things.

I have big dreams. I want to see what I'm capable of. I want this business to grow. I want to go a lot of places and give my daughter a huge life. There will probably always be a part of me reaching for whatever is just beyond my fingertips.

I like that part of me.

I'm just starting to understand that she can't be in charge all the time.

Maybe that's what I find so comforting about autumn. It doesn't ask me to abandon ambition. It reminds me that expansion isn't the only way to grow.

There are seasons for reaching outward and seasons for pulling things closer. For making dinner and sitting down to eat it. For lighting the candle you've been saving. For walking without counting the steps. For making something that never needs to become a product. For going to bed early because you're tired rather than because you've finally accomplished enough to deserve it.

Maybe a quieter life isn't a smaller life.

Maybe some of the most important parts of a life are completely unproductive.

So I'm welcoming the dark differently this year. Not as an aesthetic. Not as pumpkin season. Not even as candle season — which is probably a ridiculous thing for a candle maker to say.

I'm welcoming it as permission to stop reaching quite so far for a minute and pay attention to what's already here.

Because I still want a big life.

I'm just becoming less convinced that a big life and a full life are the same thing.