Autumn Equinox – Mabon
Reflections for the turning of the season
I’ll be honest with you, I’m feeling a little worn at the edges after the fullness of summer. There’s a particular kind of weariness that comes not from hardship, but from abundance: too many things, too many people, too many beautiful demands on your time and energy. I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
And so I find myself grateful for the arrival of autumn, and for the ritual pause it invites. In acknowledging the Autumn Equinox (or Mabon as it is also known) I’ve been sitting with a theme that feels deeply relevant right now: balance.
The equinox gives us the briefest gift: a single day when light and dark stand equal. And then, almost immediately, the scales tip. The dark begins its quiet claiming of the hours.
This is worth sitting with. Balance, in its truest natural form, is not a destination. It is a momentary alignment. The equinox doesn’t linger. It arrives, it gifts us its symmetry, and it keeps on moving.
I’ve been asking myself lately whether my life is balanced. And the honest answer is: no. It never really has been. But I’ve come to understand that this isn’t a failure, it’s only a problem if I’m measuring balance through the lens of perfect, equal parts.
the fulcrum
Right now, the fulcrum of my life sits far to one side: weighted heavily in parenting, in work, in the daily devotion of showing up for others. There is very little room for what I call “me things.” And while there are days I feel that frustration, almost desperation for my own space, I can also feel something shifting, slowly, as my kiddo grows more independent and the scales begin to redistribute themselves.
Balance, when viewed with honesty and context, is not a fixed point. It is a living thing. It shifts with our season of life, with the health of our body, with the needs of the people we love, with the weather, with the work, with all of it. The fulcrum moves. It is supposed to move.
hormones
Our bodies understand this in a way our minds sometimes resist. Take our hormones – one of the most misunderstood areas in women’s health, and one I return to again and again in this work. There is a persistent myth of “hormonal balance,” as though our hormones should exist in some fixed, unchanging ratio – a perfect, static harmony we can test for and achieve and then hold onto forever.
But that’s not how hormones work. That’s not how the body works.
Our hormones are in constant conversation with everything: the time of day, the phase of our cycle, the season of our life, our stress levels, our sleep, what we ate for breakfast. Progesterone rises and falls over a 28-ish day cycle. Oestrogen ebbs in the second half of that same cycle. Cortisol peaks at dawn. They are designed to fluctuate — and that fluctuation is not a dysfunction. It is exquisitely intelligent design.
This is why, if you are testing your hormones, timing genuinely matters. A progesterone test on day 7 of your cycle tells a very different story than one on day 21. Context is everything.
If you’re working with a practitioner and investigating your hormonal health, always ask: what are we looking for, and when is the right time in my cycle to look for it? Without that context, the numbers are almost meaningless – or worse, they can be misleading.
homeostasis
The same truth applies to homeostasis more broadly. We tend to think of it as a state – as the body maintaining a steady, stable condition. And while that’s technically accurate, what’s easy to miss is how the body achieves that stability: not through rigidity, but through constant, responsive adjustment.
Your core temperature fluctuates throughout the day. Your blood sugar rises and falls in response to meals, movement, and stress. Your nervous system is perpetually toggling between activation and rest. The body is not standing still. It is dancing – catching itself, correcting, recalibrating – thousands of times a day, without your conscious involvement.
What we call “balance” in the body is actually this ongoing, graceful negotiation between forces. It is dynamic. It is alive. And it only appears stable from a distance.
true balance
So perhaps true balance – in our lives, in our bodies, in our hormones – is not the achievement of stillness. It is the capacity to move with things. To flex and sway in response to what is asked of us, and to return, again and again, to our centre.
Not a fixed fulcrum. Not equal parts. But a deep, rooted groundedness that allows us to tilt without toppling, to give fully to the seasons of caregiving, of work, of grief, of joy, and to trust that the scales will, in time, shift again.
The equinox passes in a moment. But the wisdom it carries is perennial.
As we move into longer nights and shorter days, I invite you to set down any stories you’re carrying about what your balance is supposed to look like. Notice instead where your fulcrum actually sits right now. What does your body need in this season? What is genuinely asking for your attention – and what might, just for now, be allowed to rest?
The Autumn Equinox is traditionally celebrated on the 21st of March here in the Southern Hemisphere. I have a free guide to help you acknowledge and celebrate this second harvest festival. It’s sent out to my newsletter peeps before the equinox. If you join my newsletter, you’ll receive guides for all the Wheel of the Year Sabbats.
Please keep in mind when reading this guide, it’s only a guide – not a rulebook. Correspondences, symbols, practices can and should be altered to the land you stand on, to what feels right for you.
With warmth for the turning season and your body’s own wisdom,
Lisa xx