As winter approaches and fall comes to an end, I’ve been reflecting on this annual practice I’ve been doing for about 3-4 years now. Fall is my favorite season because it’s this beautiful reminder that nothing lasts forever, not even the darkness. The fall colors that happen every year brighten up my day-to-day existence and splash color into a world I so often see in shades of grey. During fall, you cannot drive to work or go for a walk without being confronted with the stunning beauty and color that exists in nature. Even when I feel so far removed from the world around me, I have to admit that life is beautiful because each tree I walk under is now a stained-glass window. The leaves crunch beneath my feet, the scents of autumn in the cool air fill my lungs, and I am in awe of the splendor around me. How do I capture this feeling? How do I save how I feel in this moment for the dark of winter when I will need it the most?

As a depressive, I know winters will be hard for me. The lack of light, everything dead and dormant, nothing growing, cold temperatures that keep you inside, none of these things are good for depression. Since I know it will be difficult, I spend a good amount of time preparing for it. One of the things I’ve started doing as preparation is collecting the most beautiful leaves I find on my walks and pressing them in a book for later.

 Then, when everything is dead, I pull out my dried leaves and I hang them up in my window, so that I will still have that visual reminder that there is beauty in this world even when I can’t see it around me. It’s become this annual practice for me. During fall, I go for long walks and try to lose myself in the brilliant colors of the leaves and search for the best leaves that strike me to take home with me. I try to stay in that moment for as long as I can and save a little reminder of it for later when I know I’ll need it.

I’ve said to friends, “I’m basically a little kid running around collecting pretty leaves.” And it’s true that I’ve come across 4-year-olds on my walks with fists full of the pretty leaves they’ve collected, as my hands are also filled with pretty leaves. But this practice has nothing to do with age. It is simply a practice of identifying something that fills me with joy, embracing it without shame, and saving some of that joy in a way that allows me to revisit it later. I have the awareness and knowledge that there will be a time where it will be harder for me to experience joy, which is what makes this practice so important for me.