Karen Hoyt is a blogger who has a story about hepatitis C, cirrhosis, end-stage liver disease, liver cancer, and liver transplantation. This excerpt first appeared on Karen’s I Help C blog.

We get many rotations of the seasons in our life. For me, fall has been a time of back to school, liver biopsies, cancer treatment, and finding my organ donor. This year, I’m watching the deer feed, waiting for the leaves to turn, and planning a trip with my daughter.

Now that the Autumn Equinox has passed, the nights become longer than the days, and a new season has begun. I feel it in my heart as well as my body. As a teacher, fall is a celebration of so many things. Since I’m not in the classroom, please let me reminisce with you and discover all the ways that our life also moves with the four seasons.

Seasons of Life
Spring signifies new beginnings and is always a favorite because it’s a time of planting. Turning over a spade of soil to begin the sowing is a favorite pastime to connect us again to the earth. The rainy months flood the earth with water, bringing seeds to life. So, in the springtime, we embark with joy, enthusiasm, and extreme growth.

We are finding a new way to be in the world, and like the birds, we build nests. Indeed, springtime is a symbolic of newly created lives and fresh starts.

Summer is lived at its fullest. Bright, hot, and radiant, we move into action in life. We expand into the world, and begin to grow our career, family life, relationships, and vacations. It’s a progressive time, filled with energy and the desire to achieve.

During this season, even fruits and vegetables produce abundant growth. There is a bustle of pulling the weeds and picking the crops. In the summer of adult lives we prune and make way for intense growth, insuring that we will be ready for autumn.

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