The Apple Tree Doesn't Apologise

September belongs to the apple.

Not the polished supermarket version lined up in neat rows beneath fluorescent lights, but the real thing. The slightly wonky apples hanging from old orchard trees and overgrown hedgerows. The ones that arrive with blemishes and bird pecks and stories written into their skins.

Around this time of year, I find myself slowing down whenever I pass an apple tree. There is something reassuring about them in September. The branches bow under the weight of fruit. Windfalls gather beneath them in the grass. Wasps arrive. Birds help themselves. The tree simply stands there in quiet abundance, offering what it has grown throughout the year.

This month, the apple takes its place in the Ogham calendar. Associated with love, generosity and the heart, it arrives just as the year begins its gradual turn towards darkness. There is a confidence about the apple tree that I find myself drawn to. Not confidence in the way we often think about it. Not swagger or certainty or self-belief performed loudly for the benefit of others.

Something quieter.

A trust in its own nature.

The apple tree does not seem particularly concerned with whether it deserves to bear fruit. It does not hold back until it feels worthy enough. It does not compare itself to the oak or the ash or the rowan. It simply offers what it has spent the year creating. Human beings, on the other hand, often make things much more complicated.

Over the years, both in the therapy room and in my own life, I've become increasingly interested in how difficult many of us find receiving. Not giving. Most people I meet are remarkably good at giving. Giving time. Giving energy. Giving care. Giving second chances. Giving themselves away in small and often unnoticed ways.

• Receiving is another matter entirely.

• Receiving appreciation.

• Receiving support.

• Receiving rest.

• Receiving love without immediately looking for a way to earn it.

Somewhere along the line, many of us absorb the idea that our worth is conditional. That we must prove ourselves useful, productive, successful, accommodating or endlessly capable before we can fully relax into being who we are. It's such a familiar story that we often stop noticing it. We tell ourselves we'll feel better when we've achieved a little more. When we've lost the weight. Finished the project. Paid off the debt. Sorted ourselves out. Worked through the anxiety. Become more confident. The goalposts move, and we move them with us.

What strikes me about the apple tree is that it seems completely uninterested in this arrangement. It doesn't spend spring worrying whether it will deserve to fruit in autumn. It simply grows. And when the time comes, it offers what it has. Perhaps that sounds overly simple. Human lives are, after all, more complicated than trees. We carry histories. Relationships. Losses. Family stories. Experiences that shape how we see ourselves and what we come to believe we are allowed to want. But I wonder whether there is still something here worth paying attention to.

The apple arrives at the autumn equinox, the moment when day and night briefly come into balance. Light and darkness share the sky equally before the wheel turns again. There is a sense of reckoning at this time of year. A taking stock. A gathering in. Perhaps that is why September often feels reflective.

The year is far enough along that we can begin to see what has grown and what has not. The plans we made in January have either taken root or quietly fallen away. We are confronted, once again, with the gap between the life we imagined and the life we are actually living. And yet the apple tree offers a different lens through which to view all this. It reminds us that abundance and imperfection coexist quite happily.

Some fruit falls early.

Some is damaged.

Some feeds birds and insects.

Some becomes next year's tree.

None of it appears wasted.

There is a generosity in that way of being. A trust that not everything needs to be maximised, perfected or proven valuable in order to matter. The older I get, the more I think self-worth may have less to do with confidence than we imagine. Perhaps it has more to do with allowing ourselves to participate fully in our own lives. To stop standing on the edge waiting to become good enough before we begin. To stop treating our worth as something that must be earned through effort, achievement or endless self-improvement.

The apple tree does not spend September apologising for taking up space.

It does not shrink its branches.

It does not hide its fruit.

It trusts the season.

Perhaps there is wisdom in that.

Particularly for those of us still learning that we are allowed to be here too.

From the Forest Edge

The apple tree gives what it has grown without questioning whether it deserves to.

Not because it is arrogant.

Not because it is perfect.

Simply because it trusts its place in the wider story of things.

Some days, that feels like wisdom worth borrowing.