Dr Shiam Chuttoo

A reflection by Dr Shiam Chuttoo on seasons, moving countries and the people who carry us, with my SEASON Model.

Everything happens for a reason. Different seasons come for different things. Some countries have two seasons, others have four, and each gives them its own names. We are all travellers in this world, and we adapt to each season wherever we stand. (From my notebook.)

Two seasons, four seasons, six seasons

I grew up in Mauritius, where the year has two seasons. In Kreol we say lete for the hot, wet summer with its cyclones, and liver for the cooler, drier winter. In 1988 I came to Britain, a country of four seasons, where the light changes month by month and the evenings close in at four o’clock in December. In India, the land of my ancestors, the old calendar counts six seasons, the ritu: वसंत Vasant (spring), ग्रीष्म Grishma (summer), वर्षा Varsha (monsoon), शरद Sharad (autumn), हेमंत Hemant (early winter) and शिशिर Shishir (late winter).

Same sun, same earth, different names. Every country reads the year in its own way. Each of us carries the calendar of the place we grew up in, and when we move, that inner calendar has to learn a new language.

Where the word comes from

Here is something that surprised me. The English word season comes through Old French seson from the Latin satio, which means sowing. A season was first the time to plant seed. The same root gives French assaisonner and English seasoning: the spice you sow into food. So every season is a time to plant, and every life needs a little seasoning.

There is more. The Hindi word for weather and season, मौसम mausam, comes from the Arabic mawsim. Portuguese sailors carried that same word to Europe, and it became monsoon. One word crossed oceans the way our families did, and changed its clothes in every port.

Seasons we celebrate

We count seasons by joy as well as by weather.

• Wedding season: in India the shaadi ka mausam runs through the cooler months, and in Britain the summer weekends fill with marquees and confetti.
• Festival season: Diwali lights in autumn, Christmas in winter, Holi colours in spring, Eid moving through the year with the moon, Cavadee and Chinese New Year bringing Mauritius onto the streets.
• Sporting seasons: football from August to May, cricket in the summer, bowls outdoors in summer and indoors in winter, and the Commonwealth Games, a season that comes round only once every four years.
• Harvest seasons: in Mauritius we waited for sezon letchi, the lychee season, and the sugar cane harvest, lakoup.

Seasons are how we remember our lives. Nobody says, “It was the fourteenth of the seventh month.” We say, “It was that summer,” or “the winter Mum was ill,” or “the year of the big cyclone.” The season holds the memory.

Seasons we dread

Other seasons we brace ourselves for.

• Hay fever season: tree pollen in spring, grass in early summer, weeds later on. For some people the sunniest days are the hardest to breathe.
• Cold and flu season: winter coughs and colds. In Britain the NHS offers a free flu vaccine every autumn to people aged 65 and over, among others.
• The winter blues: seasonal affective disorder, known by the fitting short name SAD, is a low mood that comes with the dark months. People who grew up near the equator, where the days stay long all year, can feel the British winter keenly. Daylight, a morning walk, company and, when needed, a talk with your GP all help.
• Cyclone season: every Mauritian child knows the cyclone warnings, one to four, and the quiet after the storm.
• Seasons of pressure: exam season, tax season, the season of bills after Christmas.

The festive season on the ward

Hospitals have seasons too. Every winter the NHS speaks of “winter pressures”: wards over-full with flu, chest infections, falls on icy pavements, and beds that cannot be found. Waiting areas fill up and staff stretch themselves thin.

The festive season is good for some and very hard for others. For many families Christmas and New Year mean lights, food, gifts and full tables. For people who live alone, who have lost someone, or whose families are far away or broken, the same days can be the loneliest of the year. The whole country seems to be celebrating, and the silence at home grows louder.

As a psychiatric nurse I saw this with my own eyes. Around New Year we often had more admissions. Some of the people who came to us had nobody at home. On the ward they were fed, kept warm, listened to and looked after. For a few days they felt they belonged somewhere. It taught me that a hospital bed can be about company as much as treatment, and that loneliness is a real illness of the season. Studies differ on whether the festive period raises crisis numbers across the whole country, and every ward is different. What I saw stays with me.

So this festive season, look around. Who on your street, in your family, your temple, church, mosque or club, will be alone? One invitation, one phone call or one plate of food can be the light that stays on in someone’s window.

If you or someone you know is struggling over the festive season, help is there every day of the year. In the UK, Samaritans answer free on 116 123, day and night, and older people can call the Silver Line on 0800 4 70 80 90 for a friendly chat. In an emergency, call 999 or go to A&E.

Every season has two faces

Summer is holiday season. Families fly overseas, beaches fill and airports hum. The same weeks bring peak prices: flights, hotels and package holidays can cost double during the school holidays, and some families cannot go at all. I plan my own trips to Mauritius outside the school holidays for exactly this reason. Yet the high price that hurts the traveller also pays the wages of the hotel worker, the taxi driver and the fisherman back home. One family’s expense is another family’s income.

That is the balance of every season. Each one gives and each one takes. Here is how I weigh them.

Season	What it gives	What it takes	How to balance it
Summer holidays	rest, travel, family time, long light evenings	high prices, crowds, heat, hay fever	travel in the quieter shoulder weeks; enjoy what is close to home
Festive season	lights, faith, food, gifts, reunions	loneliness, debt, overeating, pressure to be happy	set a budget; invite someone who is alone; rest as well as celebrate
Winter	cosy evenings, indoor bowls, time to reflect and read	dark days, flu, the winter blues, high heating bills	get daylight each morning; keep warm; take the flu jab; keep in touch
Spring	new growth, longer days, fresh hope	pollen, restlessness, spring cleaning to-do lists	plant something, literally or in your life; pace yourself
Wedding and festival season	joy, belonging, culture passed on	cost, tiredness, family tension	give what you can afford; your presence matters more than the gift
Cyclone and monsoon season	water for crops, rivers and wells	storms, floods, damage	prepare early; check on neighbours; rebuild together
A move to a new country	opportunity, growth, new friends	homesickness, culture shock, strain	use the SEASON Model below

No season is all good or all bad. When we see only its gifts we are caught out by its costs, and when we see only its costs we miss its gifts. A wise traveller packs for both.

The colours of the season

Walk into any shop and you can tell the season without a calendar. Autumn browns and golds, Christmas red and green, Diwali gold and orange, Holi’s rainbow, spring pastels, summer whites. Fashion houses call them seasons too: the autumn and winter collection, the spring and summer range. We dress our homes, our tables and ourselves to match the season. Perhaps we should dress our minds the same way.

A pot-pourri of season words

Some season words lift us and some warn us. Here is a mixed bag from my four languages.

Language	Word or saying	What it tells us
English	In season	fresh, ripe, at its best
English	Out of season	the wrong time, or quiet and cheaper
English	Seasoned	experienced, like a seasoned traveller or teacher
English	Open season	a time when anyone can be attacked or criticised
English	The silly season	the slow summer weeks when news turns trivial
English	One swallow does not make a summer	one good sign is not yet a change (an idea going back to Aristotle)
Français	Une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps	the French version: one swallow does not make the spring
Français	Hors saison	out of season, off-peak
Français	Assaisonner	to season food, from the same root as saison
Kreol	Lete, liver	summer and winter, the two seasons of Mauritius
Kreol	Sezon siklonn	cyclone season, a time to prepare and look after each other
हिन्दी	ऋतु ritu, मौसम mausam	season and weather
हिन्दी	मौसम की तरह बदलना mausam ki tarah badalna	to change like the weather, said of someone unreliable
हिन्दी	सावन के अंधे को हरा ही हरा दिखता है Sawan ke andhe ko hara hi hara dikhta hai	one blinded in the monsoon month sees only green: we judge the world by the season we were stuck in

Season and reason

Season and reason rhyme, and I do not think that is an accident. People say that some come into our lives for a reason, some for a season, and a few for a lifetime. Here are a few lines of my own to carry with you:

Spring plants, summer sings,
autumn lets go, winter brings
the quiet that the seed needs.
A season for every reason,
a reason in every season.

We are all travellers

Moving to a new country is one of the biggest seasons a person can live through. The climate changes, and so do the food, the accent, the humour, the rules nobody writes down and the way people greet you. Even good moves carry strain. I have felt it myself, and over thirty years as a nurse, social worker and lecturer I have seen it in patients, students and colleagues from every corner of the world.

Researchers have mapped this journey. Kalervo Oberg (1960) described culture shock: an early honeymoon, then a crisis when the differences begin to bite, then slow recovery and adjustment. John W. Berry described four ways people respond to a new culture: integration (keeping your own culture while joining the new one), assimilation (letting your own go), separation (keeping only your own) and marginalisation (feeling at home in neither). His research found integration usually brings the least stress. That matches what I have lived.

What the body does in a new season

Strain starts in the body before it reaches the mind. Joseph LeDoux showed that the brain’s alarm, the amygdala, fires before we have time to think. It would rather raise a false alarm than miss a real danger. In a new country almost everything is unfamiliar, so the alarm rings more often: a strange accent at the bus stop, a form you do not understand, a cold you have never felt.

Bessel van der Kolk and Peter Levine describe how ordinary stress has a beginning, a middle and an end, and the body returns to calm. When the strain never ends, the body stays on alert. Stephen Porges and Deb Dana add something every migrant knows without the words: we calm down best in the company of a calm, kind person. A friendly face and a warm voice tell the body it is safe before the mind has caught up.

Some of what we carry did not even begin with us. Rachel Yehuda and Mark Wolynn write about how families pass hardship down the generations, often through silence. Many of our grandparents crossed oceans as labourers, and much of their story was never spoken. Naming those stories helps them stop repeating.

Does everything happen for a reason?

I believe it does, and I hold that belief with humility. There is an old Chinese story of a farmer whose horse ran away. His neighbours said, “What bad luck!” He answered, “Maybe.” The horse came back with a wild horse beside it. “What good luck!” “Maybe.” His son broke his leg taming the new horse, and when soldiers came to take young men to war, the son was left behind. Each time the farmer said, “Maybe.” He never claimed to know the full reason. He simply kept working his fields.

The Bible says, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). In Acts 16, Paul and Silas sat in a prison cell with their feet in the stocks, and at midnight they sang. Their hardest season became the night the jailer’s whole household was changed. Viktor Frankl, who survived the camps, taught that we cannot always choose our season, and we can always choose the meaning we give it.

So this is my stand. We may not see the reason while we are inside the season. Often it shows itself years later, looking back. Meanwhile, our job is to live the season well.

Ye rishta kya kehlata hai?

ये रिश्ता क्या कहलाता है? What is this relationship called? When you move to a new country, some of the people who carry you through have no name in the family tree. A neighbour who notices your light has not come on and knocks on the door. A colleague who becomes a brother. A friend who stays when you have nothing to offer. There is no word for what they are to you, yet you know exactly what they mean.

People like that are rare, and they matter most in a new season. One day, when someone new arrives in your street, you can be that person for them.

My SEASON Model

© Dr Shiam Chuttoo 2026. Six steps for living well through any season of change, whether a move, a loss, retirement or a new start.

• S, Settle the body first: when the alarm rings, slow down. Breathe out longer than you breathe in. Feel your feet on the ground and name five things you can see. The body needs to know it is safe before the mind can plan.
• E, Expect the strain: culture shock, homesickness and tiredness are normal parts of change. Naming them takes away half their power. Emotions are signals on a dashboard: anger points to a boundary crossed, sadness asks for time, fear warns of risk.
• A, Adapt with your roots: join the new season without cutting yourself off from the old. Keep your languages, food, festivals and prayers. Learn the new customs. A banyan tree spreads wide because its roots go deep.
• S, Seek your people: nobody settles alone. Find the neighbours, friends and community who become family, the relationships that have no name. Ask for help before your light goes out, and be the one who knocks when someone else’s light stays off.
• O, Observe with “maybe”: hold judgement lightly, like the farmer. Ask, “Can I control this?” If not, set it down. Before a big decision, ask, “And then what?” Measure yourself with your own ruler. A ruler borrowed from someone whose journey was different will always leave you feeling short.
• N, Nurture the long dig: settling in a new place is like digging a well. For a long time nothing seems to come back. Every effort counts, and one day the water rises. Take an inventory of what you already carry: your values, skills, faith and the progress nobody noticed.

A word for helpers

Nurses, social workers, teachers, coaches and volunteers who support people through hard seasons absorb some of that weight. Laura van Dernoot Lipsky calls this vicarious trauma. Take real breaks, use supervision, notice how your body feels after a heavy day, and look after your own season too.

My recommendations

• If you have just moved, give yourself at least a full year of seasons before judging the new place.
• Find one community group where your mother tongue is spoken, and one where it is not.
• Each evening, name one thing that went well in the new country.
• If the strain stays heavy for weeks, speak to your GP. Asking for help is part of adapting.
• Write down one family story that was never told, and share it with the next generation.
• This festive season, invite one person who would otherwise spend it alone.

Questions to sit with

• Which season am I in right now, and what is it asking of me?
• Who are the people in my life whose relationship has no name, and have I thanked them?
• Who will be alone this New Year, and what could I do about it?
• Where am I measuring myself with someone else’s ruler?
• If I said “maybe” to today’s bad news, what might change?

In my languages

• English: Every season has its reason, even when we cannot yet see it.
• Français : Chaque saison a sa raison, même quand on ne la voit pas encore.
• Kreol Morisien: Sak sezon ena so rezon, mem kan nou pankor trouv li.
• हिन्दी : हर मौसम की अपनी वजह होती है, चाहे हम उसे अभी न देख पाएँ। (Har mausam ki apni wajah hoti hai, chahe hum use abhi na dekh paayein.)

We are all travellers. Settle, expect, adapt, seek, observe and keep digging, and every season will teach you something.

A word of caution. This piece is for education and personal reflection. It is not medical, psychological or legal advice, and it does not replace care from a qualified professional. Please understand any technique before you use it. Anyone who uses these ideas does so by their own choice and is responsible for their own actions. If stress, low mood or worry stays with you, talk to someone you trust, your GP or another health professional.

© Dr Shiam Chuttoo 2026. The SEASON Model, the recommendations and the multilingual sayings are the original work of Dr Shiam Chuttoo. Ideas are drawn from and credited to Oberg (1960), Berry (acculturation), LeDoux, van der Kolk, Levine, Porges and Dana, Yehuda and Wolynn, Frankl, van Dernoot Lipsky and the Stoic tradition; the farmer’s story is a traditional Chinese tale; the stories of the well and the light at the door, and several visual maps, were inspired by posts shared online by StoryBloom and PsiOS and are retold here in my own words; scripture from Ecclesiastes 3:1 (King James Version) and Acts 16. The poem lines are original. Credit: SEASON Model, created by Dr Shiam Chuttoo. You may share or use this model only with my permission, or with clear credit to me as its author. Contact: shiamduth@outlook.com. Work record: Ref DSC-2026-SEASON-01. Title: A Season for Everything. Author: Dr Shiam Chuttoo. Created 16 October 2026. All rights reserved.