Winter

My toes will always crave mud between them. My hair needs the scent of lake and sun. I long to press my face into the green things and breathe it into me like a lover.

But winter does come. Every year. To bury me in her white darkness. The cover pulls over and I pretend for a while that I am still summer. But she wins.

I begin to move slower. My words are fewer. The dark feels like the blanket I was missing in the summer. I forgot how tired I was. How deeply I need rest. The winter reminds me.

The dark is sweet. The cold is relentless and forever. But then I begin to glow golden from the inside. In a way I don’t need to in summer. In a way that only winter creates. I glow with a determined faith and satisfaction that only those who spend long amounts of time in the cold areas of the world can understand. A stubborn kind of glow that sits and waits.

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with winter here in the north. My skin will forever call for sun. But the depths of me now bow in reverence for the cold. That hardened winter creature that has forced this golden glow from the center of me. It could not have been birthed any other way.

We all have seasons. Within and without. Physical, mental, emotional, sexual, spiritual… May you bow to the season you are in. It’s lessons. Wherever you are, whatever is happening, is the teacher, is the blessing. This season holds all the medicine you need.