The Winter of My Soul

Funny how long it takes to settle things in a home. In the moving-in process it was necessary to dump all of my stuff - writing materials, books, paintings and paint supplies, craft materials and materia magicae (sorry, Mr. Gray! 37 years out of Latin classes with you and I just don't remember as well as I should!) - onto the surface of the repurposed kitchen table which is now my desk, and envision it all perfect in just a week or two. In reality, although it has been functional for a while now, it took five months to get everything in just the right place.

Earlier this week I was doing the final sorting out, prompted by the need to create an easily accessible morning altar space. This process included going through an impressive stack of notebooks and journals and, because I have lost the ability to stay on task, I found myself reading through each one of them. At the bottom of the stack I found the journal I started when I realized I was in the Winter of My Soul.

Nearly two years ago, close to the end of the first year of life without my youngest daughter in this world, I wrote about wishing I could take a sabbatical for six months or a year. Mostly, I said, I wanted to get away and rest and renew my spirit. I wrote these words:

     "I have alternately felt as though I am lost, drowning, overwhelmed, cannot breathe, cannot slow          down, cannot move fast enough..."

I tried for a while to turn inward with the season. I tried to tend to my own needs, my own healing. I was successful for a short time, but then I let life get in the way. I allowed the expectations and distraction of other people and society to turn me away from dealing with the grief that threatened to consume me. In doing so I shut down all awareness that it was wearing away at me from the inside out.

Events in my life in the past year stripped away all those distractions, and those of you who know me best probably know that I severed the ties of expectations and obligation. While those life changes were immensely liberating and have opened doors of opportunity, they have left me standing face-to-face with the grief that is still raw in wounds that are wide open. This has not been an easy journey, and it is nowhere near complete. I have once again alternately felt as though I am lost, drowning, overwhelmed, cannot breathe, cannot slow down, cannot move fast enough.

A couple of weeks ago I made the decision to follow the seasons in the Turning of the Wheel of the Year, and to turn more deeply inward than I have ever done. To the marrow of my bones I know that it is the right thing for me to do.

When I found that journal yesterday I rediscovered a writing that woke a truth within me the first time I read it, and I read it out loud again as a prayer:

     "When winter comes to a woman's soul, she withdraws into her inner self, her deepest spaces. She refuses all connection, refutes all arguments that she should engage in the world. She may say she is resting, but she is more than resting: She is creating a new universe within herself, examining and breaking old patterns, destroying what should not be revived, feeding in secret what needs to thrive." ~ Patricia Monaghan, Season of the Witch

It is time for me to embrace that truth, and to live in each moment of this season. Self-aware, self-exploring, healing, learning, and turned as deeply inward as I can possibly go. I do not fear the darkness anymore than I fear the light.

I am living The Winter of My Soul.