The body remembers.
Even when the mind forgets.
Grief is seasonal like that.
She waits for the air to turn.
For the light to bend a certain way—
low and sideways, like it did that December
when I stood beside my father’s bed,
watching the shape of his soul grow thin.
Winter does this to me.
And strangely, I welcome her.
She strips the world of performance,
peels back all the defenses.
No pretending in this season.
In her stark authenticity,
everything is laid bare.
Not alive, but not dead either.
Just… waiting.
Winter is the pregnant pause—
the gestation—
before the flutter of life begins to crown again.
She knows how to make silence sacred.
She knows that stillness is not stagnation,
but the fallow ground of reception.
And so I sit with her. To receive.
Allowing Grief to crash
like a ***** tide against the shoreline of my being,
taking the bittersweet debris out to sea,
making way for Spring,
where birdsong will return,
and the faintest pastel colors
will once again peek shyly
from beneath the frost.
I was born in Winter
on a Sunday
at the end of January
during a blizzard.
And I’ve always felt the weight of that
like the first breath I ever took
was from beneath two feet of snow.
Maybe my mother was grieving
when she birthed me.
Maybe her sorrow folded into my skin
before I even had words
to ask what I had done wrong.
Now, every Sunday whispers back to that.
Not in sentences.
But in sensation.
A low tide of lamentation
that never quite recedes.
I’ve always felt it—
Winters and Sundays, whispering of endings
Of something pulling me back, under
Beneath ground.
Winter always knows
before my mind catches on,
before the calendar reminds me of the ache,
The light begins to bend just so—
and something triggers within.
It’s not sadness at first.
Just a pause,
a heaviness
in the back of my heartspace.
And then comes the knowing.
The air sharpens.
Overhead, the geese—
a ragged "V" written in the pewter sky—
call out their ancient echo
And my body, without asking,
begins to reprocess.
Not just one loss,
but all of them.
My mother vanished with November’s leaves.
My father, in the darkness of December’s Solstice.
My marriage cracked with January’s ice
I’ve been carrying these winters
like folded letters
tucked away in drawers
no one ever read aloud.
And here I am—
lighting candles
for ghosts who never learned how to knock.
Making warmth
out of everything that tried to leave me cold.
Still, I love winter.
Isn’t that the strangest thing?
I love her honesty,
her bare branches,
her refusal to lie.
She is Death and Beauty.
Grief and Acceptance.
She keeps me insulated in a blanket of sacred reverence
Despite the cost.
This is how Grief tiptoes back in—
when the light leans a certain way at 4pm
when dusk casts a bruised lavender hue
when the songs shift moods on my playlist
when the air softens just enough for her familiar knock
No calendar reminder
just a fractal knowing—
summoning the ache from the cellar
where the memories rest
in tear-stained time capsules
awaiting remembrance.
And Winter…
She is the key.
So I welcome her—
like an old friend
who sometimes knows me
better than I know myself.
I let her remind me
that I have survived more
than I admit
That love—nay, loss—
reshapes the soul.
And that maybe
being born into a season of stillness—of waiting, of death
taught me how to find warmth in the coldest, barren places
and how to hold vigil for the bones not yet buried.
How to grieve ghosts.
Dec 13, 2025
Dec 13, 2025 at 2:06 PM UTC
The body remembers.
Even when the mind forgets.
Grief is seasonal like that.
She waits for the air to turn.
For the light to bend a certain way—
low and sideways, like it did that December
when I stood beside my father’s bed,
watching the shape of his soul grow thin.
Winter does this to me.
And strangely, I welcome her.
She strips the world of performance,
peels back all the defenses.
No pretending in this season.
In her stark authenticity,
everything is laid bare.
Not alive, but not dead either.
Just… waiting.
Winter is the pregnant pause—
the gestation—
before the flutter of life begins to crown again.
She knows how to make silence sacred.
She knows that stillness is not stagnation,
but the fallow ground of reception.
And so I sit with her. To receive.
Allowing Grief to crash
like a ***** tide against the shoreline of my being,
taking the bittersweet debris out to sea,
making way for Spring,
where birdsong will return,
and the faintest pastel colors
will once again peek shyly
from beneath the frost.
I was born in Winter
on a Sunday
at the end of January
during a blizzard.
And I’ve always felt the weight of that
like the first breath I ever took
was from beneath two feet of snow.
Maybe my mother was grieving
when she birthed me.
Maybe her sorrow folded into my skin
before I even had words
to ask what I had done wrong.
Now, every Sunday whispers back to that.
Not in sentences.
But in sensation.
A low tide of lamentation
that never quite recedes.
I’ve always felt it—
Winters and Sundays, whispering of endings
Of something pulling me back, under
Beneath ground.
Winter always knows
before my mind catches on,
before the calendar reminds me of the ache,
The light begins to bend just so—
and something triggers within.
It’s not sadness at first.
Just a pause,
a heaviness
in the back of my heartspace.
And then comes the knowing.
The air sharpens.
Overhead, the geese—
a ragged "V" written in the pewter sky—
call out their ancient echo
And my body, without asking,
begins to reprocess.
Not just one loss,
but all of them.
My mother vanished with November’s leaves.
My father, in the darkness of December’s Solstice.
My marriage cracked with January’s ice
I’ve been carrying these winters
like folded letters
tucked away in drawers
no one ever read aloud.
And here I am—
lighting candles
for ghosts who never learned how to knock.
Making warmth
out of everything that tried to leave me cold.
Still, I love winter.
Isn’t that the strangest thing?
I love her honesty,
her bare branches,
her refusal to lie.
She is Death and Beauty.
Grief and Acceptance.
She keeps me insulated in a blanket of sacred reverence
Despite the cost.
This is how Grief tiptoes back in—
when the light leans a certain way at 4pm
when dusk casts a bruised lavender hue
when the songs shift moods on my playlist
when the air softens just enough for her familiar knock
No calendar reminder
just a fractal knowing—
summoning the ache from the cellar
where the memories rest
in tear-stained time capsules
awaiting remembrance.
And Winter…
She is the key.
So I welcome her—
like an old friend
who sometimes knows me
better than I know myself.
I let her remind me
that I have survived more
than I admit
That love—nay, loss—
reshapes the soul.
And that maybe
being born into a season of stillness—of waiting, of death
taught me how to find warmth in the coldest, barren places
and how to hold vigil for the bones not yet buried.
How to grieve ghosts.
