A Wintering of the Heart

There are seasons that arrive gently, like a familiar song, and then there are seasons like winter … quieter, heavier, carrying memory in both hands.

Each year, this time marks itself in my body and heart. It is the season when people I deeply love made their journey home. Their absence becomes more pronounced against the stillness. Their names surface more easily. Their stories drift through my days like breath on cold glass.

Winter asks me to remember.
And remembering asks me to feel.

Grief has its own weather, and for me, it often settles in during these colder months.

Over time, I’ve learned that this season will always hold a certain ache. What has changed is how I meet it. I no longer try to outrun the sorrow or rush myself toward “better.” Instead, I have learned to live beside it, to make room for it, while still tending to my own wholeness.

This is not resignation.
This is devotion.

Learning to Live Without Physical Presence

When people you love leave this world during winter, the season itself becomes marked.
Certain dates carry more weight.
Certain rooms feel quieter.
Certain traditions ache in ways they never did before.

Loss reshapes the landscape of our lives. It requires adjustment, not just emotionally, but practically, spiritually, creatively. We learn how to walk through the world again, carrying love without bodies, memories without voices, presence without proximity.

But I have come to believe this: love does not disappear when physical presence does. It simply changes form.

The people I have lost are no longer beside me in the ways they once were, but they are woven into who I am becoming. They are present in my work, my art, my pauses, my prayers, and the way I tend to others. Their lives continue to inform mine … quietly, steadily, faithfully.

Practicing the Work I Teach

This winter, I find myself returning again and again to the practices that have carried me through grief and toward wholeness. Not as concepts. Not as theory. But as lived experience.

I am practicing the work I plan to teach.

I light candles at dusk, not as decoration, but as a ritual of returning, a reminder that light is never fully lost, even in the shortest days.

I sit at my quiet table and write a few words, touch color, arrange objects, tend beauty. Creativity has become one of my most faithful healing companions … a way to speak when language feels thin.

I warm my body intentionally. Baths. Oils. Soft fabrics. Slower mornings. These are not indulgences; they are acts of self-respect. Ways of telling my nervous system that it is safe to rest.

I walk outside, even when the air is cold, letting nature mirror what I’m learning: that stillness holds life, that dormancy is not absence, that something is always preparing beneath the surface.

I practice sound, breath, stillness, and presence, not only for those I serve, but for myself. These practices are not something I step into when I teach; they are the way I move through my days.

Becoming a Living Visual of Self-Care

Somewhere along the way, I realized that the most honest teaching comes from embodiment. Not from perfection, but from presence.

If I am to guide others toward wholeness, I must first be willing to walk the path myself, in real time, with my own tenderness fully included.

This season, I am choosing to be a living visual of self-care.
Not polished.
Not immune to grief.
But attentive, grounded, and honest.

I am learning that wholeness does not mean the absence of sorrow. It means tending to myself while carrying it. It means allowing grief and love to share the same space without trying to force one out.

Integrity is built quietly, in the moments no one sees. In the way I rest. In the boundaries I keep. In the compassion I extend toward myself when old waves return.

Winter is teaching me how to slow down enough to listen.

A Season of Remembering and Renewal

As I move through this winter, I hold two truths at once. I grieve what I have lost. And I honor what is still growing.

This season will always be tender for me. But it is also a season of deepening … a time when my roots are strengthened, my practices refined, and my sense of purpose clarified.

Grief lives here.
So does love.
So does creativity.
So does healing.

This is my wintering of the heart … a season of remembering those who shaped me, practicing the care that sustains me, and learning, again and again, how to live fully in the presence of both loss and love.

As this winter unfolds, I am learning to let tenderness be a teacher rather than something to overcome. I am allowing myself to move at the pace my heart requires, trusting that wholeness is not something I must achieve, but something I practice, moment by moment, breath by breath.

This season may always carry grief for me. But it also carries devotion to the life I am living now, to the love that remains, and to the care that allows me to stay present to both. Winter is no longer just something to endure. It has become a place where I listen more closely, rest more honestly, and tend the parts of myself that ask to be held.

A Thought to Carry

Wholeness is not the absence of ache, but the way I tend to myself while walking with it. Each gentle act becomes a lantern, lighting the path back home to my own heart.

Winter reminds me that grief and renewal often arrive together. That even in the quietest season, something within us is listening, learning, and preparing to rise again.

If you find yourself struggling in this season too, know this: you are not broken for feeling deeply. You are human. And even here, especially here, there is room for gentleness, for rest, and for renewal.

If this time of year is tender for you too, I hope you allow yourself the same grace. To slow down. To rest. To practice care in ways that feel simple and sustaining. You don’t have to rush your healing or explain your sorrow. There is room here for remembering, for mending, and for becoming whole in your own time.

“I am learning that grief and grace can share the same room within me.” —PC

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” —Psalm 147:3 (NKJV)