it has been suggested to me that there are seasons to these lives we live. and that they aren't always clear and summer doesn't always follow spring and every once and again winter will yield more winter will yield more winter will yield more.
so i've been giving some thought to this season, to this season i'm in now. it's not clear whether it's winter or spring, summer or fall. but this i do know:
it is a season of strong women. a season in which i've been blessed by tremendously strong women. women who model friendship for me, who are driven, who take no prisoners, who laugh freely, and demand the very best. women who actually listen. intelligent, feminine, no-nonsense women. i'd met women of this ilk before. in passing i'd met them, but suddenly i am surrounded by them. suddenly i have collected a whole group of them and few things in this life have felt so important (so totally and truly lucky) as that.
this is the season in which i crave simplicity. in which i long for clean lines and uncluttered floors. in which i, unfortunately, feel a half-stranger in my own home (but know {humbly and with gratitude} that feeling will pass).
this is the season in which an unexpected october snow-fall awakened something within. demanded i order a chai latte and watch the white accumulate while standing in the warm light of the corner's coffee shop. there's something to seeing and studying and loving that cold and that dark and that dim from under the subtle yellow lights of familiarity.
this is the season i dared leave the light for the snow. into the white.
this is the season i am surrounded by, swathed in, ambivalence.
this is the season i find solace in a cabinet stocked with spices.
this is the season in which i attempt forgiveness. of myself. for the past. for my mistakes. for all that abandoned, lost time.
this is a season of reckoning. of acceptance. of remembrance. oh yes, that's who i am. oh yes, for better or worse that's what i'm made of. oh right, that's a part of my story. still.
image by Carol Reed.