The dark of the year.  We light it up with holiday decorations and strings of lights.  How do we light up our dark corners and determine our next steps?  If you’re in the northern hemisphere, you may be dealing with cold, snow, and inclement weather.  Mother Nature pushes indoors, pushes us to slow down, to cuddle within the protection of our shelter. 

Despite all the grumbling, winter is beautiful.  Yes, it’s cold and difficult to get through the snowy weather but if you stop and take a moment to look ever the untouched snow in the fields or the trees covered with snow (well okay and where I am right now there is none of this) there is beauty and lessons in the season.

Snow is a blanket, covering, warming, and hiding the land.  Snow helps the land to rest and recover from the growing year.  I love the sparkle of the snow, the seemingly smooth texture of the snow while at the same time, I’m perfectly aware of the dips, twists, and drifts snow is shaped into.

Winter is a time to pull your cocoon around you.  It’s a time to look at your last year and think about what went right, wrong, and stayed the same.  It’s a time to look back but it’s also a time to look forward, particularly around the solstice. 

Each day we lose a little more light.  We’re in the dark for a few minutes longer.  But the solstice fast approaches.  In days it will be here and the world switches from being darker more a little each day to being a little lighter each day. 

At this time of year, I’m looking within myself.  Am I happy with who I am?  What I’ve accomplished?  Where I am in life?  I take the dark times to consider all of these questions and more.  There’s a sadness in me for what could have been or should have been when I look back.  This can easily turn into a destructive round of me blaming me for all my perceived failures.  This means I’m still working on balance in my life (probably for all my days I’ll work on finding a balance).

Looking back is difficult.  There are opportunities which were missed.  Things done, words said, which shouldn’t have been.  There’s little I can do to change that but I can learn from it, pull it into my soul and make it a lesson. 

I need to look forward.  I need to look at what I want to accomplish in the next year, what I want to grow and develop.  I need to consider all my options and figure out which are most important.  For the last month or so, I’ve taken a break from writing and not been on email, social media and so on much.  I needed to escape from some of these. 

I know going forward I’ll return to writing, return to telling stories, publishing crochet patterns, and being more of a presence on social media.  I can no more stop writing than I can stop breathing for any length of time. 

As I pull the darkness of the season around me, I feel a comfort in going within myself.  I see myself – warts and all.  I see my bad habits.  I see the good ones.  I know I will continue to work on the bad habits – some will change and some won’t.  I know I can’t change everything at once.

I’ll keep the darkness of the year pulled around me and keep assessing until Yule.  As the year turns from the darkest night and shortest day, I’ll move from reflection to action.  It will be time to figure out what I need to do to accomplish my projects, to work on my goals. 

Though the days get a little lighter, the darkness lingers giving time to plan and consider what comes first, what steps I need to take, how I want to move forward.  The darkness keeps the world at bay, giving me time to consider my own counsel and my own needs. 

Winter may not be an easy time of year for getting around; but it’s a great time of year to consider options, goals, and our past and future.  It’s a time to take advantage of the cold weather and stay indoors to find where I am in my journey.