Crow and Flame

Winter isn’t just cold.

It’s heavy.

It settles into the body first—

into tired bones, stiff joints, shallow breaths.

It seeps beneath the skin and lingers, pressing down in quiet ways that are hard to name and harder to explain.

The world slows, but the mind doesn’t always follow.

Instead, it fills the silence with old memories, unanswered questions, and the familiar ache of am I doing enough, am I enough?

Winter makes everything louder inside.

The grief you learned to carry politely through warmer months suddenly takes up more space.

The anxiety you thought you had managed waits patiently for darker days to return.

The trauma that softened in sunlight sharpens again when nights stretch too long.

And there is a strange shame that comes with it—

the feeling that you should be handling this better.

That you should be more productive, more grateful, more resilient.

But winter is not a season of becoming.

It is a season of enduring.

We were never meant to bloom year-round.

Trees do not apologize for going bare.

The earth does not rush itself back to life.

Even fire burns differently in the cold—lower, steadier, conserving what it must to survive.

So why do we demand constant growth from ourselves?

Winter asks something quieter of us.

It asks us to sit with discomfort without trying to fix it.

To rest without turning rest into failure.

To recognize that heaviness is not weakness—it is weight carried for a long time.

Some days, surviving winter looks like getting out of bed.

Some days, it looks like staying in it.

Some days, it looks like choosing softness when the world feels sharp.

And that is enough.

If winter feels heavy for you, you are not broken.

You are responding to a season that asks for less light and more patience.

For gentleness.

For grace.

The flame does not go out in winter.

It burns inward, waiting.

And so do you.