The story of a beginning.

[1-8-21]

February offers us in the North a deep bone chilling cold. In the morning I go out to bring the chicken their ceramic blue bowl filled with chicken oatmeal and the dirt has frozen like little stalagmites all along the path. If I stop in presence and bend over I can see the tiny ice crystals shining like jewels for the earth.

January brings the beginning of this story. Characters dressed in wool sweaters with long boots topped with fur. Children waiting at bus stops in only sweatshirts because they have grown up in this kind of cold, and teenagers apparently don't wear coats anymore.

Some days the sun comes out and the temperature hits 50 degrees and the adults shed their coats and put on their fleece and give the dogs extra walks. Outside the windows things come to life until the water turns to ice again and the dogs sleep by feet and fires.

Mostly in my story, I've found myself achingly tired. Not in the fall asleep tired, but the heavy tiredness where you have to talk yourself into washing the next round of dishes or taking your clothes off to get in the shower. I wish I could drink caffeine without my heart beating out of my chest, just so I could feel that extra bit of energy.

I set my heart to learning to feel into winter in a new way. Rather than sit around wishing it were over while succumbing to the laziness of the cold, I wanted to figure out how to embrace this cycle of life death life and sink into the offerings it has for us. Crone visits us in winter and with each new moon or moon time bleed. I follow her along hungry to learn.

It is winter in winter as the moon goes dark. I feel myself letting go so that I can become. Crone sits by the fire with her knitting and says, keep going, another layer, another layer. Life, death, life. Keep going. Find the precious.

Then the moon begins to find her light and I realize there are things I need to do to care for my body and my home. I pick up the phone. I feel lighter because I have released the layers. I am clear on my movements. I make plans.

By the time the moon is full I have released and tended and I find myself in the kitchen, wooden spoons and heavy cast iron cauldrons are the way into the medicine. I chop and stir and experiment with new sauces and spices. I feed. I feed some more.

The light wanes and I am connected to something deeper than myself. There is a communication with spirit and mother earth. I want to listen. I want to feel the presence and follow what is being asked of me. I want to listen.

The next page, Crone is back, reminding me of the hope inside of winter, the stillness, the release, the layers. I feel her writing the story with slow black ink and perfect handwriting that my kids will one day no longer see.

Yes, it is a beginning. A beginning that becomes another beginning and then another. Inside of it, our lives, sacred moments that seem like nothing until they form a chapter then a book then the pages burned one at a time in the fire.

And the ashes say, begin again.