The long exhale

Solstice came and went, a little calm in the dead of night that December blackly embodies. Inky stillness,  minute ticking past the next, thick, soupy darkness, yet the gradual inch forwards. In this all, in this silence, I deflated. The few weeks away from everything held me softly as I finally let go of the tightness barely carrying me through 2025. A long out breath. A muscle finally relaxed. Why now? I don’t know. But finally, finally. A welcome crumpling of the soul, floating on that liminality that always exists in these last few weeks.

Ice stills the world outside. No time for resolutions, this. Short days and frost, deep dark nights and waiting. To be and just exist, bare essence as the leafless tree branches, clear soul as the vast starry sky. How can we muster energy to resolve, at this time? Forcing brightness and momentum in the stillest part of the year. It is right to stop, and rest, and let that small, infinitesimal current carry us forward to brighter days. To consider but let things lie. To plod on earth crisp underfoot and trust that come spring, energy and vibrancy will rise once more.

I felt as though 2025 was tight around me. I did too much, building and chasing and trying to prove something to anyone and everyone around me. Finally, in this deep dark winter, something shifted. A block removed, a stone plopping into a pond, the soft thud of melting snow from a branch. Clarity. The softness to stop trying. A few weeks away from social media filling the days with colour so I remembered how real life is. Doing real things in real worlds, and even in the slowness of winter there are infinite layers of experience. I missed that. I don’t want to go back. I feel like I returned after a long time away, somehow. I breathe out, with the moon and the snow and the dark blue night. I breathe in with the diamond pinpricks of stars, with the icy ferns of jack frost as he spreads over the land, with the hint of oak and peep of tiny snowdrops above the dark earth.

I breathe out again, and wait, and float, and trust.