what i’m leaving in the dark
This morning I woke up and stumbled through my morning, quite literally in the dark, the Daylight Saving shift both a gift and a curse. As I made my coffee and padded around the kitchen in a pair of wool socks belonging to my husband, the chill of winter still present here on the mountaintop, and likely will be for a couple more months, an electric sunrise started to peek through our barren aspens and ever-full evergreen trees.
I feel a tug of comfort in my belly. I notice it the way you notice something you’ve been waiting for without admitting you were waiting, a slow exhale, a loosening somewhere. The coffee is the same. The mug is the same. But there’s more light in the evening for a dog walk and a chapter of my book before dinner, and something in me is paying more attention.
We are approaching the spring equinox. The light will catch up. It always does. But right now, this morning, I’m standing in the in-between, longer evenings I don’t quite trust yet, dark mornings I thought I was done with.
We are headed toward the light and here are the things I am leaving in the dark. And what I will be tending to.
What I’m leaving in the dark
The habit of shrinking preemptively, before anyone asks me to. I got good at this from about age twelve on. I thought it was consideration but honestly it was fear wearing consideration’s coat.
The story that grief means I did something wrong. That if I were stronger, more prepared, more something, I would be further along by now. I’m releasing that one with both hands and maybe field-kicking it across the mountain.
The pressure to optimize every corner of my life. The sense that every habit must be upgraded, every morning perfected, every practice made more efficient. I’m letting that urgency decompose. I want to be here for the messy, gorgeous unfolding.
I’m also leaving in the dark the belief that healing should follow a neat timeline. Some things move slowly through the body. Some realizations arrive in layers. I’m learning to trust that what is buried is not wasted, it’s transforming and coming to the surface brand new.
And I’m letting certain expectations rest there too - the need to explain my path and my shifts to everyone, the need to make my work legible to the entire internet. Not everything needs to be seen right away. Or ever.
The constant scrolling that passed itself off as connection but was really just absence with a backlight. And the consumption. God, the consumption. The way it kept me from making anything real.
What I’m letting sprout
The journal pages I started in January and have actually kept, imperfectly, unevenly, some days missed and zero guilt about it. They're working. I don't totally understand how, but something is loosening on the page and it's staying loose out in the day.
This season I’m letting slower mornings sprout. Mornings that begin in my body before they begin on a screen. A few minutes of breath, sunlight on the floor, the quiet noticing of how I actually feel. Maybe some movement (sometimes looking quite unhinged, to be honest) backed by a soundtrack of my choosing.
I’m also letting a more honest voice emerge in my work. Teaching from lived experience instead of trying to wrap every insight in the perfect framework. Letting my classes, my writing and my conversations reflect the real process of being human. That’s who I must be if that’s who I want to draw in and be with, on my mat and off of it.
Creativity is sprouting too, but in a softer way than before. Less urgency to produce, more willingness to follow curiosity. To explore ideas that might not become anything public right away. Or again, ever.
What needs to be pruned
The perfectionism that has disguised itself as standards. I know the difference now, most days.
The relationships that mean so much to me. Some that did not get the care they needed when I went dark. They are just as important to me as water, sunlight and my alone time. (I swear. Ha.)
The exhausting project of managing how I am perceived by others. I can put that one down. It is so dumb. And it has never once helped.
The commitments that quietly take more than they give. The reflex to say yes before I’ve checked in with my body. The habit of overextending.
And some identities, too. Roles and expectations I once carried that just don’t fit anymore, that don’t reflect who I’m actually becoming.
I don’t think healing is linear, but I do think it’s seasonal. The dark months asked something of me, to go inward, to be still, to honestly let things die that needed to die. I mostly did that, albeit messily, with a lot of resistance and several false starts.
Now the light is coming back. A few minutes more each day. And I find I have to be clear about what I want to bring with me into it.
The grief comes too. I’m not pretending otherwise. I’m not walking into this spring cleaned out and renewed, some sort of equinox success story. I’m walking in tender and functional and curious about what grows in the particular soil of a hard winter. Or honestly a hard few years.
Turns out that’s enough. Turns out you don’t have to be finished to be ready.
The mornings are dark again for now. The evenings are suddenly, startlingly long. I’m learning to pay attention to the light that’s actually here, even when it’s not where I expected it.
