approaching winter

There is a morning, usually in late October, when you step outside and the air has changed its mind. It is no longer crisp and playful. It is quieter, sharper, and it carries a message you did not ask for: winter is coming. Something in your chest responds before your brain does. A small tightening, a soft sigh, a strange mix of dread and tenderness.

Approaching winter feels like standing at the edge of a long hallway with the lights dimming one by one. The evenings arrive earlier each day, as though the sun is tired and has started leaving work before everyone else. We find ourselves reaching for the heavy coat we swore we wouldn't need yet, discovering a single glove, and wondering where its partner went. Winter, it turns out, begins with small betrayals.

But there is a hidden softness in this season of slowing down. Winter gives us permission to be gentle with ourselves. It asks us to turn inward, to light a candle at four in the afternoon, to hold a mug with both hands like it is a tiny, warm miracle. The world quiets, and in that quiet, we begin to hear the things we were too busy to notice: our own thoughts, our own tiredness, our own longing for people we have not called in far too long.

Winter is also when we feel our loved ones most clearly. It is the grandmother's kitchen steaming with soup, the friend who texts "come over, I'm making too much food," the strange comfort of sitting beside someone in comfortable silence while the cold presses against the windows and fails to get in. Warmth, we learn, is never really about temperature. It is about who is in the room.

And yes, there is the grief of it too. Winter has a way of dragging old memories into the light, the holidays that were louder once, the chairs that are emptier now. It would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. But even that ache is a kind of proof that we loved deeply enough to miss someone.

So as the days grow shorter, perhaps we do not need to dread the dark. Perhaps we can meet it the way we meet an old friend with a complicated past, with a deep breath, a warm blanket, and the quiet hope that spring is already working on its comeback.

P.S. That's such a cool mindset to have btw.