The Winter Table: Making Room for This Season
Winter is thinning out. The light is stretching, the soil is loosening, and the air has that faint, almost-imagined scent of something waking up. This is the last entry in the Winter Table series, and it arrives in a season where grief is sitting close beside me. Some of it is anticipatory. Some of it is tied to the unknown. All of it makes me want routine and steadiness, even when life is not offering much of either.
I keep thinking about Carla Fernández’s idea from Renegade Grief. She describes grief as a dinner guest who shows up without warning and takes a seat at the table. The guest does not wait for an invitation. They do not follow the usual rules. They stay as long as they need to. That image feels honest. Grief is here. It has pulled up a chair. I can pretend it is not in the room, or I can acknowledge it and make space for it.
Megan Devine writes about how grief is not something to fix. It is something to tend. That framing helps me slow down. It reminds me that I do not need to push myself into clarity or productivity. I can meet myself where I am. I can let this season be what it is.
Irvin Yalom, in Staring at the Sun, talks about how facing the realities we’d rather avoid, whether it be endings, uncertainty, or mortality, can actually deepen our capacity to live. Not in a performative, “silver lining” way, but in a grounded, honest way. A way that says I can stay present even when things feel uncertain; I can keep living my life without pretending that everything is fine.
Earlier this winter, I asked myself what seeds I was sowing for the months ahead. That question feels different now. I am not sure I need to plant anything new yet. I think I need to plant roots instead. Roots in the present moment. Roots in what is real right now. Roots in the relationships and routines that help me feel steady.
If you are in a season where grief and change are sitting side by side, you are welcome here. You do not need to be finished with winter to imagine spring. You can hold both.
Reflection for You
What roots are you being invited to plant in your life right now, instead of rushing to sow seeds for a future that is not fully formed yet?
