I love this photo choice for today’s blog; you can’t help but giggle seeing Ally’s version of winter, in an art piece called Snowball.
And no doubt we are still in winter. All of the recent snow and bitter cold causes deep memories to surface:
It seems that I’m really good at wintering. Not that I don’t mind warm sand in my toes, but the hard New England season does have its sweet moments.
As Katherine May discusses in one of my favorite books, Wintering, we must learn to invite the winter in. We may never choose to winter, but we can choose how we winter.
“That’s the gift of winter: it’s irresistible. Change will happen in its wake, whether we like it or not. We can come out of it wearing a different coat.” – Katherine May
The path starts under your feet.
For me, it means the return to my mat. Not only is my mat the place I practice yoga, but it’s also my home, a place where I go if there are no answers. It provides me a sacred space where I can gather, so my body can release whatever it is holding.
It’s here where I thought about my winter, Ally’s winter, what we will do, and with whom. I knew things were changing with our work together; as two creatives, it’s impossible to work on the same project always. And honestly our Shine needed some polishing. It’s so exciting when we are creating something shiny, just as winter begins with holidays, lights, fancier clothes, and then come January, we feel dull, pale in our skin, heavier, and sometimes we just don’t know what to do next. We turn to the calendars and count the days till valentines. To this, to that.
These are the necessary days, the ones spent polishing. And that’s what I did. How do we do that in a time filled with winter’s stripped-down trees, dirty snow, Mother Nature’s blizzards? Like the bible, it becomes ordinary time. We still Shine though.
I needed to be creative and move on to another part of our journey with House of Shine. I wanted to find ways to inject new juice into our beloved home.
WE take the first step. We try, we see what works, for now.
Happy polishing, Shine Tribe.
Stay Sunny.
