What will you do with your season of growth? 🪴
The above piece, rendered in water colour and crayon, is an impressionist composition reflecting the new flowers in my garden. Since planting the lavender, lupin and marigolds, I am reminded every time I look out of my window that I am in the midst of an intoxicating season of growth.
After my husband died young two years ago, I experienced a long winter.
Emotionally, physically, creatively.
As such, it is heartening to look at the sunflowers stretching towards the sky and know, in my heart, that I have blossomed into a new summer. And that the seeds of that summer were planted in the depths of the cold, dark winter. One simply doesn’t exist without the other.
Personal winters can happen anytime, no matter the month or the weather. Perhaps you are experiencing one now. But as I’ve mentioned before in these postcards, change is the one thing in this world that is as inevitable as death. A seed in the ground must, at some point, flower and mature, by its very nature. It cannot stay in the soil forever.
Thus, even while caught in the middle of your wintering, it is acceptable, nay encouraged, to turn your thoughts to what you might do with your season of growth when it arrives.
Perhaps you’ll do that hike you’ve been saying you’ll complete for years. Or learn how to fly a hot air balloon. Or save the world from an alien invasion - the rest of us will be very much in your debt if it turns out to be the latter.
I’m using my personal summer for much more humble pursuits. Proofing my latest murder mystery which will hit the shelves by Christmas. Writing a vampire novella set in steampunk London. And making art like that shown in the postcard above whenever I get the chance.
What will you do with your season of growth? Or, what are you doing with the season of growth you are experiencing right now? Feel free to tell us in the comment box below.
Oh this was such a beautifully written post and touched me so much. I really relate to this - last Summer my grandfather passed and despite the gorgeous weather, I felt as if I was in a personal harsh and unfeeling winter. And you’ve really hit the nail on the head in relation to how we grow. Somewhere in the mess and how dark it can be, you need that moment where you think about how you want to grow.
This beautifully puts into words so many feelings that sometimes can’t be summarised or our process of healing
I live in a city where is summer all months of the year: Maceió- Brazil, but I am in a long personal winter, to use a word you used, neverthless I am growing, or I think I am (smiles) thanks to persons like you, Helen. Thank you very much.