Winter to Spring.

Summer has most always been my favorite season. Usually I am so excited for Summer to just get here already that I don't mind just rushing through Spring. But not this year. This year with the arrival of Spring, I have felt like I have been able to take deep long breaths of clean air. Air I was gasping for this winter.

This winter was a hard one for me mentally. My mind felt dark, blank, and closed off. With the birth of our delightful baby Ulysses (really, he is so wonderfully delightful!), my responsibilities grew. Physically I felt I could keep up, even with the lack of sleep that always accompanies a newborn. But mentally, emotionally, I was drowning in a sea of anxiety, fear, and guilt. I couldn't make even the seemingly easiest of decisions without my mind being flooded with the fear and guilt that I made the wrong choice. I deliberately and conscientiously had to tell myself to get up each morning and function, to smile, to interact. Most days I managed, and I always tried to not let my boys feel the brunt of my abnormal emotions, but I am sure they noticed. I remember most nights  having a hard time falling asleep because my mind was riddled with everything I failed at. Sometimes that still happens.

Never before in my life do I remember I time when I honestly wasn't sure I really wanted to be me. Not because I didn't love my life, but because I did not feel like I was good enough to have it.. Never before in my life do I remember a time of having the thought that those around me might just be better off if I were not around. As I write this down I realize how down I really was, it is a little scary. In hindsight, maybe I should have sought some medical attention like my Mother kept gently urging me. But I didn't, I just kept trying to "ride the wave" (as my Mother would also say.)

But the good new is that I think most of my mental "winter" has passed. Oh yes, I still carry fear, anxiety and guilt around with my everyday. But I like to think that I am coping with them better. I feel my confidence slowly returning with each sunny morning that is filled with the sound of happy chirping birds. I feel my mind beginning to thaw from its fearful frozen state each time I am able to open the windows and let the fresh spring air sweep through our home. All of the tulips, the daffodils, the peonies, the lilies, the allium are beginning to grow, some of them already blooming. And I each time I see them through my window, or walk past them in my yard I feel bits of myself beginning to come back too. And it feels so very comforting to know that after a long winter I am still here. I am growing.

“In a way winter is the real spring, 

the time when the inner things happen, 

the resurgence of nature.”
-Edna O'brien

(Thank you to my dear sister and friend, Rachael, who first read me this quote years ago.)