Lessons from January

January is for digging though shadows, searching for deeper comfort. For wrapping oneself in the fur you’ve borrowed from the wolf inside your heart and sleeping like the bear beneath the frozen ground. We belong to the hearth fire and the frosted whiskers of the horses. January tells us to “stay where you are” while her wind howls through the somber trees and the snow blows sideways, drifting into sculptures of ice-colored waves, of rippling ponds atop fallow fields. January is for the hard and the brutal amongst us. The time when the earth falls silent, save for the wolf moon. The nights when the gentle fall prey to the cold. January is for the deer to retreat to the forest in search of shelter from the storms. To survive on bare branches and greenbrier brambles. January is not for love, for that is Imbolc’s scripture. Instead, she asks us to only breathe. Breathe in rhythm with the heartbeat of what’s below. Breathe and press closer to the fire, to each other, and to the darkness.

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