February sticks out of the calendar like a sore thumb with her oddly shortened days.
When I walk familiar trails around my house, I remind myself that soon, the world will be green and blooming again. But for now, wrapped in layers, I am apart from everything. Leaves don’t brush my legs as I walk through the narrowest trail, which opens up to the open expanse of ocean far below. When I breach the crest of it, the wind off the sea finds no bare skin to touch. And I could walk barefoot in the waves, but I leave my shoes tied. I choose the warmth of isolation.
While everything is hibernating, while everything waits with bated breath for spring, we fall into it together.
It’s easy to feel lonely in February.
It’s only natural we hold our breath and wait for warmer weather to reach back out towards anything else that moves.
But isn’t loneliness also a kind of suffering?
Loneliness hurts like a missing rib. Loneliness is a symptom of an ancient infection.
Something to be numbed while we search for a cure. Disconnection from everything else is a root cause. We’re dehydrated, especially in winter.
The truth is, we need people as much as we need water.
In steady doses, in ways that keeps us moving and healthy and human.
But even when I am not suffering from acute withdrawal of water— even when I have bottles full and remember to take careful sips all day — that does not mean it gets absorbed.
We’re chronically dried out. All of us. We’re missing vital minerals that remind us how to root in and accept the watering of connection. We touch each other but we miss each other entirely, the weight of us that matters. The parts of community that make us whole is the osmosis— the careful hand off of pain and joy in honest doses. If we share these burdens for a moment, we are balanced.
If we don’t, we wonder why at the end of the day, even though we said a hundred hellos and took a hundred sips, we are still thirsty.
Is there a cure for loneliness? I think it starts with truth. We ease our suffering by reaching for deeper layers. Beyond pleasantries and ‘doing well,’ we are honest creatures, with complex stories.
Let me remind you that even though February strips the branches bare, the roots are busy underground. They are working while they rest. They are tangling into each other for a deeper foundation. They know they will bloom again, and they know what to do with the relentless rain of February. They drink it up, they absorb, and they prepare to transform.
All this, while we wait for spring. A winter’s worth of water saturates us, but down there in the dark is all the honest salt-of-the-earth goodness that will pull us out of the dirt in good time.
So dig deep today, for something true. The rawness of your humanity is not a burden; it’s meant to be poured out, received, and held inside a container made by all our hands, all our roots.
Very nice Winter reminder. Lovely photographs.