The weather this winter has been atrocious in New York, a level of cold New Yorkers refer to as “brick” and I jokingly (sort of) refer to as unlivable. As I write this, I am staring out my window at the Hudson River, frozen solid, wondering how the life below the surface holds the anticipation of this season ending. It’s natural to them, of course. Unlike me, who has taken years to learn how to relax into it.

Relaxing into this season means embracing the bareness of it. Winter is (or should be) when everything slows down and preserves energy for the coming season. It also means working with it rather than against it. Incubation. Rest.

Bears, seedlings, us.

The cycle of life, of nature, of all living things.

Like flowers that start as seeds, grow into seedlings, sprout, bulb, bloom, and eventually wither, so do we over the course of a year. Of our lives. Sometimes we shed all of our leaves and become new again in another season.

A never-ending pattern.

Still, it’s a challenge to accept. This is the cycle that nature has followed for all measurable time and we still have trouble relaxing into it as a natural course of the cycle of our own lives. Because unlike most natural lifeforms, we grip things — as they are, were, might be.

Recently a friend and I were talking about the grief that comes with letting go — of old things, people, identities, and even dreams — even when we know, and believe, that it’s time for something new. She said something that reframed what my mind and body had been trying to metabolize for weeks, if not months. Maybe years.

I had referred to something I was leaving behind as "a dying dream", and her response was:

"What if the dream isn't dying, but complete?"

W H E W.

Dream complete. Time for something new.

In that moment, my heart shifted and my mind followed. What I had been feeling — the downward drag of reluctant decay – gave way to something else. It felt like a full, bright breath.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about what happens when we learn to recognize the drying out seasons when we’re in them.

What shifts and becomes possible when we start to surrender to their place and purpose in the bigger picture of our lives rather than struggling through them?

Can we learn to look for the unique beauty present in completion, instead of clinging on - - - to the dream exactly as imagined, to the thing, to the person, to the place, to the season - - - its once-peak form?