I Need Spring So Badly It Hurts

I am so ready for Spring, it hurts.

Almost each day now, I feel a melancholy wash over me.

I search through all the storage lockers of my mind for the reason why.

And then I step into the blaring sunlight and know:

I'm just done with winter.

I need this to be over.

I need the next part to begin.


I am wondering if waking up to Spring is not much different than falling asleep to Winter.

I have to make it happen.

In the beginning of December, I was ready for everything to go away.

I was ready to be wrapped in blankets of snow.

To rejoice in the darkness.

To say "Look how lucky we are to have shelter and warmth!!"

I didn't cause the snow to fall or the sun to set early, but I made space for it in my life.

The season entered by its own power, and I offered up my whole body to the shift that had to happen.

We built our ritual nest and climbed in for weeks on end.

I stopped all work and let my mind slow down to the pace of the season.

I let die what had to die.

I brought winter into myself.


Is it any different now with Spring?

This season that I am so desperate to see happen, must I first create it within myself?

I need Spring.

I need sun, ground, and life.

I need this snow to melt and leave me alone forever.

I need these birds to surround me in their song every moment of every day.

I need this sun to blind me with its light and heat.

My body needs this.

And yet, I can't make it happen.

I am at the mercy of the skies and the trees and the light to do what they will do.

I must wait on them.

So what do I do with this incredible urge insisting that Spring come NOW?


This is my own absolute determination to be here, to be seen, to become.

This is the force of my own bud pushing its way up through frozen ground.

It is building and building and threatening to burst.

And burst it will.

Just as the crocuses will burst from the ground one day soon, so must I.

Against this hard soil holding me down, frozen.

Until I break through the soil and erupt with my own color.

I am the bud, pushing, not yet emerged.

I am the seed of the flower, open and taking root.

Forcing myself out of this old casing and into a new body, a bigger being, a greater force.

I can feel myself roaring to come alive.

Utterly determined to make myself be known.

To make myself be seen.

I am this tiny force against this heavy earth.

And I have absolute conviction to do what I must do.

This is the push of Winter into Spring.

And I am so ready to do it.

Love,


Whitney Rhiannon Till

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