Piles of Cold: Braving the Winter Feels Inside and Out

Hi, Dears.

As much as I can have feelings of real hate for this
viciously  cold ,
viciously  snowy ,
viciously  freezing ,
winter season,

I really am grateful for it.

Yeah, there is bitterness,
and slush,
and subzero temperatures,
and piles of coldness sitting like a thud mountains,

and sheets of things
solidified
which used to be fluid
...

---

But seeing those qualities of nature gives me an excuse to be more empathic
with those icy feelings  within myself. 
Reminds me I do not have to have an excuse for these natural cycles of chillier, more dead qualities of my affect.

Its been an interesting couple of months on the emotional spectrum:

Getting back to school,
and surprisingly liking what I'm getting back into,
yet still questioning where this route is taking me.
And then doing that romantic thing of I often do--
feeling in love,
then not feeling in love...

The tossing and turning emotionally and vocationally brought up old
pains,
insecurities,
confusion,
apathy.
 Fortunately, I feel like celebrating myself as I've attempted to utilize the time as a means to practice a different approach towards healing
-- actual healing, not just coping.

Buddhist Philosophy is often good at reminding us that we are not our feelings. 

Emotions move through us, like waves.
As strong as they come in, they say, they will also move away
-- though it doesn't often feel like such the moments they come crashing down.
The reasons I think we so often push against sitting
with the tide of troubled feelings in the first place:
we fear if we let them wash over us, we'll drown,
or in this case, freeze. 
At least that is what I've subconsciously held onto for too long.

"Let go or be dragged",
some Buddhist would say, too.
If we run from the flood this time, it will only come to find us again
--and stronger.
I've come to the point where I'm tired of the running.

So,
I practiced the dreadful human chore
of letting the waves hit me.
Allowing myself to live in the sadness,
instead finding ways to escape;
allowing myself to be
cold,
bitter,
slushy,
solidified where I once was fluid,
until it moved through me.

And it did
--the easier part to celebrate.

The ice cracking,
with its water seeping reflectively through in its liquid state again,
bears hope for the emotional softening process. 
But, no good does it do to will oneself to be water,
when one is already ice.

The metaphor reminds me that the same emotions that were hardened,
derive from the same emotions softened,
 simply a matter of degree.

So, may we celebrate the frozen in us all, dear ones.
All those thuds of cold mountains of snow inside of us,
and in our loved ones. 
For living in the full spectrum of our human emotions
is more enlivening than to not allow ourselves to be the icy  which we, 
at times,
feel.

And it is only for a time...

xo.