Winter Woman

“When winter comes to a woman’s soul, she withdraws into her inner self, her deepest spaces.
She refuses all connection, refutes all arguments that she should engage in the world.
She may say she is resting, but she is more than resting: She is creating a new universe within herself, examining and breaking old patterns, destroying what should not be revived, feeding in secret what needs to thrive.
Winter women are those who bring into the next cycle what should be saved.
They are the deep conservators of knowledge and power.
Not for nothing did ancient peoples honour the grandmother.
In her calm deliberateness, she winters over our truth, she freezes out false-heartedness.
Look into her eyes, this winter woman.
In their gray spaciousness you can see the future.
Look out of your own winter eyes… You too can see the future.”
~ Patricia Monaghan

This is where I am.
'Feeding in secret what needs to thrive.'
Sitting around the fires of The Ancestors, listening intently to them speak
as I stir the cauldron of collateral beauty and kindness.
Here,
I am quiet and still.
As one must be if one wants to listen.
I want to listen.
I want to hear what has been already experienced.
I want to re-member that my challenge and our crisis is not the first
to have come to pass.
So, I listen.
And what I hear is words and stories that bring me to COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY as a place of being in listening, learning and healing.
COMMUNITY in which diversity is needed, wanted and welcomed.
COMMUNITY where reliability is law.
COMMUNITY where we are not required to agree but invited to honour.
COMMUNITY as the back bone of humanity.
So I listen.
And as I listen, I tend.
And as I tend, I expand.
And as I expand, I root in, 
and I stand firmly in place.
The winds blow, the rains fall, the storms rage.
And I remain rooted in,
sitting around the fires of The Ancestors, listening intently to them speak 
as I stir the cauldron,
as I examine and break down old patterns,
as I destroy what should not be revived.
as I feed in secret what needs to thrive.
Here I remain.
Winter Woman.