01/22/2026
The Winter of Grief: What Lies Beneath
Grief feels like winter.
It arrives without warning,
a thinning of the light,
a chill that seeps into the bones.
The world grows muted,
stripped down to what is essential.
Laughter sounds distant.
Time slows.
Even breath feels heavier.
In winter, everything appears dormant.
The ground hardens.
What once bloomed with ease
now seems almost inconceivable.
Grief does this too.
It convinces us that life we once trusted
has disappeared,
that color has drained from our lives,
that what was lost
is gone forever.
But beneath the frozen surface,
something is still alive.
Hidden under the cold soil
is a seed, small and patient.
It carries the memory of what once was
and the quiet promise
of what might still be.
Grief, when allowed to exist
without being hurried or denied,
shelters this seed.
Every tear is moisture.
Every remembered laugh,
every ache of longing,
every time you say their name aloud
becomes an act of tending.
Nurturing this seed
does not mean forgetting the winter.
It means honoring it.
You return to the memories
not to reopen old wounds,
but to shield them from the cold.
You tell the stories again,
even when your voice shakes.
You let the love
that once had a place to go
move through you instead.
In doing so,
you keep the ground
from becoming barren.
Spring does not arrive all at once.
It never does.
It begins with the smallest signs:
a softening,
a brief moment of ease,
the realization
that pain no longer fills
every corner of the day.
One day you breathe
without bracing yourself.
Another day,
you smile without guilt.
These are not betrayals of loss;
they are proof
that love is still working
its way toward the light.
The seed does not replace
what was lost.
It grows because of it.
It carries memory in its roots
and tenderness in its leaves.
What emerges
is not the same life as before,
but a life shaped by remembrance,
deeper,
more fragile,
more honest.
Grief is like winter, yes.
But winter is not the end of the story.
Beneath the cold,
something waits.
And when you care for it,
when you allow yourself
to remember,
to ache,
to love still,
it will sprout,
because love
never truly disappears.
~ 'The Winter of Grief: What Lies Beneath' by Spirit of a Hippie
✍️ Mary Anne Byrne
