Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Begin.
Spring – no matter how long the lead up, no matter how many signs of change show themselves, Spring sometimes feels like deep sleep in a dark room when suddenly the curtains rip open and the lights flick on. Jarring. This time is an invitation, sometimes a pushy one, to show more of ourselves to the world.
We’ve been resting in darkness, hidden under layers, cocooned in the slow pace of short days and frozen nights. Then, as if suddenly, the sun comes out to say, “show me your knees and shoulders”. Nature bursts with life and color and it is a process. When I look at leaves unfurling on trees and tulips pressing up from the Earth, I think of the stretch marks on the backs of my legs at age 11 when my bones grew so fast my skin couldn’t keep up. The dull ache of age in my muscles. As if the stretch, the sensation, the tension, the pain was simultaneously preparing me for what will be and softening the child-like innocence of my body to release what was.
The sensations of transition, of change, of movement are complex. In this time of the year we hold both joy, hope, possibility, a surge in energy – and all at once, the darkness from winter lingers on the skin. The space between what was and what is – is grief. The ache of love of energy, of plans, of hope with nowhere to land. In the midst of all this blooming life, we are reminded of what no longer is. Grief arrives in waves, sometimes soft, sometimes crashing.
It often feels like we can only hold one thing at a time: grief or joy, life or death. But as whole humans, whole souls, we are everything, all of it, all at once.
I am the playful little girl growing faster than I understand. I am the stretch marks pushing me into maturity. I am the carelessness, the liberated joy, and the sudden, deep, sometimes critical self-awareness and doubt. I am joy and I am despair.
We are all of it all at once. Grief doesn’t ask to be healed before we bloom. It just wants to fortify the journey.
You are the blooming and the breaking. The warm sun on your skin and the cold rigidness in your bones. You are laughter at the dinner table, even with an empty seat. You are the tears that come without warning. Grief doesn’t cancel joy. It just reminds us how much we’ve loved, lived, existed.
This season doesn’t ask you to be fully healed. It asks you to open – even if it aches. Even if part of you still longs for winter’s quiet. Do it with a hug, do it with community. Spring!
Witness the breathable discomfort, the sensation in the blooming. Let the joy be messy and full and whole. Let the grief walk with you into the light.
Jasmine Linane-Booey of Kazuko Wellness is a Somatic Energy Guide. Contact hello@kazukowellness.com for more.