Into the Cave

I grew up in California for the first 25 years of my life...many years spent just a half a block from a private beach. I dream of "Black's Beach" often and frequently the dream is characterized by huge waves coming toward me. Sometimes I am helpless in the water and drowning.

Winter was a time of duller colors, less warmth in the sun, but still, a temperate climate...so much so that I literally did not own socks for most of my childhood and adolescence, sandals were my only footwear.

Winter in Virginia means golds and browns and trees devoid of leaves...the river is a muddy brown and the temperatures range in the 30's to the high 50's. For a California girl, it's just plain cold and unpleasant. It is not a time that I enjoy being outside and for many years now, I've been affected by a disorder that has come to be known as "seasonal affective disorder" or SAD. Doesn't that seem blatantly obvious that when the sun doesn't shine as much and rain and snow are prevalent that people would be sad?

I become introspective in the winter, like a bear heading into the cave to curl up and rest; I journey into the symbolic cave in my mind and power down my energy to just "be". It is not a time of creativity for me, but a time for charging my battery and storing energy rather than exerting it. My greatest challenge is being in present time with the season. It's so natural to want to live in the future...visualzing the plans that have been made, anticipating a warmer and happier time. But it's important to experience this down and low time and that is what I am in the process of doing.

So perhaps I'll be silent here for some time. Perhaps I'll find lots to say. Perhaps I'll emerge in the spring from this cocoon, a brand new butterfly.

Namaste`,
Connie