Early Spring Is A Yawn
On slow emergence, mixed days, and taking our time
“And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that have never been.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Welcome to Sage Haven. Here you’ll find a quiet space to slow down, reflect, and feel at home with the turning seasons. As a paid subscriber, you’ll enjoy full access to my 60-page Seasonal Wellness Ebook, plus the archive of heartfelt letters and my 30-day collection of gentle self-care prompts, each designed to help you pause, notice, and nurture yourself.
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This week, I’ve found myself easing back into friendship.
Not through a conscious decision or a big declaration, more like a quiet peeling back of a layer of protection I didn’t even realise I’d built. I agreed to meet one friend for a chat at the weekend. I spent an afternoon on a video call with another friend living abroad. Nothing dramatic happened. And yet, something shifted.
Over the last few years, my world had grown smaller. Physically, I was living in a house far from the city I that had been my home for 20+ years. Socially, connections thinned without me fully noticing. Internally, I became isolated too, unable to understand or explain what was happening inside those four walls, and lacking the energy to pretend it was all okay. Silence felt easier than trying to translate an experience I didn’t yet have language for.
At the same time as this gentle re-entry into connection, I’ve been in negotiations with my ex, dividing up a life we once shared. Years of time and entanglement reduced to numbers, assets, and logistics.
There’s still a voice inside me that says: stay quiet, stay small, don’t fight. A voice shaped by years of learning that ‘keeping the peace’ was the easier option. But I’m practising something new now. I’m learning to pause. To breathe. To regulate before responding. To speak from fact rather than emotion. To remind myself, again and again, that I am the only one responsible for my life, and that my opinion holds weight.
Like the weather lately, these days have held a lot of contrast. Light and heaviness side by side. Moments of warmth and connection followed by stretches that feel cold or unresolved. For a long time, I believed the aim was to move out of those harder days as quickly as possible. To fix them. To override them. To feel better. But I’m learning something different now.
Plants need the rain.
Not as a punishment. Not as a failure of spring. But because growth depends on it. Rain softens the soil. It allows roots to dig deeper. It prepares the ground for what comes next.
I think we need those days too, the not-so-happy ones. The ones that turn us inward. The ones that ask us to sit with disappointment or grief without immediately trying to transform it. Those days do real work. They help us process what we’ve lost. They teach us what we’re no longer willing to carry. They make space so that when the good days arrive, we can actually enjoy them instead of bracing for their disappearance.
This weekend is Imbolc, the ancient festival marking the very beginning of spring. Not the burst of blossom or sudden warmth, but the first quiet turning back towards the light. A promise, rather than a performance.
Imbolc doesn’t ask us to transform instantly. It simply reminds us that something has begun to stir beneath the surface. That the days are lengthening, even if the ground is still cold. That emergence starts long before anything looks impressive.
Meanwhile, the modern world has its own ideas about spring. Social media will soon be flooded with spring cleaning routines, fresh decor, perfectly curated gardens, and #freshstart energy. Some of it is inspiring. Some of it is exhausting. It’s easy to feel behind, like we should be doing more, shining more, emerging faster.
But spring is a full season of emergence, not a moment. We all come out of winter at our own pace. It’s not a race. It’s not supposed to happen overnight.
Early spring should feel like a yawn. Maybe a satisfying stretch. Maybe turning over for a longer lie-in before the day properly begins. The light comes slowly. So do we.
This gentle re-entry into life doesn’t happen in a vacuum. I’m doing it while parenting, which adds another layer of learning. I’m figuring out how to care for myself while also caring for my daughters. How to notice when I’m depleted without making it their responsibility. How to show up honestly without placing the weight of my emotions on their shoulders.
Some days I get it right. Some days I don’t.
Some days I hold space for everyone, including myself. Other days I realise, often a little too late, that I’ve been running on fumes. Parenting, like healing, doesn’t move in straight lines. It loops. It humbles you. I’m learning to let that be okay.
One of the biggest lessons this season has been that re-entry doesn’t require everything to be resolved. You don’t need closure on every chapter before you’re allowed moments of joy. You don’t need to wait until the logistics are finished or the boxes unpacked. Life doesn’t pause politely while we sort things out.
So instead of waiting to feel ‘ready’, I’m practising patience. Tuning in to what I’m able for today. Stepping forward when there’s energy. Stepping back when there isn’t. Trusting that both movements matter.
There’s a temptation, especially now, to read every good day as proof we should be doing more. Saying yes more often. Pushing ahead because look, it’s sunny now.
But gentle re-entry asks something different. It asks us to stay in relationship with ourselves as we return to the world, be it from an internal or an external winter. To notice when our nervous system tightens. To leave early if we need to. To cancel plans without turning it into a story about failure. To believe that we can move slowly and still be moving.
When I allow myself to sit with the rain, the harder days, the inward turns, the sunny moments feel richer. Less frantic. Less like something I need to cling to. There’s more trust that they’ll return.
And maybe that’s the quiet promise of this season: not that things will be easy from here on out, but that we’re learning how to live with what’s true. How to carry both grief and hope without one cancelling the other.
The fresh and sunny days of spring allow us to step back into the garden, tidy up some leaves, prune some bushes, just like the rain-filled days give us time to peruse seed catalogues and plan some projects for the summer.
If you’re in your own version of re-entry right now, back to friendships, work, creativity, yourself, I hope you know this:
You’re allowed to take it slowly.
You’re allowed to have mixed days.
You’re allowed to need rest and connection.
We can’t rush the seedlings. We shouldn’t scold the rain. We need to trust that something is growing, even when the sky is grey.
Until next time,
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This framing of early spring as permission to move slowly really landed for me. The metaphor of plants needing rain feels spot on, like how we sometimes treat the harder days as failures when they're actually doing necessarry internal work. Ive been trying to balance being present with my kids while also honoring my own need for rest and its messier than I expected but maybe thats the point.