When we write, we validate the importance of our own perspectives. We choose for ourselves how to describe a moment, an event, a feeling. Authorship and authority come from the same root word. When we write, we claim authority for ourselves and we bear witness to our own lives.

And then I remembered the very thing I've just written a book about: I trust myself. ⁣

One of my favorite seasonal songs is “Sister Winter,” by one of my favorite artists, Sufjan Stevens. The song is, in part, about making peace with winter and everything it entails: both coldness and warmth, a more acute awareness of both darkness and light, and experiences of both isolation and connection. The song is heartfelt and beautiful and triumphant. I love it, and I love it most for its title.

Since discovering that song, I now think of winter as Sister—a sister, a companion, a bosom friend. I’ve always loved winter, but thinking of the season as Sister Winter gives the season a different presence, a body.

I think of winter as a feminine presence.

Here we are, on the brink of winter solstice, the longest night of the year, the official beginning of winter. I know that fills many of you with dread. It fills me with delight.

Winter is my favorite season. I find beauty in the stripped down, pared back natural world: where I live, winter is the season of stark trees, bare of leaves. I used to dislike the trees that look dead, until I remembered to focus on the fact that they are most certainly not dead. Deep in the dark earth, their roots are thriving, replenishing, being nourished. And I used to dislike the long darkness of winter, until I learned to stop resisting and embrace it, heeding its call to get quiet, still, and rest.

It’s common to reference hibernating in winter, but I think we don’t often pause to reflect on what that really means.

I’ve realized I dislike Advent calendars.

Let me rephrase this: I like Advent calendars—I think they’re quite charming and festive looking—but I hate actually using them.

Advent calendars create anxiety in me.

I love December and the holiday season. I like to really savor all its rituals and be as intentional as possible about celebrating this season where we deliberately focus on giving and creating joy for others. So I hate how the Advent calendar, with its one fewer pasteboard door or window remaining to open each day, reminds me how quickly these days go by.

The weight of loss and grief—even just the burden of change—feels unendurable sometimes. We lament what leaves us, grieve preemptively for what we watch in decline. Impermanence feels unbearable.

Yet aren’t we all looking forward to an end to the pandemic? Don’t we all look forward with great anticipation to the end of our least favorite season? Aren’t we all relieved when the time-consuming project at work is finally completed, thrilled when the neighbor breaks up with her obnoxious boyfriend whose late-night drunken rowdiness disturbed our sleep, and giddy when the poison ivy rash finally clears up?

We cherish impermanence as much as we loathe it.