There is a season for everything and everything has a season. That’s what they tell us, right?

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I could feel my limbs creak like a dried-out tree in winter when I tried to write. I wasn’t dead, not yet, but the season of being dormant had set in deep. Autumn had come like a thief, stripping away things I loved and held dear.

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It hadn’t been a beautiful autumn. It takes the right conditions to help the leaves turn vibrant orange, golden yellow, deep rich purple. The earlier months need the right amount of watering and sun to nurture them to their beauty.

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My spring was dry. My summer hot and long.

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My autumn was wet and cold. The leaves quickly turned brown and dropped to the ground. The hard work of winter set in quickly and thick.

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I never thought that particular winter would end. It felt dark.

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A birthday and a Christmas not acknowledged. A surgery was forgotten. Nights spent awake, harassed. Unable to go home. Too many nights spent unable to go home. Would this bleak winter ever pass?

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As it always does, it snuck up slowly, and all at once, springtime, new life. One day the ground feels hard, cold, uninhabitable. The next a small seedling springs forth, reminding you not all is lost. My writing felt the same. A nudging, a prodding, a poking against the hard, cold earth, beckoning me to awake again. It only took the smallest encouragement, the preparation of the right conditions, the gentle touch of someone who cared to make it explode into a new life.

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Flowers bloom more beautifully when you talk sweetly to them. People are the same. I did not need much love and care to begin to heal and grow. I just needed the right attention. The attention to the smallest details to make me bud into new life again.