Seasonal Sensitivity

I grew up with meaningful traditions, many of which were practiced over the holiday season. Each year, these activities would cause a sense of comfort, love and peace to my heart.

I have noticed as the years’ progress, there will be moments in the middle of my day and throughout the year, that I am keenly aware of intense emotions. Sometimes it is sadness, or anxiety or grief, anger or disappointment or even a sense of isolation and abandonment. It is not related to an event in the moment and catches me off guard.

I call this seasonal sensitivity: the flowering of truth. I have learned to welcome the feelings without judgment and to see them as a signal of truth. This truth is often related to an event or circumstance that has taken place in the past and has been rooted as soul memories. It is activating according to days, months or specific seasons of the year. It presents itself through my emotions in order to be noticed, processed and healed. It may need to be pruned and it may need to be discarded. It may be on its way to blooming into a valuable lesson or breakthrough, but needs some attention. I know now, if I do not deny or ignore it, it will have less triggering power over me each year and I can then begin to honor the memory and begin to build new, vibrant memories each season. The seasonal sensitivities become opportunities to become more self- aware in order to acknowledge my movement forward.

I am comforted by the fact that I do not have to forget the past, fear the seasons, anniversaries or losses, but I can be free to live and flourish going forward by reframing them as the flowering of truth. Truth that sets me free.

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

Isaiah 43:19