Not Blooming. Just Thawing.

Thoughts from the Floor, written by someone doing their best

Stumbling, surviving, still here.

Not Blooming. Just Thawing.

Wow. April is already here.

How did you make it through the winter? Barely?

Yeah. Me too.

I reflect on winter and these are my findings.

This winter felt heavier than usual. The kind where the cold doesn’t just stay outside - follows you in. The days were darker, longer, and for me… really blue. I’ve heard people talk about Seasonal Affective Disorder before, but this year I didn’t just hear about it. I felt it.

And I did the things. The light. The routines. The “get outside anyway.”

Some days it helped. Some days it didn’t.

That’s the part people don’t always say out loud — sometimes you can do everything “right” and it still feels heavy.

Where I live, winter isn’t subtle. In February we hit 156 inches of snow. We were buried— like, up-to-your-chin buried. The world looked frozen solid. It felt frozen.

But snow has a way of making things look dead when they’re not. Underneath it, the ground is still holding life. Seeds are waiting. Roots are steady. Nothing is wasted. It’s just resting.

I started thinking about animals. Some hibernate. They don’t shame themselves for being slower. They conserve energy and stay warm until the sun moves closer again.

Some days that was me. Hunkered down. Waiting out the storm. To be slower. To be quiet.

Other days, though, when the darkness wasn’t just outside — it was in my head. Sitting still wasn’t peaceful. It was loud. My brain can do a lot when there’s nothing good to focus on - and not all of it is helpful.

(Yes, I cleaned and organized the office, the kitchen, most of the house. We are not discussing the basement today. ADHD side quest. Back to the story.)

There were stretches where I wasn’t motivated. I wasn’t energized. I was just… waiting. Waiting for something to shift. Waiting for the heaviness to lift. Waiting for energy that didn’t show up.

And then I saw a photo of a bison.

Massive. Strong. Covered in snow. Head down.

Not running from the storm.

Walking straight into it.

Apparently, bison do that. They face the storms because moving through them head-on actually gets them through faster.

That hit me.

I couldn’t hibernate my way through everything. Some things needed to be faced. Not dramatically. Not perfectly. Just head down. One step. One breath. One small action.

So that’s what I’ve been doing.

Not giant leaps. Not “new Year, new me.” Just one goal. Sometimes one email. Sometimes one shower. Sometimes one conversation.

And I can feel it now — not blooming, not exploding into productivity — just thawing.

The snow will melt. The water will wash away what doesn’t belong. The sun will stretch the days longer again. What looked dead will push up through the soil like it was never gone.

We are more resilient than winter wants us to believe.

And maybe that’s what this April feels like for me.

Not blooming. Not “back to normal.” Just thawing.

Still a little tender. Still a little slow. But moving.

And when it feels like too much — when the storm creeps back into my head instead of the sky — I go back to the floor. My starting place. The spot where I can breathe without performing. Where I can decide whether today is a hibernate day or a head-down-bison day.

Both are allowed.

Thawing doesn’t mean everything is fixed. It just means something is softening.

So, I’ll ask you this:

Are you in a season of hibernating…or is there one small step you’re ready to take into the storm?

Either way — you’re not behind.

Messy doesn’t mean broken. Sometimes it just means human.

Till we meet at the next resting point, whenever and wherever it finds us.

A messy human, doing their best— Robin Lynn