I recently learned about the 5th season that exists in the northeast from a dear old friend. Here I thought there were only 4 season…  But when winter starts to thaw and spring hasn’t yet begun in it’s full bloom, there is a season of mud when it just feels like a sliding, slippery, gray brown mess. The deep underground is still frozen so when the surface begins to melt it has no place to go and just lays on top for a while until the depths soften. No one knows how long it will last from year to year. 

No seeds can take hold yet. The surface level of the earth looks pretty gross. It reminds me of the liquification that happens to the caterpillar before it becomes the butterfly. No wings to show, no beautiful colors, no lightness and fluttering. Just brown, earthy liquids encapsulated until the right moment to emerge. The mucousy, molten mess of becoming. 

It’s the birth pains and the extended labor that can happen before new life arrives. No one knows how long it takes. It seems eternal in those moments. The baby in the darkness being compressed and released as it slowly creeps to the light. Hovering and dangling between worlds. The mother breathing through what feels like being ripped apart and at the same time imploding. 

Waiting. In the discomfort and the messiness, It’s the the transitional zone before the new.  

All we have in those times is the remembering that spring will come, the butterfly will transform, and the new life will arrive. It’s a tense moment of blind faith when everything that the eyes can see shows nothing but discomfort we could just focus on things that don’t seem so beautiful in the physical, 3d  reality.  That’s when the inner voice is most important, the connection to the greater, the zoom out to remember how greater cycles work. We nurture and protect that tender new life not yet arrived, we observe what’s happening through a zoomed out lens, we trust the bigger process. 

And we breathe through it and simply wait until right timing arrives.