This post should come with a profound and poignant quote about the end of winter, something that speaks to a new beginning, the restorative power of a winter spent fully focused on slumber and rest, but you’ll have to Google elsewhere for that, as I got nothing.

So much of this season was spent in obscurity and shadow, encased in the darkness of snow and ice, and not even granted any semblance of a January thaw. All we could do was go through it – inhabit the cold and dark, and just keep on going through it. This winter made us work in that way, so it didn’t exactly feel as restful as I would have liked. Winter work can be maddening when all you want to do is sleep and be silent. Still, we went through it. We got through it. At the end of winter, sometimes that’s the best you can do.

Mercury remains in messy retrograde motion for most of the week ahead, but relief arrives with the coming of spring. This Winter Obscura has been precisely what it said it would be – a hazy, obscure, confusing season where nothing was certain, nothing resolved, and everything in flux. Let’s put an end to it with the weekly blog recap…

It began between the quiet blank lines.

White flower palette to match the snow.

Being normal is ridiculously overrated.

Why not so quiet?

A gratuitiously naked Paul Anthony Kelly.

A new mantra is born.

Morning light amended.

The truth of a violet.

When winter refuses to yield.

Meaning and beauty in these Wicked Fabulous bracelets.

Spring fever baby!

Afterglow of a dinner party for two.

The Orange Julie Monkey.

There are no words.

Soul-searching Sunday scaries.

Am I asking for too much?

Oh possum!

Dazzlers of the Day included Harry Francis and Jordan Palmer.

Oh possum, how I feel your pain, how I get your predicament, and how I share your unbothered, fabulous brilliance in the face of the world burning down as you so eloquently foretold it would.

Burn it all down, I say, and fuck ’em if they can’t take the truth. As this crazy cold winter limps to its inevitable end, what was once hazy and obscure is starting to come into clarity and focus – and all that’s been hidden is revealed for a true reckoning. Our country made have given up entirely on accountability, but this blog hasn’t.

With that, I straighten my tiara, align my pearls, and watch it all unfold with a detached glee.

“Wow.”

It was the last thing I said as we finished up my most recent therapy session. My therapist laughed a little, having just acknowledged that our session had been a lot.

A lot.

A phrase that has followed me for my entire life, one that I’ve only relatively recently learned to lean into and embrace. One that still stings when I suspect it’s meant in a pejorative manner. In this instance it was my therapist’s way of saying we’d gone deep and started the work on issues that went back to childhood. And it was a lot, as well as a beginning.

It’s been over six years since I began regular therapy, and I’m still reminded that things which happened for half a century won’t and can’t be solved in a few sessions. Or even six years of sessions. It’s humbling and daunting and precisely the sort of challenge that sets my mind to work.

Despite the carefully curated and cultivated image that most see here – an image of some dainty, hot-house flower of privilege that I’ve flaunted, taunted and perpetuated – I’ve always been ready to put in the hard work, and never shirked off a challenge, especially when it involves the possibility of self-improvement. I’m constantly on the prowl for such opportunities. It’s not all sequins and sparkle, feathers and fluff.

Sometimes, we have to go deep.

And sometimes it can wait until spring…