It did not arrive with thunder or warning.
It came quietly, one grey morning at a time. The air turned colder, and so did her thoughts. She could still smile when she needed to, but her eyes had learned how to carry what her face refused to show.
It began so gently that she almost missed it. A skipped walk here, a cancelled call there, a reason to stay in bed just a little longer. Like floating on calm water, she let herself drift, unaware that the soft current was pulling her farther from shore. By the time she looked back, the distance was too wide to swim.
She had entered winter. Not the one outside her window, but the one that lived inside her. It was long and silent and endlessly cold.
She knew that spring existed somewhere beyond the frost. She had lived it before. But she could not see it from where she stood, and knowing a thing exists is not the same as being able to reach it. The colours around her had faded. Even laughter, once easy and unremarkable, now felt like a sound from another life.
So she waited. She learned to move more slowly, to listen to her own silence without fearing it, to find warmth in the smallest things available to her. A cup held between both hands. The sun that still rose each morning even when she did not. The light of late afternoon that asked nothing of her except to be noticed.
Days passed. The frost began to loosen its grip, not all at once, but in the way of quiet promises being kept. The air softened slightly. Her steps grew a little lighter. She was still the same woman, only changed in ways she could not yet fully name but could begin to feel.
That is the thing about seasons. They always return, but never quite as they were.
We live them not only outside our windows but inside our own minds, each one arriving with its own truth. A beginning, a pause, an ending, and then a beginning again. The cycle does not ask permission. It simply continues, patient and indifferent, until one morning the light looks different and you realise the worst of it has passed.
When her spring finally came, she did not rush it.
She had learned enough to know how fragile new beginnings are, and how easily they can be bruised by impatience. She stepped into it carefully, gratefully, the way you step into warmth after a long cold.
And she was glad she had waited.