What If January Isn't Asking You to Begin Again?
A gentle invitation to honor winter's wisdom—especially when you're grieving
The clock struck midnight. Fireworks exploded. Almost everyone cheered.
And maybe you smiled. Maybe you lifted a glass.
Or maybe—if you're reading this—you felt that familiar ache. The one that whispers: I don't know how to be new right now. I don't know how to begin again when I'm still in the middle of something so raw.
If that's you, I want you to know something.
January isn't asking you to begin. And neither is your grief.
The Great January Lie
We've been told that January 1st is the portal. The fresh start. The moment when everything can be different.
But here's what I've come to belileve, both as an astrologer and as someone who has walked through deep loss: this calendar date is remarkably arbitrary. Asking ourselves to be new and goal-oriented in the dead of winter may be one of the most unnatural things we do.
The Gregorian calendar is only about 400 years old—a recent invention born of frustrated astronomers and bureaucratic necessity. Before that, for thousands of years, cultures understood something essential: the year begins when life begins. When flowers bloom. When animals stir. When the earth wakes.
That moment is the spring equinox—around March 20th—when the Sun enters Aries and the wheel of the zodiac begins again.
Not January 1st, when the world is still deep in winter's embrace.
What Winter Actually Asks
Nothing in nature is springing to life right now. Seeds rest beneath frozen ground. Trees stand bare. Animals sleep. The whole world is practicing stillness, survival, and quiet waiting.
We're in Capricorn season—steady endurance, not explosive transformation. Then comes Aquarius (dreaming), then Pisces (dissolving and feeling). Only after we've moved through all of this do we arrive at Aries, when the fire of new beginnings actually has kindling to catch.
No wonder so many resolutions fade by February. We're not aligned with the season. We're fighting against it.
Some seasons are for blooming. Some seasons are for hibernating. Both are necessary.
And for Those of Us Who Grieve...
If you're navigating loss, this pressure to begin anew can feel especially heavy.
Grief doesn't follow calendars. Grief doesn't care that the ball dropped in Times Square. When you're grieving, winter can feel eternal. The dark days stretch long. And everywhere you look, the world is shouting about new beginnings while your heart is still learning how to beat around its absence.
What if this isn't your season for beginning?
What if this is your season for simply being?
What Your Grief Already Knows
Grief has its own seasons. They rarely match the calendar on your wall.
Sometimes spring arrives in your soul in October. Sometimes you need three winters before the thaw comes. Sometimes you experience a whole lifetime of seasons in a single afternoon.
This is not broken. This is human.
Your grief is not a problem to be solved by a New Year's resolution. It's an expression of love—and it deserves to move at its own pace.
The Moon doesn't panic when she wanes. She knows that fullness and emptiness are both part of wholeness.
You are not broken when you feel empty. You are not failing when the grief returns.
You are cycling. You are breathing. You are being beautifully, necessarily human.
A Gentle Invitation
So here's what I want to offer you:
What if, instead of resolutions, you chose permission? Not goals to achieve, but ways of being to honor. Not transformation demanded, but rest allowed.
What if, instead of beginning, you simply continued? One breath at a time. Trusting that spring will come—in the sky, and in your soul—when the timing is right.
January will pass. The wheel will keep turning. And somewhere around March 20th, when the Sun enters Aries, you may feel something stirring.
Or you may not. And that's okay too.
For now, rest. Hibernate. Honor the season you're in.
And I'll be here, walking beside you.
With warmth in the dark,
Debra
✦
If you need a companion for this season...
I created something for moments like this—when the world is asking you to rise and your soul is asking you to rest.
Your Grief. Your Timeline. Your Way. is a collection of permission slips from your soul. Gentle pages that meet you exactly where you are. No fixing. No rushing. Just quiet reminders that you're allowed to grieve in your own rhythm.
Take what you need. Leave what you don't.
