The Bones of Winter

What happens when we listen to the rattling of our bones.

Jan 31, 2025

It’s deep winter here, just outside my window. So much time has passed since I wrote to you.

It’s been a year since I started my project on The Wheel of the Year, which you can read about more here. This project helped me reconnect to my writing practice after a 3 year hiatus. Everything required to produce these zines (Making digital art, writing, listening to storytelling and researching) reframed my understanding of deep time, and how I fit into it. The Wheel offered me opportunities for self reflections and softened the regard with which I understood (or didn’t) my own natural cycles.

This weekend, we will be ushering in Imbolc, the subtle awakening season. This is where we get to burn a candle, call in the light and slowly sort through our seeds for the next growing season. Imbolc is a celebration of what is to come and of the return of the goddess Brigid.

In my ideal creative world, I would already be down the research rabbit hole of my 2025 yearly project. I would be following my schedule and be happily creating , taking whatever time I have to research and collect information. That project has not materialized yet, and while I want very badly to just pick something and commit to it, I know better.

Imbolc reminds me that I can take my time, I do not have to earn it.

As the snow twirls outside my window, I find myself at my familar crossroads, yet again.

Do I push through this current creative stagnation and force myself to commit to a 2025 project?

Do I listen to the echo of nothing, heed to all my intuitions and wait for the Muse to show herself?

There is a lot of creative rhetoric that would tell me I need to push through (read Chuck Close), write everyday, muscle through it and anything shy of that would mean I’m not an “artist” enough.

In the early days of creative recovery, the rigid discipline and- to steal from Bro Culture - “Rise and grind” attitude helped me stay the course and develop a practive that I could trust and rely on.

But it’s 2025 and the world is on absolute fire, and well, I guess I know better now.

With more greys in my hair, a new toddler at my skirt hems and grief in my heart, I feel slightly more comfortable in the dormancy of right now, I am listening to what my bones are saying.

I am practicing trust, in myself, in my creativity and in a wider purpose, one that does not demand me to be constantly producing for the sake of consumption (mine and yours)

I am tending to the delicate center that fears that I am not to be trusted, that my work doesn’t mean anything if it’s not hanging in a gallery , sold for thousands or used as inspiration to others.

I have played in my journal (I recommitted myself to this practice with the help of Tammi Salas and her Ray of Light Community) and sorted out my yearly rituals that I like to devote myself to around Yule + the New Year.

I am napping and reading fiction (um, hello NIGHTBITCH).

I am listening to podcasts while I slowly fold laundry ( I see you my fellow Telepathy Tape Women)

I am engaging in The Gathering, an offering by Alexis Cunningfolk

Like the seeds and the plants who are slumbering, I too can take time off of from being “productive” and confront my learned beliefs that these moments of dormancy are not “worth anything”.

The wise women I sit with remind me that I am a Human Being, not a Human Doing.

Over the next few days, I will light my candle to that thought and keep my eyes out for the Muse.

“The Bones of Winter” digital collage , emeline villedary, 2025

I am turning to Motherwort to help me feel safe in this radical moment and Mugwort to help stimulate my dream world and see if any I can gain insight from that space.

I am comforted by the slow stirring of Imbolc, and the idea that I do not have to know it all- that more shall be revealed, as my wise ones say. And am hopeful that as I return to this practice of writing to you, that the sap will start to flow once again. Maybe I am a silver maple tree?

Signing off with some tidbits from the Imbolc Zine (downloadable link below), journaling prompts and some ressource links for you follow if you are interested! I will be back here in a few weeks to talk about the next cycle of our wheel: OSTARA!

IMBOLC INSPIRED Journal Prompts:

WHEN ALL IS STRIPPED AWAY AND YOU ARE REDUCED TO WINTER BONES, WHAT PARTS OF YOU ARE LEFT? WHAT HOLDS YOUR ATTENTION?
WHAT CAUSES HOPE TO RISE WITHIN YOU? WHAT ACTIVITIES, ENVIRONMENTS, CONNECTIONS FOSTER THE FLAME OF HOPE WITHIN YOU?

Here below is the digital zine issue of Imbolc, that I produced last year.

You can find 29 pages of inspiration, rabbit holes, rituals and art: