The Darkest Days

and what we find walking a path again and again

Dec 17, 2025

I walked today in the woods, a short trail I’ve walked for more than two decades now. The comfort and ease of knowing the loops and meandering hills and the three rocks steps across a stream. The knowledge that there is always something different — a downed tree, a slight reroute, deer crossing the trail, the water higher or lower — always something to notice.

I’ve walked this trail many times on this, not the darkest day of the year, but my own darkest day.

Another year, another walk.

On the anniversary of Henry’s death, I walked at the Audubon sanctuary at Graves Farm. I put my gaiters on before I left the house and tossed my snowshoes in the car. The snow was deep, but I walked the trail that deer and other people had trod before me. While I trudged, getting into a rhythm, I let my mind wander, noticing it circle around again and again to work and the kids I had sent off to school and the things I needed to remember to do, watched it dance around what this day was. Then I’d breathe out and notice where I was, the rough barked trunk beside me, the way the snow drifted on one side of all the trees showing where the prevailing wind had been. I’d stop and listen to the stillness, to the creak of the trees in the cold and a quiet traffic sound in the distance.

The woods were dim and shaded. Snow turned rocks and fallen logs into hills and hummocks, softening and rounding the landscape. Even the rocks over the stream looked like a bridge with snow fallen and packed between them. I stopped mid-stream to listen to the water trickling along. It looked almost still at first, but then you could see it moving, burbling and shape shifting like an amoeba under ice.

Years ago, I stood on this rock in the center of this stream. In the picture, I’m wearing the white pullover fleece Brian gave me as a gift and there is little snow. You can’t really see it yet, but I’m pregnant and everything is okay. Or so we think. We don’t know that Henry’s chromosomes have already started deviating from the norm. We don’t know that his heart will struggle.

As I stood on that rock again, in the cold stillness with just a bit of sun slipping in from the flooded swamp, I felt all the hope that has trickled by like the flow of the water. Where does it go, hope?

I can picture the photograph of that earlier winter day clearly, but the woman in it seems so foreign, so far away. There is a brightness in her eyes that both appeals to me and confuses me. I can come back to this place. I can even wear the same fleece pullover, but there is an openness in her that I can’t access.

I don’t have her innocence anymore. I’ve learned that I can’t trust that things will be okay. I’ve also learned that more things than I’d like are out of my control. I’ve seen things I’d rather not have seen—a red gash with a zipper of stitches up a chest the size of my hand, a tiny face turning dusky blue, the same face turning red with anger with eyes brimming silent fat tears, soundless because of the tube down a tiny throat. I’ve felt the deadweight of baby and the weight of empty arms longing to hold. She never imagined these things, that women standing on the rock in the long ago stream. I envy her that.

On the anniversary of Henry’s death, I stood on that same rock mid-stream, where that woman I almost don’t recognize beamed with expectation. I stood there, bearing the weight of all she didn’t know and couldn’t even conceive, breathing deep the smell of the woods. I can’t see the future with her unbridled enthusiasm, but I can still see these woods, still see the water flowing under the ice and the birch bark curling back. I can still notice the deep two pronged footprints of the deer and the pine branches fallen to the ground. I can still hold my head back and gaze up in wonder as snow, light as fairy dust, swirls from the leaden skies.

I need you to know both of these things, who I was and who I am, what I don’t have and what I do. This is grief: what is always missing and what you still hold, and also what you take back, rediscover, reclaim. There is light in my world, even in December. There are shadows too. You need both. You get both, like it or not.

Today, noticed the light, filtered and dappled through the evergreens and the bare branches of maple and oak, birch and beech. I noticed it dipping already at 2, noticed the shade in the woods and the sun as I exited the trail to a field.

Today the wind that has been bitter the past few days was quiet, the air gentle enough I unzipped my coat and took off my gloves, appreciated the softness, the caress of this day.

Today, I noticed all the green even in this winter landscape — moss and lichen and a fern sticking out from the snow, pine and hemlock and ground pines, the glossy leafed mountain laurel.

I walked and noticed the greens and other signs of life — the litter of picked apart pine cones a sign someone had a snack, the scat on the trail, the scattering of snow fleas hopping in footsteps.

Sometimes it seems like this day is an ice jam, clogging up this month, this season. Tomorrow I’ll exhale and things will begin to flow. We have a few more days of growing darkness in this winter before the light returns, but tomorrow that process starts in my own personal calendar. Even before that I find the light

In this season of dark, I appreciate especially the glow of the tree lights, the candles at dinner, the fire in the stove, the lit windows and outside trees on my night walks. I appreciate gentle light, the cusp between light and dark, the last glow of the already set sun in the late afternoon.

I appreciate the slowing down, the space in this season, this day I give myself to not do. To read, write, make things with my hands, bake things that warm the house. One year bread for my restless hands, one year the chocolate orange cookies for the bright hit or citrus, today the warm cinnamon of granola.

Tonight we’ll sit around the table and eat beef stew I made yesterday, gifting myself ease today, gifting myself comfort. Tonight we’ll sit and find good things in our day. Even this day, they are there.

Where are you finding light these in these short dark days?

write • nourish • grow

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