Shadow arrives the way winter does: quietly, without permission, and often before I’m ready for it. One day I’m keeping up with life just fine, and the next I’m craving silence, softness, and a kind of inner stillness that feels more like retreat than rest.

And retreat, for me, has always felt a bit uncomfortable.
As if pulling back means I’m unraveling or falling behind.

But Shadow isn’t the unraveling.
It’s the gathering.
The folding in.
The resting of parts of me I’ve pushed too hard for too long.

I’ve been sitting with something lately — the subtle seasons we move through as women, the ones that shape us quietly from the inside out. Those deep interior winters, the first flickers of returning light, the wobbly middle where everything feels tender and uncertain… I’ve lived them all, and I have a feeling you have, too.