For the Season of Return

Written by: Liz Cerven

Dear Reader,

Lately, I’ve been watching the world thaw. Not in any grand, dramatic way—but in those slow, almost imperceptible shifts that remind me we’re entering a new season. The light lingers a little longer each evening. The birds have returned with songs that sound like memory. The air smells different—like wet earth and something waking up beneath it all.

There’s something sacred in this part of the year. Not the full bloom of spring just yet, but the tender cusp of it. The beginning. The in-between. It’s a season that doesn’t rush, and maybe that’s the invitation—to slow down enough to notice how life returns to the edges before it bursts open.

This moment doesn’t demand our speed. It asks instead for our presence.

I’ve been thinking a lot about emergence. About how we often imagine growth as something bold and triumphant, when in truth, it’s often quiet and tentative. Emerging from winter—internally and externally—takes time. It’s okay to come back slowly. To stretch without knowing exactly where we’re headed. To feel a little uncertain, and still trust the pull toward light.

This is a season that rewards intention. Not the pressure of perfection or performance, but the grounded kind—the kind that says: how do I want to feel in this next chapter? What rhythms do I want to honor? What can I let go of in order to create space for something more nourishing?

Growth doesn’t have to be loud to be real. Maybe your new beginning looks like clearing a surface that’s been cluttered for too long. Maybe it looks like carving out ten quiet minutes in the morning before the world begins to pull at you. Maybe it’s as simple as noticing the sun again, and allowing that to mean something.

There is joy in this pause between what was and what will be.
There is power in choosing slowness.
There is healing in allowing yourself to savor the space before action.

You don’t need to rush to catch up with anything. You are not behind.
This season reminds us that becoming is not a race—it’s a return.

And so I want to ask you:

What in you is waking up?
What is asking to be tended to—not with urgency, but with care?
Where are you softening, shifting, creating room for something new?

Can you sit inside the pause just a little longer?
Can you relish in it—not as a delay, but as a meaningful space of its own?

You don’t need a five-step plan or a finish line. You don’t have to name everything just yet. Spring teaches us that beginnings often arrive in whispers, in stirrings, in moments of stillness that we almost miss if we’re moving too quickly.

So let your becoming be slow.
Let your days hold small rituals of return.
Let yourself be surprised by what grows, and how.

I hope this season brings you back to yourself—not the version that pushes through, but the one who knows when to pause. When to breathe. When to notice the beauty just beginning to unfold.

With steadiness, and the quiet joy of beginning again