It always seemed odd that we called the Solstice the first day of winter. By then, it had been cold for weeks already. When I was little we lived much farther north, so the snow was thick on the ground long before the “first day of winter.” Then I got into witchcraft, and celebrating my witchly new year in late fall felt even weirder. Most places I’ve lived, Samhain makes more sense as the start of winter than Yule does, but celebrating any beginning just as the plants are dying and the days are growing short didn’t feel right. Now, roughly a decade later, I see so many things differently. Beginning the year with darkness makes sense to me now.

Everything starts in darkness. The darkness of the womb, the darkness of rich earth around a seed. Everything has such a long journey before it even reaches the light. We often say “first you crawl, then you walk, then you run” but we don’t mention our lives before crawling. We skip over the months in the womb and the months wrapped in blankets just trying to make sense of our bodies and the world around us. In some sense, our whole childhoods are the winter of our lives; we’re growing so fast, learning so much, but like tiny sprouts we make so little mark on the world. It isn’t until our late teens, the springtime of adulthood, that we begin to have real power to shape our own lives.

Ideas and emotions start the same way, in the dark caves of our minds and hearts. My own practice started this way. It started so small and secret, reading books and gazing at the stars. My longing for a more personal set of rituals, a deeper connection to history, the world outside, and my own unconscious mind began much more than a decade ago. It began in the dark, just as the new year begins with buried life sleeping in the dark and cold. Then came the “spring,” with my first embarrassed rituals, my first tarot deck, the first books I read with an eye to really putting them into practice.

Now, so many years later, I might be entering the long productive summer of my practice. I’m thinking more deeply about what it all means to me, practicing daily, starting to know what really works for me. I’ve started to root down into the earth and transform into someone a little more focused and powerful. The long summer of life is full of work and worry–jobs and kids and debts and responsibilities–and sometimes I get buried in those and fail to appreciate how much more power I have now to change myself and my life in the ways that feel right to me. So much more power than when I was a child trapped in an unhealthy family. More than I did as a young adult with no money and no idea how to find and nurture healthy relationships and a healthy sense of self. I realize I’m well into the summer of middle age now, and I can see hopeful little glimpses of a lovely autumn ahead when kids are grown and life slows down a touch. I hope all this work and worry gets me there.

This Samhain, this new winter and new year, I think I’ll start with a good look back at my life so far. I’ll take some time to recognize how far I’ve come and how far I can still go. Where I live it’s common to spend November listing things you’re grateful for and I’ve done that once or twice in the past, but as this difficult year passes and another one begins I think I’ll spend my month being grateful for myself and my own survival and growth.