New beginnings

Earlier this week, the sun appeared and for a few hours there was gentle warmth in the air. Some colour emerged from the winter greyness.

It wasn’t strong, it didn’t last, but it was enough to make me feel that spring is not too far away. Enough to soften the air and for a change to the winter birdsong along the riverbank.

In just a few days, so many returning voices could be heard again - skylarks rising and spilling their song into the sky, yellowhammers calling from hedgerows, reed buntings and meadow pipits moving through the margins and sitting in the bare trees. Melodic song thrushes announced their presence and oystercatchers lapped at the water’s edge.

They joined the year round residents, the robins, wrens, goldcrests, swans, herons, cormorants, mallards who hold the winter line.

Deer were out in abundance on open ground. Hares sat in fields with their usual alert stillness.

And, closer to the earth, the snowdrops are still bringing their brightness, and for me, always a reminder of my Great Grandad who cherished them.  Their small white heads pushed through cold January soil, exactly when they were meant to. They’re now being joined by crocuses and other emerging spring bulbs.

Snowdrops don’t wait for perfect conditions, or for winter to be gone. They emerge anyway, responding to something subtle but certain: a shift in light, a change in season, something they sense before it is fully visible to humans.

Though we are not that different.

There are times in life when something in us begins to stir before we fully understand it. A quiet knowing that things cannot continue exactly as they have been. A sense of readiness, even if the path ahead is not yet clear.

Not urgency, or pressure, but the first signs.

Spring has always been associated with renewal, but renewal rarely arrives as a dramatic turning point. More often, it begins quietly with space to pause, to notice, to reflect.

To ask simple but important questions:

What feels ready to emerge now?

What have I outgrown?

What needs more light, more attention, or more care?

What would I like to be different by summer?

Clarity rarely comes through force, but through attention. Through moments of stillness. Through conversation. Through allowing something new to take shape at its own pace.

Like snowdrops, we don’t need to have everything figured out before we begin. We only need to notice what is already beginning to emerge.

If this season feels like a point of change for you, you’re welcome to reach out and begin a conversation.

Carolyn Deveney

Nemophilist Coaching & Wellbeing