I feel the cold settling in, but not on my skin. It comes from within, like a slow mist that dims my urgency. I no longer want to explain, to prove, to rush. And my first impulse is to argue with myself: why am I no longer who I used to be?
Then I fall silent. And I listen.

Emotional hibernation never arrives with spectacle. It doesn’t knock on the door. It slips in quietly. It slows my steps, shortens my answers, gathers my thoughts into a warmer corner. It is the season in which my soul whispers: enough, for now.

I learned—slowly—not to fear this cold. For a long time, I mistook it for failure, for weakness, for lack. I believed I had to be forever open, forever luminous, forever growing. But the truth is, not all growth is visible. Some of it deepens.

In my emotional hibernation, I no longer seek validation. I seek stillness. I no longer want the noise of forced optimism or the pressure of being “fine.” I want to sit, simply, with what is. With my emptiness. With my fatigue. With questions that ask for no answers.

It is a time of gentle withdrawal. A time when the soul gathers its resources, like an animal that knows winter is not something to defeat, but something to pass through. I no longer fight my lack of motivation. I no longer judge it. I see it as a message: stop. And I stop.

Sometimes, this hibernation hurts. Because it brings with it small, quiet losses: old enthusiasms, desires that no longer burn, versions of myself that no longer belong here. I let them go without drama.

In the soul’s cold, I learn tenderness. I learn not to rush toward spring. Not to force the light. I light only a small candle: a book, a purposeless walk, a morning without a plan. Just enough to keep from freezing entirely.

I know now that emotional hibernation is not an ending, but a preparation. Beneath my apparent silence, something is rearranging itself. The roots are strengthening. Meanings are clarifying. Even if I cannot name them yet.

When the soul grows cold, I no longer argue with the season. I let it be. I let myself be. Because I finally understand that my spring will come precisely because I had the courage to remain in winter.