Hello friends,

I hope this finds you well and safe. Here in western Maine, many of our small, rural communities are on alert with the arrival of ICE. To say it is disheartening feels like an understatement. Our community partners are coordinating care, and working together to ensure that our neighbors, family members, and loved ones remain as safe as possible.

As if that weren’t enough, we’re also staring down record-breaking Arctic temperatures this weekend, followed by a major snowstorm. Taken together, it’s a lot

It reminds me that life moves in cycles, and not all of them are gentle. Some stretches are simply hard. Winter is hard, but it’s a kind of hard with an end date—you know, even on the bleakest day, that it will not last forever. Other difficult periods are less defined. They linger. They blur into normalcy. Sometimes you don’t even realize how heavy they were until you’re standing on the other side of them. I look back on COVID now and think, wow—that was hard, even though at the time it just felt like survival.

Nursing school is one of those demanding chapters. I’m old enough to know there will always be another challenge waiting beyond it. Still, I imagine finishing school as stepping out of a cluttered, chaotic room. The mess will still need attention—but at least I’ll be standing in clearer air, able to see what comes next.

Nature planned Imbolc at just the right time. The coldest, harshest part of the year in the northern hemisphere. And yet—here comes the gift of light. It’s a subtle offering, easily missed if you’re only measuring the day by temperature. But it’s there, if you know how to look: the days stretching just a little longer, warmth returning to the sun’s touch, its angle shifting ever so slightly. Birds flit and sing. Icicles on the south-facing eaves drip at noon. Small, stubborn signs of what’s ahead.

These are reminders that even the hardest times contain the seeds of what follows.

So I am choosing hope. I am choosing to believe that this moment—however heavy—will not stand forever. That light and kindness endure. That spring is not naïve optimism, but a certainty written into the natural world.

It is coming. And until then, we keep going.