The Light Is Returning (Even If You Cannot Feel It Yet)
What the days between the Winter Solstice and Imbolc teach about trusting what we cannot see
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about what it shifted in you.
The turn has already happened.
Since the Winter Solstice on December 21, the days have been lengthening. Where I am in Paris, we have gained nearly 50 minutes of daylight. The sun rises earlier. It sets later. The arc of light across the sky grows wider each day.
You probably have not noticed.
This is the strange thing about the return of light. It happens so gradually that the body does not register it. January still feels like the depth of winter. The cold is bitter. The skies are grey. The mornings are dark when the alarm sounds. Everything in your experience says: winter is here, and it is not going anywhere.
But the light is returning. It has been returning since the longest night.
Why It Does Not Feel Like It
There is a lag between what is happening and what we feel.
The Solstice marks the astronomical turn. From that day forward, the Northern Hemisphere tilts incrementally back toward the sun. The change is real, measurable, and undeniable.
But our bodies do not register incremental change. We notice thresholds, not gradients. We feel the moment when the coat suddenly becomes too warm, not the gradual warming that preceded it. We notice when we can read by natural light at dinner, not the daily accumulation of seconds that made it possible.
January is the lag. The turn has happened, but the feeling has not caught up.
This is true of so many things beyond the seasons. The healing has begun, but it does not feel like healing yet. The underground growth is largely invisible. The change that will only be apparent in retrospect.
The light is returning. We are simply not built to feel it yet.
What I Noticed This Week
I have been paying attention on my walks.
Not dramatically. Not with instruments or calculations. Just noticing. When does the sky begin to lighten in the morning? When does it darken in the evening? What is the quality of the light at midday?
This week, I noticed something new.
The light in the late afternoon has a different quality than it did a month ago. There is more of it. The day does not collapse into darkness at four o’clock the way it did in December. There is a stretching, a lingering, a reluctance to let go.
It is subtle. If I were not paying attention, I would miss it entirely. But attention reveals what rushing past would hide.
The light is returning. I can see it now. Not because it suddenly became visible, but because I slowed down enough to notice what had been happening all along.
The Season Between Seasons
We are in the space between.
Deep winter is behind us, though it does not feel that way. Spring is ahead, though it seems impossibly distant. We are in the unnamed territory between Solstice and Imbolc, the Celtic festival that marks the first stirrings of spring.
Imbolc falls on February 1. The word means “in the belly,” referring to the lambs stirring in the ewes, the first movements felt as new life grows within. It is not spring. It is the quickening that precedes spring. Life moving in the dark, invisible but real.
This is where we are.
The light is returning, but it does not feel like it. Something is quickening, but we cannot see it yet. The seeds planted in autumn are doing their slow work underground. The sap is beginning to rise in trees that still look dead.
The season between seasons asks something difficult of us: trust what we cannot feel.
Trusting the Turn
I have been thinking about what this teaches.
So much of contemplative practice is about trusting what we cannot see. Trusting that the sitting is doing something even when we feel nothing. Trusting that the walking is working even when the mind stays busy. Trusting that the attention is accumulating into something even when each moment seems insignificant.
The return of light offers the same teaching.
You do not have to feel the light returning for it to be true. The turn happened on December 21. The days have been lengthening ever since. Your experience of deep winter does not change the fact that spring is approaching. Your feeling of darkness does not mean the light has stopped.
Trust is not the same as feeling. Trust is continuing to walk when you cannot see the path. It is letting the seeds stay underground without digging them up to check. It is believing in the turn, even when everything feels like the middle of winter.
A Practice for These Days
Here is one simple practice for the days between the Winter Solstice and Imbolc.
Notice the light. Not once, but repeatedly.
In the morning, pause and observe: how light is the sky?
In the evening, pause again: how much light remains?
Compare today to yesterday, this week to last week.
You will not feel the difference in any single moment. But over days, attention accumulates. You will begin to see what has been happening all along. The gradual, imperceptible, undeniable return.
This is the practice of trusting what we cannot feel. We do not force the feeling. We offer attention. We let the evidence accumulate. We trust the turn.
What Is Quickening in You
Imbolc invites us to consider what is stirring beneath the surface.
The Earth is preparing for Spring even while Winter holds. The light is returning even while the cold persists. Something is quickening in the belly of the world.
Something may be quickening in you as well.
A project that has been dormant. A longing that has been waiting. A change that has been gathering underground. The season between seasons is when these things begin to stir, long before they are ready to emerge.
You do not have to force it. You do not have to dig up the seeds to check on them. The quickening happens in its own time, like the light returning whether or not we notice.
Your only work is attention. Notice what is stirring. Trust that it is real even if you cannot feel it yet. Let the light return at its own pace.
Spring is coming. The turn has already happened. The only question is whether you will trust it before you can see it.
Do you?
Walk With Me
If this resonates, I invite you to subscribe to Where Insight Meets Earth, my weekly reflections on contemplative walking, ecospirituality, and embodied practices for navigating what overwhelms us
In September 2026, I am leading a contemplative walking retreat on France’s ancient Le Puy Camino. Seven days of walking in presence on a 1,000 year old pilgrimage path. Only 4 participants. Private rooms for everyone. Every accommodation directly on the path where pilgrims have walked for centuries. Silence as practice, not punishment. If you are curious about what contemplative pilgrimage might offer you, details are here.
If you want to delve more deeply into this, I am launching the Rewilding the Soul EcoSpirituality Certificate at Cherry Hill Seminary in March 2026, a year-long journey exploring Earth kinship through contemplative practice. Learn more here.