It’s Not Spring
It’s not spring, But I Still Feel Hope
The calendar says no.
My chest says… maybe.
It’s January. The sky is gray in that aggressive, Midwest way. The kind of gray that doesn’t hover so much as loom. Nothing has changed. Same routines. Same cold mornings. Same half-finished coffee I keep reheating like it owes me something.
And yet—something feels lighter.
Which is inconvenient, frankly. Because hope is supposed to arrive with daffodils and open windows, not windchill warnings and frozen eyelashes. But here it is. Early. Uninvited. Sitting across from me like it knows my name.
Do I trust it? Absolutely not.
Do I feel it anyway? Unfortunately, yes.
Hope Doesn’t Wait for Permission
We tend to treat hope like it needs a hall pass.
Spring equals permission to feel better.
A new relationship equals permission.
A fresh start, a clean calendar, a decent night’s sleep—permission granted.
But hope doesn’t actually care about timing. It doesn’t check the forecast. It doesn’t wait until your life looks Instagram-ready.
Hope isn’t optimism. Optimism is shiny. Hope is stubborn.
I live in Wisconsin, where winter isn’t a season—it’s a personality trait. Below-15 mornings. Wind chill that feels personal. And the cruelest tease of all: those random days in the upper 30s or 40s with bright sun and just enough warmth to trick you into believing things are turning around… right before Arctic wind barrels down from Canada and drops the temperature back into single digits.
And yet today, of all days, I felt hope.
Not New Year’s resolutions. Not “new me” energy. Just a quiet sense that maybe I could be a better person than I was last year. Maybe I could form new friendships. Spend more time with old ones. Be a little more present. A little less braced for disappointment.
Hope doesn’t usually tap you on the shoulder unless you’ve survived something first. And too often, that’s all I feel during the gray, cold days of winter, that i am just surviving.
The Quiet Kind of Hope (The One No One Posts About)
This wasn’t the loud, cinematic kind of hope.
No fireworks.
No declarations.
No vision board screaming THIS IS YOUR YEAR in aggressive serif fonts.
It was quieter than that.
The kind of hope that doesn’t announce itself. It just… stays.
If you’ve got an ADHD or OCD brain—or honestly, just an emotionally tired one—you know this feeling. Burnout dulls the big emotions. Relationship fatigue makes excitement feel suspicious. Even happiness can feel like it’s asking too much of you.
I didn’t feel happy.
I just felt… not done.
That’s the kind of hope no one posts about. The kind that shows up when you’re still cautious, still tired, still wearing emotional layers like it’s February inside your chest.
And maybe that’s why it felt real.
Winter Teaches You What You’ll No Longer Beg For
Emotional winters have a way of clarifying things.
They strip life down to essentials. No performative positivity. No chasing people who are emotionally unavailable but really good at texting just enough to keep you confused. No pretending you’re fine when you’re actually just functional.
Winter—literal or emotional—reminds you what you won’t beg for anymore.
You stop bargaining with silence.
You stop romanticizing inconsistency.
You stop mistaking anxiety for chemistry.
Hope gets clearer after disappointment.
Not because it erases what hurt you—but because it’s sharper now. More selective. Less willing to waste energy on things that don’t return it.
And that kind of hope doesn’t sparkle. It steadies.
Hope Isn’t Loud—It’s Persistent
Hope doesn’t kick the door down. It leaves it cracked.
It’s showing up again.
Trying one more time.
Answering the phone instead of letting it ring out because you “don’t have the energy.”
For me, hope feels like the cracks forming in the ice just before spring. You don’t see the thaw all at once. You feel it in small shifts. Longer light. A little softness underfoot. The sense that something is changing—even if you can’t point to proof yet.
This year, I’m choosing hope. Not resolutions. Just hope.
Hope for a steadier routine.
Hope for days where I feel and do better.
Hope for becoming the kind of person who spends more time with family—not because I should, but because I want to.
I want a daily rhythm that isn’t dictated entirely by outside demands. One that leaves room to be present. To notice things. To breathe without checking the clock.
Still cynical. Still cautious. Just… open.
You’re Allowed to Feel Hope Without Explaining It
People love to ask questions when you start to feel better.
“What changed?”
“Why now?”
“What’s different?”
Sometimes the honest answer is: nothing you can put in a sentence.
Hope doesn’t require a justification. You don’t owe anyone a PowerPoint presentation on your emotional state. You’re allowed to feel hopeful without a milestone, a breakthrough, or a dramatic turning point.
Hope doesn’t mean I forgot what hurt me.
It means it didn’t win.
And that distinction matters.
It’s Not Spring. But I’m Still Here.
It’s still winter.
I’m still learning.
Still guarded. Still paying attention.
But I’m here.
Maybe that’s what hope actually is—not a promise, not a plan, not a shiny future waiting to unfold. Just the quiet decision to stay open when it would be easier to shut down.
Or maybe it’s something even smaller.
And for now… that’s enough.
(We’ll see how I feel once the wind picks up again.)
Sources & Recommended Reading
Research & Articles
American Psychological Association – Hope & Resilience
https://www.apa.org/monitor/nov01/hopePsychology Today – The Psychology of Hope
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/hopeGreater Good Science Center – Why Hope Matters
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/hope
Books
LL&S-Aligned Products
