There’s a line I keep coming back to this time of year:
In the bleak midwinter…
Not the cozy version of winter.
Not the Hallmark-card version.
The real one.
The kind where things feel stripped down.
Where old structures no longer hold.
Where the familiar rhythms, titles, routines, external validation, have quietly fallen away.
That’s where many of us find ourselves in this chapter of life.
Not broken.
Not lost.
But standing in a season that feels colder and quieter than the one before.
For years, decades, really, your value was obvious.
Your calendar was full.
Your role was clear.
You knew where you fit.
And then one day, often without ceremony, that chapter ended.
No applause.
No clear next step.
Just space.
A bleak midwinter.
Christina Rossetti’s poem doesn’t rush past that moment.
It lingers there.
Frozen ground.
A stable, not a palace.
A beginning that looks nothing like success.
And that’s the part most people miss.
The most meaningful beginnings rarely arrive with confidence.
They arrive with humility.
What I see over and over, both in myself and in the people I work with, is this quiet tension:
I still have so much to offer…
but I’m not sure how it fits anymore.
That uncertainty isn’t failure.
It’s transition.
You’re no longer driven by proving.
You’re pulled by something quieter.
Impact.
Meaning.
Contribution that feels true, not impressive.
The poem ends with a question that matters more now than it ever did earlier in life:
What can I give Him?
And the answer isn’t effort.
Or productivity.
Or reinvention for reinvention’s sake.
It’s simpler than that.
Give my heart.
Not your résumé.
Not your former title.
Not your old playbook.
Your heart.
Your lived experience.
Your hard-won wisdom.
Your ability to see what others miss because you’ve been around long enough to recognize patterns.
This chapter doesn’t ask you to start over.
It asks you to offer what’s most essential.
To design what comes next, deliberately.
To shape a portfolio life instead of chasing another role.
To use modern tools not to keep up, but to extend your voice.
The ground may feel cold right now.
But that doesn’t mean nothing is growing.
Some seasons are for building quietly.
For listening.
For choosing what you will, and won’t, carry forward.
If this feels like your moment, here’s the question I’ll leave you with:
What would this next chapter look like if it were designed from the inside out, not driven by fear, but guided by meaning?
The bleak midwinter isn’t an ending.
It’s an invitation.
And you’re not done yet.
