After the Glitter

That collective emptiness that follows the holiday rush!

January always arrives softly.

After the rush.

After the noise.

After the effort of holding joy, holding grief, holding togetherness, sometimes all at once.

We return to routine. Back to school. Back to work. Back to the familiar scaffolding of our days. And there is comfort there. Routine steadies us. It tells the body where it is, where it’s going, and what is expected. It gives shape to time again.

And yet, there is often a hollow that comes with it.

Not depression.

Not sadness exactly.

Just… space.

A collective exhale after weeks of emotional output. A quiet grief for what was briefly possible: more closeness, more pause, more connection—or even just the idea of it.

For some, the holidays illuminate longing.

For others, they highlight absence.

For many of us, they do both.

I felt it in the missing of a rhythm, the knowing. The certainty that I would check in, or be checked on. When that cadence ends, the body notices before the mind can explain it.

And still, beneath it all, something remains steady.

An awareness.

A trust.

A quiet knowing that even when things feel unformed, they are landing where they will.

Looking back, not everything has unfolded the way I intended. But when I widen the lens, I can see the artistry of a guided hand—how grief softened into compassion, how loss taught tenderness, how faith did not erase longing but learned how to hold it.

I still carry a dream.

Of lightness.

Of play.

Of loving banter and gentle touches that speak their own language.

Of two hearts one day entwined—yet whole.

Beating together not from need, but from rhythm.

And this season, after the holidays, before the next becoming, asks something different of us.

This is not emptiness.

This is a step in becoming.

It is the patient pause where existence is witnessed.

Where nothing needs fixing.

Where wanting does not mean lacking.

Where trust and desire sit side by side without urgency.

If you’re here too—in this quiet, collective stillness, know this: you are not behind. You are not broken. You are not waiting wrong.

You are present in the pause.

And presence, like all true beginnings, is essential and enough.