(inner) winter - Leysin, Vaud

“My inner winter is intense, but it’s also the phase where I feel the strongest. The most honest.

Not because it’s easy. The pain can make me tired, irritable, and frustrated with my body and with the world around me. But there’s something powerful about enduring it. About knowing that every month, I move through this phase, and I’m strong and shedding and in pain and dealing with everyday things. If that’s not powerful, I don’t know what is.

Menstruation feels like completion. Like closing a chapter, my body has been writing all month. A release. A reset. Proof that I’m alive and my body is working just as it should be.

During this phase, I become whatever I want to be…more grounded, more honest with myself. With the people around me.

There’s power in that audacity to be 100% me.

My inner winter strips everything back to what’s real. And somehow, in the middle of the heaviness, I find myself.

And slowly, the tension softens. The fog clears. Energy returns.