This year, as late winter sulked and sank in its usual heavy, water‑logged way, I found myself embracing this inevitable seasonal threshold; the time when “stirring beneath the surface” begins, when deep‑Yin feminine energy wakes and generates the first impulse toward awareness. This is Worm Moon time: sap rising inside the trees, worms moving underground, the subtle quickening before anything breaks the surface.

This year, Lilith knocked loudly, she refused to stay asleep within me. Thankfully, I have been dedicated to personal inner work for several months and was curious and receptive to hearing Lilith’s messages. She’s the archetype who refuses unconsciousness, who awakens inside the dark, who insists on truth before emergence.

Working with archetypes and fairy tales has become one of the most powerful ways I navigate emotion and the sensory world. (I was studying myths and archetypes in my late teens into early 20s then pushed this work aside.) They offer a map for the psyche, especially when paired with essential oils that support rest, sleep, and dreamwork — the inner terrain where these stirrings first appear.
As life wakes and turns toward yang/solar energy in late winter, we still need rest. Yet we’re asked to “spring forward,” lose an hour of sleep, and move prematurely into yang time when nature demands otherwise. Daylight Savings forces outwardness too soon, disrupting the very ecology, internal and seasonal, that needs rest to generate healthy movement. The body is still in winter’s architecture. Yin is still gathering.

A poem, Thunder Beneath the Water’s Edge, came through exactly at that threshold. I wrote it on the morning of 3/3/26, the morning before someone very dear to me was going into open heart surgery. Essential oils and their corresponding aromatic plants, along with archetypes and poetry, supported me during this stressful time; together they offered a healthy container for my shakiness. (Listen to the podcast episode for more.)

A Poem: Thunder Beneath the Water’s Edge
In time the water will recede, and the cattails will bloom.
But the stars are stuck—the phoenix won’t rise.
Thunder is stirring beneath the water’s edge, gathering force and will.
It’s time to dream into existence the very thing that stirs inside — the one who knows you.

The deeper arc of late Winter—Lilith’s awakening, the Worm Moon’s stirring, the rupture of Daylight Savings, and the essential oils and aromatic plants that protect sleep and dreams—is explored in the March 3rd episode of Essential Aromatica.