Persephone, our goddess of spring—abducted by Hades and trapped in a dark-and-light game of seasons and identity—is always ruminating on choked-down pomegranate seeds, wondering what if?

October is what happens when she settles into her throne and dissociates from the flowers and the light. She cracks open a can of Pepsi from the vending machine that costs $4.50, and knows she’s in hell. 

Like every year in Saskatoon, it may snow once this October—an early wedding gift to celebrate the kiss between Halloween and the white-sweater season of November.

The parade of dark sweats will take over the meticulous outfits that crowded the university halls as we rush forward: a new deadline to meet, a new paper to write.

We settle into the habits we cultivate, and we often have no time to make significant changes to them. On the bright side, there’s no time to feel the growing pains.

But that is what these months are for: the stillness in transformation—the quiet shifting of something unnamed and subconscious. We feel it, and we may try to talk about it, but the extent of it won’t come to light until everything else does.

We are all Persephone, holding fast and reigning our own version of the Underworld. These seasons and what we rule here are our kingdom. Exhaustion is a crown, unglamorous, but powerful–to keep going, keep showing up, even when everything around us is half asleep and floating (or monstrous and rattling its bones in the closet). 

I think a lot about the mismatch of this time. We are all snowed in by our various afflictions and responsibilities, and often, I don’t think we make the time to see the elegance of a flaw.
We are bustling and upset too often to notice the quiet appeal of the spilled drink and the missed appointment; the angry word and the overwhelm.

Given one collective deep breath, we could see the season for the machine it is and marvel at the coordination—every misstep is still a step.

Becoming is a messy process.

Often it feels as though time is pouring and flooding the kitchen, and you are sixteen, though you haven’t been sixteen in years and will never be sixteen again. The rain is hammering down against the window, and everything around you is different, but you are the same.

Still, you are always reassembling and moving—the slow and stubborn rebirth is never-ending.
How are the pinks of spring and the auburns of autumn in you all the time, everywhere you go?

The deadlines are approaching, the horror shows are starting, and you’re dressing up for Halloween and wondering how long you can get away with procrastinating on buying presents for the holidays.

The exhale comes when the snow falls—then the tensing is covered up with a thicker coat.

At this point, I start to wonder:
all those spring and summer days with Demeter in the light—
is it possible I haven’t grown at all?

The thing no one tells you about change is that it doesn’t wait for your permission, and often, you aren’t as prepared for it as you’d hoped to be.
It happens in the middle of everything: the unread emails, the laundry, the late bus, the small griefs you never name.
You think you’re standing still, but you’re already in motion, already shifting toward something you can’t yet recognize.

Before you know it, who you are is a strange mixture of someone you were and someone you don’t yet know.
You ask yourself how long you’ll keep the floor beneath your feet.
Then, you’re walking forward—on air or solid ground—and it isn’t as hard as you thought it would be, though the grief seems eternal.

Persephone does not choose the underworld every year, but she learns how to live there. It may not be a home, but she is a sovereign.
That’s all we can do—learn how to live here, in the dark parts of our calendars, in the versions of ourselves that haven’t grown yet.
To hold the weight of the season and still look toward the light, knowing we’ll meet it again.

Becoming is a slow accumulation of moments: the overpriced vending-machine Pepsis, the cinnamon, the surprising, recurrent October snow.
Transformation doesn’t always announce itself; sometimes it just hums under the surface while we get on with surviving.
And that feels a bit mythical itself—the knowledge that the someone we are is always becoming someone else, and yet we will always be the person we were.
The can hisses open.
It’s still $4.50.
The fizz fades, and then it’s still again.