Heidi Gray McGill Walking Through Adormant Season

Repost from Author 

Heidi Gray McGill  

https://heidigraymcgill.com/2026/10/03/grief-in-dormant-seasons/

 

Walking Through a Dormant Season

I’ve been learning something about grief in dormant seasons, and it started on an ordinary walk. I get outside no matter the weather, three times a day when I can manage it. Some days that’s a thousand steps around the cul-de-sac. Other days it’s two miles of hills. A few of those walks I take barefoot. I can’t fully explain why. The cold, the heat, the rough ground under my feet, something about it wakes me up when the rest of me has gone numb.

This season has been emotionally heavy on me. I’m holding onto everything that keeps me steady: a regular sleep schedule, real meals instead of whatever’s quickest, movement, people who matter to me, and time with the Lord, which has turned out to be the hardest part. I still count my blessings. I still thank Him for His goodness. But these days I ask for more than I used to.

Recently I asked Him outright to answer me. I’ve never heard God speak out loud, but I’ve felt Him in ways I couldn’t explain away. Even so, I wanted more than that this time.

A Leaf Where I Least Expected One

When walking, I keep my eyes on the ground more often than on what’s ahead. Being visually impaired makes that a mixed habit. It means a low branch can catch me off guard, or someone can get close before I hear their footsteps, or a goose can stay silent right until the honk sends my pulse racing. But it also means I catch things I would otherwise walk past. One blue flower in an entire field. A dragonfly resting on a puddle. A leaf.

On that day, the leaf was the answer.

The rest of the leaves on the ground were dry and curled from weeks with no rain. This one was bright red, and that’s not a color you see in South Carolina late in August. I bent down and picked it up. It had already fallen, yet it was still soft in my hand, nothing like the brittle ones around it.

Grief in a Dormant Season Isn’t the End

Death was the first word that came to mind. The end of something. I turned that leaf in my fingers and wondered if the tree it dropped from was dying, the way I felt on the inside, then glanced up to bright green.

A tree that drops its leaves in a hard season hasn’t given up. It’s dormant. Everything it needs gets stored underground, out of sight, until the season shifts and it can bud again. Nobody standing in front of a bare tree in January calls it finished. They call it waiting.  

Showing Up in Grief Anyway

I’m still in the season of showing up and doing it anyway. Still walking, wanted or not. Still opening my Bible on the mornings it feels like talking to a wall (Psalm 13 says it better than I can). None of this has gotten easier just because I’ve done it a long time. Some days, faithfulness is nothing more than the next right thing, with no evidence yet that it counts for anything.

This is grief in dormant seasons: the days when you wake with no enthusiasm for what’s ahead, and the exhaustion hits well before it’s time for bed. Things that used to come easily now require more than you have to give, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, or financially.

My fingers ran over the silkiness of that leaf, and I took a deep breath, and reminded myself dormant isn’t dead. A season that looks empty from the outside can be the exact place where something is taking root, out of sight, until it’s ready.

I don’t know yet when this season will turn. The audible answer hasn’t come. But a red leaf, soft against dry ground in the middle of a drought, was enough to remind me He’s still here.

Where This Grief Series Is Headed

What’s the one small, easy to miss thing in your life right now that you’d catch if you started looking down instead of past it? A conversation that surprised you? A morning that didn’t hurt as much as the one before it? A quiet moment that felt, for a second, like enough?

The holidays are close enough now that this is often when a hard season shows up sooner than expected, or more than we’re ready for. If you’re heading into that season carrying something heavy, I don’t think you’re the only one. Over the next few weeks, I want to keep walking through grief in dormant seasons with you, not because I have it figured out, but because doing this together, with you, means neither of us needs to walk it alone.

If this is the season you’re in, you might also want to read The Shadow of Sorrow in the Light of the Savior