Winter's Dark Night and The Shadow of My Projections

“Projection is one of the commonest psychic phenomena…Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly.” - Carl Jung

Where do I go when grief isn’t just a quiet ache but a roaring, ceaseless storm that shakes the very ground beneath me? When I realize that the pain I feel isn’t because of what you couldn’t give me, but because of what I desperately wanted to give myself and couldn’t. You were just a mirror, a holder of the dreams and expectations I buried deep, so deep I hadn’t even seen the emptiness growing within me. Sobonfu Somé taught that grief is a path not to be rushed—a slow, sacred journey that strips away our illusions and leaves us face-to-face with our truest selves. And now, here I am, stripped of projections, standing raw in front of my own unmet needs. The pain is like winter’s chill, closing in on all sides, forcing me to see what I am without any warmth to hide in.

The mask is ripped off, and there is no going back.

It is said that when we deny our grief, we deny the depth of our own love and longing. I wonder how long I’ve been avoiding these parts of myself, evading the darkened spaces within, afraid to confront the rawness. Here I am, feeling as if the tears may never stop. There’s a deep well of sadness here, not just about you, but about the illusions I held, the dreams I clung to. Maybe that’s the hardest part: realizing that once grief like this touches us, we are changed, but we don't know how - let alone if we will survive.

I feel the cold truth of winter settling in. A season that does not ask whether we’re ready. A season that kills what is not strong enough to survive. I can’t help but wonder, does something inside of me need to die? Is this grief asking me to shed the parts of myself that no longer serve? Parts that I clung to because I thought they made me whole. But what if they were only keeping me from wholeness?

This isn’t just grief for the relationship or for the person I thought you were. It’s grief for the person I thought I was. Grief for my own inability to see myself clearly. Sobonfu described grief as an act of bravery, a willingness to walk into the fire of our own losses and vulnerabilities, not knowing who we’ll be on the other side. And yet, here I am, standing between what I feel I cannot bear to let go of and what I know I cannot keep.

Where does this leave me?

In winter’s depth, where life is forced to a standstill, I am left with nothing but myself—no projections to cling to, no illusions to hide behind. Just the bare bones of who I am. I wonder if this is what Sobonfu meant when she said that grief is a return to our deepest self. Maybe I must be willing to lose these parts of myself, to let them die like brittle leaves, trusting that something truer will emerge from the ground they once covered.

Where does my grieving end so I can pick myself back up and begin again? Or do I need to let myself fall apart completely, to die in some sense, to ever fully live? What happens if I surrender to this grief without fear of the death it brings?

In this place, I am left wondering: is the purpose of grief not just to mourn what’s been lost, but to clear the soil for something unknown? Is there wisdom in letting this season of my soul bring me to a kind of death, so I can one day return to life?

Maybe winter is here to teach me that some things must die to create space for what might yet be.