Today I came back from my walk/jog and realized that the snow was gone from the side of the house that faces south. Everywhere else was still covered in deep snow—and on my jogging route mists hung above the snow and below the trees. It was a warm day that made your brain think of spring even as your eyes told you it was still winter.

But when I saw the stretch of green grass I suddenly remembered that there were crocus and daffodils bulbs I’d planted in the fall—right before the final freeze—and I ran over and began scouring the area looking for any signs of spring—any green shoot.

I can remember back to November. I had a basket full of fall bulbs that I had procrastinated planting because of work and travel. It seemed I never had the time. And then watching the winter approach, I remember thinking that I needed to plant the bulbs for ‘future me.’ The day I planted them I was catapulted out the door with my shovel and the basket of bulbs by imagining it being the end of winter, and walking out my door, with no spring flowers to look forward to.

I am truly grateful for ‘November me.’ Seeing the green shoots of daffodils and crocus today made such a difference. A reminder that growth can lie fallow. That you can’t always see what is happening when all is dark and cold. That maybe we already have all we need to head towards the light.

I know I haven’t been writing much for the outside world lately. There’s such a cacophony of noise and outrage. I don’t know what to say to all of the hatred and violence. I don’t know what to say to all the children who have been hurt. I don’t know any way to stop it or slow it down. Words seem so small. And there’s so much constant chaos. It feels like there’s a thousand Double-Dutch jump ropes spinning at once: I watch them go around and around, and I don’t know how to jump in. What possible difference could it make?

But then two barely ½ inch yellow-green shoots show up in my yard and I remember that hope and bravery are contagious. I see the small shoots who have waited patiently underground. Have waited patiently under piles of snow. Have sunk their roots in, in a new place, and trusted themselves to show up.

And I remember the Girl Scouts behind the table in their winter jackets selling cookies, having shoveled out a place to put their table. Or the people I work with who are doing AIDS research, or staffing a newsroom during a war, or working their shift in the NICU or the pediatric emergency department—who almost all also leave their shifts to go home to their own children at the end of the day—and somehow manage their own broken hearts enough to help with homework, read bedtime stories and make lunches the next day. A faith not in the whole future, but in the small acts of beginning and ending a day.

I remember all of them and my heart hurts—but it is also full. Life is both so courageous and fragile. It breaks my heart to hold that trauma is so asymmetrical—with some people living in bunkers right now and others in comfort. Some children in dance recitals and some dying in rubble. It’s true that trauma has always been asymmetrical—whether at the individual or collective level. But it’s also true that some of us can sometimes have choice about what we plant. And we can also choose to look for the green shoots of growth, or love or faith wherever we can find it—and we can be grateful for its presence. And we can nurture it along.