Goddess of Spring: Emerging

Spring is here.
Sort of.
Our Goddess has awakened from Winter's long sleep, although, apparently, she's not ready to abandon her cocoon altogether. So, she wears it—loosening here, opening there.
Because emerging isn't the same as arriving.
​
She still carries Winter's questions: Am I pretty enough? Thin enough? Good enough? Do you approve?
But something has changed.

Look at her eyes.
​
Winter dreamed with hers closed. Spring is looking forward—curious perhaps, a little cautious, possibly surprised by what she sees.
Or by the realization that she gets to decide what and where to look.
​
Pearls and diamonds are tangled through her hair. The pearls have followed her from Winter, but they're no longer hidden treasures extracted from a shell. They're on display.
Perhaps she is beginning to understand that being seen and being judged are not the same thing.

That's a rather profound discovery for a young woman entering a world eager to tell her who she should be, how she should look, what she should want—and what she should want to be wanted for.

Spring hasn't figured any of that out yet.
Thank goodness.
​
She's experimenting. Testing boundaries. Trying on identities. There is vulnerability in emerging, but exhilaration too.
Perhaps she's beginning to replace one question with another:
How do you see me?
becomes
How do I want to be seen?
And somewhere beyond that waits the far more interesting question:
Who am I when no one is looking?