Wild Lilacs - Winner of the Spring 2025 Writing Contest

Each season carries a story, and Wild Lilacs blooms with the essence of change. This year’s Spring 2025 Writing Contest invited personal narratives that capture transformation through the lens of spring—renewal and the fleeting beauty of growth. Our winning piece embodies this theme with striking clarity and emotion.

This is Bibiana Krall's first narrative nonfiction piece, and we were delighted to later learn that she was stepping outside her usual genre to take on something new. Her ability to craft such a compelling and beautifully written nonfiction piece is remarkable—we’re so glad she took this leap, and we know readers will be too.

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Wild Lilacs

by Bibiana Krall

The uncut forest surrounded me, rich with the scent of earth and damp leaves, burrowing into my blood and bone. The wild lilacs by the barn, delicate and fragrant, sang a different note—yet both stirred something deep within, a quiet renewal. In the open space of nature, I felt free, yet inside our home, it was a different story. I wasn’t born to be a nameless worker bee in a hive, but as the third eldest, life with my seven siblings often felt that way.

Before I left home for good and moved to the Deep South, my formative years were spent on a Michigan farm, tangled in the rhythms of an enormous family. We were connected—to each other, to the land, to the unseen pulse of the seasons. It was immersive, powerful.

Winter came with stealth. The endless cornfields lay fallow, appearing lifeless—gray, colorless, oppressive. The cloying scent of decay clung to the soles of my boots, yet even in its death, the earth whispered a quiet promise: the cycle will continue.

Snow arrived like clockwork, covering everything in a silent, eerie hush. The landscape was frozen and watchful, like a shattered window in an abandoned house. Some nights, the fresh snowfall beckoned me outside at midnight, urging me to stand beneath the stars.

At four a.m., tending the animals in the barn, our warm breath curled in the frozen air—a phantom of life. We were safe inside our cocoons of flesh, going through the motions, our fingers stiff with cold, waiting for the sun’s return.

Fire was our anchor against the long dark days. Candlelight flickered against the walls, barely holding back the shadows. Woodsmoke curled from the hearth, threading through the house like a silent promise. The scent of homemade bread—spoils from the summer garden, now rationed with care—lingered in the air, a reminder of warmth in a season that gave us little. The land had been good to us, and in its stillness, we waited for the days it would be able to give once again.

But winter made us wait. It made me long for color. The sky, a blank canvas of white and gray, reflected another world—distant, unreachable—as if seen through a hag stone.

Whiteout. Waiting. Wishing.

I spent hours in the library, lost in books that could take me anywhere, or sat at the window, searching the horizon for a sign. Some proof that we would emerge on the other side—changed, renewed. Winter was nothingness, but even nothingness was a season.

The land taught us that survival was not about speed. I learned to wait, to conserve my strength, to endure.

And then—a miracle.

Spotted from twenty feet away, a tiny emerald shoot pierced through the snowdrift, defiant against the cold. A rebel. A whisper of life. A force to be reckoned with.

I raced outside, barefoot, through a solid foot of snow to get closer. So perfect. So brave. Utterly breathtaking. Was it finally over?

That memory still lingers, a lesson in patience, in resilience.

Loss and hardship are part of the cycle we sign up for when we arrive on this planet. In Celtic mythology, the most fearsome goddess of all is the Cailleach, the Winter Crone—the bringer of ice, the keeper of endings. At times, the goddess of Winter has a way of demanding her due, of taking without warning, indifferent to what we cherish most.

At sixteen, she took something from me.

A moment—shattered my world.

A freak accident stripped away everything I had planned, everything I had worked for. My future as a ballerina had been within reach. And then, it was gone. After a year of painful surgeries and grueling rehabilitation, I learned to walk again—but the scars, the chronic pain, the hole in my heart were permanent. I looked alive, but inside, I was not.

My season of Winter had begun.

I demanded answers from the moon, the stars, the wind rattling through the trees. I asked them why. I asked her—the goddess of Winter—what was life now that she had taken my dreams?

What remains when the only path you've ever known disappears?

There are so many obstacles to a beautiful existence. When you have built your life around a singular dream, and that dream is gone, what is left? What could I do?

I ran.

To the islands. To the sea. I disappeared, searching for answers in saltwater and solitude.

There were days when the world slowed to a crawl. I spoke to no one, lingering in the shadows, realizing—at last—that no matter how far I ran, I would always be trapped. Trapped with myself. With her. The goddess of Winter and the season she had cast me into.

It would be easy to stay mired in the ice, to roll over, to give up. To blame. To deflect. To lie. But every action—even in surrender—is a choice. And you always have a choice.

Rising up against the goddess of Winter is the only way.

Nobody else knows how far you’ve come, how much you’ve endured. But you do.

One day, resistance fades—and at first, we don’t even notice.

Spinning, twirling, nesting, doing—breathing in the herbal spice of everything blooming around us is the great antidote to the fractures of a broken world. There is a symphony in it, something so pure, so euphoric, that you have no choice but to unclench your fists and receive spring.

Seasons define the choices we make. I have had my lion’s share of winter, but the lessons are necessary—to appreciate what we have, to understand what we desire, to embrace even the stillness.

To stop.

To savor.

To be still.

To inhale the essence of what remains.

I learned to let go. I learned to put down roots. And one fateful day, motherhood changed my trajectory forever. Emerging from the grasp of a goddess, tender and new, I understood at last:

We are limitless. We are possibility. We are love.

When I finally returned home, the landscape was familiar, yet different. But I realized—the greatest changes were within me.

The afternoon sun warmed my skin as I stood in the yard, inhaling the scent of earth. Snow melted in rivulets along the fields. And then, as if answering a silent wish, I saw them.

The lilacs.

Bursting into bloom with delicious abandon, filling the air with honey, with almonds, with the sweet, intoxicating promise of life.

That spring, they bloomed—just for me.

*****

About the Author: Bibiana Krall is an award-winning American author who earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and an M.A. in Fiction from Wilkes University CW. She is honored to be a member of The Society of Midland Authors and a Deep Center Writing Fellow.