There is something truly wonderful about the rain.

A good rain is for walking in or dancing in, barefoot with no coat or umbrella. A good rain soaks through your skin into the very core of your being.

It washes away everything you are weary of and every small anger you’ve kept burning inside. It drenches your hair, your clothes, your bloodstream, until rivulets stream from your every movement and into your every breath.

Puddles rise to the tops of your ankles, soothing tired feet, washing away the dirt and sweat and heat of the day. They swirl between your toes and caress your soles.

You stay until you are not only drenched but numb. Not just when you can’t feel your fingers, but when you can’t open and close them anymore. You can only get them to shake a little. That’s when you go in.

Take a hot shower, and the heat you’d been holding close to your heart shatters out into needles in your fingers and toes and everywhere. Stay until the the hot water runs out.

Dry off with a fluffy towel and wrap yourself in soft, warm pajamas. Flannel are the best. Thick, squishy socks or warm slippers. Maybe both.

Make a cup of something hot: coffee, cocoa, tea. It has to be in a big mug, the kind you can wrap both your hands around. Sip it slowly and let the heat seep into your fingers. When you swallow, feet it slide down your esophagus and spread across your diaphragm, tracing the shape of your lungs before it lands in your stomach and chases away the cold that has wormed its way deep into the center of you.

Sit by a fire, if you can, or a heater. Curl up in a big, fluffy blanket. Become a cloud of soft, warm things. Melt into the couch.

Listen to the musical duet of gravity and dihydrogen monoxide. Watch it through the window.

Snuggle a little deeper into your cocoon and enjoy the sensation of being warm and dry. Notice that your hair is no longer plastered to your forehead, that your skin stopped wrinkling into raisins.

Find yourself a good book—the perfect book—or a movie or a song, or just sit and exist. Listen to the rain and let your thoughts be soothed or inspired or both.

Soak in the sensation of having been wet to your core. Remember the exhilaration. Bask in the quiet feeling of being thoroughly exhausted and dry and clean.

There is something truly wonderful about the rain.