I find myself wanting to be silent and still. I am feeling a pull to retreat and I realize this happened around the same time last year. And if I look back at my life, this is something I have always felt around this time of year. Resisting it I believe has caused me a lot of suffering. This slow silence is the call of the winter.
November has been a month of slow down. Between a vacation then back to back sickness and now my actual back in spasm, the universe and life have been pushing for it. The slow down. For me, when I get sick, I can feel like my world is over and I’ll never feel better again. Don’t we all reach that point when we are sick for more than a few days, It feels like forever?
But when there is a bit a reprieve from the sick, I see how much a blessing this insisted slow down is. Ideally I create the slow down myself but in sicks case, the virus is a cosmic joke of sorts saying “See, you need you slow down, reorient, refocus and regroup. There is something here to learn”
Regardless of the colds in my house and the holiday season approaching, there is a consisting hum, a soft but sturdy nagging to slow down and reflect. I could apply meaning to it and say to myself there is something wrong with me. I could overthink analyze all the reasons why I feel unmotivated to push through the clouds. I could apply external reasoning in the form of the negative around what I am feeling. I could push this feeling away and continue barreling at a faster pace in the name of “getting it all done”.
Who is it that says what needs to be done and what needs to be put aside. What needs my focus at this time and what needs to be shelved for the season. And by shelved, I do not mean put away but put to ferment in a sense. To put it aside so it has a chance to change form, to become something more layered to taste.
Wintering
I am feeling quietly sad and pulled to go inward. Regardless of what my brain tells me, my body is telling me to tend to my home inside and out. The only thing that makes that quiet sadness hard is when I resist it and try to push it away.
I am being called to allow it. To let it simmer over me and let me feel all of it. To let myself be in it, the winter. Away from eyes and ears of those who do not enter my physical realm. To allow myself to be without trying to make it mean something for someone else eyes and ears to hear and understand. I am called to return home. To my own body. Away from social media again. Away from consuming sound bites and snapshots and other people thoughts. I am being beckoned into silent listening once again.
Wintering is a term I heard a lot of last year. As I was applying the seasons to the healing process, other authors and writers were sharing similar threads of understanding of how we are so very connected to nature and the seasons.
Katherine May is an author I greatly admire. She shared a shortened version of Wintering bullet points here. She also has a book that deep dives into what wintering means as we navigate these metaphorical and physical seasons of our lives. It is called Wintering - The power of rest and retreat in difficult time and you can find it here. But in short, Wintering is when we allow our bodies to lean into the seasons of our lives as we naturally would. To sleep more, to tend to the home, to tune into the subtleties of our existence. To winter is to allow yourself to go dormant, to allow your roots to gain strength, to nurture what is under the surface. Wintering is a necessary part of living and being human. No matter the meaning of season, whether it is our physical world changing temperature or our inner growth seasons and periods of great change. We must slow down to allow ourselves to be strengthened and to gain the wisdom in the process.
I have enough thoughts in my head and physical sensations to keep me occupied in this particular season. My family. My art practice. My sense of worth and purpose. These are all coming to a precipice of new understanding and to alchemize it all, silence and slow become the threads to tie it all together. This is the time of observance and pulling back to see the whole picture. Zoom in and zoom out and process it.
Sit with it. Be with it. Breathe into it. At some point, I will exhale. I will let it go to form anew.
To be Well in all Seasons.
I am sitting here late November with a deep yearning to feel into my own skin. To be well with myself and to enjoy my own company. I have been running and wanting and grasping, failing and succeeding and I know part of my experiment of living is at a point where it needs to fully sink into my skin and penetrate my bones.
I need less. I want less. And with the less of the wanting and grasping I get More. More presence. More steadiness. More felt love amongst my little family unit and expanded out to the neighbors on my street. This is what it means for me to feel well in this season. The cold and dark days can not be fixed or solved by doing more or achieving more. The bitterness of winter can meet its balm in intentional slow love. A love that can only be reached by giving ourselves the grace of winter and what it calls of us.
This season, I am going in with my head up and heart open. Perhaps this is the way I should have been living all along. The way we should live, in accordance to our environmental seasons and our body seasons. I think that being a splenic authority and intuitive being is leading me this way. I believe that me denying this and not allowing myself to winter has caused more suffering and led to my seasonal depression. The resistance and un allowing , only deepening the depression void.
I hear the winter call for silence and a steady presence and I am here for it.
Another Leave of absence to return to presence.
I am taking another long break from social media as well as the invisible demand to produce for content and consumer. I will also be stepping back consciously from the pull to start selling my art and monetizing what I have begun to create. It’s it still in progress and process and this time is meant to be part of that process and not forced into a business that is not rooted well enough yet.
I attempted to be somewhat active by sharing my art online and in person through my studio and that has gone fine and even great in reflection of the work I am doing. It has been beautiful to see the way people are seeing it and seeing me and seeing themselves in the work. It has opened the door to deep conversations with people I would otherwise never have had and for that I am thankful.
But now, I am meant to convene with myself and my people. I want to keep it close to home. For sake of sovereignty of my own mind, family unit and art creation. This returning home reminds me that we are never far from home if we are home in our bodies. And that makes me realize, once again, the more time I spend on social media and consuming others ideas, the further I get from feeling at home in my own body. The further I move away from what my voice and creative expression wants to say.
So for the sake of my own brain and personal creative expression, I must be absent to be present in my own life.
I am devoting my time into surrendering to what is and what is now. The growth and care of my family and each unit and configuration. Surrendering into the sadness and slowness that this winter will demand, I abide to. To allow the snow to cover over the roots I sprouted this year and allow them to become nourished and solidified.
This winter, I will breathe. I will breathe in my family. I will breathe in me. I will sit and breathe and move towards what next right action is mine to take. But I will not speak out needing to prove a thing. I will not create for anyone other than my inner soul. I will learn to live in my own home just a little more well each day and surrender into what it means to be my particular human in the coldest and darkest days of both the season and my life.
I am not afraid of the winter as I used to be, when my depression would become its worse. I am afraid of resisting it and the self destruction that could occur if I continued on my old path.
So instead I will walk slowly into this winter and allow it to teach me what it has been trying to teach me for years.
I wish you well in your wintering season. Bring your water and your journal. It is sure to be an intense one, a healing one, at least that is what I am seeing from these eyes.
Stay warm. And remember, you are always home in your own body. (Saying this to myself daily)
Love,
Rae
I really like the idea of "Wintering", Rae! I can relate to the pull to go within during the winter months.
This sounds so nourishing. I took a month off social media in December, and it was glorious! And I, too, love Katherine May's "Wintering", very much annual reading. I hope that you are looking after yourself during your 'Wintering' time x