Wintering

Winters can be difficult. Here in the mountains, we are familiar with snow-squeaking frosty mornings, the sun dropping behind the mountains by three pm, and the unfortunate build-up of nostril icicles when out for an innocent walk. I know some people love the winter season, with its contrasts of stoke and hygge, but physically it is demanding in a way that requires our care and attention throughout. And whether you anticipate it or are resigned about it, inevitably, “Winter is coming”. We accept the season as a given, and part of the natural order of things. However, when it comes to our emotional or spiritual winters, we tend to feel more disoriented or stricken when life brings us to winter’s doorstep.

It goes by many names. Life’s ups and downs. A deep pit. A roller coaster. The dark night of the soul. A long tunnel. Beautiful chaos. These are all phrases I hear in counselling as people try to describe where they are at in context to the rest of their life. Pictures are painted of imposed changes, loss of control, unpredictability and a state of being that catches in throats and tenderizes hearts. These words speak not just of a season, but of a difficult season. A life-changing season. More than the “is this normal?” moments and rather the deep ache-in-your-bones kind of seasons.

Sometimes we’ve been pushing ourselves for far too long in a slow burn, hoping we can hang on a little longer or that sweet relief is just around the corner. Sometimes we are blindsided by changes so swift and severe that we are still orienting to our new normal. At other times the suffering is rhythmic and anticipated, with understood triggers and the clockwork arrival of painful anniversaries. These are our life’s winters.

In her beautiful book, Wintering The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May writes, “Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through.” I love this image of change happening invisibly in the quiet depths of our human spirit. Have you had a winter of the soul? Felt the growing pains of an extraordinary act of metamorphosis? A season where on the surface, things felt fallow or unyielding, while beneath the horizon, waste and loss were being transformed into the earthy loam to nourish your root system for your next season?

Katherine has more to share with us: “Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but it’s crucible…” You may or may not have noticed this instinct, to turn inward during your own winters. Sometimes this feels like a profound aloneness or isolation. At other times it is the pure sweetness of solitude. Both experiences can come as a surprise amidst the busyness (business?) of life, but either way, we are invited to spend some time with ourselves. Again, we learn of internal transformation and the conditions needed to contain and transmute the raw experiences that shape us anew, from the inside out.

Katherine May continues, “It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order. Doing these deeply unfashionable things – slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting – is a radical act now, but it is essential.” How do you feel about these words? Do they stir longing inside you or agitate you with their unfamiliarity? Savour them for a moment:

Slow replenishment.

Slowing down.

Rest as a radical act of resistance.

Is it overstated? I don’t think so. We are not prone to lingering. We exist in a capitalist culture, that rewards efficiency, quantity, speed and production. We receive constant messages to hustle, keep up, get ahead and then keep going. These messages can lead us to be constantly striving, but never arriving. As though we are machines and not mammals with soft skin and wondrously beating hearts. And so the author reminds us that winter is also about nourishing and being and resting. Not as something optional, earned or doled out as a pithy reward, but as an essential season that we all require. A season where we learn to let go of what doesn’t serve us in preparation for what is growing behind that space.

“This is a crossroads we all know, a moment when you need to shed a skin. If you do, you’ll expose all those painful nerve endings and feel so raw that you’ll need to take care of yourself for a while. If you don’t, then that skin will harden around you.” If you are additionally highly sensitive, this can feel excruciating at times. Here, Katherine May highlights our choice point: how do we be with ourselves when we are in one of life’s winters? Our ability to be vulnerable is core to our humanity, and as Brené Brown notes, “the center of meaningful human experiences”. Just as our physical winters can bring high stakes, so too can our spiritual or emotional winters.

Winters can be an invitation to deepen our practice of self-compassion. Can we care for our wounds gently through these darker periods? Can we shed some old patterns? Or do we let the cold enter in to harden our hearts, our delicate skin calloused into ill-fitting armour? The choice is ours.

How exactly we choose to respond to winter looks different for each person. For myself, I need to prioritize safety, warmth and softness. This means tuning into my body’s rhythms and following her yes and her no. Sometimes it means setting boundaries. Usually, it means generously giving myself time to process and permission to take in comfort. When we haven’t been taught this it can feel awkward at first, you might even notice you feel a bit Scroogey with yourself. It’s okay. This is part of the metamorphosis, the challenging in-between or liminal space that signals that change is underway. Everything that arises in our winters is fodder for the undercurrent of transformation, and a chance to be with what is there. With ourselves. Tenderly.