My season of wintering
I'm back from my winter break!
Happy Sunday, Soothers. I'm back from my winter solstice break, and it wasn't quite the quiet, restful period I had envisioned, though there was a great amount of going inward. So much shedding and death took place, as it does when we go inwards during solstice. As I wrote about earlier in December, my partner AJ's father unexpectedly passed away mid-December and we spent six unplanned weeks in Indiana with his family over the holidays and new year.
The second we got back to the east coast we tested positive for COVID (we had it mildly for about a week, isolated accordingly and are now symptom free). I turned 42 somewhere in there, AJ and I began making plans to move in together, I tried Peloton for the first time, learned there are YouTube channels where you can stream people's bird feeders (actually a huge mood boost ), did a big chunk of the Yoga With Adriene challenge with some folks in my Sunday Soother Slack before the whole COVID thing and did my best to stay warm in an Indiana winter. I haven’t really seen my family since Thanksgiving due to circumstances and I super miss them. I got a new phone! Wow, it takes good photos! (Says the lady who had her last iPhone for like 5 years.)
In short, Life kept taking place in big ways and in small and I tried my best to be present for all of it. My solstice inward season was marked by loss, illness, quiet and a stillness to my energy. The roots were deepening.
But things are shifting; can you feel it?
I swear, I've always been able to sense spring coming even in early February. The ground here in the northern hemisphere may be covered with ice and snow but there's a bit of a vibration I can tune into — a certain note from a songbird, a drip of rain; a fresh dampness in the air... I really feel it. In many ways this is the most frustrating time of year for me, knowing that spring is truly arriving but not yet visibly present. Where is my warmth?! WHERE ARE MY PRETTY FLOWERS! MY GOD, WHERE IS THE SUN!!!
And yet, the earth takes her time, as I am still learning to take mine. Even though spring just feels within touch if I only stretched my hands out a bit further... I don't mind the last bits of winter as much as I used to. As I’ve stepped into working for myself the last couple of years, I found I shifted to a natural affinity for winter, once I could sync my nature and my self to its inherent inwards cycle. Going to bed earlier, sleeping later, short walks in the frosty air when the sun was out… it became so clear to me how much the 9-5 schedule had stripped my senses and connection to the earth.
It’s difficult if not impossible to enjoy winter when you have to wake up and commute in the icy darkness, never see the sun or the trees during the day, and come home in that same darkness only to have to do it over and over again for months, sustaining a grueling working schedule that’s in total opposition to your body’s needs during a time when practically every other animal in your hemisphere is resting, hibernating, going slowly.
But now my winters get to be what I choose, and I choose the cycle of the earth because I am earth and she is me. And like I said, I know deep in my cells that spring is shortly on its way. On my walk today in one tree were dozens of chattering robins, flapping about, preparing to herald in the season. The tree they were flittering about was dry and barren, but I knew that was just an illusion. As surely as my energy will return with the sun and the flowers, so will this tree in just a couple of short months be blooming with buds.
Don’t be fooled by a winter, whether earth’s winter or the winter of your body and heart. As Rumi wrote, “Don't think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It's quiet, but the roots down there are riotous.”
The Soother, like me, has undergone a bit of an inwards journey, too. She's gone from starting out as a casual weekly series of personal life essays to something more instructive; a newsletter that mixes some of my life in here still, for sure, but has more of a focus on teaching concepts around growth and healing. She kind of feels like an adolescent in some ways; figuring out her identity a bit awkwardly. Maybe she's going off to college? And in other ways she's still the playful, oversharing child she started out as; and in some ways she is certainly already a bit of a wise crone.
I was thinking a lot over my break about where I want to take the Soother and the answer is, I don't know, I've never really known, I've never had any sort of plan or strategy for this newsletter other than writing what's on my heart, what I'm learning, what I'm curious about, and sharing insights and whatever meager wisdom I have to offer with you, dear readers.
And that's all okay. In a lot of ways too much in this world is overplanned and overlogicked as a way to try to assume control and safety, and by now I feel pretty comfortable saying I don't know what I'm doing about 80% of the time, whether it's here in this newsletter or in my own life, and pretending that will magically change one day and I will be Competent Planner Strategy Lady Who Knows All is a big fallacy.
I just keep following what I call the golden thread, and what our queen lord lady Taylor Swift might refer to as the invisible string — the mysterious urge of the heartspace pulling you forward, in intuitive ways that often make no sense in the moment but, if we're lucky, we're able to follow and listen to and eventually, when we glance back over our shoulders, it's unfolded into a shimmering path we've been walking all along that took us just where we needed.
Here's to your solstice season, your golden thread and your invisible string; may you be free to follow it wherever it takes you and trusting enough in your heart to believe that even if it doesn't make sense now, it's taking you to the right place. And here's to your upcoming spring, no matter where in the world you are.
As I ease back into the Soother I may not write weekly quite yet, but I'll be here! And I've returned on my podcast and Instagram, too. I hope you'll come for a visit.