Winter, while it can be one of the hardest seasons to embrace, has a lot to teach us about true beauty and wisdom. Stripped of her flowers, leaves and warmth, the earth reveals her naked self through her skeleton branches and barren ground. She becomes completely simple, having discarded everything but the bare essentials. Her scarcity and fierceness command our respect and attention, and without apology for not being a warm and gracious hostess, she retreats into frozen silence. When we look to nature as our teacher, we see that she’s reflecting back to us prolonged opportunity to hibernate and renew
Use the darkness all around you to explore your inner world. There you will find that flame inside you that can never be extinguished. You can only make this descent when you commit to stillness, solitude, and deep soul-searching. You must be quiet, less social, more introverted, and despite the negative connotations in most cultures lazy. Just as fields need to remain fallow at times for their soil to stay fertile, we need to leave our innermost beings barren of new projects, adventures, and activities.
If we don’t make time each year for deep rest, then authentic healing, rejuvenation, wisdom and softening are not possible. It takes so much energy to burst forth into the world and to birth something new. Rest, nurture yourself, rebuild your vital life force, and prepare for the coming of new life.
Yet while nature’s saying one thing, society’s saying another. We need to acknowledge that there is reason why winters wisdom is ignored in modern society. We’ve come to see rest as lazy and unproductive and have fallen in love with constant linear progress. Saturdays, Sundays and Holidays are designated days off, and at all other times we’re expected to be on. Within the cycle of life, late adulthood isn’t valued either. Our elders are hidden away in old age homes, no longer able to enrish the youth with their wisdom. There’s asad ignorance in this, forgetting of how to honor the sacred balance by holding in equal esteem all of life’s stages.
You, I know, are here because you’ve seen the fallacy in this denial of the dark, quiet point in the circle. You’ve seen how destructive it is for your health and happiness as well as for your family and community. But we haven’t just thumbed our noses at winter repose because of our prejudices about becoming soft and rested: we have also done thid because we’re afraid to face our own shadow sides. We’re afraid of uncertainty. We don’t want to look our sadness, our anger, or our fear in the eye and really ask what each has to teach us. When we avoid facing these less savory parts of ourselves, we’re missing out on opportunity to become who we truly are. Yes it’s messy. Yes, it feels uncomfortable. But by going to those depths you call in the light. You heal the parts of yourself that you have never wanted to acknowledge, much less learn to love. You must become the loving mother who calls all her lost children, or estranged parts of yourself , home.
Written by : Sara Avant Stover
