Using Busywork to Strengthen My Personal Wintering Skills
I can feel the sunlight calling to me. My cells are already hopping around in excitement of the longer, warmer days ahead. I’ve had to do some big-brain mental work to get my body to trust these winter months. For the longest time, I cursed the Winter and her cousin, Autumn, ‘cause they felt rigid and isolating, unfriendly and abrupt. My Island Ooman ways hadn’t made peace with temperatures that plummeted below 60 degrees Fahrenheit and dragged me with them into the depths of frigidity. So dramatic right? Yet it really matches how I often felt, real talk.
Lately though, as I continue to slow into my life, to trust where I am and who I am, I realize that Nature deserves the same thing from me that I am learning to give myself. That thing that Nature and I deserve is this: space to change and the reminder that my value doesn’t live in my capacity to make everyone comfortable.
Nature doesn’t owe me shit. I am also nature, and so whatever is owed, I owe it to myself. And just like my job isn’t to contort myself to meet what makes others comfortable, Nature’s job ain’t that either! I can adjust. I can look past my own discomfort to remember and value Nature’s wisdom, and all the levels of dis-ease and discomfort our planet and all the nature within it has to contend with at the hands of her human kin. Hellooooo?!
So, this year, I leaned into the benefits of Autumn and Winter months, with some resistance, but plenty of curiosity and capacity. It’s a fumble-bumbly, messy process from me, and as usual, I’ve relied on intuitive ritual creation to support my intention.
Last December, I shared a bit about my personal wintering practices with the folks in my make-it-happen family. Watch the short video (6ish minutes long) and see if you can relate to, or learn from, how I’m unlearning a bitter relationship with colder months.
As I yawn away the chill and continue to celebrate the call of the warmer months ahead and how my personal energy matches that, I will still savor the season I’m in today.
As the pull of the three super juicy Spring and Summer offerings (that I’m so hyped about!) try to call me out of season, I smile at them and command them, with love, to calm their asses down because I am wintering with my whole entire heart!
We are in the middle of human crises and a climate crisis that contributes to the existing human crises of displacement and various insecurities (food, location, health, etc.) as a result of weather and a result of human doings.
These realities, like the sunlight, are calling to me. They call for me to be diligent in my practice of decentering my comfort so that I can be present and in alignment with my power, with love, with my listening skills, and with my efforts to stand with people and places that call for standing with, and to keep doing my work in the world.
As I stretch my arms long and wide and slowly take ideas and launch plans that have been in hibernation and move them into more visible parts of my workspace in Notion (affiliate link), I will still savor the season I’m in today.
As I engage in wrist and neck stretches as the warm-up to spending more time pressing buttons on my computer, and less time starting at videos on my screen, I will still savor the season I’m in today.
Cozy sweaters and beloved hoodies washed and ready…
Sexy-ass jet black space heaters that look kinda like old-school radios on deck…
Fluffy socks and thick gloves that seem out of place in Georgia’s alleged “mild” winters all on me…
No cussin’ the cold, no attempts to rush Nature past her process, just like I unlearned doing that to children, and am still unlearning how to rush any parts of me through mine.
I will savor, I will practice being satisfied and even appreciative of what the slower months bring. I will follow the lead of the Nature around me, and bring my offerings to full light when the sunlight cues me to do just that.
