‘However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonel..
🕑 Added 2023-01-09 22:25:42 +0000 UTC
‘However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, & deeply painful.’ ‘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. 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 its crucible. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order. Doing those deeply unfashionable things—slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting—is a radical act now, but it is essential. 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. It’s one of the most important choices you’ll ever make.’ Wintering | by Katherine May My former reiki master shared this passage on her social media and I loved it so much I wanted to share it here too. I'm not currently reading this book; it is written for those who find themselves in difficult times. But I am very much acquainted with rest and retreat as a way to take care of yourself when life goes awry. I started a giant list today of all the things that need to be taken care of around my apartment. There are closets that I desperately need to organize and an entire room that has become a messy storage space. I intend to bring the chaos in my physical space to an end during this winter. I'll let you know how it goes! 😊
