Winter: The Pause We All Need

I watch the rain mix with snow and fall from the sky. Christmas music plays in the background. As I write this, Winter Solstice has not yet reached us and the light continues to grow short. Things freeze. Hard. Our animals in the big barn out back struggle with the quick drop in temperature, no chance to acclimate this year. Their humans brace themselves; dress shivering goats in goat-sized coats; bring warm water and feed. We do night check. Pray. Eventually body temperatures climb and the animals rally. Another crisis averted.

We are as vulnerable to these elements as we are to the cycles of our own lives. We forget this throughout the rest of the year, when things are often easier. Energy picks up in the spring, expands in summer - a joyful burst in autumn as the harvest yields and the colors grace us with a beauty some never get to witness. Some seasons of our lives are more fluid than others.

But Winter…Winter is different. The rules are different. You take the windows of grace the season offers and then you breathe deep and bundle up for the rest. We all remember those parts of our lives when breathing deeply was sometimes the only way through.

In the cycle of seasons and the Wheel of the Year, Winter is the season of death. Everything slows. Animals burrow and return to the earth. Night expands. Day contracts. It gets cold and deep, forcing us to Slow Down. When we don’t, when we drive forward and ignore that need for stillness  (whether from denial or hubris, it doesn’t really matter), we struggle. Our nervous system needs a pause…time to recalibrate. 

The graceful thing is to accept where we are in this season of death and allow the lessons it so wants us to learn…Slow…Quiet…Rest.

But.

Our modern culture isn’t quite comfortable with the concept of death…or stillness. We’ve lost touch with this very natural and necessary pillar of life. Birth - Growth - Aging - Death is the way of things. Our great unifier. When we fear and deny one aspect of that cycle, when we don't allow ourselves to just sit with it and "be", we tend to have a hard time.  

And so, I slow down. Inviting the death of another year. Allowing the learnings, often through struggle (sometimes through joy), to percolate and make their changes to my cells. A small, annual dress rehearsal for how I hope I approach the end of my own time on this Earth…with grace, humility and peace. In awe of my opportunity to experience the unique joy and pain of Being Human.