I'm taking an inner winter from Solstice to Imbolc
Wintering and how you can too
John O’Donohue calls the soul “your inner hearth — the home we have never left.”
Winter is soul time.
The quiet. The dark. The slow.
I yearn for the sound of rain and the coziness of bundling up in a big jumper and a thick blanket. Justin Vernon tunes in the air. Lighting the whole room with candles. Preparing a meal unhurried. A cat curled in perfect contentment. Epsom salt baths. Reading in bed and falling asleep at 8:30 pm.
Winter Solstice arrived in the Southern Hemisphere over the weekend.
And I have begun my wintering.
I am going offline to write my book proposal.
I need to finish it by Imbolc (1 August in the Southern Hemisphere).
Imbolc in the Celtic Wheel of the Year is also known as St Brigid’s Day in Ireland. Imbolc literally means “in the belly” and is when the milk returns to the pregnant ewes and cows. It is also when the first snowdrop flowers shoot out from the grass after the bleakness of winter. I would not have believed it unless I saw the magic of what happens with my own eyes when delicate white flowers popped up on Imbolc morning seemingly out of nowhere.
Aligning with the seasons and nature’s cycles is hugely important to me.
Firstly, winter is the natural time of rest in nature. Animals know this.
Having a true winter means can you properly restore your energies for the more outer seasons of spring, summer and autumn. Which demand more.
The good news is that we can make the necessary corrections and return to our own natural cycles again. It is through the love for and the caring for our natural seasons that we protect our lives from being dragged into someone else’s rhythms, someone else’s dance, someone else’s hunger.
It is through validation of our distinct cycles for sex, creation, rest, play, and work that we relearn to define and discriminate between all our wild senses and seasons.
— Clarissa Pinkola Estés
The thing is — and especially in the place where I live is an “eternal summer” (to quote Albert Camus) — a winter is hard to have.
So I am giving myself an intentional inner winter.
The concept of wintering was made popular by author Katherine May.
Her book of the same name has changed many people’s lives, including mine, when I read it throughout a winter of solitude in Ireland, when I was writing the first draft of my book while housesitting in West Cork and Wexford.
Krista Tippett in this On Being conversation with Katherine May says — Winter is a season of nature, and a season of life.
I am not prepared to let the magic of winter bypass me.
What kind of winter do you want and need this year?
I’ve been asking myself this question.
One thing is glaringly obvious: Winter needs spaciousness.
We all have a fear of stopping, saying “no, and prioritising what we need.
I’m still learning the art of being unavailable.
Because I need hard boundaries to get this done, here they are:
Delete all social media apps. A scroll down Social Media Avenue is my #1 time suck tool and it gives me mental fog — Bo Burnham explaining “They are now trying to colonise every minute of your life” was hugely sobering.
Pretend my phone doesn’t exist. Turn on airplane mode. Put it in another room. Turn off every notification (if you haven’t already, I implore you).
No email checks during focused writing blocks. I do love popping into my inbox
five thousand times a dayto see what distractions I can find so I don’t have to focus.Close all tabs except what I’m working on now. This one is the scariest.
Unsubscribe from emails. It’s very satisfying. I went one step further and cleared my whole Socials folder — zero emails is free therapy.
Say “no” to anything that distracts me from finishing my book proposal. Not publishing this book will feel like soul death, so my social life is going to have to die for a while instead.
Say “yes” if something soul-giving and spontaneous pops up. I’m still a human who wants fun, so if I get an invitation for something that feels freeing, I have the option to say yes (thank you to my gorgeous friend Shannon for that tip).
Offline = real life. Solitude done well, very happily fills me to the brim. See the list at the top. And don’t forget to eat.
I know protecting my time and attention will allow me to become more productive, efficient, and complete this hugely personal task.
I just want someone to do it for me.
Now that list above looks like a lot of “not allowed to do” guidelines. I plan to allow the spaciousness to be spacious. To orient my time towards what feeds my soul.
My inner winter will look like:
Lots of sleep
Time to be alone
Time to be silent
Not rushing
Contemplative practices
Time to go deep
Fresh air walks
Calmly cooking a meal
Savouring slow tea
Long vigils beside a rare blossom
Northern Hemisphere friends — save this for December to February as your seasonal winter.
It’s important to note that wintering can happen anytime.
Some of us are buried in the mud in unlikely times.
Take the principles of wintering and apply them whenever you need a break from the world to digest your life or work through something big.
I wish to mirror the wisdom of nature.
I want to be enchanted by the still, inwardness of winter.
I need the quiet time of stillness to channel the muse.
Why?
Because if I don’t take an inner winter, it will never get done.
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, maximising 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.
— Katherine May
When you rest, rest.
When you create, create.
When you serve, serve.
To pause in an age of weaponised ambition is in fact revolt.
Ideally, my inner winter would have no outcome, but due to the timing of my life, this book needs to be birthed.
Katherine May writes, “Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.”
I will be retreating to finish my next David Whyte study series. Going for winter walks and forest tea. My winter reading list is already delivering the goods (reading at breakfast, lunch, and dinner is how I sometimes finish three books in a week). Trying out new recipes to add to the repertoire. And focusing on my skin love evening ritual, which involves intentionally patting in skincare products (this prebiotic serum is a saviour for clearing up my peri-oral dermatitis) and not slapping it on like my face is a to-do list.
Nobody had ever said to me before, "You need to live a life that you can cope with, not the one that other people want. Start saying no. Just do one thing a day. No more than two social events in a week." I owe my life to him.
— Katherine May
Wintering is about nourishing yourself.
Wintering is resting and retreating — a chance to metabolise and replenish.
A pause to think about how we want to be in the world.
To do one thing at a time and do it with deep love.
As Katherine May writes, “The problem with “everything” is that it ends up looking an awful lot like nothing: just one long haze of frantic activity, with all the meaning sheared away.”
Each year, the whole of nature died in winter only to bud and blossom again in the sping.
— John Moriarty
Midwinter is a time for honouring our need for rest and the creative inner work that happens in the darkness, where seeds germinate.
Imbolc is the beginning of new growth. A time of great promise and intention where we can recommit to and inspire our artistic soul work.
It is also the time of year for one of my favourite rituals from the Irish triple fire goddess Brigid.
Brigid’s Cloak Imbolc Ritual
The Imbolc ritual, also known as the Brat Bhríde in Irish, involves leaving a piece of cloth out overnight on the eve of Imbolc for the goddess Brigid to bless. In the morning, it is brought inside, and the cloth (covered in dew) offers healing and protection for the rest of the year. After I learnt this ritual in Ireland, I do this with my favourite blue handwoven shawl, and then take it everywhere with me — travel, cinema, tea ceremonies, writing in cafes — as my lucky talisman infused with the wisdom and the healing powers of Brigid.
Also, I love the old Celtic tradition of washing your face with the morning dew on Imbolc, believed to be nature’s ultimate facial, bestowing beauty and purifying your skin. I do it every year now, and it’s such a delight!
Wintering brings about some of the most profound and insightful moments of our human experience, and wisdom resides in those who have wintered.
— Katherine May
A lot of this idea came from that I needed to be left alone to get this book proposal done. Katherine May’s concept of wintering provides much wisdom and clarity that having a winter is the most natural thing in the world, except some humans have forgotten.
I promise not to return until it is done.
What can shelter you this winter?
What rituals, practices and comforts will nourish your inner hearth?
You may think yourself lazy, or flawed. Yet your body
is made of almost exactly the same elements as the stars.
Your bone composition matches perfectly the coral
in the seas, and you, my friend, are ruled by the moon
and the sun, the tides and the planets. Whether you
like it or not. So, no, you are not lazy, you are not late.
Nature is simply pulling you to slow, like the life, flora
and fauna around you. It is not your moment to rise.
Look around you. It is winter. You are wintering.
And you are right on time.
— Donna Ashworth
Add your name to get future letters — it’s fun.
Heart (to like), speech bubble (to comment), or fwd: the ritual of wintering.
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Another beautifully written reflection by a very beautiful soul❤️
Beautiful. Ahhhh permission to slow down.