Winter:

Hibernation, Recovery, Preparation

Photo by Yaopey Yong on Unsplash

I recently read the following quotes on social media:

“Winter is a season of recovery and preparation.”

~Paul Theroux

Though I am from near Buffalo, NY and spent a year living in Minnesota, I am quite happiest in the warm weather and the sunshine. I prefer tropical living. And I’ll take the heat, the tsunamis, the snakes and bugs and spiders, if I can always be warm and have year-round flip-flop weather.

My body is usually cold in winters, and so, this time of the year, even back living in the south, which is admittedly much warmer than the frigidity of Minnesota, I tend to want to stay in doors and hibernate.

In the spirit of also allowing myself to rest, I am giving myself time to just be cuddled up, warm and go to bed earlier, get up and wake up slowly. For some, this is a norm and way of life, but—

As I said in the last post, I spent too many years running and bracing myself, so I am learning to slow down.

It has gotten me thinking about the period of gestation, cocooning, recover, rebirth. Time to rest, to prepare for longer days and life.

There are times where I feel so…weary. Not normal tired or fatigued, but I think, my body’s way of adjusting to normal levels of cortisol, and the shock of what it went through for years. It’s returning to a stage of homeostasis.

I am also sleeping better—thank God—and I’m sleeping a lot. Going to bed quite early and rising when it’s light. I’m dreaming vividly. I feel so much better and I am so thankful:

When I go through periods of insomnia, I am reminded of how glorious sleep truly is. I understand why we refer to it as medicine and I cherish that I fall asleep, sleep through the night, and wake up like a normal person. That I am not watching the daylight gradually appear from my bedroom window, anxious, and wishing that I could get just an hour or two of shut-eye.

I am learning to rest. I am learning to relax.

I spoke to my dearest friend the other day and she spoke about her own journey, referring to herself as a toddler in how she’s grown and developed in the past few years. We are on similar paths. I also feel that in many ways, I feel that I am an old, old woman, but in other ways, like her, I am a small child, learning to self soothe, to relax, to sleep (I think about how often my peers talk about their small kiddos having ‘sleep regression’.), to calm my own nervous system.

I sit writing this mid-morning: occasionally sipping on my coffee, still in my nightgown, wrapped up in cozy throws and enveloped in my fuzzy bathrobe, slowly taking in my coffee, listening to my Mennonite church service online.

I have grading to do. I will get to it. For now, some self care of meditation and mindfulness and centering.

May we all go slow and learn that that is okay. Because though my situation is exacerbated with my trauma, we all are living in this hellscape of late stage capitalism, where the grind and glorification of “being busy” and “producing,” laboring, working, is so often told to us. We find ourselves rushing and too often believing the lie to be busy is to be successful and worthwhile.

May we find peace and presence in:

Dolce far niente

or—

Italian—the sweetness

of doing nothing.

In just being.