The year passes in linear fashion yet in reality it spirals, as we pass each seasonal milestone, we are not the same as we were last time. Like a river, our waters continually change, our cells constantly regenerating.
Autumn transition
This period of autumn leaning into winter has a soporific effect on me. I feel like crawling into cosy warm, dark spaces and cuddling down. I build fires and sit, watching them slowly eat the logs. There’s something so primal about this urge, I know I’m not alone. Yet mass culture tells me I need to be out there being fabulous in some sparkly dress with freshly shaved legs, and if I’m bleeding no problem. Well it is a problem. As some of you discovered last week, when I bleed I find it hard to function, it is similar to the feeling of sinking into winters warm embrace.
Deep winter
The outer world and its concerns seem to dim, and priority is given over to sinking deeply into the present moment. It feels like my centre of gravity shifts, moves from belly button towards womb. Womb wisdom. She whispers, and I feel called to lie quietly all the better to hear the wisdom. Another voice, a critical judge tells me I’m being weak, I should be roller-skating wearing white tight trousers like the old ads. I should be delivering workshops. But in this place of deep inner winter those messages don’t land. Here is old wisdom, self-loving and releasing of old wounds. I’m bleeding it all away in the darkness of my cave.
Spring
The season changes and energy begins to come back to my arms and legs, my eyes open and I feel called to step out of the darkness and unfurl in the light. Ideas start bubbling up, conversations happen, and the flow of the day moves external. Time resumes its forward flow. I feel excited about the year ahead, I want to reach out, make contact, connect.
I came here to write about the cycles of the year, the surrendering into winter and somehow the words turned to my recent experience about bleeding. These seasonal cycles within always remind me how deeply we are connected to nature. If you are still bleeding or not, the current shift in season from autumn to winter is an opportunity to look within, to take some time for self-care and interior clearing out of anything that no longer serves.
If you’re anything like me with my inner critical voices, try to be gentle with yourself. The mass media is built on a model of ever-expanding growth, yet this is not how our energetical and physical bodies function. We are cyclical beings. We ebb and flow with the moon and with the seasons of the year. This information cannot be bought and sold, it is in our bones even though it may have been buried under generations of consumerism and denial. Ironically I feel the only way is to unplug and reconnect with innate wisdom. For me this happens when I bleed, but it also happens in nature. Watching clouds scuttle across windy skies, listening to rain fall, swimming in wild places or simply sitting in the park with feet planted on the earth. I can slowly come to find some compassion for the critical voices as well, they’re trying to keep me safe from vulnerability and shame. But they have some catching up to do as it’s here, in the edge of my comfort zone, that is the most fertile for personal growth.
Good luck and enjoy the surrendering into winter’s warm embrace!
Find out more about joining our year-long deep dive into feminine presence & conscious connection with the season HERE
art credits:
mage from mystic mama
Autumn Skye art The Goddess Autumn
Shannon Port
Alicia Hunsicker
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