Honoring the Quiet Season
Popping in with a few reflections as we move through these colder months here in the northern hemisphere, a season that naturally calls for quiet, rest, and slowing down.
To be totally honest, I'm finding it challenging to slow down myself. This tension has been especially present as I move through a personal life transition that is clearly asking for incubation.
Fully transitioning out of my corporate career at the end of last year into a lifestyle that allows me to truly own my time and schedule has thrown my body and nervous system for a loop. For years, my work required me to grind steadily, day in and day out, regardless of what my personal rhythms were needing. Over time, I learned to disconnect from those rhythms entirely.
So now, even though my body is clearly calling for rest and stillness, it's taking me a moment to truly hear and honor that message.
What's interesting is that while I physically feel a deep, bone-level exhaustion (beyond just needing a few good nights of sleep), my autopilot still struggles to shut off. There's a persistent internal push to stay in motion, to do, to produce, even when I know it's not the move.
I remember experiencing something similar in my early twenties after leaving my job in public accounting. I had a few weeks before starting a new job, and during that time my body felt like it shut down into a comatose-like state. I slept 13 hours a day for three straight weeks. My mind kept insisting I should be productive, but my body simply wouldn't allow it.
The difference now is that I'm carrying nearly 16 years of conditioning that says it isn't safe to rest.
Just yesterday, I felt overwhelmingly tired and instead of resting, I scrubbed my house from top to bottom. The entire time, I kept asking myself what I was doing, fully aware that I was pushing myself past my limits and risking getting sick if I didn't pause. And yet, I kept going. At one point, I even knocked over something heavy bruising the top of my foot, almost like the message to stop and slow down physically manifested itself.
Today, when I felt that same incoherence (deep exhaustion paired with the urge to immediately get outside and run) I decided to pause instead. And in that pause, I found myself sitting with what's really underneath this need to stay in motion.
The biggest energy that came forward was the discomfort in the unknown of what lies ahead.
The type-A, control freak in me wants a clear grasp on the next six months… the next ten years… mapped out in detail. But my current reality simply doesn't offer that. And that lack of certainty feels unsettling to my nervous system that was trained to forecast, plan, and stay one step ahead at all times.
So now, I'm asking myself:
How can I allow myself to slow down for this season?
And how can I honor the beauty of this quiet without letting my mind default back to constant future traveling?
The deeper knowing part of me understands that what I need most right now is spaciousness. Nothing to manage. Nowhere to be. No one to answer to. Just a blank canvas.
This is something the mushrooms have taught me again and again, that the greatest inspiration and expansion arise when I allow the future to reveal itself one brushstroke at a time, rather than forcing a rushed, unfinished picture into existence.
So for now, I'll honor the quietness, the stillness, the call to rest and cocoon.
I'm letting my two tiny humans, who only know how to live fully in the now, re-teach me how to be here. How to love here. How to embody presence moment by moment.
And I'm trusting that my natural rhythms will let me know when it's time to take the next step.