Welcome to the fortnightly Sunday letter, traversing nature, being human, story, season and compost.
Hello
So lovely to have you here, THANK YOU.
We have been blessed by deep frost and some snow here, it feels safe to me, that we have dipped into ice and cold in the early winter.
We have had many winter that has felt like a grey blur without the ice, frost and snow, and it has felt odd. So this bright crisp aliveness feels safe and good to my body.
I love the seasons for their personalities, the affect they have on my body and psyche and the story they tell through their processes and movements. I always feel a little out of sorts when the seasons blur and aren’t so defined.
It has been incredibly powerful for me, to rewild how I viewed winter, and look into the heart of this season and see its natural beauty and wisdom.
As I’ve said before here, we as animals are deeply affected by the season that swirls around us; physically, emotionally and mentally.
The declining light, the colder days affects us hormonally and energetically, for we are wild animal bodies, with wild souls and hearts. And the story of the land is our story too.
We are being drawn inwards at this time, we are being called to rest, to listen to what lies beneath our skin and breathes within our soil.
The animals on the land, are sleeping for longer, stilling their physical activity, and our bodies long to do the same, need to do the same.
Yet in winter, much of our culture has got into shopping, partying, extra lights and a push to carry on being outward, sociable and shining.
Although the warmth of nourishing social activities can be beautiful and feasting together is also important in these darker days.
But, as I mention above, the bright electric lights, the shopping the sugar, the busyness, the spring and summer outward ways and the parties, really an go against our inner wild animal pull.
We need to be even more gentle with our bodies at this time of year. Softening our expectations, resting for longer, being even kinder to our muscles, our bones, and our psyches, spending time alone, nourishing our systems. Rather than pushing through, trying to be the same bubbling outward person we feel to be in spring and summer.
The land and your animal body calls you to a different way at this time, how would it be, to listen to it even more, and follow its direction?
Many of us in these modern and often disconnected times, are pushed into being a completely different way to what our innate nature is calling for and we can end up gaslighting our entire system.
I have found it to be incredibly powerful, for my mental and physical health, to find ways in which to hear, feel and listen to what my animal body and the land around me is trying to show me. And following it, by implementing ways in which I can shift my actions a little towards those feelings that run through my body.
It doesn’t have to be a complete and sudden switch away from our modern culture, but just little things that help bring me closer and closer to my nature, and year by year, I find myself nearer and nearer to the seasons wisdom and my animal body.
And feeling a whole lot better for it too. More aligned, more true, more supported by earth and my actions and more integral.
In December, we really feel the darkness grow, as the days are getting darker, the softness, the juice and the tender green descends ever deeper downwards. Wild beings seal the doorways to their dens, the plants sink completely into the earth. Sleep and dreaming is infused into roots, seed, cave dwellers, the furred, feathered and clawed.
And the pull to descend strengthens within.
Descent is birth, it is the passage way to becoming. Descent as we know, can be hard, and one of the reasons I think this is, is because becoming is hard. Walking into the unknown, without the old safety net can be edgy, even when the old safety net was really not in line with what we want to walk towards, even if the safety net has been suffocating, it is still hard to release, for the unknown can feel so discombobulating.
Yet every winter nature descends in beauty, grace, courage and necessity. Following her own processes and cycles back into the heart of herself, back into her soul and soil.
Of the lessons nature shows us, this perhaps is the most potent and profound, that descent is not to be pushed away, hidden from, avoided or ignored, but instead, embraced.
It is worth remembering the purpose of this darkening time, of this descent; the seeds, life, medicine and beauty.
How are you honouring your descent, or the feelings winter brings to your marrow?
Sending so much love and winter beauty to you
Brigit xx
“Descent is birth, it is the passage way to becoming. Descent as we know, can be hard, and one of the reasons I think this is, is because becoming is hard. Walking into the unknown, without the old safety net can be edgy, even when the old safety net was really not in line with what we want to walk towards, even if the safety net has been suffocating, it is still hard to release, for the unknown can feel so discombobulating.” ❤️
Indeed, there is a beautiful divine intelligence and purpose to this unfolding. The medicine found in every season, every turn of the wheel. Feeling this medicine that is the cold dark winter wrapping around me now and holding me in a sweet embrace of slowness. Tender. Compassionate. One longgg exhale. Time to be nourished by the harvest. Blessings for this beautiful post <3
PS, I also feel like the winter hasn't fully landed yet until its snows! There is something just so pure, so belonging about it at this time.