My inner winter
The day is November 20th as I am writing this, it’s 3 degrees outside, an icy wind is blowing and it hasn’t stopped raining since I woke up this morning. I am cuddled on the sofa, my 2 dogs on each side of me, keeping me warm, while wearing a huge wool coat that reaches my ankles in an attempt to stay warm. It’s been 8 years since I experienced fall and winter and an experience it is.
I have had 8 years of eternal summer living in Bali. Yes, there are seasons there too: dry season and rain season and they are both quite different. In dry season it’s a lot cooler and, obviously, dryer. Rain season was my least favourite time of the year, not necessarily because of the rain (although some years it rained for weeks on end and I completely forgot how the sun felt like), it’s more the humidity and heat that was killing me. I was so happy this year to move back to Europe and say goodbye to the ceaseless heat. I was craving sweater weather, candles, blankets on the sofa and to just not sweat 24/7.
When I was younger I absolutely loathed fall and winter. It was a big reason for moving to a tropical island with a sunny and hot climate. Every year at the end of summer I started sliding into what I called a ‘winter depression’ and I wouldn’t come out of it for at least 4 or 5 months. It makes so much sense to me now. At that time I was in a permanent ‘inner winter’, struggling with depression on one hand and violent emotional storms on the other, the outer seasons amplifying my inner state. And I wanted an escape. I needed eternal summer for the sun to start shining within me too.
Now being back and experiencing the outer seasons with a different level of consciousness and a new understanding of how connected I am to the cycles and rhythms in nature, I am absolutely fascinated by what is going on inside of me. With the temperatures dropping, the flowers disappearing, the rain and wind showing their faces, and ‘the grey’ returning, I notice my inner seasons changing drastically as well. Something I wasn’t really expecting or saw coming, and if I am honest, something I have been struggling with for a few weeks.
And it has made me think… how interconnected we really are. How the inner and outer are really two sides of the same coin. How much we are part of nature. And whether we are conscious of it or not, the cycles of day and night, of the moon, of the earth, of the seasons, of life and death, they affect us just as they affect every other living being on this planet. All is in perfect balance and everything is needed and perfect the way it is. The outer seasons, but also the inner seasons.
Winter has arrived within me too.
It started slowly, some leaves falling here and there, but it has fully arrived now in my inner universe. I have retreated deeper within myself, covered myself in all those fallen leaves, craving solitude, silence and peace. Anything that is not that, makes me react like a Bear being awoken from hibernation. I am more sensitive and the intensity of my emotions have increased. I am happy one day and then find myself lost in an inner storm the next. Some days I feel like ice, like everything within me is frozen, other days the earth cracks and a flood comes in, wiping away everything in it’s path, taking away emotions, feelings, memories that have been stuck for years. Other times I am a storm, raging and destructive, wanting to obliterate anything in my path. Mostly I feel I don’t want to do anything, my creative juices seem to have run dry, while I keep looking for an oasis in the desert, desperate to feel any sort of passion or aliveness.
What I am trying (and some days succeeding at and other days profoundly failing) is to just let it be. To take a step back, to simply observe and allow the inner winter within me to move through me. To not judge the outer weather, even though I crave sunshine and summer. And to not judge my inner storms as well. They come and go, without warning, one moment I am in it, the other moment I am not. And to trust that the sun will shine again, eventually, all in perfect timing.
What I struggle with the most is anger. Some days I feel like I could set the world on fire. And it scares me. Will this inner darkness consume me? Have I lost my goodness, my innocence, my purity? Shouldn’t I rise above this? Meditate my way out of it? With all that is happening in the world, and with the knowing that the inner creates the outer, I am worried that my inner anger helps keep an angry world in place. And I so badly want to create The New Earth. I so badly want the world that has been a little seed in my heart to blossom into reality. This vision, feeling, glimpse into the future, of a world in perfect harmony. All beings living in peace, safety and abundance.
But, as inner creates the outer, I will never be able to create The New Earth when I keep anger hidden away in the depths of my inner being. I realise now that winter is happening for me. The outer world is a mirror for what I need to face within me. And to honor Earth and to honor nature, is to firstly honor nature within me. My body, my emotions, my feelings, my intuition and instinct. So I am trying to take more moments to go within, to see what the weather is like, to howl with the wind, to cry with the rain, to shake when the earth trembles beneath my feet, to erupt when the volcano spews hot lava in the air and to mourn and let go of what is ‘dying’ within me.
If there is one thing I learned recently, is that the more we connect with nature outside of us, the more we connect with nature within us, our true, authentic selves. And the more we come home to ourselves, the more we start to reconnect with nature and take care of the more-than-human world from a place of connectedness. It’s a beautiful circle.
