The Sweet Cycle of Seasons
On Change and Transition
As snow falls and covers the ground and trees in wonderful white, I contemplate transitions. Spring has officially arrived, but like all change, the weather can regress to its previous season. Hence, the snow.
The thing about change is that it can be so gradual that we don’t even realise it’s happening. Sometimes, it’s only on reflection that we realise things/we are different. Other times, it can be sudden and brutal, shocking us. It can take time for sudden change to settle, regressing back to a previous form or state before moving forward or onward again.
What can we learn from nature and its cyclical nature?
Wintering by Katherine May is a book I’ve mentioned before. May’s beautiful prose teaches us or reminds us that taking time for rest, to ‘winter’, is important for our growth and development. We, humans, cannot survive in an eternal spring or summer state. Just like we need sleep for our brains to reset and recharge, the body and soul also need rest, sometimes for many months depending on what life has thrown at us.
Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible…It’s time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenshment, for putting your house in order.
Katherine May in Wintering
By allowing ourselves to rest, we are laying the ground for all things ‘new’—new thoughts, ideas, and creative pursuits. It may also mean we shed parts of ourselves that no longer serve us.
This sentiment was so poignantly clear in Phoebe Fox Trott’s Instagram post this week. She wrote of the importance of leaning into the transformation, reiterating that shedding is okay - a natural process that’s essential to the next cycle or transformation.
There are many seasons in our lives, And like the trees, sometimes we must shed our leaves, darling girl. (@phoebefoxtrot)
I couldn’t help but respond, her thoughts echoing my own contemplation, as I move through another transition, the end of my forties and the ever-encroaching start of a new decade. (#SoonToBe50andFabulous)
We’re all travelling on this blue planet, not so big at all in the whole vastness of the universe. The seasons cycle through, one after another, as we cycle through with them. Autumn, winter, spring, summer. Wet, dry, wet, dry. Even the tropics experience cycles as the earth spins around our sun.
What does it take to flow with it?
How accepting are we of transition? What rituals help us through cyclical change? Can we do ‘ritual’ better? All of these things have been on my mind this week as the weather reminds me it can be fickle. How do I gracefully flow with change?
Acceptance is a start. Accepting that change happens, sometimes whether we want it or not. Stopping to find awe in the everyday, the ordinary. Acceptance of our feelings, whatever they are, and taking time to notice how they show up in our bodies.
Fellow Substack writer, Kathryn LeRoy, who writes
was also contemplating change this week in her piece No one likes change...not even a plant. She writes, “We can’t stop change but we can nurture ourselves and others.” Perhaps this is key for us to thrive during the endless cycles of transformation—self-care and kindness. Like tending our gardens or plants, we need to tend to ourselves, be gentle and kind, turning to our communities for support when we need it.…We should stop trying to finalise our comfort and security somehow, and instead find a radical acceptance of the endless, unpredictable change that is the very essence of this life.
Katherine May in Wintering
Being present is all we have—the here and now. Change will happen whether we like it or not and our ability to respond to it in ways that honour ourselves and others is, perhaps, how we flow with it in a way that is supple and strong, rather than brittle and breakable.
So I sit, looking out at the snow-covered landscape, each tree branch dusted with white. I breathe deep refreshing breaths that land me in the now. I wait, knowing the seasons will change. Just not today.
Stay present
Lisa x
On My “Must Read” List
The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han is on my list to read. Recommended to me by my sister, I’m looking forward to exploring the importance of ritual in our lives.
Timely and beautiful as I watch the days shorten on the other side of the world!
I can't imagine that much ice! Living in a temperate zone and looking at your photograph, reminds me that I will always have more to learn and experience about the world. We fight change, but without it, we become stagnant. Katherine May has given words to the need to "winter" and exist within the season, flowing with the constancy of change in the external world and within ourselves. Your thoughts and photos keep that message alive in my mind. I need the consistent nurturing of those ideas. And, what a delightful surprise to see my words. Thank you.