For those of us living in an area of the world gifted with the full range of all four seasons, winter can be a difficult time of year. Bounded in by cold, our bodies are caged indoors and forced to sit in muted stillness, and the sun’s light is dim and occasional. Our souls ache, weighed down by these burdens. We crave the open sky, the whisper-breath of warm sun on bare shoulders. But the warmth so freely given in the summer months is but a distant memory. And as the long cold months drag on, our longing sometimes turns toward depression and despair.
In truth, what we are waiting for is for things to “get better.” Waiting for spring is waiting for signs of change to appear. Many people trying to change a habit decide to implement the new routine in the new year, the dead of winter. But two months hence, it’s still barely March and most have abandoned their commitments. They feel exhausted and depleted, and the weather is just as dismal, if not worse. Thus, they aren’t able to sustain the change. (Perhaps the physical signs of change aren’t yet visible.) They go looking for proof, don’t see it, and tiredly give up. They went looking for spring, but it isn’t ready yet. It’s a long process, and it’s hard to stay patient.
To me, the nature of winter is similar to that of the cocoon. Western culture finds it difficult to be comfortable with this state of being, because it embodies inaction: on the outside, there is a seeming stillness. Winter is cold – there is a lack of external, dynamic energy. In winter, all appears asleep. And our culture doesn’t value stillness. We are encouraged to constantly do more, work harder, keep moving, no matter what is happening on the inside.
Yet in slumber, deeply burrowed into ourselves, we are gifted the opportunity to do the deeper work, bring into being what shall soon come to flourish in brighter days. Just as a woman carries a growing child within the dark space of her womb, so too is the world steadily coming into being in the darkest of seasons. We neglect to conceive of the cocoon-shroud of winter as a safe space! It is not a time for us to be roaring and dancing about; rather, it is a reminder, enforced by elemental forces much greater than we, that we sometimes need respite to keep on growing.
The sacred space of a cocoon is one wherein potent transformation takes place, although it is not yet visible from the outside. Sleep, too, is a place where we access powerful subterranean aspects of our consciousness. Far within, even beyond, the shell of the physical, we recede into the deepest parts of ourselves, effect changes on a nonphysical level, and thereby lay the groundwork for what we will manifest in the coming year.
To me, the beauty of winter lies in its ability to hold space, rather than energetic presence, for us. We are given this precious time to let things that have died come away, so that we may mourn, and then allow ourselves to open that space for the nourishment of new things. And the birth of the new is not meant to come before its time. If winter lingers, then it is a message. Sit quietly with your emotions and allow yourself to feel them. Be with your thoughts and allow them to take the long and winding roads into greater realization. That is why we are given space: so that we may contemplate how to meaningfully fill it when the time comes.