The Wisdom of Winter
The exposed season & why letting go feels so uncomfortable.
I used to get the ick when people would talk about slowing down, resting and “enjoying” winter.
It all made me feel deeply uncomfortable, and frankly annoyed me. Why were people telling me to enjoy something that I really didn’t enjoy, something that I felt so much resistance to. Like they had a secret to joy and peace but I didn’t get the key.
Well, from a recovering Winter-hater - I’m about to share why.
If you’re anything like me, there’s something very unsettling about this time of year.
As the trees shed their leaves and darkness closes in earlier each evening, we find ourselves standing in a landscape that feels more and more bare. In turn, this shines a light (bright AF because it’s so dark, the irony) on us, in all our vulnerability and exposed emotional nakedness. We wonder why we feel more inward, uncertain, slow… and this can start manifesting as resistance.
In my therapy room, I watch this resistance play out in many ways. Scrolling through phones, filling every weekend with plans, every silence with podcast episodes, every pause with productivity.
We have become masters at outrunning stillness, at treating empty space like something dangerous that needs to be immediately filled.
Having more time in your own mind can do that.
Do we somehow interpret quietness as laziness or any moment of rest as time wasted?
Well, here’s what I’ve come to understand, both in my practice and in my own life - our resistance to stillness is often our resistance to what stillness might reveal.
The natural world doesn’t share our anxiety about letting go. Trees don’t apologise for their bare branches. Instead, they trust the cycle. They know that this exposure, this stripping back is an essential part of the process.
But we’re not trees.
We’re humans living in a culture that celebrates constant growth, productivity, and the appearance of having it all together. So when this season asks us to let go, to be still - we panic, we resist. We feel like we’re failing. It’s understandable, we were never encouraged to soften into these edges.
Here’s what I’d love you to consider:
What if feeling low right now isn’t a problem to be solved?
What if flatness isn’t something to be fixed or hustled out of?
What if the loss of vitality you’re experiencing is actually your system’s wise response to a season that is asking you to turn inward and stop performing?
We can’t sustain something that was never meant to be sustained.
And sometimes, control creeps in during this season as a way to avoid exposure, but control is exhausting.
It requires constant tension and effort. And the cruel irony is that the things we most fear, the feelings we’re trying to avoid, don’t go away when we control. They just get compressed and postponed.
I’ve crawled my way through this season many times - “just get through in anyway you can and you’ll be okay, you’ll be fine, you’ll manage”. I’ve seen the toll that resistance has taken on my own life, and I’ve also felt the relief that comes when I finally stopped fighting and let myself be where I actually am. In my low-ness, stuck-ness, fear and sadness.
Letting go is a practice.
A series of small releases. A gradual unclenching of the fist you didn’t realise you’d been making.
It looks like saying no to commitments that feel like “shoulds” rather than nourishing. It looks like allowing yourself to be less productive and less social without spinning a story that something is wrong with you. It looks like sitting with difficult feelings instead of immediately trying to fix or change them.
It looks like trusting that you don’t have to hold everything together all the time.
That some things are meant to fall apart.
So if you’re feeling exposed or uncomfortably visible in your struggles - know that I’m with you and this experience has a purpose. You’re not falling behind. You’re participating in a cycle as old as life itself, one that requires loss before renewal, and a big letting go before receiving what comes next.
Some periods of life ask you to grow. Winter is this invitation, but not the kind we’re used to. This one is asking you to rest and to let yourself be held.