In my own green witch life, connecting to the winter season has always been my greatest challenge. I have just never loved it as I have the other seasons of the year.
Even with Mother Earth at the center of my spiritual practice, winter has never been my favorite season.
For years, it felt like something to endure instead of something to enjoy. I dreaded the cold, the layers, and the long hours of darkness and seasonal affect disorder just added to it.
But everything changed with a simple shift in perspective. This is how I came to deeply appreciate this season and its gifts. If you’ve ever felt that same dread about winter as I used to, I invite you to begin reconnecting to the joys of the winter season.
I hope you’ll be inspired by this personal perspective.
Watch the video or if you prefer, read the transcript below.
Transcript for Green Witch Life: Connecting to Winter
Nature’s cycles are something that our modern lives have disconnected us from in a way that gives us the sense that we’re apart from, rather than a part of, nature.
I have to admit that I have never, ever loved winter in the same way that I love the other three seasons of the year.
For a lot of my life, winter was just always something that was sort of tolerated but not enjoyed. And perhaps you also can relate to this. I always saw it as a complication or an inconvenience, and I often expressed hatred for it as I piled on layer after layer of clothing just to be able to go outside.
And I didn’t enjoy it once I got out there, either. In these cold months, I would have liked to just hibernate and wake up in the spring.
I’m one of these people that’s always cold.
And, as someone who has dealt with depression for many years of my adult life, I had seasonal affect disorder too.
I never looked forward to winter, then I had something of an epiphany. I began aligning myself with this season of cold and dark. I embraced her unique gifts, and in doing so, I noticed I could then use them to move through this season with more grace and ease.
And then a funny thing happened, I actually began to enjoy the winter season.
To get there, I started small with things that I enjoy about this season, like my sweaters and boots and scarves and fuzzy blankets. I reveled in those things and eventually I graduated to even hiking in the snow, and that gave me the opportunity to explore the winter season in new ways.
I began to honor this time of rest and repair—this time of renewal and rebirth. My reverence for Mother Earth deepened as I remembered how this sacred cycle serves her.
Observing the forest now with bare trees and snow covering the leaf litter, there’s no sign of anything, but that’s deceiving.
Underneath, there’s a great deal going on, although we don’t really see it. Winter is that time of year that everything just seems to be doing nothing. But it’s there, and it’s waiting to be beckoned forth by the lengthening days and the warming temperatures of spring.
So by returning to this alignment and reverence for Mother Earth, I began to actually find joy in the winter season. I think that’s where the true magic of winter lives.
And Yule is a wonderful place to start that process of reverence and alignment.
Summary
I hope you’ve enjoyed this personal look at connecting to winter and it inspires you to consider how you might create a deeper connection to the winter season in your life.
Blessed be.
You might also like:
Celebrating Yule/Winter Solstice
Journey through the Wheel of the Year – Sabbats & Themes
Karen
