The Descent into Winter

Dear Earth Women,

Here in Aotearoa, the days are short, and the nights are extending their reach into the deep well of my heart.

Living in alignment with the seasons has become deeply vital to my life, and I wonder how it weaves its way through yours?

It is a radical act to not only align our lives with the seasons of the earth, but with the cycles of our bodies.

A relationship that requires you to look inside, beneath the surface, and let the medicine of the seasons work its way through your being.

The dark winter is inherently ignored by society here in the Western world. There is an expectation to be in summer all year round, producing, visible, and consistent in our results.

However, as I've grown alongside Earth Women, she has taught me something far greater than I could have imagined.

The magic of winter.

But, my love, you must be brave to truly face it. To look it in the eye.

It can be confronting what winter asks of us, or more so what it invites within us.

It asks us to take a look beneath the soil, to meet our heartbeat and internal world.

How can we meet the darkness? How can we tend to the seeds under the soil, or perhaps just the soil alone?

Fostering this kinship with the dark, the mystic, the unknown.

Living cyclically also aligns with our menstrual cycle, our bleed time.

Asking us to turn inward, to slow down and breathe what was once alive.

Our bodies singing this low hum of life, of release, and of death.

I heard the call of winter this season, deeper than I ever have before.

Calling upon the learnings of menstrual cycle awareness, and learning what the heck rest is.

It's the yin and the yang, the dark and the light, the doing and the resting. It's a polarity.

And Mother Earth works in balance, in cycles.

It teaches us that seasons provide us different lessons and initiations into ourselves and the world.

It teaches us that if we can truly honour our light, we must also honour the dark.

That's how we know ourselves, in all shades, in all colours of the dark starry night.

So I wonder how you are finding this winter season, and what's been called up from deep within you?

I thought I would impart some poems that have soothed my heart in the initiation of the dark.

I am out with lanterns looking for myself — Emily Dickinson

The Guest House — Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

You see, the clearing may be just what you need.

As scary as it can be to let go, this is how we align deeper to our truth.

How we align to the earth within and all around us.

It's okay to be lost, to not have it figured out, and to step out into the unknown.

The bravest humans I know have been the ones who take the step into the dark, knowing that from somewhere deep within, they knew the way.

Good luck, dear friend, in the depths of this winter.

I hope you dance with it, and let it weave its medicine with you.

For spring will arrive, in all due time.

And life will have changed. Don't miss this moment.

Decay, before you sprout and bloom.

From the darkness with love, Ila.