I'm Letting Winter Slow Me Down (Even when I don't want to)

How the coldest season is teaching me to embrace stillness and silence

I’m bundled up in my husband’s hoodie, favorite flare leggings, with a blanket over my shoulders and candle burning on my desk. The sun is gracing me with it’s presence through the window but even with my thick socks and slippers on, I’m still cold. It’s officially winter in Tennessee and although it’s much milder than the winters I grew up with in the Chicago suburbs or in college or the high rockies it still manages to have the same effect—I feel trapped.

I feel conflicted by winter this year.

Last year, I was in survival mode. There was really nothing I could do but snuggle my baby and make it through another day with the seemingly never-ending internal questions of how do I do this whole “mom” thing?

Now, I am a lot more confident as a mom and all the other roles I embrace in my day-to-day have started to settle into my transforming identity as if I’m creating some sort of calculated block tower and have finally taken my hands off of it watching it all balance in place, at last.

That first year of motherhood is a doozy but then you start to become the mom who other moms call giving out advice like it is second nature: put some breastmilk on it, try a lukewarm bath, hang patterned swaddles to look at in the car.

As winter felt like it was closing in around me this year I felt my spirit panic a bit. “Wait, wait!” I wanted to shout. I have just figured this all out. We have a routine that works for us and is pretty dependent on getting outside. While my son is in a new stage and my outdoor activities dwindle, I feel myself forced to adjust, again.

Now, here is where I am conflicted.

There is a part of me that really likes winter. When my husband and I moved to Colorado it was in part because the ski town we lived in is quite literally a winter playground. We would go skiing on Sunday nights under the lights, we trekked around the national forest to chop down our Christmas tree in exchange for a $10 donation, we’d snowshoe despite the knee deep snow.

Us with our first Colorado Christmas tree before we chopped it down.

And part of the beauty of winter was the quiet. It was still and white. But even in a winter playground the harshness of winter would shut us inside.

We had days where we couldn’t safely descend from our little mountain town condo. (I kept a snow shovel in my car back then in case I needed to dig myself out.) So we would make big pots of cozy spaghetti and wear our thick carhart socks and get creative with indoor activities. I started sewing my own scrunchies. This was before the pandemic and we were already masters at surviving isolation when that rolled around.

That part of me loves winter. I like the challenge of it. I like how it humbles us. It gives me this sense of awe and wonder that doesn’t visit me as often in the summer. In the harshness of the cold I’m reminded of how small I am, how human I am. And I like that feeling because it forces me to look to a bigger God.

This part of me tells me to slow down. To settle into my humanity. To confess that winter will always humble me and instead of resisting that feeling to embrace it and pull out a thrift store puzzle.

But then there’s another part of me that resists.

I try to create a to-do list that will help me outrun the feeling of being trapped, being small, being out of control. I determine I will get to the gym for an indoor workout every day. Sweating inside is almost an escape. I start taking my vitamin D supplement again. I look at empty days on the calendar and come up with ways to fill them. That part of me is a bit afraid of the slowness, of the silence, of the dark, long, cold winter nights.

Winter, with it’s unique, stark beauty is teaching me something about myself. It asks me to sit with the tension I feel between the part of myself that longs for productivity, action, and control and that part of me that aches to turn inward, to reflect, and to rest.

Both parts are good and both parts are needed—like the necessity of every season in nature.

Winter stops my striving and invites me into a season of awe and wonder. Of feeling small but being held by an infinitely big God. Of being stripped away from the noise.

Instead of trying to outrun the cold or fill every moment with busy-ness I’m trying to embrace this slower pace. To light the candles, sip the hot tea, pile on the blankets and embrace the dark and cold with trust that this is necessary—even good.

Maybe this season isn't something to white knuckle and endure but something to welcome. Maybe I can learn to love it as an opportunity to reflect on the life I want to build, one that is quiet, still, present, and full of grace for every season.

“New life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”

-Barbara Brown Taylor