Ep #152: The Gift of Wintering

This is Feminist Wellness, and I’m your host, Nurse Practitioner, Functional Medicine Expert, and Life Coach, Victoria Albina. I’ll show you how to get unstuck, drop the anxiety, perfectionism, and codependency so you can live from your beautiful heart. Welcome my love, let’s get started.

Hello hello my love. I hope this finds you doing so well. It’s a new year. What are you making it mean that it’s a new year? That’s the question I’ve been asking my clients a lot lately.

Are you making it mean, like we talked about last week when we talked about resolutions versus commitment, that it’s time to make all these radical big shifts and changes in your life? Are you telling those fantasy stories that the coming of January once more means it’s time to get a million things done?

I’ve been thinking a lot about wintering. I feel like I’ve been starting shows talking a lot about wintering because it’s really been on my mind in large part because this is my second winter up in the Hudson Valley after so many years in Brooklyn, where winter feels just really different up here in a way.

I’m really, really loving long walks in the woods, a lot of time in nature, freezing my butt off. And this January, I’m really pausing a lot to remind myself that winter, Capricorn season, it’s a time of rest. It’s a time of renewal. It’s a time of hibernation.

I mean, if you live in the northern hemisphere, how many bunnies are there in your yard right now? Hopefully zero. They’ve gone to ground, right? They’re hibernating, they’re getting their chubby cheeks on, they’re getting ready for the spring. The vernal equinox is just around the corner. Spring is soon to come.

So January to me feels like a really sacred invitation to go inward, to slow down, to do less, to support ourselves in ways we may not have been allowing ourselves to feel supported. To call a friend when we don’t really have anything much to say, but just to say I was thinking of you, I love you, you’ve been on my heart, you’ve been on my mind.

I’ve been taking the mornings really slowly as a way to support myself. As I mentioned last week, I have stepped away from caffeine and your girl’s been tired. It’s so fascinating. It sounds funny, but I’ve never really been tired.

I mean, of course I’ve been tired. I’m a human on this planet. But it’s not part of my MO. You know those people – I had an ex who every morning would wake up and say, “I’m just exhausted. I’m so tired.” And it’s never been my story.

I’m always one to bounce up without an alarm at six or 6:30 in the morning and just jump into the day, to exercise, to move, to journal, to write, to produce, to create, to connect. And I didn’t really realize how much of that energy – some of it’s me. Some of it’s the Leo animal that I am. And some of it really was the caffeine.

And I didn’t realize my dependence on that external substance to create my mood, to create my experience of energy. And the longer I am away from it, the more it’s not part of my life, the more I’m getting to know me in new ways. The me that needs more rest.

I’ve been sleeping until previously unthought of hours like 9am, 8am. It’s been wild. And I share that to say what is it about you that you could learn if you stopped buffering? If you allowed yourself to slow down and to honor your humanity, to honor all of our need for wintering, for quiet, for stillness, for presence.

What could you learn about you? Who might you meet beneath the busyness? Beneath the doing, beneath the activity, beneath the go, go, go, go, go that seems to be one of the only options in this moment in late-stage capitalism.

And even if your life is one in which you need to work two or more jobs, plus parenting, plus caring for relatives, plus keeping the house looking somewhat not like a tornado just hit it, how too could you find micro moments of peace, of presence?

When you’re drinking water or tea, as you raise your sandwich to your lips, could you murmur some words of gratitude to those farmers who grew your food, the grocery workers, the truck drivers, all the folks working on oil rigs? What a dangerous job.

Could you murmur some words of gratitude to your own amazing human body for giving you the gift of digestion? And I hear you, my IBS SIBO superstars saying, “But my digestion’s the worst.” But that’s still not the point.

Your body is capable of magical and magnificent things. And I know that our experience of life can pull us away from the magic that really is being a human, being alive, having a body.

A member of the Anchored family lost her husband over the Christmas break. He died from pancreatic cancer. And I’ve been holding her and her family so dear in my heart. We’ve been meeting extra in Anchored for extra dance parties, extra coaching, extra breathwork.

To hold her, support her, and to remember just how precious life is, just how precious human connection is. And how much each of us deserves to pause, to breathe, to connect in with our humanity, to give ourselves that gift.

My intention for today when I sat down at this microphone was to talk to you about the science of inner child healing, and then something else happened. I just started talking from my heart and I’m glad that I did. I’ll keep this short and sweet, just like me, and I’ll leave you with this wish.

That you find a way to give yourself the gift of coming to understand what it is that you want, what it is that you need, what it is that is missing in your own life and world and emotional landscape that you can give yourself, what it is you might ask for support from others around, that you look at how you can resource yourself and support your nervous system, and start to build that trust in you that can lead you to do remarkable things, that can lead you to change ancestral, habitual, intergenerational patterns that can lead you to reconnect with you in deep and powerful, magical and healing ways by finding stillness, the space between breaths.

Those moments where that liminal space is where we are. And you can get present to it. Can find that quiet there. And can revel in it. Spring is around the corner, my beauties. The equinox is almost upon us.

So what could it look like to give your perfect self permission right now today in this moment to get a little more sleep, to drink a little more warm water, to remember to feed yourself like you matter to you, to give yourself permission to take exquisite and excellent care of you, to cherish you the way you cherish the other beings and creatures in your life, and to really show you how wildly and simply important you can be to you in your own life?

And allow yourself to winter, to rest, to simply be. And to notice the magic that’s waiting for you on the other side of all the rushing, all the hurry, all the busy. I got to tell you, it’s pretty magical.

Thanks for listening, my loves. Have a magical, beautiful, incredible day. And before we go, let’s do what we do. Gentle hand on your heart if that feels supportive. And remember, you are safe, you are held, you are loved. And when one of us heals, we help heal the world. Be well, my darling. I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’ve been enjoying the show and learning a ton, it’s time to apply it with my expert guidance so you can live life with intention, without the anxiety, overwhelm, and resentment, so you can get unstuck. You’re not going to want to miss the opportunity to join my exclusive intimate group coaching program, so head on over to victoriaalbina.com/masterclass to grab your seat now. See you there. It’s going to be a good one.