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The Unsettling Stillness of Winter

Writer's picture: Helen MooresHelen Moores

Updated: Jan 17





 


There’s a peculiar kind of quiet during this sleeping season, a hush that settles deep into the bones of this old countryside cottage where I live.


The stillness can be startling if you're not used to it - but I've learned it's not an absence.


It's a presence.


 


In my work, I regularly speak with clients about the discomfort of stillness.


How it can press against us, exposing the parts of ourselves we avoid when life hums louder.


Yet here, in these colder months, the landscape models a different truth: stillness is not discomfort.


It's a deep, necessary pause. The kind that allows unseen growth.


Everyday, I take long walks through the fields and wooded paths near my home. In spring and summer, life feels expectant and urgent, with newness and bloom. The air hums with energy and the land bursts into colour.


But winter - winter is the deep exhale. The frost-blushed branches stand bare, their truth revealed.


The earth, though quiet, is not idle.


Beneath the soil, roots stretch deeper, resting and preparing for the inevitable return of warmth.


 


In years gone by, I resisted the long, dark months. I would fill my days with noise, work, and anything to avoid the quiet.


Winter felt like a void.


But over time, as I walked this land and let the silence speak to me, I realised the void was never empty.


It was full of wisdom, patience, and truth.


There’s a lesson here, one that echoes both in nature and the work of healing:

growth isn’t always visible.


When I guide clients through their own seasons of emotional winter - those times when everything feels bare, exposed, and silent - I remind them that this quiet is where the real work often happens.


Healing doesn’t shout. It whispers, gently reshaping us from within.


 


I've learned, too, that winter demands presence.


The cold on my cheeks, the crunch of frost beneath my boots, the skeletal beauty of the trees - all of it asks me to be here, fully. To accept what is in front of me.


To accept what must be.


It's the same with personal growth.


We can’t skip past the difficult moments or rush through the discomfort.


We must be present with ourselves, even in the barrenness, even when all we can see are empty branches.


 


Living here has taught me the art of embracing simplicity.


In the winter months, this simplicity feels like an invitation to slow down - to notice.


The ritual of lighting candles at dusk, the scent of tea steeping, the sound of rain against the window - these small acts become sacred when you stop to witness them.


So often, healing asks us to simplify, too.


To strip back the noise of self-judgment and endless striving and return to something essential.


To warmth. To presence. To truth.


 


I think about the trees most often in winter. How they stand, patient and unashamed of their bareness, trusting that the fullness will return when it’s time.


They do not rush their blooming or fight the frost.


They simply are.


And I wonder - what might it be like for us to trust our own seasons this way?


To accept the quiet not as a failure but as fertile ground for growth yet unseen?


 


In this slower rhythm, I've come to understand that winter is not just a time for waiting but for integrating. It's when the lessons of the year settle in, and when we can reflect and prepare for what’s next.


Without this pause, the cycle would break.


Spring’s bloom would be shallow, unrooted.


The desire for constant progress and relentless self-improvement - it exhausts us. Nature reminds me that real healing requires honouring the ebb as much as the flow.


Dormancy is not failure. It is preparation.





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