In the belly.
That’s where we are, right?
At least that is how it seems to feel. Our Neolithic Irish ancestors named this midway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox “Imbolc” which literally translates to “in the belly.” They were describing the time of year when the ewes and other farm animals were pregnant with new life. But they very well could also have been referring to this dark and seemingly silent period of the year. For those who are quite far north of the equator, we see a landscape usually covered in snow. This snow captures the sound making it more quiet than normal. A bit eerie, but also peaceful. The days are shorter and typically darker. Plants and animals seem to have vanished from the earth.
It reminds me of a major snowstorm we had in New York City half a decade ago. My friends were in town visiting, otherwise I would have never pulled myself out of bed. We took the train from Brooklyn up to Harlem. The train was empty. When the doors opened and we walked out onto Central Park, it was one of the most bizarre yet beautiful things I have ever seen. A foot of sparkling snow covered the ground as far as the eye could see, and the city which is always bustling with bodies was completely empty. I looked at my friend, “Why does it feel so weird?” “It’s quiet,” she said. It was such a foreign “sound” to me in this city that I couldn’t even put my finger on it when it happened.
What fascinates me about observing the Wheel of the Year, is that it can be taken literally and figuratively. Literally we see the representation of the sabbats reflected in the outer world around us, but if we pay attention they just as easily help to describe what is happening in our inner worlds.
We are part of nature and therefore replicate nature’s cycles. When I first realized this it was great epiphany for me. Suddenly I did not see myself as a machine that was mean to be on the go all the time, producing without end, showing up each day exactly has I had in the last. Never resting, with the exception of sleep where I would merely charge up for the next day. Now I saw myself as a spectacle of nature. A living, breathing organism that grows and changes and transforms. That gets sick and injured and needs to rest. A mysterious unfolding of the universe just like everything else.
The winter blues and increased illness started to make more sense in this context. Rushing around at light speed to accomplish tasks with the fervor of summer is directly counter to what my DNA says to be true. This is the time of retiring to the hearth, sitting by the fire, living off what was grown the previous year, and regenerating for the coming spring. While I no longer fall ill in the winter because I refuse to push myself very hard, my internal world still reflects the landscape. There is little movement, lots of sleep, and sometimes I grow cold internally. Depression and despondency tend to set in.
But this is natural.
If you are feeling lost, adrift, depressed, confused — know that you are not alone. The earth is dark and quiet because this is a period for resting and dreaming. For allowing there to be a space where the new version of yourself can grow, just as a seed in the earth or a lamb inside of a ewe. If you sit quietly enough, you may hear the voice of the future guiding you through.
Just as we whisper to the baby in a mother’s belly, the future whispers to us from beyond. Letting us know it will be ok. That it is preparing itself for our arrival.
My hope for you this winter is that you are able to find long periods for dreaming and for rest. That in the midst of the confusion and chaos you find kindred spirits to help you through. I wish for you the courage to let go of what was in order to open to something new. And if you need a little help, you know I’m here for you too.
I’ll leave you with this quote by Alice Walker, “Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening.
We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before.
Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”