View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Julia Kretschmann (@julika.illustration)

I had winter blues growing up until my 30s, now known as SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder).

More accurately, until my first Saturn return, when I experienced my own wintering. The process of shedding so much and reaching the bare bones—just like the tree trunks in winter—only to nourish and grow again.

For the first 30 years of my life, winter brought up feelings of loss, darkness, and depth that I wasn’t yet equipped to deal with; my cells sensed them and reacted to them with anxiety and resistance.

In my 30s, I wintered by the book with no shame of shedding just as the season doesn’t hide the fact that it’s winter. My winter was intense so I couldn’t even imagine being able to give a different seasonal appearance. Parts of my life were decaying and falling apart, and there was a basic survival mode in place of finding my roots and my truths. I was stripped to the bare elements like those beautiful tree trunks, and many times, I was in doubt of whether a new season would come.

But real winter knows there is a season to come and maybe that’s our hint. It looks so dead from the outside, but in the ground, there is marvellous growth, transformation, and nourishing.

“The tree is waiting. It has everything ready. Its fallen leaves are mulching the forest floor, and its roots are drawing up extra moisture providing a firm anchor against seasonal storms. Its ripe nuts providing essential food for mice and squirrels, and its bark hosting hibernating insects. It is far from dead. It is in fact the life and soul of the wood. It will not burst into life in spring. It will just out a new coat and face the world again.” ~ Katherine May

Winter is an important part of a long cycle of growth, maturity, and renewal. If it wasn’t such an important season of our soul, the marvellous Saturn wouldn’t have come all the way to meet our sun several times in our life, forcing us into our own winter just to be reborn again.

Magical cycles are always happening within, above, and below.

~