We Were Never Meant to Live Like One Long Summer

For a long time, my life looked a lot like spring, summer, repeat.

Bloom.

Create.

Move.

Do.

Give.

Perform.

Keep going.

Every now and then I would throw in an autumn.

A little reflection.

A little shedding.

A little letting go of an old layer.

But winter?

What winter?

The dreaded winter.

I didn’t really understand what it meant to truly stop. I didn’t like sleeping. I didn’t like being idle. I loved movement, energy, excitement and momentum. Sure, I had dancing and yoga, and in many ways they were my “down time”, but true wintering?

I don’t think I even knew what that was.

As a girl, when I got my period at sixteen, my dancing life meant I just soldiered on.

Use a tampon.

Keep dancing.

Keep training.

Keep going.

There wasn’t really a conversation around rest, or listening, or honouring the body’s rhythm. There was just the quiet message that the body was something to manage so life could continue uninterrupted.

I had really bad cramps in my teens, and then migraines in my twenties that would literally force me to stop.

But only for the time it took them to pass.

My body was screaming, and honestly, I mostly got annoyed.

I did what I could to endure it, push through it, fix it, override it — and then I kept going.

And the truth is, living in adrenaline was fun.

It was exciting.

It was productive.

It made me feel capable.

I was reliable.

I got things done.

I could hold a lot. I could keep moving. I could be the person who showed up, who managed, who made it work.

And isn’t that what so many of us are praised for?

Being able to keep going.

As women, mothers, business owners, partners, friends — we are so often celebrated for our capacity to bloom, produce, give, parent, work, perform and keep everything moving.

But nature doesn’t live like one long summer.

The trees do not bloom all year.

The flowers do not stay open forever.

The earth does not keep producing without rest.

The animals know when to retreat.

The seeds know how to wait in the dark.

Nothing in nature apologises for needing a winter.

And yet so many of us do.

Then came motherhood.

With my first baby, I was still pretty good at keeping it all going.

Even with my second, I could still move through the seasons in a familiar way — spring, summer, a little autumn, then back into doing.

But then came my third.

And wham.

Something in me finally had to face the truth.

I could not hold it all together and be some kind of supermum.

And maybe even more importantly, I realised I didn’t actually want that title.

I didn’t want to be praised for disappearing inside the needs of everyone else.

I didn’t want to be impressive at the cost of my own body.

I didn’t want to keep overriding every signal just so I could be seen as capable.

I began to realise that rest was not optional.

It was necessary.

But knowing rest is important and actually accepting rest as part of the cycle are two very different things.

That has been the deeper journey for me.

Not just stopping because I was forced to.

Not just resting once my body had completely had enough.

Not just collapsing after months or years of holding too much.

But learning to recognise winter without shame.

Learning to let winter have a place.

Learning that winter is not failure.

It is not weakness.

It is not laziness.

It is not me falling behind.

Winter is part of the rhythm.

And I want to be really honest here: I am not a master of this.

The journey to allowing winter in has been a long one. It still is. And sometimes, now that I am finally letting winter have a voice, it feels like all the winters I skipped are arriving at once.

The only analogy I can think of is this:

It is like taking the pill and skipping your period over and over again, then deciding to take all the sugar pills at once and feeling like every missed bleed has come to meet you.

That is how this season can feel for me sometimes.

Like I am in a long winter because I missed so many.

And I wonder if this is true for many of us.

When we finally let ourselves pause, it is not always instantly peaceful.

Sometimes there is a backlog.

A backlog of tiredness.

A backlog of grief.

A backlog of resentment.

A backlog of unmet needs.

A backlog of all the times our body whispered, then spoke, then screamed — and we pushed through anyway.

So don’t be surprised if, when you finally let winter in, there is more there than you expected.

Don’t be surprised if the dark feels thick at first.

Don’t be surprised if the pause brings up tears.

Don’t be surprised if your body wants more rest than your mind thinks is reasonable.

Don’t be surprised if slowing down feels uncomfortable before it feels nourishing.

That doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong.

It might mean your body finally feels safe enough to tell the truth.

This is what wintering is teaching me.

That rest does not need to be earned.

That my body should not have to scream before I listen.

That being productive is not the same as being alive.

That I was never meant to bloom all year.

Wintering is not about giving up on life.

It is not about disappearing, becoming passive, or never creating again.

It is about returning to rhythm.

It is about remembering that we are cyclical beings.

We are allowed to bloom.

We are allowed to shine.

We are allowed to create, move, mother, work, love and give.

But we are also allowed to pause.

To soften.

To be held.

To do less.

To let the roots take their turn.

Because winter is where the roots deepen.

It is where the body restores.

Where the nervous system exhales.

Where the quiet truths rise to the surface.

Where we begin to hear the body before she has to scream.

And maybe that is what so many of us are aching for.

Not a complete escape from our lives.

But a space where we can put down the endless summer for a moment.

A space where no one needs us to be impressive.

A space where we can come back into conversation with our body.

A space where we remember that the pause is part of the path.

This is why I created Wintering.

Not because I believe women need one more thing to do.

But because I believe we need spaces that remind us of what our bodies already know.

That winter is sacred.

That the dark is not empty.

That rest is part of the cycle.

That the body has wisdom.

That we were never meant to live like one long summer.