Winter, Inside and Out
- deborahberrymanyog
- Dec 19, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 30, 2025
I’ve always found winters hard. As someone who uses daylight as my preferred drug of choice, the longer nights can make me feel a bit like a caged animal. By late September, a mild grump descends. A sulk, if I’m honest.
There’s a quiet resentment about having to change my routine – like evening playtime has been cancelled without consultation. I pace the house, glare at the rain, and feel personally offended by darkness at 4pm, especially on long, stormy days when being outside feels like a chore rather than a pleasure.
For years, I could feel myself bracing from autumn onwards – only half enjoying its beauty because I knew what was coming next. And then endured winter through gritted teeth, in a low-level state of silent fuming, just waiting for it to be over.
It was a battle of wills. And winter won. Every time.
After 50 years of research, I’ve concluded that no matter how much I resist wet, windy days, winter is happening anyway. Audaciously. Every year.
If you've been orbiting my world for a while, you'll know I’m someone who believes in my bones that we shouldn’t endure things we don’t need to. Goodness knows, we do this far too often – staying in places, jobs, relationships, and dynamics that leave us slowly losing our centre. Carrying more than our fair share of the practical and emotional load. Waiting for the other person to change, rather than accepting the reality in front of us and focusing on how we want to show up. Overfunctioning. Holding it all together. Telling ourselves we have no choice, while quietly making one by not choosing.
But there are some things that must be endured – not because they’re good for us, but because they can’t be rushed. Seasons in the year. And seasons in our lives.
Times when the wisest thing we can do is wait for the storm to pass, for our energy to be restored, for the next step to reveal itself.
This is not an easy place, my love. But here we are anyway.
For some of us, winter isn’t just outside. It’s the quiet ache of a relationship that hasn’t ended but has grown quieter. The deep tiredness that comes from years of being the strong one – holding things together, carrying more than your share. It’s the grief of outgrowing an old identity without yet knowing what’s next. Or that whisper you can’t quite ignore: Is this it? Life looks fine on the surface, but something essential is resting, waiting.
And while we may not be able to change what’s happening (or not happening), we can choose how we meet these tricky seasons.
We can brace and resist.
Or we can soften and accept – allowing this 'fallow time' to serve us.
Hard weather doesn’t ask us to grow up and out. It asks us to grow down and wide. This is where depth forms. Where our roots strengthen.
In these times, try not to brace. Instead, choose to ride it out in the most nourishing, loving way you can. Like the tiny dormice who hibernate each year, build a cosy nest – not to escape life, but to give your nervous system a chance to exhale while the hardest weather passes.
Trees have become my winter teachers. I used to mourn their lost glory, but now I admire their discerning wisdom. They don’t resist the winter, they don't cling to what’s no longer needed or apologise for looking bare. They wait, pulling their energy inward and down – less admired in this season perhaps, but deeply nourished. Bold in their nakedness. Brave in tending to their inner life, even when no one’s clapping. Bravo!
We can do this too. We can wait out a difficult winter season, in wisdom and in a quiet, gentle surrender.
And just like the tree, this resting doesn't mean we're giving up. Wintering isn’t getting stuck or any kind of failure. Nothing in nature rests forever, but everything rests enough. We wait, buds are ‘poised’, ready for the spring energy to move us into something new.
Whether it’s winter outside or inside, whether it lasts an hour, a season, or a year, here are a few practices I return to, you might enjoy too.
Keep them simple. Think in three gentle categories: comfort, ritual, and release.
Comfort: hot baths, early nights, fewer people, favourite films, a good friend or the dog, quiet solitude.
Ritual: lighting a candle morning and night, watching the sun rise or set, marking the day with intention. Make this time sacred in tiny ways with moments of meaning.
Release: giving grief, endings, old selves and old patterns somewhere to go – on the page, by the fire, or quietly in your own time. Letting what’s finished be finished.
Choose one or two. That’s enough.
These tiny acts of grace and compassion are ways of honouring your soul in this necessary period of rest, stillness, and perceived inactivity.
But mostly, try to bless the whole messy business of being human. Our real lives. Our real relationships. Our real selves. Not in spite of how imperfect they are, but because of it.
This weekend is winter solstice – the longest night of the year. This morning I’ll be on a hill, watching the dawn break. In the midst of tinsel and relentless Christmas cheer, I want to honour the darkness too. The place where we meet the unknown, the unconscious, the parts of us that are being reshaped. This is often the birthplace of something beautiful… eventually.
Are you here now, dear one? Have you been pushing against your winter too? Are you tired of trying to force an ending that isn’t ready yet?
If so, lie down for a moment. Open your arms and legs like a starfish so you can stop curling against it. Let the ground hold you. Let life hold you. Feel the weight lift from your tired bones. Let the pressure soften in your chest.
This winter season is shaping you – into something wiser, stronger, more loving. Nothing about this season is wasted. It’s not delaying your life – it’s preparing it.
Don’t rush it. Meet it bravely, messily, tenderly - I'm walking with you...thick socks and chunky jumpers all the way.
Tend your nest. Tend your heart.
Spring will come soon, I promise.
With love, Deborah PS. If you find yourself longing for steadier ground and deeper support as winter unfolds, I’ll be sharing something in the New Year that’s been quietly growing too – especially for women ready to meet the next season with more steadiness, support, and truth.
