220 - 5 Ways I'm Wintering this Year
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Show Notes:
Have you ever heard of wintering as a verb? Well, now you have because today I am going to share with you 5 ways that I'm wintering this year.
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Guys it's my last episode of the whole year. Sometimes I sit here in disbelief that I have done this another year. I'm not going to lie. There have been several times where I've almost thrown in the towel. There have been sick days. There have been challenging days as a mom. Scheduling is not always easy and yet I sit here today. Another year of Work and Play with Nancy Ray is complete. I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful if you are listening to my voice right now, I want you to know I am grateful for you. I am grateful for every single listen and download that you give, if you have written a review, thank you.
If you haven't, I would so appreciate it. Um, but even if you haven't I'm just grateful that you're listening I'm so thankful. Patrons, huge shout out to my patrons. You keep this going every week, I am so thankful for you. You can learn more about that community over at patreon.com/workandplay but just wanted to pause and celebrate that here we are, end of the year. This is the last episode of the year. I'm taking January off. I'm wintering, and so you won't be hearing from me again until February.
Two quick resources I wanted to leave with you before I jump into the five ways I'm wintering. Number one, I haven't talked about it very much but I'm still doing the contentment challenge. nancyray.com/contentmentchallenge is where you can learn about it, download some free resources there if you ever want to do it. You can also ahead of your contentment challenge pay for the $15 course that I offer. It's basically a podcast that you can listen to while you're doing the contentment challenge all about contentment along with a downloadable journal on contentment that you fill out with some devotions just to help keep you strong. It's a hard thing to do but it's good, it is rewarding, so you can find out more there.
And then also, nancyray.com/planning. I shared a couple episodes ago or maybe last episode that I'm not really planning a lot for the new year in December which is very unlike me. I am waiting till January and I'm just choosing to be really really present this year and not think ahead. It's like so hard for me because I'm such a forward thinker. But nancyray.com/planning if you are already looking ahead and planning for the New Year, I put together my favorite end-of-year resources for planning some personal audits that you can take, like questions that you ask yourself. I even like lay out the timeline of kind of how I would take my team out for dinner and celebrate the end of the year just like end of year rhythms routines traditions that I would do to help finish the year strong and also look ahead to the next year. So that's free, nancyray.com/planning.
Okay back to wintering. I decided to look up wintering like winter as a verb in the dictionary and it really only referred to birds who migrate and they like winter in a tropical place but that's not what we're talking about here. But there's this phrase about wintering and how you winter kind of going around and if you've heard it I even saw someone post about it today and it's all about what do you do to kind of hunker down in winter. This is more I think popularly discussed or talked about or embraced in other parts of the world, especially when the sun sets at like 3pm and it doesn't rise again until 9am or 10am and the days are super super short and the nights are really long and they deal with a lot of seasonal depression and they have a whole different culture of life that they have to embrace. It's more popular I think there to talk about wintering and kind of how you cope with that and deal with that throughout the winter.
But today I'm going to talk about ways that I'm wintering this year and also just the different seasons of wintering, and the place I learned most about this was a book actually called Wintering and the tagline is the power of rest and retreat in difficult times. And I think that we hear a lot about goals. We hear a lot about plans. I love those things. We hear a lot about dreaming and strategic planning, all those things right?
But what about when life happens? What about when things have to slow down what about the seasons of life where you have a new baby or someone in your family becomes really ill and you have to take care of them or maybe you're really sick or you start to face health challenges that you've never faced before, what does that look like? I think a lot of times we can think that we're failing at life when things like that happen because we're not able to achieve our goals or achieve the plan that we've laid out. And today I want to say loud and clear it doesn't mean that you're failing, it just means that life is happening and life is always, always intended from the Creator from the beginning of time to be lived in seasons and winter is one of those seasons.
Our life reflects the seasons of nature. A lot of times there's seasons where something new and exciting is starting and it's spring. And then there's the season of summer where you're just working really hard and then there's harvest, you reap the benefit of it and then there's winter. And wintering and the season of winter is not talked about enough but it's beautiful and it's actually necessary. We can't skip winter. Plants can't skip winter. They can't constantly be in a cycle of blooming. It's healthy for them to go through these different seasons and it's healthy for us too.
And so in the book Wintering by Katherine May she talks a lot about a season of her life where she had to really pull back in work and she had to pull her son out of school and homeschool him even though that was never in their plans and she had to take care of her husband who got so sick, she had to take care of him. It was just like this major life shift and she was like whoa whoa whoa like, how do I do this and how do I do it well?
And so that's just what I want to talk about today is that it's okay for there to be winter. It's good for there to be winter. I am taking that into my own life this year. There have been some hard things that have happened for us this year that I have not shared and I don't need to share them. But I just want to take some time to allow the process of winter to take place, to pull back to meet with the Lord and I'll share with you my five ways that I am wintering this year
1. Prioritize Sleep
In nature, a lot of creatures will hibernate or there's even like actually even for people. I don’t know if you knew this, you tend to sleep longer in the winter. It's like your body needs more sleep. The darkness is longer, the the days are shorter, and your body tends to just need more sleep in those months. I think to help fight off sickness, living in the cold, whatever, I don't know why exactly but we do. But you know bears will hibernate, other animals will hibernate and it's just a very practical way that you can winter and allow yourself to like rest and recover.
Katherine May says in her book Wintering “Doing those deeply unfashionable things, slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting is a radical act now but it is essential. This is a crossroads we all know, a moment when you need to shed a skin if you do you'll expose all those painful nerve endings and feel so raw that you'll need to take care of yourself for a while. If you don't then that skin will harden around you.” I love those words and I love the permission she gives just to rest and sleep more and allow yourself to have some spare time. Um, so I'm going to just prioritize my sleep.
Back in episode 108, I talked about this book I read called Sleep Smarter. And it had some really practical tips on how to sleep smarter, how to sleep better, and that includes having a consistent bedtime, getting sunshine on your skin early in the morning, eating a lot of healthy foods, I increase my magnesium intake, all of those things help you sleep better and I am going to just set my alarm a lot less this winter.
2. Not Planning Until January
The second thing I'm doing is like I've mentioned, I'm just not making a plan for 2024 yet. I'm not setting any goals for next year yet. I am going to let December be December one hundred percent and I'm not going to think about anything else ahead of time. I've never done this before. I am a goal setter, I am a 3 on the enneagram, I like to know where I'm headed before I get there, but some things in life have just caused me to pause and really to be honest, just to be so grateful for my family and so grateful for my kids. And I told Will I feel like this season of December is so special for us, I mean we celebrated Christmas with our kids at the ages of 2, 5 6, and 8, and I just don't want to rush through them enjoying Christmas time in the holidays because they are at such beautiful, innocent ages and I know these Christmases are going to just go by so fast. The holidays are, the new year, it's all going to go by so fast, I just want to take it all in.
3. Taking January Off
The third thing that I am doing to winter this year is I'm taking off a whole month in January. Taking off the podcast, taking off working, I'm just going to be home. I'm not going to do anything crazy. I'm just going to rest and I do this every year. I take off January and I take off July every year, but this year I want to be really really intentional about making sure that I am working ahead and getting everything done by the end of the year so that I truly can take off all of January and just be. I'm very excited about that.
4. Use Up What I Have
The fourth thing that I want to do to winter is to use up what I have.
Think about animals—they will stash away all their food in the warm months. I don't know if you've ever seen the show Alone, Will and I love to watch this show about these people who are literally dropped off in the middle of nowhere and they have a camera and 10 things and they have to survive as long as they can. And one of the things they do, when they're living off the land and building their own house out of tree limbs and whatnot, is they will harvest berries and food as much as they can and store it up in their boots and stuff and store it away for the winter months that are coming. And they literally just stash it all away and then they like methodically eat it throughout the winter.
I want to do that this winter. I want to take time to use up what I have, I want to stop consumption. This goes along with the contentment challenge. Stop buying things, stop getting more, and use up everything that I have. There's just a massive influx of gifts and belongings and material things and food over Christmas time, really starting in October. Halloween so much candy, Thanksgiving so much food, Christmas so much food and so much candy and so much baked goods.
It's like by January I just want to start—first off I want to probably like throw out all the candy. And the second, I just want to eat what we have. I want to go through everything in our freezer and eat it or throw it away if we're not going to eat it. I want to use up all the Play-Doh and toys and modeling clay and kinetic sand and whatever activities I have stashed away this year. I want to get them out and use them over the next several months. I want to use up what I have.
5. Reflect, Don’t Rush
The fifth way that I'm wintering is to just take time to reflect and not rush ahead into what's next, but be grateful for and look back at the things that have been. So I want to reset my priorities before I set any new goals. I want to stop and write out the things that are most important to me. I want to name the things that are working in my life and the things that are not and then I want to take time to just recover like from the year, from everything that's gone into this year from homeschooling, from the holidays, I want to recover from tending to sick kids and being sick myself, I just want to recover from the work that was this year and use it as a time, use this little winter season as a time to reflect and reset my priorities.
So that's it. Those are the 5 ways that I'm wintering this year. I'm prioritizing my sleep. I'm not making a plan for 2024 until January. I am taking a month off the podcast in January. I am using up everything that I have, and taking time to reflect.
Well that was it. Thank you for listening to Work and Play with Nancy Ray episode 220. Anything I've mentioned today can be found in the show notes at nancyray.com/podcast/220. You can find me at nancyray.com and over @nancyray on Instagram.
Katherine May said,
“Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.”
Thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.
