dormant season
maybe you need one
This is the newsletter version of Sara by the Season, where I explore a little bit of everything that’s on my mind as I try to lean into nature’s wisdom and rhythms. I usually record a podcast version too, but in the interest of practicing what I preach, I’m skipping that for this edition. If you know someone who would like this sort of thing, I’d be so grateful if you would share it!
January has been a bit of a bust at our house: I’ve had the cold from hell for going on three weeks, the kids are back to virtual school, and we’ve been trying to help a family member navigate some really awful health news. Even though I’m the person going around telling everyone that January is a terrible time for doing all the things, I still find myself feeling behind: I haven’t had the mental head space to do my normal end-of-the-year reflection stuff, I have done the bare minimum to keep things functioning around here, and I’m just sick of not feeling like myself.
I was venting about all of this to a friend who said, quite nonchalantly in response to something I had barely done, “what if you just let that be enough for now?” Honestly, my response in my head was something along the lines of: “well, because it actually isn’t enough!”
But then her words rang around in my head for a few days. They were words that I would say to a friend in a similar situation, but I couldn’t say them to myself - it felt like I couldn’t let myself off the hook.
In teaching yin yoga in the winter, I often reference how nature rests during the winter. Nature doesn’t rest as a reward for anything, but she rests just because that is what winter is for. Even though I say this often throughout the winter, I wasn’t exactly sure what dormancy does, so I did a little research...
Dormancy in trees and perennial plants allows them to survive the winter in freezing temperatures:
Because they can’t uproot themselves and migrate south to warmer clients like certain animals, trees enter a dormant state similar to the hibernation of snakes, bees, skunks, bears and bats (to name a few). This dormancy is what allows trees to survive the cold winter.
During dormancy, a tree’s metabolism, energy consumption, and growth all slow down significantly in order to endure the harsh season of winter when water and sunlight are more scarce. Dormancy occurs in stages; it begins in the fall with the loss of leaves. A chemical called abscisic acid is released, which signals the leaves to detach so trees do not expend energy in keeping them alive during the winter…During the winter months, the rate of growth is brought nearly to a halt. The stored energy is utilized to maintain the tree’s health, instead of being used for growth. Without cell division and growth, or the task of keeping its leaves alive, trees are able to survive through winter by maintaining only the “essential systems” until the spring.
Many animals go dormant in the winter, which we typically call hibernating:
Hibernation is an adaptation to a harsh environment. During winter months, food is scarce, and this can be dangerous for endothermic animals who use their energy stores to regulate their body temperature. Hibernation can help warm-blooded animals to survive the harsh winter months where there is very little food available…Their bodies slow down, allowing them to conserve energy. Their heart rates, breathing, and body temperatures reduce, allowing them to survive through winters with less food.
The Latin translation of the word “hibernation” is “to pass the winter,” and many animals will enter a state of hibernation lasting many weeks or months.
Because we move from one climate-controlled place to another all year long, we forget that, for most of human history, humans themselves lived very differently during the winter months, just like the animals they are:
Evidence from bones found at one of the world’s most important fossil sites suggests that our hominid predecessors may have dealt with extreme cold hundreds of thousands of years ago by sleeping through the winter.
The scientists argue that lesions and other signs of damage in fossilised bones of early humans are the same as those left in the bones of other animals that hibernate. These suggest that our predecessors coped with the ferocious winters at that time by slowing down their metabolisms and sleeping for months.
Even if we don’t go all the way back to the Ice Age, we know that humans prior to the advent of electricity were forced to live more seasonally: they worked during the growing months to put up food for the fallow seasons of late fall and winter, they would have had to stay inside more during harsh winters, sleeping with the sun and relying on fires and body heat to stay warm.
Whatever you want to call this capitalist, consumerist, totally-divorced-from-nature-culture we find ourselves in, it would tell us that your output should be the same no matter the time of the year: Always be hustling. Bust your ass. Work hard, play hard. Never quit.
But we are nature, and ignoring that fundamental truth is causing all sorts of problems for us humans, to say nothing of the destruction it wreaks on the planet and the more-than-human-world. Because we’re nature, we’re meant to have dormant seasons too. Seasons to regroup, to rest, to be still, to lay fallow, to cut yourself lots of slack.
If you’ve been immersed in our culture for years or even decades (especially if you belong to any marginalized group), your need might be even greater - your dormant season might need to be much longer than our typical winter. If you’ve lived through two+ years of this pandemic swimming in so much death and carelessness, you probably need to go dormant for a bit.
The trees and plants and animals don’t go dormant so they can hustle harder in the spring to come - they do it so they can survive. We too need to go dormant for seasons - not so that we can work harder or maximize productivity or do much of anything - we need dormant seasons so we can survive this world we’re living in, because we need and deserve to just be.
This is counter-cultural, and the systems in place obviously don’t leave much room for even a fallow weekend, let alone a dormant season. But anytime we carve out a little time to just be instead of do, I think we’re reminding ourselves that we’re human beings not human doings and that work, no matter how seemingly small, plays a part in creating the kind of world we want and resisting this current iteration that is so destructive.
Rants and raves
👍 As mentioned, I’ve been sick for most of 2022 and had a terrible cough at night. Grant went to the grocery store to get me some cough drops, but the store shelves looked like spring of 2020 again, and there were only two boxes of cough drops in the whole pharmacy. They were this brand, which I had never tried before, but will now be a fan for life. They’re numbing, which helps that throat tickle, plus they’re flat so I don’t get nervy about choking on them if I fall asleep.
👍 I read the first four Outlander books several years ago and then just kind of stalled out on book five, but I started reading again a few weeks ago and am totally sucked back in. January feels like the perfect time to get lost in a story, so I’m savoring that little bit of escapism.
👍 Speaking of getting lost in story, we decided to introduce the kids to Lord of the Rings since we can be a little less strict with their bedtimes with e-learning. We watched the extended versions of all three movies, and the kids were both completely enthralled. I love bigger kids.
👎 This [waves her hands around to encompass everything] is just all so much. It’s exhausting. Let’s be excessively gentle with ourselves. My bet is that, if we can find some extra gentleness for ourselves, it will spill over to those around us.
Stuff worth sharing
Per the rant above, I like how this question from the Nap Bishop: how will you be useless to capitalism today? A perfect question for dormant season!
Saeed Jones’ two-parter on productivity was full of insights, but I especially liked this reminder and advice:
Generally speaking, I think “productivity” is about quantity. It’s about more. I can create more. I can do more. I can accomplish more. But sometimes — or often! — we find ourselves lost in the canyon between goals. We want to be more productive, but just can’t squeeze more tasks or pages or emails out of ourselves. That happens; we need to recharge. In the meantime, what can we be instead? Maybe I’m not productive right now. But can I be curious? Caring? Kind? Attentive?
Chris naming this funk we’re all in.
Cheers to a little dormancy in the week ahead!
Sara