You do not always need to be in bloom (reclaiming the internal winter of the feminine soul)

The internal winter is an inner space that weaves in and out of our beings- sometimes for a moment, sometimes a day, a week, a season. Sometimes for a longer stretch of time that seems never ending. The internal winter is a descent and a dying to the old self. It is the darkened space that teaches us to trust in what is unseen and unmanifest. It is the feminine, the yin, the subtle, the soft, the still.

Yet in our culture, the internal winter is a place that we resist and feel shame for. We want to push through it, fight it, resist it, pretend it is not necessary.

I have had much experience with this state of internal winter. Like many of you who are drawn to my writings, the path to reclaiming our feminine nature is often accompanied by a natural desire to retreat into the centre of our beings, away from the rush of the world, away from the masculinised norms and striving pace that we have become so entangled within.

What I have come to see is that we have an inherent intelligence within us that seeks to restore our organic nature. So when we have been in these extrinsically focused states of masculine achievement and outward performance for many years (often many decades), there is a natural re-balancing that our feminine hearts yearn to soften into. When we have been culturally entranced into a state of perpetual ‘summer’, we naturally seek to regain the internal nourishment of inner winter, of the feminine, of the yin energies that we have lost.

For the woman drawn to deepening into her feminine soul, there is a natural recalibration that takes place once she more consciously reclaims her intrinsic nature. It is a re-calibration that can uproot her way of life, relationship, business, more than she may think it ‘should.’ 

Yet if we consider how much of our lives we have already spent inadvertently building up a way of relating to the world, a way of achieving that depends on us masculinising our true nature, it makes sense that there must be an extended (and what can sometimes seem like an ‘over focus’) on nurturing the feminine back into being.

Usually, an extended winter (or repeated cycles of extended winters) is exactly what we need to restore the internal beauty of our being, and bring our feminine nature back into natural bloom. Sometimes, we peek out from this internal cocoon and realise, ‘No, I need more time’. Because at a deeper level, we know that if we push ourselves to heal, grow, bloom, achieve and create in ways that do not honour our organic nature, our feminine being burrows even further into our unconscious, carrying with her an even deeper distrust in her ability to be nourished and understood in this world. 

I have seen how a woman will know when she is in this organic reclamation of feminine energy, because it does not matter how much she thinks about forcing or pushing herself into taking action on what she thinks she ‘should’ be doing, her feminine soul will quite literally refuse to let her budge.

Yet there is a healthy rebellion here, as though the feminine body and spirit is finally demanding her rightful pace, her rightful nature back.

It is a natural return into the nucleus of the feminine soul. A reclamation of being that the over culture has deemed as inherently lazy, misguided, wrong.

It is a re-embodiment of the feminine, a return to the deeper soul. It is a gentle yet fiercely protective ‘No’ to all the ways you have been taught to achieve, produce and perform to keep up with artificial, synthetic pace.

It is an unapologetic ‘Stop. Not now. Right now, I am resting, I am softening, I am healing. I am taking back the truth of my nature, my divinity and my heart.’

Belinda x

other writings you may enjoy

The Feminine Art of Softening

How masculine achievement culture impacts the feminine soul

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